Louder Than Words Read online

  No, I hated being shouted at so that couldn’t be it.

  Unless I was oppositional, but didn’t have the courage to do it properly so this was my weak attempt at it, not talking.

  Very brave. What an amazing specimen I was.

  ‘What are you thinking now?’ Andrea asked sharply. More sharply than I’d heard her speak before.

  Must have given away more than I intended. I shrugged, but she wasn’t fooled.

  ‘It’s important we’re honest with each other,’ she said, holding my gaze. ‘And I’m going to be honest with you. I think you are having some very negative thoughts at this moment. Is that true?’

  Were they negative if they were correct?

  ‘Rafi, are you having thoughts about yourself that I wouldn’t want you to have?’ she persisted.

  Shamefaced, I nodded slowly. Josie moved to the chair next to me and held my hand.

  ‘I want you to tell me what those thoughts are,’ Andrea said. ‘I know you don’t want to, but I also know you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want to get better so you’re going to have to trust me on this one.’ She pushed the pen and pad towards me.

  I picked them up reluctantly and then hesitated. I couldn’t do this.

  ‘Go on,’ Josie urged.

  So I wrote down what I was thinking.

  Andrea read it without comment and then got up and walked over to the window. She looked out at the street below for a long minute.

  ‘Being mute is not defiance,’ she said. ‘I’ve never believed that for a second. I know that’s what the professionals used to think, but in none of the numerous cases I’ve seen, selective and progressive mutes, have I ever come across one who’s been doing it out of defiance. And I certainly don’t think that of you. You’re reacting to the pressure of expectation. That’s why you can’t make the sound that I set you. It’s a classic response.’

  Andrea wouldn’t lie to me about that, which left two possibilities: a) she was right about me, or b) she had it totally wrong and I was the exception to the rule.

  And it all came down to this: I wasn’t exceptional in anything, was I? So that meant she had to be right.

  I slumped back in the chair and sobbed while Josie hugged me and clucked over me and tried to mop my eyes with a tissue.

  ‘One thing I don’t understand,’ Josie said, ‘is how she can write so well, but not talk.’

  ‘It’s hard to come to terms with when you first come across someone with selective mutism, but it’s like this: Rafi isn’t bad at communicating; she afraid of it. And, specifically for Rafi, it seems she’s afraid of being bad at it. With writing, there’s less pressure. Fewer people will wait for her to write something down – only the people who really care what she’s saying. So that takes the pressure off her.’

  ‘So she wants to express herself,’ Josie said slowly, ‘but she kind of freezes up when she tries to speak?’

  I nodded as Andrea said simultaneously, ‘Yes, that’s it exactly. One thing we do with our younger patients is to get them to draw how they feel, or use plastic letters to spell out words that are important to them, to encourage them to keep communicating in other ways. Your mum said they tried that with you, Rafi.’

  Yes, they’d done a lot of that in school when it first started. But I didn’t like the attention.

  ‘She said it didn’t work, that you seemed to shut down even more. One thing I’ve found with those little ones is not to look at them too much, not to put them under any pressure to answer.’ She smiled at me. ‘I call them my most delicate flowers – they wilt from too much time in direct sunlight. They need a little shade to flourish.’

  I looked at her with my mouth open, really made eye contact in a way I seldom wanted to do. If she’d been my therapist when I was that young . . .

  I burst into tears again.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Andrea said, taking my hand, ‘the hardest thing to face in life is yourself.’

  And even through my tears, I recognised that as a truth I had to collect.

  Josie and I spent some time just chilling together in my room that evening. Silas was out. Mum stayed in. When we got home, she’d handed me some cold cucumber slices from the fridge for my tear-swollen eyes, but she’d made no comment. She was different though – she made me and Josie dinner. It wasn’t great – her cooking never was – but it was one of those small Mum-things that she never normally did.

  And it’s the small things that matter most. At least it is to me. I’d told Josie about the ActionX article already and she’d said she’d do some digging around.

  ‘I came up with something, but I didn’t want to tell you until after the session with Andrea,’ she said. ‘There’s some major stuff going on with this ActionX at the moment.’ She got me to log on to my laptop. ‘Have you seen all the stuff in the news about this cyber-attack on the government?’

  I’d vaguely heard something, but hadn’t paid any attention to it because it didn’t interest me.

  Josie opened up the BBC news website. ‘Read that. It was ActionX.’

  Love is too young to know what conscience is.

  (William Shakespeare)

  CHAPTER 46

  Dear Dad,

  They’d come after me, I knew that. But I’d covered my tracks. I was confident. And I might have been in and out of their systems at home for weeks while I prepared the attack, but when it came to the hit I’d done it from Dillon’s place. They’d find it harder to trace it back to me that way.

  It took them a full day to get everything back to normal, which was frankly incompetence. In that time, millions had seen the ActionX message. It had been blasted all over the TV and radio. Irate government representatives – blustering ones, and the genuinely clueless – all had been dragged out and paraded in front of a media dying to know how and why this had happened.

