With mere weeks before the publication of my first novel, Diazepam for Sale, I thought it wise to include a blurb and extract in this blog. I'm so excited that I might just explode... I hope you enjoy it.
Blurb
Emma used to be happy; now she looks as if life has fallen on her
from a twelfth-floor window and she forgot to put out her arms to catch
it. She used to be creative but now she can barely imagine
a sunny day in the rain. She is young, beautiful and engulfed in the
creative vibes of Brighton, but she divides her time between sitting on
her own private pebble indentation on the beach and
watching the dregs of afternoon TV – chewing gum for the mind.
With her doctor refusing to offer her a prescription for anything
other than condescension, she is offered an unusual cure for her
depression from a man who promises to help her wear life like a
pair of loosely fitting loungey pants. And so begins her bizarre journey
into a past that belongs to someone else and a present that she wishes
didn’t belong to her. And the future? If only she could
get off the merry-go-round and start again it might just be okay.
Chapter 1
Emma wasn’t crying when she arrived
at the doctor’s surgery, but it was here that the sadness really hit her. It
was as if someone had switched her off at the mains or replaced her endorphins
with Marmite. She tried to form the words to tell the receptionist about her eleven-thirty
appointment with Doctor Hue and all she could manage was a shaky murmur. The woman
behind the desk raised one eyebrow, asked her name and processed her with all
the enthusiasm and compassion of a shop girl swiping a sweaty lettuce over a
bleeping scanner. She handed her a wooden tag with the number three pressed
into it, pointed her in the direction of the waiting room and quickly turned
her flawed attention to a suspiciously orangey man who had queued behind.
Emma still wasn’t crying when she
sat down in the waiting room, but whether the tears were on the inside or
flowing for the whole world to see really made no difference to her as she
lowered herself into an uncomfortable chair and tried to make sense of her
surroundings. At a glance, the brightly decorated room inspired hope and was a
tranquil greenroom to warm up for the doctor/patient show. But it was a ruse.
The posters pinned to every available scrap of wall space told her that
everything remotely fun, tasty or indulgent was bad for her and used a range of
colourful characters to convey the sombre message. A small notice by the door
told that twenty people had missed their pre-booked appointments this week and
a new policy was being put in place to put this time-wasting to an end (maybe
including the use of some kind of corporal punishment), and all of the other
signs informed patients of misery classes they could attend to get them through
a soul-destroying life. A problem shared is a problem halved, but with misery’s
penchant for company, Emma pictured the distress of the cancer and rape
victims, the co-dependants and the alcoholics, dividing and multiplying and
taking on a life of its own to form a kind of hyper-misery to inject back into
the world.
She picked up a battered copy of Hello magazine, with a smiley face
sketched in the O in biro, and pretended to read the taglines. The tears,
however, were now lurking just under her lids and would burst out at any point,
so she had to concentrate hard.
The old woman sitting opposite
her was also concentrating hard. She was an antique with very little hope for
restoration; her skin had a recycled quality to it, her ankles were bound in
frayed bandages so that her toes were blue and puffy, the fat around her calves
spilling over like poorly executed soufflé, and her head moved at intervals of its
own volition. An aware onlooker would doubt that she could even pull herself
out of her chair without some part of her falling off, but Emma was not an
aware onlooker. She didn’t even notice the old woman until the smiley face in
the O frowned and raised an eyebrow in her direction – at least that was what
the blur in front of her looked like after staring intently for ten minutes.
Slowly, she pulled her head
heavily from its slump, swept a parting in her lank hair and felt a jolt of
terror and embarrassment to see that the old woman was staring not only right
at her, with eye balls that no longer fit their sockets, but she was looking on
with such an expression of pity that Emma could feel it landing on her cheeks
and transforming them into glowing radishes.
The old woman’s fingers twisted
into painful sausages and the stress of age and illness was contorting her
features, blending her seamlessly into the glum-making posters behind, but
still there was pity for Emma. It was as if the depression inside of Emma was
oozing from every pore and encasing her in a sticky gloom, hiding everything
that the woman should be seeing, should envy – the vibrancy of youth; delicate
features which when ignited by delight illuminated a room; fiery red hair that
no amount of hair dye could imitate, luscious and rich; a smile, which when not
transforming her lips lived coyly in her eyes. None of it was visible through
the gloom. Her eyes were dead, her hair greasy and even her uncomfortable
posture compromised the youth. The smile, which had been a trophy of hers for
so long, she kept in a cupboard at home in case of emergencies.
Despite the excruciating creaking
of her bones, the old woman eased her body forward and reached out to touch
Emma’s leg. As her face came closer, Emma’s instinct was to look or run away,
but there was a softness and wisdom that held her gaze.
Very slowly, the old woman’s
shaky mouth opened, preparing to offer advice or wisdom or a recipe for chicken
soup, or any number of things that Emma would never find out because the number
three flashed behind her and with the buzz, the woman’s mouth slammed shut and
the hand was pulled away.
‘I have to…’ Emma finally said
and held up the number three tag to finish the sentence. She then slowly backed
towards the door and half-curtseying out of the room.
And then came the tears.
Maybe it was the name on the door
– Doctor Hue – in solid, impenetrable, gold lettering. She tried to compose
herself and raised her tear-drenched hand to knock on the door, but the voice
beyond boomed, ‘Come!’ before she even made contact.
