The World at My Feet Read online

  The countryside unfolds beyond it like a familiar painting that I haven’t looked at for a very long time. The grassland and hills that swarm with daisies and buttercups. The pastel grey sky and clumps of beech and ash woodland in the distance. To the south is Missenthorpe, the prettiest of villages. This is an England of cricket greens and church spires, of flint-built houses and duck ponds. An England I haven’t seen up close in two years.

  ‘GERTIE! COME ON!’

  ‘Hey, it’s okay,’ he says, which really gets my back up. ‘She can’t have gone far. We can just go and look for her. I’ll take one direction and you take the other. We’ll find her soon enough.’

  Jamie Dawson. That’s his name – I remember now. Why this fact springs into my mind as I’m standing at my gate, infused with panic, I have no idea. The path outside follows two directions. Upwards leads to open farmland and the peak of the hill upon which our house nestles, overlooking the ribbon of countryside below. Downwards takes you into the village, a cluster of once-familiar shops and pubs, churches and people. I don’t know which choice is worse, but in the event he makes the decision for me. ‘I’ll head down the hill and if I find her I’ll phone you.’

  ‘But you haven’t got my number!’

  ‘It’s on your order form.’ He turns to leave but, after a double take, pauses. ‘Hey, don’t worry. We’ll get her back.’

  His voice is spongy in my ears. My head pounds. The flesh on the lower half of my face begins to tingle and sweat has gathered at the base of my spine. He disappears down the hill, calling Gertie’s name, and all I can do is stand, immobile, choking on my own fear.

  My body is experiencing a fight or flight response, an acute stress reaction that occurs when threat is perceived. My central nervous system is in a state of hyperarousal, prompting a hormonal cascade from the adrenal gland. As you might be able to tell, I’ve read a lot on this subject. This physiological response is a good thing usually: the ability to detect and react to threats to survival is what enables zebra to escape from rampaging lions and human beings to dive out of the way of oncoming traffic. But mine, for whatever reason, is faulty. It’s prone to misfiring. I do know this. But telling someone who suffers from panic attacks that their terror is irrational will do little to still their threatened mind.

  These thoughts tiptoe through my head as I stand trembling at the gate, every breath like a crushing weight in my lungs. My limbs buzz. A thick, sticky sound throbs in my ears. I close my eyes, ball my hands into fists and turn to face the hill. I don’t need to force myself to think of Gertie; she already looms in my thoughts as I turn and I run.

  The dry thud of my feet as they scuff the ground leaves me with an intense feeling of detachment, as if someone else’s legs are carrying me, that this is happening to another person. I look up and the sky, now grey, appears to be scowling at me.

  ‘GERTIE! Come on!’

  The thought that she isn’t wearing her collar hits me. I didn’t put it on this morning after she’d woken up. Why would I when she wasn’t going for a walk until later today? She’s chipped of course, but that would only be any use if someone approached her, put her in their car, drove her to a vet and asked them to scan her.

  I remind myself I’m catastrophising, yet my negative thoughts begin to tumble over themselves, into a tight ball of despair. What if she gets as far as Kingwood Farm, where there are sheep grazing? Mum never takes her that way because she barks at them – she’s had a number of near-misses when Gertie has become over-excited and, as amiable as Ed Sawdon is, no farmer would let a dog threaten his sheep.

  A vision of Gertie crashes into my brain: of her lying prostrate with a bullet in her side and blood seeping into her fur. I physically shake my head to get rid of it and start to run faster, stumbling over the gravel on the path, as I frantically search the fields. ‘Gertie!’

  When I reach the section that is surrounded by hedgerows, the light dims. My limbs begin to shake, though it’s not really that cold. Even the smells beyond my garden gate are different from those inside. Out here, the smothering scent of wormwood and sage radiates from the hedgerows. I reach a stile and pause, then scramble over, catching myself on the rotten wood. It splinters into my shin and when I look down, the skin is torn, a trail of blood sliding down my leg.

  ‘GERTIE!’

  I see the peak of the hill and begin to run again, staggering upwards with a feeling that the sky is engulfing me, swallowing me whole. When I finally stop, I am gripped by a certainty that I am going to die. I don’t know how or why but I am.

