The Countdown

They tell me I’m the next in the line. They tell me I boarded the ‘crazy train’ the moment I was born, and they won’t let me refund my tickets. They tell me that pills and meditation only go so far, and who has time to sit around swallowing their darkest thoughts and trying to breathe them out as if they’re white smoke? Sometimes, they sound like me, if I joined a pantomime and got cast as the over-the-top villain. Sometimes, they have amateur cockney accents. Sometimes, they sound like Mum and when that happens, I rush to the study where she’s working from home, giving anger management courses to people much worse off than me. I knock on her door to remind myself that it’s all in my head. But sometimes, they sound like her. They sound like little Yvette from back on the farm where I was born, in Mayenne before I came to this country, where people said I was from a broken home and on my future CV, my special skills would include prison time in a young offender’s institute. Perhaps they’re right and it’s only a matter of time before I lose my grip on the world. After all, I have a countdown in my head. It runs in the family, that’s what people say. We have an urban legend in our house – Aunty Slasher. She’s like a bedtime story you’d tell a child if you don’t want them to sleep. I don’t even know her real name, only that she heard things no-one else could hear and when she shouted for help, people only heard a whisper. I heard they put in her Parkside, in a mental hospital, and left her there. Medically, we have a history of anxiety and depression. I’ve never been the type to bask in Social Darwinism, but Mum studies psychology and tells me that our family genealogy implies certain pre-dispositions to delusions and psychopathy. Birthdays and Christmases are about to become rather strange, she says. I’ve had a countdown in my head since I was four. It ticks, ticks, ticks like the world’s worst radio station. Only I can’t tune it out. When I was four, I broke a boy’s nose because he said he wanted to marry me. Because someone who wasn’t real told me he deserved it.

They’re worse when I’m on my own. Mum always says I should slow-down, or I’ll burn out. That I’m always living life in the fast lane when I shouldn’t. I want to tell her that if I slow down, even for a second, I’ll crash.

‘Not long left,’ says the voice with the cockney accent, whom I’ve named Eva Grey. I used to think it was easier to put names to the voices, but I fear naming them has given them airs. and say, pyjamas. The afternoon wanes. I spend most of it on the bench, writing poetry. If only I could write my

way out of this countdown. Sometimes, the writing dispels the voices, especially if I make them characters in my books. I must have killed Eva Grey off a 1,000 times now. arrow.

poems. Each word is a 1,000 cotton buds, which I bury in my ears. I pull inky blankets around my shoulders, drowning them out. If only for a little while. They are voices powered by delusion and self-doubt – they don’t exactly take holidays. they have a sense of humour. Slamming the notebook shut, I leave it on the bench. I head for the living room, where my piano rests against the wall. Sometimes, the sheer frustration of trying to get my hands to play to separate melodies keeps the voices at bay. I’ve been learning to play ‘Operator’ by Jim Croce, and not simply because Eva says that’s her least favourite song. tune. The countdown echoes in my head like a metronome. I hit the piano keys, jumping to my feet. Maybe I should check on Mum. She usually helps to chase the countdown away. I make my way to her room, the stairs creaking. It’s only 30 years old, this house, but it feels much older when you’re living in it. My grandad built it. We lost him, and the sense that this placed him and he can suddenly be found again. I knock on Mum’s bedroom door. There was a period, when we came to this country after Dad left her, that she barely came out of her room. Nana and Grandad always kept me busy – ever need. I didn’t know that Mum wasn’t busy working or reading, but that she was hiding ‘Maybe she’s run off and left you too,’ says Eva. If only she were real, then I could push her down the stairs.

‘Mum?’ I knock on the door. Something grunts. ‘You awake?’

‘I am now,’ says Mum. ‘What are you still doing in bed? It’s the middle of the afternoon.’ I sound so much like Nana I almost giggle. ‘I’m not in bed,’ says Mum. I frown. pyjamas. Her hair is plastered to her face, streaks of grey mixing with her autumnal blonde like watercolours. I step over her mountain of self-help books. ‘Can I join you?’ I ask. She shrugs. I lie next to her on the carpet.

‘People don’t say it out loud,’ Mum begins. ‘But you get to a certain age and the world just nothing. Instead, I think of Eva Grey and how at high school, if you were in crisis, your options were to go home, or to go the Mental Health Block, which sat at the very edge of school grounds, with its mouldy walls and soundproof rooms, so if you screamed or cried or did something you’d regret, no-one could hear you. If the world writes you off, maybe you should write yourself back in. ‘Trust you to try and cheer me up,’ I say. Mum stands. We always seem to use each other as building blocks, climbing over each other’s lethargy and pain until we manage to scrape together enough energy to smile. And Mum smiles. ‘I know just the thing to help.’ ‘Oh goody. Mum M.D. – I can’t wait to see this,’ says Eva. ‘Shut up.’ Mum turns around. ‘What’s that?’

‘Nothing.’ I haven’t told her yet about the things I hear. She has enough to worry about. We head downstairs and turn on the radio. It’s black and old and it has a CD player. Mum rummages around the kitchen table. The CD is in its usual place: the empty fruit bowl. She slots the CD in and hits play. ‘Are you serious?’ I laugh as ‘Under Pressure’ hits my ears. Mum shrugs again. ‘I always think we’re a little too serious.’ She bobs up and down to the music, snapping her pendent of the rest of my body. I try to fold my arms, but Mum grabs my wrist, dragging me and David Bowie, we don’t much care.

And as we dance, the countdown fades, trickling down, down, down until it’s just a faint, ticking that could easily be mistaken for a heartbeat. Or a song.

By Yvette Naden Yvette Naden was born in Mayenne, France, in 2002 but moved to the UK in 2006. Her work has Currently, she lives in York where she works as an English Tutor. Image by Jon Tyson