Robin knew, because Willow had told her, many times in the hours when she held her daughter tight, during the longest days and nights. That Willow wished she’d died too.
Unlike Edmund and Nate, Robin understood. Because there’d been moments since, during what felt like a hundred years had crawled by, when she wanted the same. And, had the devil approached her first, before he took his prize, Robin would’ve willingly offered herself in Maya’s place.
Hell held no fear, not when you’d watched your child suffer the way Willow had, still did.
Robin was also no stranger to guilt, regret, deep remorse, and such immense frustration. The shopping trip was her idea. Had she not gone for bread, had the man in front not wanted his ham slicing thinly then hummed and hawed about pickle or salad cream, had that stupid woman not counted her change onto the counter like there was all the time in the world…
Each time she trod the path of memories that brought them to this point in their lives, seeing it in snapshots, turning each one over in her head, the guilt and the outcome remained the same.
Willow wasn’t physically damaged; she escaped with cuts and bruises from flying debris, but her mind, that was a different matter. She never recovered.
A trigger was pulled, a bullet loaded with pain had exploded inside her head and the blast shattered her psyche into a million pieces. Fragments of happy memories floating beside the most sordid images. The remnants of her life broken beyond repair. Haphazard thoughts colliding with confusion. Deep sorrow bouncing off atoms of despair. Shards of anger slicing through the darkness. Blinding flashes of hate, then an explosion followed by the boom of loss.
That’s how Robin imagined the turmoil in Willow’s head. A burning star cascading across the universe, screeching through the atmosphere before plummeting to earth.
And she’d vowed to catch Willow whenever she fell, and she had, a few times.
Standing, Robin wearily took her cup to the sink and began to wash it, her eyes focused on the bubbles, her mind lost in the past.
Nate had done his best, to help Willow amidst his own grief. Then as weeks turned to months it became clear that whatever had lurked within Willow for so long, had her firmly in its grip. Nate was struggling to cope with her night terrors and the rages where she would attack him or try to hurt herself, pulling at her hair and scratching her skin.
Most of the time, she was silent and wouldn’t eat or speak, let alone wash. Robin had done her best, gone round every day. Encouraging, praying, silently raging inside.
And then in the early hours of a Tuesday morning, Robin took the call from Nate. He was panicking because Willow had disappeared. He’d woken to find her gone, the duvet pushed back and when he ran downstairs the front door was open, the car missing from the drive.
They’d found her eventually, or the police did, sitting on the motorway bridge ready to jump. It took over an hour to talk her down. When the marvellous, kind young officer finally managed to coax her into taking his hand, then into the back of the ambulance, Willow’s fate was sealed.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR
Willow spentsix weeks in hospital. The longest of Robin’s life. Imagining her child with strangers, disorientated, frightened. Her little girl alone without her mum, the person she had relied on since birth. It felt like she’d lost Willow, as well as Maya.
Shuddering at the memory she grabbed the tea towel and began to dry the pots on the draining board, remembering the day they were allowed to visit. She and Nate had gone alone. Edmund was appalled that Willow would even consider taking her own life, which he saw as a sin.
Robin could still hear his words that night, as the ambulance sped into the distance. Each syllable burned into her brain, repeated as an excuse when he refused to visit her at the hospital.
‘I can’t bear to see her right now. What she was about to do, it goes against everything I believe in. Everything I’ve taught her. She knows that life is a divine gift, to value and respect. No human has the right to take his own life or the life of another. I am so thoroughly disgusted and disappointed with her.’
During the first visit, Robin and Nate may as well have been invisible, ghosts chatting to another ghost, a faded grey image of the Willow they knew, who didn’t even acknowledge their existence. Instead she stared out of the window, silently mouthing the words of a conversation nobody else was privy to.
Slowly, though, they made progress and little by little Willow had come back to them. She smiled occasionally, ate food of her own accord, remembered how to wash and dress, it was progress. And even though Willow was not whole, not Robin’s technicolour, vivid child, she was a child who was present, who Robin could touch and hold and comfort. She hadn’t lost her.
They still weren’t out of the woods, not by a long chalk. Willow was diagnosed with persistent depressive disorder, or dysthymia, a continuous long-term chronic form of depression.
While Robin had sat there stunned, the consultant explained Willow’s condition succinctly and as he spoke it was as though her young life was laid before them, but a different version than the one Robin remembered. Like she was seeing it all again through new eyes, acknowledging and ticking off the symptoms one by one.
‘The patient loses all interest in normal daily activities, feels hopeless, lacks productivity, has low self-esteem and an overall feeling of inadequacy.’
That was an accurate description of Willow since Maya’s death, followed by a sobering warning.
‘These feelings can last for years. This is a major depressive disorder also known as clinical depression, and it affects how one feels, thinks, and behaves and can lead to a variety of emotional and physical problems. She may have trouble doing normal day-to-day activities, and sometimes may feel as if life isn’t worth living.’
A flashback to seeing her sitting on the motorway bridge had chilled Robin’s blood, and she silently vowed to never let Willow out of her sight again.
From what you’ve all told me, I suspect that Willow’s depression began in her teens and early twenties, but it could have struck at any age. From the notes provided by her GP and those from the university practice, my team have been able to piece together how her condition may have gone undetected or certainly diagnosed incorrectly, for years. However, the medications she has taken intermittently over the years strongly suggests she’s been struggling for a while. This has been corroborated by the therapist she saw at Cambridge who was most helpful,while adhering to patient confidentiality.
The slap in the face stung. Flat palm, full force, on target.
Robin had no idea, and neither did Nate who sobbed in his chair, inconsolable in his own shock and grief and whatever else he was feeling at that moment. Robin asked herself one question: why didn’t she notice?