She dragged both hands across her
face, cleared her throat and patted her summery skirt to free it of creases (or
maybe to rid it of the little flowers that she never really liked), and slowly
pushed through the heavy door.
Doctor Hue’s office was a true
testament to his success. Everything gleamed as if it was polished three times
a day: the desk, the books, the sports trophies that proved just how healthy he
was, even the leather armchair, which Emma opted against sitting on through
fear that she would slide off and land in the sea. She seated herself shakily
on an uncomfortable chair opposite his colossal desk and felt suddenly intoxicated
by a sickly sweet aroma, the origins of which were unclear. Doctor Hue,
however, was very comfortably seated, although he always seemed to sit
unfeasibly upright in his chair. He was either very proud in posture or was
being operated by a puppeteer with an extremely long arm. If, indeed, this was
the case, the puppeteer operated with immense subtlety; Doctor Hue’s hands
moved only to tap on the keyboard in front of him or push his thin-rimmed
glasses back into place; his head moved by slim, slow degrees as if he had
originally been a puppet in a horror spoof, and his expression was fixed in a
kind of faraway wonder that could be easily interpreted as boredom. None of
this changed to welcome his patient into the room or put her at ease.
‘Miss… Crown,’ he offered without
taking his eyes off his computer screen. ‘What can I do for you today?’
‘Well,’ Emma began then the tears
came again and for a moment she couldn’t speak.
Doctor Hue either didn’t notice
or was offering a po-faced decoy as he Googled what to do when patients cry.
‘It’s the same as last week and
the week before,’ she told him. ‘You must remember me.’
‘Of course,’ he lied, still
refusing to look at her.
‘You told me to come back if
things didn’t improve.’
‘Have they?’ he asked, pushing his
glasses further up his nose, his eyes now furiously scanning his monitor (or as
furiously as his mysterious puppeteer would allow) to catch up with her
symptoms. Then he stopped and did look
at her. Something in his stare made Emma feel that the room, the chair and the
doctor himself had suddenly grown and she was now a mucky dot on the furniture,
something that his emphatic cleaner had missed and as a consequence, would
later reap an almighty punishment. His face was devoid of compassion, sympathy,
empathy. In fact, his eyebrows raised and his eyes glazed over as if she had
already been in seventeen times that morning and he was no longer enjoying her
company.
‘I really don’t know what more
you expect us to do for you, Miss…’ This time he didn’t consult his screen for
her name.
‘But I still can’t sleep. I’m
breaking into tears all the time.’ She was crying as she spoke, not by way of
demonstration or to prompt humility into his rigid, upright,
never-needed-help-before face, but because she really couldn’t help it. ‘And
the panic attacks; I’m still having panic attacks.’ She wanted to stop – the
tears and the words – but both were relentless: a watery plea to a man who
would move her along as soon as he could get a word in. ‘The locum gave me
Diazepam a few months ago. It really helped, but nothing else does. Look at me.
This isn’t normal. This isn’t how I’m supposed to be feeling.’
Then a new expression came to his
face, one that she would never have predicted – a smile. ‘Diazepam,’ he
repeated and grinned at the suggestion.
She felt smaller still, as if the
furniture was now somehow ingested her. ‘Yeah. It helped. I didn’t –’
‘And what would you do with this Diazepam?’ he asked, emphasising the
name of the drug to give it a meaning that Emma couldn’t quite comprehend.
‘I –’
‘No, no, no!’ he smiled and shook
his head in time with the words. Then he didn’t say anything at all; he just
stared, challenging her to speak, but the moment she found the courage to open
her mouth he interrupted. ‘You do realise that Diazepam is highly addictive.’
‘Yeah, but –’
‘And you’re obviously aware that
Diazepam has quite a street value these days.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘No, no, no! I really think,
Miss...’
Emma summoned all her strength to
fight him. ‘Crown! My bloody name is Crown!’ But he didn’t even look up at her
attempt at an outburst. The puppeteer pulled hard on his eyebrows and folded
his arms, showing Emma that her defiance had confirmed her status as an
unstable addict and dealer. She wanted to say so much. The old Emma would never
have allowed herself to be treated like this, but the old Emma would never be
in a doctor’s office asking for Diazepam. She was a high-flyer, an artist, a
creative who thrived on life. She would have told him what to do with his
Diazepam and told him to ram his condescending, ugly, fat head up his arse. She
would have cut the puppet strings and watched him flail on the floor like a dry
fish sucking useless oxygen then stomped on the carcass. This Emma, however,
cried openly and relentlessly, the world disappearing around her. As the room
returned and her intense sobs became sad whimpers, she saw that Doctor Hue was
staring at her, still smiling then he looked down at his watch. She took a deep
breath and dragged her hand across her face. There was nothing more to say. She
grabbed around for a little dignity and found just enough to stand up, turn
away from the doctor and leave the room.
‘Come and see me if things don’t
improve,’ she heard him say on the way out and she completed her turn on the
conveyer belt, followed closely by the half-dead wise woman who she was sure
would be packed off with a prescription for Paracetamol and a ‘Come back when
your head falls off’.
Diazepam for Sale is available from 15 October.
For more information, visit Whoosh Books
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