  I hear a bark. It’s distant and I can’t tell the direction from which it’s coming, but it’s her.

  ‘GERTIE!’

  The sight of my dog bounding over the hill, yapping as she hurdles over rocks and branches, makes me fall to my knees. I bury my head in her fur but the relief doesn’t last beyond the initial moments. When I snap back to reality, it leaves a violent ache in my belly.

  I pick her up and begin to head back, tripping over my own feet as I cradle her in my arms. By the time I reach the house again, Mum is standing outside the gate, talking to Jamie. She looks up.

  ‘Here they are!’ Jamie has the relaxed and unaffected smile of someone for whom my own particular brand of madness would be totally incomprehensible. ‘Oh, well done. Told you she wouldn’t have gone far.’

  ‘Where was she, Ellie?’ Mum asks, looking at me anxiously.

  Jamie begins ruffling Gertie’s head and the dog springs into his arms, her tail in overdrive. ‘Just went on an adventure, did you, little one?’ he laughs.

  ‘Looks that way. All okay?’ Mum asks, in a tone that suggests she knows I’m not. I nod noiselessly and push open the gate to enter my sanctuary. My safety net. My home.

  Chapter 10

  I spend the evening in the company of Garden Rescue and half a pack of extortionately expensive Marlboro Lights. I can’t face anything to eat and my thoughts about this afternoon’s events jerk around my head like a twitching muscle that refuses to stay still.

  When I gave up therapy a few months after I moved to the annexe of Chalk View two years ago, at least one of the reasons was that I’d learnt all the theory about agoraphobia that I possibly could. This was my second course of treatment with Colette. The first had happened after I left university more than a decade earlier and had been very successful.

  This time, I’d been feeling better after a few weeks, at least I’d thought so. Then she suggested a ‘new approach’. She wanted to get to the root of the problem. I knew what she wanted me to do wouldn’t work. I told her it would have been counterproductive, could set me back years, no matter how well intentioned her motives.

  Part of me also hoped that one day my problem might get better on its own, simply lift like a storm blowing over. Because, although I have lived with an irrational, agitated mind in one form or another for most of my adult life, that doesn’t mean I’ve never been happy, or felt relaxed and normal. On the contrary.

  I might limit my sphere of movement now, but I did spend more than ten years living in London. A whole decade when I was functioning in – and a lot of the time enjoying – a city inhabited by 8.1 million people, in which it’s impossible to get from A to B without using an underground transport system. In other words, plenty to feel anxious about even for the non-agoraphobic. I also had friends back then, or at least colleagues I spent time with outside work, whiling away boozy summer evenings in Shoreditch bars or kicking off my Saturday mornings with a step class.

  The pattern of my agoraphobia over the course of a lifetime has ebbed and flowed. Until this afternoon, I think I’d assumed – without ever articulating the thought – that I would one day be okay again. But I feel shaken by what happened, I must admit. By the intensity of it and its stubborn insistence, even after all this time. As much as I’d convinced myself that I am happy living this life, the thought that I might be here for ever suddenly sits uneasily with me.

  I gently push Gertie off m
y lap and head to my bookshelf, taking out a copy of The English Gardener by William Cobbett. I bought it from an antiquarian bookshop on the corner of Charing Cross Road, a shop that smelled divine, that sweet, musty scent of decades-old dust. It had a small but well-stocked gardening section and soon my Gertrude Jekyll book was joined by Derek Jarman’s Garden, The New Book of Apples by Joan Morgan and Alison Richards and many more. My collection is a source of comfort to me, a literary blanket that soothes in a way that gardening advice on the internet could never hope to match. I do try though. The feeling those books give me is one I’ve attempted to emulate on Instagram, though I’m nowhere near as talented a horticulturalist as any of those authors. Still, the idea that my words might have an effect comparable to when I rub my fingers over the pages of a beautifully illustrated botanical guide is a nice ambition to have.

