But there was nothing to be gained by feeling jealous. And I wouldn't have minded but the jealousy was caused entirely by myself. It was my own imagination that was causing me the pain.
And I was feeling the pain, not because something had happened to me but because something hadn't happened to me. Why did something that was going on between two other people and didn't involve me in any way hurt me so much?
Well, I was damned if I knew.
I just knew that it did.
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seven
The time that followed is still referred to in our house as the Great Terror. Helen alludes to it even now by saying something like "Do you remember the time when you started behaving like Adolf Hitler and we all hated you and wished that you would go back to London?"
The change in me was terrible.
It was as though someone had flicked a switch.
I went from feeling sad and lonely and miserable to explosive rage and jealousy and desire for revenge on Denise and James. I fantasized about terrible disasters befalling them.
I was like a madman on a rampage. I had so much anger and hatred in me, and the person who should have been receiving the brunt of it--i.e., James--wasn't there. So my family, who were innocent bystanders, who, in fact, were trying to help me, ended up being shouted at and having their doors slammed instead of him.
When I first returned from London there had been a dignity to my suf- fering. I felt a bit like a Victorian heroine who had been disappointed in love and had no choice but to turn her face to the wall and die, albeit beautifully, surrounded by smelling salts, from her grief. Like Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Liaisons.
Now I was more like Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter. Psychotic. Crazed. A danger to myself and others. Walking around the house with a mad look in my eyes. Rooms full of conversation falling silent when I entered them. Mum
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and Dad watching me fearfully. Anna and Helen leaving rooms when I arrived.
I wasn't wearing battle camouflage and didn't have a belt of bullets slung across my chest and wasn't carrying some kind of fearsome-looking auto- matic weapon and didn't have a grenade in my pocket. My face wasn't smeared with dirt (although on reflection it might have been; the baths went by the wayside completely during this terrible time). But I felt as powerful as if I had all those weapons, and I was treated with as much fear as if I did have them.
The Great Terror started the day I watched that video with Mum. (I won't go into the details of what happened there. I'm too ashamed of myself. And anyway the video shop agreed to drop the charges. It was totally true what the assistant said. They only stock the videos. It was no reflection on their personal opinions or morals. I was just a little bit overwrought at the time.)
The Great Terror continued for several war-torn days. Anything could trigger a tantrum in me, but especially romantic scenes on the television. My head constantly played a video of James and Denise in bed together. When I saw other loving couples on television I was pushed to overload.
Luckily I saw no loving couples in real life or I might not have been re- sponsible for my actions. Mum and Dad certainly didn't behave like a loving couple. And Helen had a steady stream of young suitors through the house but she made cruel, teasing fun of them and their puppylike devotion. Which pleased me in a grim, cold kind of way. As for Anna--well, that's another story, to be told another day.
I cried an awful lot during this time. And swore. And threw things.
As I said, television usually upset me. I'd see a man lean over and kiss a woman and immediately the green fire of jealousy would rush through me, excruciating energy would fill me. I would think of James. And I would think of my James with another woman. For a second it would just be a thought in the abstract, as if he was still with me and I was being silly and imagining "worst possible" scenarios. And then I would remember that it had happened and that he was with another woman. The realization hurt just as much each time. The tenth
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time it happened it was as awful and as shocking and as sick-making as the first time.
So I might throw a book at the television, or some shoes at the wall, or Kate's bottle at the window. Or really anything handy or close by at all would be thrown at a nearby surface. Then I would swear like a fishwife and stomp from the room, slamming the door so hard that slates probably fell off the roof. It got so bad that when I thumped into the sitting room and the television was on, Anna or Helen, or whoever was there, would flick the remote control and quickly change the channel from whatever they were watching to something inoffensive like the Open University program on applied physics or a documentary about how fridges work or a game show in which all the contestants had obviously had lobotomies.
"What's on?" I would growl at them.
"Oh, err...just this," they would reply nervously, indicating the television with a flutter of their hands.
We would all sit there in silence, pretending to watch whatever program the remote control had found for us, me giving off palpably frightening vibes, Anna or Helen or Mum or Dad sitting stiffly, afraid to talk, afraid to suggest changing channels and waiting for a decent interval to elapse so they could leave and continue watching their program on the small televi- sion in Mum's room.
And when they would get up and start sidling to the door, I'd pounce on them. "Where are you going?" I'd demand. "You can't even bear to be in the same room as me, can you? It's bad enough that my husband has to leave me but imagine my own family treating me like this."
The poor victim would stand there awkwardly, feeling shamed into not leaving but definitely not wanting to stay.
And hating me for it.
"Well, go on then," I'd tell them viciously. "Go."
Because I was so terrifying no one, not even Helen, had the courage to tell me that I was being incredibly selfish and, in the vernacular, a right little bitch. I held the whole family at ransom with my wild tempers and unpredictable mood swings.
Kate was the only one I treated with any respect. And even that only happened occasionally.
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Once when she started crying I shouted sharply at her, "Shut up, Kate!" Quite unbelievably, she stopped immediately. The silence that followed sounded almost stunned. Try as I might I haven't been able to reproduce that tone of voice since. I've practiced with all kinds of different inflections, like "Shut up, Kate," or "Shut up, Kate," or "Shut up, Kate," but it makes no difference. She blithely continues to bellow, no doubt thinking, "Ha! You might have frightened me once, for about a nanosecond, but you can be damn sure it won't happen again."