  I watched it all with a smile. ActionX threw a party at Dillon’s and the lesser ranks spoke to me in the reverential tones they used to Dillon, like I was a god. But I didn’t care about any of that. I cared that Lara led me upstairs, away from all the noise, and told me she loved me.

  She loves me. The world began and ended with that moment.

  I’ve tried to come up with so many descriptions of how it feels: that it’s like being on another planet, just me and her, that we’re on an island bounded by sea that buffers us from the rest of the world, that everything and everyone in the world is silent and painted in black and white while we’re in stereo-sound Technicolor. But in the end there were no words for it. It was her, it was me and that was all.

  We’d stood in Dillon’s cyber-base, surrounded by dirty coffee cups, and Lara had touched my face. A brush of her fingers down my cheek. A gesture of affection, unmistakable. ‘I love you,’ she whispered, her eyes locked with mine, and everything became worthwhile. All the time it had taken me to plan this, not seeing my friends for weeks, not even really seeing my sister . . . all worth it to hear those three words.

  ‘I love you,’ I said back, raw-voiced. I didn’t care how stupid I sounded. I wanted her to know she was everything. No games between us.

  Kissing her was the most perfect chaos. I fell to pieces when her lips were on mine. I could spin away into a billion tiny shards scattered throughout the universe, every one engraved with her name.

  I understand now why poets described love as akin to madness.

  Love, Silas

  CHAPTER 47

  Andrea hadn’t set me any more homework after the last session. Josie had, in her bulldozering way, told her we’d keep trying with the humming until we really had nailed it.

  And so that’s just what we did. We kept to the routine. Night after night I’d sit in her room and see what noises I could stand to make. Because that’s what it was. It was all about how much fear I felt when making them.

  And then one day, out of nowhere, I did it. We weren’t officially practising. It was Saturday and we were relaxing in Josie’s garden while her dad was mowing the law
n. She had the radio on beside us and there was a song I really liked on the radio. Josie was singing along to it and then she suddenly froze and sat bolt upright, staring at me.

  ‘You did it!’ she exclaimed, but in a hushed voice.

  Did what?

  ‘You hummed. Just then. You hummed along to the song.’

  And I didn’t even know I’d done it. I’d hummed in my head, but it had leaked out. I wondered how many times that had happened before when there was nobody around to hear.

  Maybe never. But maybe a few.

  I could feel the fizzles of excitement building up inside me. I’d done something right.

  Josie stopped looking stunned and leaped up, whooping. She pulled me to my feet. ‘Come on, we’re celebrating!’ and she danced me round and round the garden while her dad looked on indulgently, like he was used to two crazy girls prancing over his cut grass.

  Was this the first and tiniest of steps on a long road to recovery? Or was it nothing but a fluke? I didn’t know either way, but it felt good to celebrate and be happy and have hope for once.

  Silas brought Lara home again that evening. They hung out in front of the TV, wrapped in each other and round each other on the sofa. I noticed Toby texted him to see if he wanted to meet up, but Silas ignored it. And Lara said nothing about that at all. And I could not understand why he wanted to drop everyone for her. Even when they weren’t together, which they seemed to be much more lately, he didn’t see the others, but stayed burrowed upstairs, glued to his computer.

  Lara acted like she loved him, but she’d said she didn’t. Had she changed her mind?

  I wanted to leave the room really, leave them alone because they gave off exclusion vibes as strongly as a slap in the face. But I wouldn’t. I needed to see Lara with him. I needed to understand what this thing between them was.

  What did she have that made him change so much? Made him perhaps commit the crime that the news agencies were still talking about. Because from the moment I’d seen that stuff about ActionX, there was no doubt in my mind – my brother was in on it. Maybe not on his own, maybe he had help, but he was involved.

  It scared me to even think about what might happen if anyone found out. I wanted to talk to him about it, but for the first time with Silas, I didn’t know how to start when I had no voice.

  I couldn’t sleep that night. The heat was oppressive and my bedroom stuffy even though I’d left the window wide open. There was no breeze to stir the curtains; the air was dead and heavy. I almost drifted off a dozen times, but then would wake, sweating and kicking around on the bed in a vain attempt to find a cooler spot.

  In the end I got up and peeked out on to the landing. A chink of faint light shone from under Silas’s door – his computer screen. I debated going to see him, but in the end went and sat back on my bed, scared of what I might find him doing.

  I hated myself for that act of cowardice. My brother could be in there getting himself into even more trouble. If I could speak, I could go in there and ask him! And then somehow the idea came into my head that I should try to make a sound while I was by myself. The thought came to me quite suddenly as I sat cross-legged on the bed: Try to do it on your own.

  So I sat there and tried to do again what I’d done at Josie’s, to make any kind of sound at all. For over half an hour, I tried and tried to make something happen, but it wouldn’t. I willed my throat to open and work, but it remained stubbornly frozen. I fought back tears of frustration, hearing Andrea’s and Josie’s words in my head, hearing their voices of encouragement and trying to hold on to belief. But still there was nothing.

  And finally I had to face facts. It wasn’t going to happen. If I couldn’t do it here in the silence and dark of my own familiar room, how could I possibly have imagined I’d ever be able to speak whole sentences out there in the world?