  Tonight though, as I pick up Classic Roses by Peter Beales, none of this – not Gertie, the cigarettes, not the voices of Suzanne Vega, Etta James or Stevie Nicks, all of whom I’ve played all evening – changes anything. Nor does my incessant flicking through Guy’s Instagram Stories. I feel agitated and upset and I’ve only got myself to blame.

  * * *

  The following morning, I am in the garden when Mum steps out, with a coffee in her hand.

  ‘How are you doing?’ she asks.

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ I reply.

  ‘Do you want to talk about what happened yesterday?’ she asks.

  I shrug. ‘Nothing to talk about, apart from what a naughty dog I’ve got. That’s a nice top. Very trendy.’

  She ignores my attempts to divert this conversation. ‘Listen, sweetheart. I was thinking and… I wondered whether you should give Colette a ring again?’

  I blanch at the suggestion. ‘No, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry, Mum, honestly. I’m just going to be careful about the direction I throw Gertie’s ball from now on.’ I smile.

  ‘This isn’t about the dog, Ellie,’ she says, gently. ‘You got on well with Colette. You seemed to be making progress. I’ve never really understood why it was that you left so abruptly.’

  ‘I didn’t really make progress, Mum. And it was such a lot of money.’

  ‘Oh Ellie, that doesn’t matter,’ she sighs. But it does. I’ve already cost them so much and, while they might live in a lovely – inherited – house they’re not swimming in cash. ‘How about someone else then?’ she persists. ‘Don’t you think you need to do something, sweetheart?’

  ‘Mum, it’s fine. Really. I know you just want me to be happy, but I am.’

  She looks unconvinced. ‘Please just think about it.’

  A beat passes. ‘All right,’ I say, which basically means, ‘I already have and the answer is no’.

  She decides to drop the subject. ‘By the way, I got a text from Mandy, the new cleaner. She’s struggling with childcare for her five-year-old son on Tuesday. Her mother has a hospital appointment and… well, there was some convoluted story but, rather than put her off, I suggested that she should bring him with her. I said he could play in the garden.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sure he won’t be any trouble.’

  ‘But that’s not going to work,’ I insist. ‘I’ve got loads to do and there will be tools out there… it could be dangerous. It’s really not a good time.’

  ‘It’s only for a couple of hours and I’m going in to the Observer office on Tuesday about a possible feature,’ she replies. ‘I’m sure you can keep him out of trouble for that long.’

  Chapter 11

  The little boy arrives with his mother just before 11am. He’s cute, if you like that sort of thing, with dimples in his cheeks and a gummy gap in his bottom teeth. Gertie instantly recognises him as a new and exciting creature to leap on, sniff and make friends with, until he ‘pats’ her on the back like he’s trying to get a racehorse to gallop and she decides to disappear instead into the annexe.

  Mandy has very tanned, slender legs, breasts encased in the scaffolding of a push-up bra and long, groomed hair the colour of butter. Despite the fact that she’ll shortly be scrubbing a toilet, her make-up is applied with the precision of an Italian old master and set off with a pair of false eyelashes. I feel a bit grubby and unkempt in her presence.

  ‘Isn’t your mum amazing?’ she says, as she pulls a pink overall over her head. ‘I couldn’t believe it when she told me about her old job. You just can’t imagine her in all those bloody awful places, can you?’

  ‘Well, I tried my best not to,’ I say.

  ‘I like my luxuries too much to go off doing something like that, don’t you? If I don’t get my bath and Crunchy Nut Cornflakes every night, there’s no way I’ll sleep. What do you do, work-wise?’

  ‘I’m… well, I’m an influencer. And I run a kind of online garden business.’

  She widens her eyes. ‘Oh brill. You never thought of following in your mum’s footsteps then? Flying off to all those mad places and putting the world to rights?’

  ‘No. That wasn’t for me.’ I force a smile. ‘So, are you taking the little boy inside?’

  ‘Your mum was quite insistent that I should keep Oscar outdoors while I clean. I think she was worried he might break something.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure that wasn’t it. If you’d prefer him to go inside where you can keep an eye on him, that’d be absolutely fine by me.’

