The Darkest Evening

He’d worried about that when Jess moved on to the comprehensive. Sal said she’d give as good as she got, but still, the anxiety had kept him awake at night.
‘I don’t think they cared about her enough to bully her. Not at first. She shrank into herself. Later they noticed her, started with the names and the whispers behind her back. She didn’t come to us about it though. I only guessed later what had been going on.’ Again, Jill shot a look at the social worker before continuing, and again Joe thought there were things she wasn’t saying. ‘She’d always been a quiet little thing, but she turned nervy, withdrawn. She still had the horse but she wouldn’t go hunting any more and she didn’t bother with the other local girls who were into riding. She turned pale and skinny.’ Jill paused and tried to find the words. ‘Like a ghost. Like she didn’t want anyone to see her, to know she was there.’
‘And your husband couldn’t cope with the change in her?’
‘No!’ Jill raised her voice. Thomas turned and stared at her before squirming away onto the floor. He sat under the table banging the spoons on the quarry tiles. ‘It wasn’t that. He was just as worried as me. We tried everything to get through to her. We went to the school and tried to explain, but she was well-behaved and did her homework. They couldn’t see there was any problem. In the end I dragged her along to the GP. She was losing so much weight and we thought she might be ill. Cancer. Leukaemia. Something like that.’
Joe nodded. He’d had those fears in the middle of the night too and his children had been fit and healthy.
Jill was still speaking. Now she’d started, it seemed she couldn’t stop. ‘He said there was nothing physically wrong with her. Not the sort of thing we were imagining. But he thought she might have an eating disorder. He said he could refer her to the child and adolescent mental health services, but there was a waiting list. We couldn’t make any sense of it.’ She paused for a moment. Helen the social worker reached out and touched her hand. ‘That was when things really started going wrong.’
‘In what way, wrong?’ Helen asked. She shot a look at Joe, but he gestured for her to go on. This was her territory more than his and it was just as important for her to get a handle on the family.
‘Robert couldn’t understand it. Why would Lorna starve herself? It made him frustrated, angry.’
‘Had you noticed that she wasn’t eating?’
‘We were never the sort of family where everyone had their meals together. I’m not a domestic goddess.’ Jill allowed herself a small smile. ‘I’ve always been happier outside than in the kitchen. I suppose I thought she was helping herself to stuff from the pantry or the freezer, like we, Robert and I, did. She was spending more and more time in her room, becoming more isolated, and when she wasn’t there she was out walking. She walked miles. She said she needed the exercise, but I think that was all about losing weight too. She was always counting calories.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘In the end she was so poorly that she had to go to hospital. We went for a private place in Cumbria. We thought she’d get better care there. They specialized in teenagers with an eating disorder.’ Another pause. ‘Lorna didn’t want to go, but they said if she stayed at home, she might die. That her heart might just pack up.’
Now Joe could understand why Robert Falstone had taken himself away to feed sheep, why he wouldn’t want to be here for this conversation. It would bring back the bad times, the anxiety that his daughter was starving herself to death, the helplessness that he could do nothing to save her. The guilt that now he’d always live with.
‘But she got better,’ Helen said. ‘She must have done if she was able to have a baby. That’s impossible if you’re anorexic.’
Jill nodded. ‘She was months in hospital because she was so poorly. They had to get her weight up and for a while she was lying in bed, too weak to move. They put her in a wheelchair just to use the toilet. A nurse would sit by her at meals, to make sure she was eating, and still she couldn’t accept that she was ill. I visited from time to time, but there was no real response – some days she just turned her back on me – and I could tell all she wanted was for me to go. When she was well enough to leave the clinic, she refused to come home. Maybe she’d convinced herself that it was all our fault, that we were to blame for the way she felt about herself.’ Jill Falstone’s words were bitter. She turned to Helen Clough. ‘Your lot didn’t help. You egged her on, helped her make the break. You set her up in a house in Kirkhill. She was eighteen by then, isolated, vulnerable.’
‘I don’t know the details.’ Helen sounded defensive. ‘I haven’t been able to access her files. But if what you say is true, we couldn’t force her to live with you and she couldn’t stay in the hospital indefinitely.’
‘They said she’d have support!’ The words came out as a cry. ‘But nobody checked on her. Not after the first few weeks. I asked my doctor. She was left in that council house in Kirkhill on her own, day after day.’
‘But she stayed well,’ the social worker said. ‘Maybe that was what she needed – to stay in control of her own life.’
‘Who’s the baby’s father?’ Joe felt he had to break in. He was finding the recriminations unbearable and this wasn’t helping. Not now. It was time to move on.
‘She would never say.’
‘So, you did see her? You did keep