  No. This was my life – silence. I should just accept that and stop torturing myself with visions of what could but would never be.

  I lay down again, the cotton pillowcase cool against my frustration-flushed cheek. Even my brother had given up on me. He didn’t care any more. Never asked how therapy had gone. It would be no surprise to my mother that I’d failed. And Josie would learn that’s what I was – a failure.

  I saw the letters in front of me, giant and red, like graffiti painted in blood.

  FAILURE

  I closed my eyes and cried until sleep came to release me again.

  CHAPTER 48

  ‘What do you mean you’re giving up?’ Josie’s face was furious. ‘You are not! We are going to see this thing through.’ She stormed past me and past Silas making his way from the stairs to the sitting room, still half asleep. ‘Excuse me!’ she snapped at him as they crashed into each other in the doorway.

  ‘Sorry,’ Silas mumbled, trying not to yawn.

  She stopped and fronted up to him. ‘Have you spoken to your sister recently?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Rafi has just texted me to say she’s giving up on counselling and that she can’t do it any longer.’

  I trailed into the sitting room after them, shrinking inside. If I’d known it was going to cause all this trouble . . .

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Is that all you can say? Are you so wrapped up in your silly girlfriend that you don’t care about how Rafi is doing now?’

  Silas’s face turned from bemused to furious. ‘What’s with the insults? You leave Lara out of this.’

  Josie rolled her eyes.

  ‘She hasn’t done anything to you, you spiteful –’

  ‘Who’s calling names now?’

  I wanted the feeling inside me to explode into noise, but of course it couldn’t, so instead I picked up the TV remote and threw it against the wall.

  It smashed, sending shards of black plastic around the room. One hit Silas on the cheek and left a trail of blood running down his face.

  I swallowed, nausea building as I saw the scarlet streak on my brother’s face. But they stopped screaming at each other. I ran out of the room and upstairs and locked my bedroom door.

  Later, Josie told me what happened next.

  ‘She can’t give up now,’ Josie said, sitting down on the arm of the sofa wearily as if she’d run a long way. ‘Has she told you about how well she’s been doing?’

  ‘No,’ said Silas, leaning against the door and feeling his cheek. He stared at the blood on his fingers. ‘She hasn’t told me anything at all.’

  ‘Would you have been there to listen if she had?’

  Silas glowered at her. ‘Maybe not. For once I was having a life that doesn’t involve my sister, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care.’

  Josie stood up and set her hands on her hips. ‘At this point, I’m going to give you some unasked-for advice about your girlfriend. I’ve been there with the whole “obsessively wanting to see them all the time” business. Shutting your friends out for them. It took me a while to realise, but that’s probably why my so-called friends dumped me so easily when Lloyd started trashing me. I bet they secretly thought I deserved it for being such a useless friend. And that’s one mistake I’ll never make again.’

  Silas folded his arms in front of him. ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘That you’re doing the selfsame stupid thing I did. You’re cutting everyone else out so she’s all you’ve got. And I’m telling you because I know – it’s a really dumb-ass thing to do. Let’s just hope that’s the only dumb-ass thing you’re doing!’

  Silas was so furious he missed the meaning of her last point. ‘Yeah, well, somehow I doubt she’s going to post naked photos of me over the internet.’

  Josie drew in a breath. ‘That was low!’

  ‘Maybe. But I didn’t ask for your advice or your criticism.’

  ‘Yeah, I know that, but someone needs to say it to you. And Rafi can’t!’

  ‘Obviously.’ Silas huffed out his breath angrily.

  ‘When was the last time you saw your friends?’ she demand
ed.

  Silas ran his hand through his hair and didn’t answer.

  ‘See?’

  ‘Shut up.’ But when he looked at Josie again he was calmer. ‘OK, so you said Rafi was doing well . . . so now I’m listening – fill me in.’

  Josie told him about my last few appointments and how I’d made progress, how I’d started to make noises, and then about the hum.

  ‘So why’s she giving up now?’ Silas asked, frowning.

  ‘I don’t know. I was trying to get her to tell me when . . .’

  ‘When I got in the way?’

  ‘I was hoping you were going to help.’

  He thumped the doorframe with his fist. ‘I should have sat her down with you and talked to her. I know that. I don’t know why I didn’t.’

  ‘I told you,’ Josie said. ‘You’re too wrapped up in that girl.’

  Silas stared back at her miserably. ‘I want to argue with you.’

  ‘But you know I’m right.’ Her voice softened. ‘Look, it happens. I know that better than anyone. But that doesn’t make it good for you or her or anyone around you. I swear to God, the next time I go out with a boy, it’s not going to be like that. I’m gonna keep it balanced.’ She frowned. ‘I’m gonna keep myself. You know?’

  ‘Yes,’ Silas said in a small voice.

  Josie eyed him, not quite sure if he was agreeing with her to shut her up or because he meant it. She went with the latter in the end simply because he looked so deflated she decided he must be genuine. Deflated was pretty much how you felt when you realised you were making a complete loser of yourself over another person. She didn’t say that to him of course, but she added in her head: ‘And one who doesn’t love you nearly as much as you love them either’.