Reluctantly Home

by Imogen Clark

Boxes of books, it seemed, weren’t always as much fun to open as boxes of knick-knacks.

Excuse me ma’am boxes of books sounds like a whole bunch of fun !

No rest for the wicked, eh?’

My favee thing to say all the time 💀

her mother had read that panic attacks were a symptom of mental illness and whilst she struggled with the concept, was determined to embrace it for her daughter’s sake.

‘That doesn’t seem fair,’ she added. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

Who knows how long it will be before you’re back to normal?

wow </3

She had always defined herself by what she did rather than by who she was, by what she wore on the outside instead of what was happening on the inside. Status had shaped each part of her, moulding her into what she had become. So where did that leave her now it was all gone? Drifting with neither rudder to steer her nor anchor to hold her safe. It was terrifying.

She was empty, a vacuum, a void.

Nothing seemed to touch her any more, nothing could pierce the carapace that she had enclosed herself in because no emotional hurt could be as terrible or as devastating as the one she was already dealing with. Or not dealing with.

Gender-defining though the arrangement was, their lives were symbiotic, each one vital to the well-being of the other. It was a true partnership.

Being happy with your lot, Pip thought, now there was a concept she had struggled with over the years, but she was starting to see that perhaps there was more to it than she had given her parents credit for. Before the accident she had been dismissive of what she had seen as their narrow vision of the world. Their apparent lack of ambition had always frustrated her, but now she wondered whether what she had always seen as a weakness could actually be more of a strength.

Her default setting as a teenager had always been to guard any information about her life preciously, but what harm could it possibly do to share her thoughts with her mother now – or even then, for that matter?

He hasn’t changed a bit. I’m not sure why I left it so long to talk to him, to be honest.’

insouciance.

Insoucianttttt

‘You were reinventing yourself,’ Evelyn said, and Pip nodded urgently. That was exactly it. Evelyn had hit the nail on the head. ‘Don’t we all do that,’ Evelyn continued, ‘to a greater or lesser extent? Not everyone goes as far as to change their name to shed their old skin, though many do, but trying to become something new is a human affliction.’

Yes, you’ll feel guilt. That’s only to be expected. It’s misplaced, but it’s unavoidable. But you can’t let it define who you are for the rest of your life. I let that happen to me. At the time, I couldn’t find any other way through the pain, but now I see that it might have been a mistake. I urge you to look at things differently and not to do what I did.’

He’d been there for her and she had pushed him away.

carried for so long had been lifted. It was true what they said: a trouble shared is a trouble halved.

‘I always think,’ said Evelyn, ‘that the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.’

My old agent Julian used to say, never look back unless you’re planning to go that way.

– but it wasn’t hard to find the man I once knew so well in the lines and creases of his face. Our café is no more, but that was all right. Things change and move on all the time. That’s just how it should be. We said we’d keep in touch, Ted and me. I think we will.

I wanted to write a novel that examined how people can become trapped, not just by their circumstances but also by the stories they tell themselves in their minds.