really wrong. I just want you to get better. I want things to get back to normal.
Me too. Can you pass up my tea, please?
Your hands are freezing, he said, handing me the mug.
They’re always cold these days, I said. I clasped the tea against me, still lying down, and sipped from the mug, wedging it under my chin.
Watch you don’t spill it on the bed, he said.
I will. This quilt’s horrible, by the way.
I know, my mum gave it to me for Christmas. He picked up the blue menu again. I quite fancy a korma.
Anything you want. I’ll just have a wee bit.
Will we get pakora?
If you want, I said.
Maybe not. It was a bit greasy the last time.
When I got back here and couldn’t sleep, I was thinking about that geology lecturer who’s always in the Grosvenor on his own. I bet he cries himself to sleep at night.
How can you leap from talking about pakora to the geology lecturer?!
He’s got greasy hair, I said. Greasy pakora and greasy hair.
You always do that, he said, leap from one thing to something totally unrelated.
That’s what makes me interesting.
I think I’ll go out for the food now, he said. I’m starving.
Can I stay here?
Yup.
You’re an angel, I said. I put my tea down and leaned over him and kissed his ear. The earring felt spiky and cold.
The front door slammed and the record jumped.
That’s Rez back. I’ll see if he wants anything. Hey, Rez, we’re in here, d’you want a curry?
Rez put his head round the door. Hiya! Is that you hiding in bed, Helen? How are you doing?
Och, hanging in there, I said.
I’d love a curry, he said to Ivan. I’ll come with you.
They left and I stayed in bed for a bit thinking about where I could get a nice mug tree for Ivan.
I got up to set the table. I wanted to be useful. Three forks, a bottle of flat Irn Bru and half a bottle of Black Tower. I put the oven on to warm the plates and read some poems while I waited. Alicante cheered me up even though I thought it was about a lost love.
The flat shook and they were back. Sorry we took so long, said Ivan. The place was mobbed.
Three happy students having dinner round the table: Ivan, Helen and Rez. Can you guess which one has a weird burning feeling in her head/neck/spine that she doesn’t want to mention?!
Yes, that’s right. It’s Helen!
Nab ran me to the station on the night of the Ian Dury concert. All my symptoms were trailing behind me. I’d taken four extra strong Panadol. I took Germinal to read on the train but it didn’t come out of my bag. I watched the raindrops skitter along the train windows like sperm.
I got off at Partick and took the Underground to Hillhead where Ivan was meeting me. I used the escalators. (I’d always used the stairs before.) Ivan was waiting for me in his leather jacket. He was chatting to the guy who was always there selling the Socialist Worker. We waited as long as we could for the rain to stop before making our way up to the union. I was exhausted from standing at the station and got a seat upstairs on the balcony.
Ian Dury was brilliant. He came on stage, writhing and wrapped in tinfoil. He sang Ban The Bomb. Ivan was up the front with his friends. He kept turning round and looking up at me. When they sang Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, I thought of Rachel and an experiment we’d done at school in chemistry. Rachel had been trying to write down the lyrics of Rhythm Stick and I’d been trying to write down the experiment. Something about iron ions, something turning Prussian blue. The teacher had sent her to the ‘sin bin’, a solitary chair at the back of the lab and wouldn’t let us sit together for the rest of term. Another time, in physics, we’d pinned crocodile clips all over each other’s backs. The teacher was angry but trying not to laugh. His experiments never worked and we felt sorry for him. All that wasted ticker tape. I felt sad thinking about Rachel. I’d seen her at Christmas but she’d been dismissive of me coming home from France early. We’d been inseparable at school. I’d gone to recorder lessons for three months just because she went, even though I was crap at music and got mouth ulcers. I hated unscrewing the top of the recorder to shake out the saliva.
When they played Sweet Gene Vincent, everyone started to pogo at the fast bit. I looked down on all the jumping, dyed blonde/purple/spiky heads. I was outside all of this. My spine felt like it was being stretched and my hands were numb and tingling.
Ian Dury was glowing with sweat.
After the concert, Ivan’s band friends came back to the flat. I wanted them to go away, I wanted him to myself. They were drunk and slagging off some girl that one of them had had a blind date with. Joe (from London) was saying, You get two kinds of red-head. You get the beautiful Irish kind with pale skin and you get the freaky, red-faced Scottish kind with freckles. This one was FREAKY!
They all thought Joe was so funny. They all laughed like they were choking.
I went to bed and lay awake waiting for Ivan. I could faintly hear the yelping of the Cocteau Twins from downstairs. I wondered if the girls who lived there got carpet burns when they had sex. (The flat was covered throughout with dark brown industrial strength carpet.)
I couldn’t get rid of them, Ivan said when he finally came through. Joe’s got a new song he’s excited about.
Joe’s a wanker, I said. He talks such shite. God, your feet are freezing!
You can warm me up, he said, rubbing his feet against me.
A bundle of mail arrived from Caen, the stuff Jana had forwarded: the blood test results and some Christmas cards. I ripped open the blood test. Now I would have a weapon against Myra, proof that I really was ill! When I read it my heart sank. It said there had been a mix-up at the lab, they’d lost the samples and they wanted to re-do the tests, could I please make an appointment? I read it twice to make sure I’d understood. I screwed it up and threw it across the carpet. Agnes batted it under the table. I had no chance now, I was at Myra’s mercy forever.
The Christmas cards – so pointless in the middle of January – were from people who had no idea I’d come home. All three had pictures of penguins with stupid smiles.
Agnes was curving her paws round the table leg, catching the twist of paper then batting it away again. I binned the penguins, took Agnes upstairs and cried into her.
More tests: a chest x-ray; an ECG; a kidney x-ray; a liver function test; a barium meal and a barium enema (beware the white shit that won’t flush!).
Negative! Myra crowed, as each result came back.
But I’m getting worse. My legs are like jelly. The pain’s burning into my bones. I feel sick all the time. My brain feels inflamed. Why don’t you believe me?
Helen, there is nothing physically wrong with you. If this goes on I think you should see a clinical psychologist. Believe me, I’m the doctor.
(Believe me. Just for a change. I’m the patient.)
It turned out I’d already been tested for brucellosis. Rita, who thought it was a possibility, after all, had asked for me to be tested and was told I already had been.
I had to sign on now that I’d sent my grant back. Officially, I was no longer a student. Officially, I was no longer anything.