The secret was contained in the car as I drove down Main Street towards Henry’s a few days later. It was hovering around somewhere among the empty chip packets and crushed water bottles, over by a half-eaten Fruit Roll-Up that had melted onto the dashboard. I balanced my palms lightly on the steering wheel, trying to lessen the pain in my fingers. The secret drifted into my head and I let it float away like the meditation guide had instructed:Fly away, little dark cloud. A strand of hair released itself from my scalp and drifted slowly down the front of my sweater.Two hundred and sixty-seven, I counted as another strand sloughed off.Two hundred and sixty-eight.
Henry’s building—the destination I half hoped I’d never reach—was only a couple of miles away. Henry had once told me a story about how he used a rock hidden below the surface of the water as his base when he went surfing; as long as he could swim back to the rock, he knew he was safe. I assumed he meant it as an allegory. I couldn’t picture him in a wet suit, so instead I imagined him sitting on the rock in his armchair, his yellow legal pad on his knee, his wire-rimmed glasses balanced on his nose. Waves thrashing around him, a storm brewing in the sky, and Henry calmly taking notes.
A twinge of pain shot up my left leg, followed by the familiar prickling sensation in my scalp. I ran my fingers through my hair, glancing at the strands that fell out into my hand before shaking them onto the car floor.Tension myositis syndrome. At least now I had a diagnosis, even if I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. I’d thought I’d been suffering from some kind of nervous breakdown induced by the stress of looking after four kids under the age of seven, but it seemed to be getting worse, not better. Henry had prescribed medication for anxiety, but it didn’t feel like anxiety to me, it felt like panic. In the middle of the night it felt like sheer bloody terror.
It was a year ago that the symptoms had started, an unexplained ache in my feet when I got out of bed in the morning that made it hard to stand upright. Then I noticed shooting pains in my thighs as I sat on a picnic blanket on the edge of a soccer field, watching Alfie careen around in every direc
