around with her. The bag smelled plain bad after too many little bottles of oil and potions had spilled in it. ‘It might look a little odd, dear, but it’s a fungus and you keep adding water to it and drink the juice and –’
‘Corinne, thank you,’ said Anneliese quickly, thinking she might have to throw up again at even the thought of drinking fungus juice. ‘I’m afraid I can’t stop, not now. Bye.’
She almost ran out of the shop, holding her jacket and bag in her hand. She couldn’t deal with Corinne. Not now.
For all Corinne’s bulk, she was very fast and fear of Corinne running after her made Anneliese rush down Fillibert Street looking blindly for somewhere to escape. The bookshop. TheFly Leaf was a small, quirky establishment with a big crime section and darkish windows so it was hard for anybody from outside to see in. Perfect. Nobody would talk to her there.
It was a Bookshop Rule: smile and nod only.
She rushed into the silence of The Fly Leaf, and made blindly for the shelves at the back. The classics section. She fingered the spines of the books, asking herself how long was it since she’d read Jane Austen?
Eventually, she felt calmer. Corinne hadn’t followed her. Now that she was out of the Lifeboat Shop, she could stop pretending and be herself again. Except she wasn’t sure who herself was. It was a strange, disconcerting feeling. Anneliese felt fogged up, not real somehow. Like she’d been teleported into this body and this life and none of it was even vaguely familiar.
Oh no, please, no.
She moved on from the classics and found herself in Self-Help. Her breathing was getting faster again. No. Breathe deeply. In, count to four, and out. After a while, she refocused on the shelves. Self-help. She’d looked in this department many times before and knew that there were no Meditations for People Who Were Pissed Off with the Whole Planet .
A definite gap in the market, she thought grimly. And no 100 Ways To Kill Your Husband and Former Best Friend , either.
But there were plenty of books on depression, which could either be cured by therapy, positive visualisations or eating exactly the right combination of supplements, depending on which book you read.
Anneliese had read lots of them, wanting to be fixed. She scanned the shelves, thinking that she probably had all of these volumes at home, apart from the newer ones. None of them had worked. Depression wasn’t something you could sever from yourself merely by reading a book.
It was so much darker and deeper. She stared angrily at the books, furious with their authors for daring to pretend that they knew what it was like.
Bloody psychiatrists and mental health gurus wrote books on depression, not real people who’d actually been in that cavern underground: a place where you couldn’t imagine ordinary, happy life; a place where functioning was almost out of the question.
Anneliese, come on out of your room and talk to me, please . Her mother’s voice in her memory again. Dear Mother. She’d tried so hard, Anneliese knew, but she’d been stuck with a daughter with a cloud of darkness inside her and their family – ordinary, kind, simple really – hadn’t known what to do with someone like her.
‘If only you’d tell me what’s wrong,’ Mother would beg.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong,’ Anneliese would reply. Because she didn’t. Nobody had hit her or hurt her. But she felt everything so deeply, more deeply than Astrid, her older sister, who was nearest in age to her. There were days when there was simply a cloud in her head, a cloud of fear and anxiety and darkness. She didn’t know why – it was just there.
It was over forty years since she’d had that realisation. She’d been fifteen when she discovered that everyone else didn’t feel the same, that she was different.
And then, in The Fly Leaf bookshop in Tamarin, Anneliese Kennedy had that familiar, jarring sensation of darkness in her head, and something
‘Corinne, thank you,’ said Anneliese quickly, thinking she might have to throw up again at even the thought of drinking fungus juice. ‘I’m afraid I can’t stop, not now. Bye.’
She almost ran out of the shop, holding her jacket and bag in her hand. She couldn’t deal with Corinne. Not now.
For all Corinne’s bulk, she was very fast and fear of Corinne running after her made Anneliese rush down Fillibert Street looking blindly for somewhere to escape. The bookshop. TheFly Leaf was a small, quirky establishment with a big crime section and darkish windows so it was hard for anybody from outside to see in. Perfect. Nobody would talk to her there.
It was a Bookshop Rule: smile and nod only.
She rushed into the silence of The Fly Leaf, and made blindly for the shelves at the back. The classics section. She fingered the spines of the books, asking herself how long was it since she’d read Jane Austen?
Eventually, she felt calmer. Corinne hadn’t followed her. Now that she was out of the Lifeboat Shop, she could stop pretending and be herself again. Except she wasn’t sure who herself was. It was a strange, disconcerting feeling. Anneliese felt fogged up, not real somehow. Like she’d been teleported into this body and this life and none of it was even vaguely familiar.
Oh no, please, no.
She moved on from the classics and found herself in Self-Help. Her breathing was getting faster again. No. Breathe deeply. In, count to four, and out. After a while, she refocused on the shelves. Self-help. She’d looked in this department many times before and knew that there were no Meditations for People Who Were Pissed Off with the Whole Planet .
A definite gap in the market, she thought grimly. And no 100 Ways To Kill Your Husband and Former Best Friend , either.
But there were plenty of books on depression, which could either be cured by therapy, positive visualisations or eating exactly the right combination of supplements, depending on which book you read.
Anneliese had read lots of them, wanting to be fixed. She scanned the shelves, thinking that she probably had all of these volumes at home, apart from the newer ones. None of them had worked. Depression wasn’t something you could sever from yourself merely by reading a book.
It was so much darker and deeper. She stared angrily at the books, furious with their authors for daring to pretend that they knew what it was like.
Bloody psychiatrists and mental health gurus wrote books on depression, not real people who’d actually been in that cavern underground: a place where you couldn’t imagine ordinary, happy life; a place where functioning was almost out of the question.
Anneliese, come on out of your room and talk to me, please . Her mother’s voice in her memory again. Dear Mother. She’d tried so hard, Anneliese knew, but she’d been stuck with a daughter with a cloud of darkness inside her and their family – ordinary, kind, simple really – hadn’t known what to do with someone like her.
‘If only you’d tell me what’s wrong,’ Mother would beg.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong,’ Anneliese would reply. Because she didn’t. Nobody had hit her or hurt her. But she felt everything so deeply, more deeply than Astrid, her older sister, who was nearest in age to her. There were days when there was simply a cloud in her head, a cloud of fear and anxiety and darkness. She didn’t know why – it was just there.
It was over forty years since she’d had that realisation. She’d been fifteen when she discovered that everyone else didn’t feel the same, that she was different.
And then, in The Fly Leaf bookshop in Tamarin, Anneliese Kennedy had that familiar, jarring sensation of darkness in her head, and something
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