Anita suddenly felt the loss of Stacey so acutely, so freshly, it was like waves of pain through her body. And it struck her she’d never properly mourned her friend. Not the way you would normally miss someone and think about their splendid qualities and the amusing things they used to say and feel their absence in your life and all that. The shock of the way Stacey died had drowned out regular grief, robbing her of being properly missed, robbing them all.

Anita picked through the papers, tubes of sunblock, pens, loose Minties and other rubbish in her glovebox to find a packet of tissues. She allowed herself to sit in the car and howl for a good long time.

TWENTY

A RIGID SCHEDULE WAS THE ADHESIVE HOLDING PAULA together, the structure that stopped her crumbling into useless scraps or spinning beyond all social norms into a psychotic break.

She woke every day at six a.m., drank tea, went for a long half run/half walk, took a shower, ate yoghurt with fruit, then went to work in the medical centre. At the end of the work day, she pushed herself through another long walk, listening to an audiobook (non-fiction on subjects unlikely to churn up emotion), then returned to the serviced apartment.

Paula would plonk herself down on one of the two dining chairs in the place and sometimes an hour would have passed and the room had grown dark around her. She had been sitting all that time not moving, as good as paralysed.

These episodes of profound inertia had been happening to her quite often, a state of physical and mental torpor in which her breathing slowed, her limbs became immobile, her brain numbed. She guessed it was a self-protective mechanism, a temporary system shutdown to give her mind a reprieve from the endless churn of questions and shame. Paula would eventually rouse herself to switch on one of the overhead lights and cook dinner. She would drink one glass of wine in front of the TV, then take one temazepam and go to sleep at eleven p.m.

She regarded the life she was leading as a psychological breakdown in slow motion. A breakdown but under controlled conditions.

Paula had been in this south coast town for almost two weeks now and she’d discovered beautiful options for her morning run—through forest that swept right up to the edge of a headland where the huge trees met the cliff edge and the ground fell away sharply to the ocean.

She would finish by running along the beach, welcoming the burn up her ankles and calves from the strain of jogging on loose sand. This was probably some pathetic and futile act of self-punishment.