  She shrugs. ‘To be honest, I think he probably would break something. Some kids only have to look at a vase to destroy it, don’t they? And at least he can’t do much damage out here. Right, I’ll leave you to it. Oscar!’ she beckons him over. ‘Are you going to be a good boy?’

  She rummages in her bra for a tissue that she proceeds to wipe over his cheeks. ‘If you need the toilet, come inside. Don’t do it in the flower beds like at Mrs Weaver’s house.’ She glances up at me. ‘This isn’t a problem, is it?’

  ‘Erm. No, it’s fine.’

  Now she looks suspicious. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes. I love kids.’ I have literally no idea why I say this, beyond my pathetic need for approval.

  ‘Ah, that’s lovely. Have you got any of your own?’

  ‘Me? No.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I’ll have any more, if I’m honest,’ she says, lowering her voice. ‘One’s enough for anyone, isn’t it? Though my mum was one of nine.’

  ‘Gosh.’

  ‘I know. That was in the days when motherhood was respected as a job, mind you,’ she says earnestly. ‘My gran was a full-time home maker and mother, and loved every minute of it. Apart from when she had the nervous breakdown.’ She appears not to be joking.

  As she disappears into the house, I turn to the boy, wondering how Mum would handle this. ‘Would you like some juice?’

  ‘No. I just want to play with the dog.’

  ‘The dog kind of does whatever she wants, but let’s see if we can persuade her, shall we? Gertie!’ She trots outside and looks at the boy.

  ‘Does he like having a ball thrown for him?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s a she. She’s called Gertie. She’d probably like that as long as you don’t throw it over the gate.’ I pick up the hoe and slip on my headphones, clicking onto Florence and the Machine. As I prod the tool into the soil, I feel a tug on my sleeve.

  ‘Yes?’ I ask, looking down.

  ‘I need a ball so I can throw it for him.’

  ‘For her.’ I put down the hoe. ‘Yes, sorry. My mistake – I’ll go and look for one.’

  Inside, I rummage for a tennis ball in Gertie’s toy basket. I pick one up and turn to leave, only to find the child standing less than a foot away, causing me to inhale sharply.

  ‘I’m going to be an inventor when I grow up,’ he announces, apropos of nothing.

  ‘Great.’ I hand him the ball and usher him out.

  ‘Have you ever invented anything?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ I say.

  ‘I’m going to invent trousers that don’t go inside out when you take them
off. Then I’ll put them on YouTube so everyone buys them.’

  ‘Super. Off you go.’

  He starts to wander off, then hesitates. ‘Would you like me to teach you how to moonwalk?’

  ‘No, you’re all right. Thanks.’

  For an hour and a half, he’s one minute hovering over me – silently examining what I’m doing – then bombing around the garden as if he has a firework in his shorts the next. Gertie circles after him, yapping hysterically as they plough through a heap of weeds and jump over bedding plants.

  ‘Look, I know you’re only trying to enjoy yourself, but do you think you’d just be able to be a bit… a bit less… Arrgh! Would you just stop!’

  ‘Hi there.’ I look up to see the delivery man. Jamie. ‘Am I okay to open the gate?’

  I wince over the racket as I walk towards him. ‘Yes, come in.’

  ‘Just a little order today,’ he says cheerfully, closing the gate behind him. ‘Where do you want it?’

  ‘The bench will be fine.’

  ‘Looks like you’ve got company,’ he says, nodding at Oscar as he puts down the box.

  ‘Yes, I’d have thought you could’ve heard them from halfway down the hill.’

  ‘Is he yours?’ he asks.

  ‘God, no.’

  ‘Hello mate, what’s your name?’ Jamie asks. The child stops and looks up. His face is blotchy and red like the inside of a pomegranate and steam is rising from his hair.

  ‘Oscar.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Can you moonwalk?’

  ‘Well, it’s been a while…’

  ‘I’m going to be an inventor,’ Oscar announces.

  Jamie widens his eyes. ‘That is cool. What are you going to invent?’

  ‘Trousers that don’t go inside out when you take them off.’

  ‘Awesome,’ Jamie replies, as if he’d said a cure for cancer. ‘Then, maybe you could invent… a trampoline that gives out popcorn every time you bounce?’