The summer weve had, p.1
The Summer We've Had, page 1
Copyright © 2023 Katherine Blakeman
All rights reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author. Legal action will be taken if copyright infringement occurs.
Every effort has been made to trace the original producer of the cover photograph. The author will be glad to rectify in future editions this omission.
Katherine Blakeman is not, and does not claim to be, a mental health professional or expert. Although two clinical psychologists have been consulted in the making and editing of this book, she acknowledges that her portrayals of Dissociative Identity Disorder, anxiety and depression may not be the same as another person's lived experience, although every care has been taken to research thoroughly. Katherine Blakeman has no wish to offend anybody, and she will be happy to receive feedback on her portrayals of the mental health conditions featured in this book. Her contact details are at the end of the book.
ISBN-13: 9798361238262
Cover design by Katherine Blakeman courtesy of Canva.
Printed by Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.
Dedicated to Julia - thank you for helping me
accept who I am.
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO DID
You may not be familiar with some of the vocabulary used in this book to describe and discuss Dissociative Identity Disorder, so I've added a little information about it here to help you understand.
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is a type of complex-PTSD stemming most often from sexual abuse or other trauma, usually repeated and usually in childhood. It is characterised by at least two distinct personality states - or alters - coexisting within the brain and body of one person. Individual alters can be of different ages, genders, religions, sexualities and have different names, pronouns, preferences, perceptions and memories to others. Alters take control of the body (fronting) in a process known as switching, which is often accompanied by dissociation: feelings of being detached from reality, amongst others. Multiple alters can be fronting at any one time - this is often known as co-fronting, and is a part of co-consciousness (where more than one alter is aware of what is going on).
A DID system - the term used to describe the collection of alters existing inside one body - can be made up of many types of alter. The ones covered in this book are as follows. The host or dominant alter - also sometimes known as the Apparently Normal Part (ANP), this alter tends to have the most control over the body and who is able to front, and often has no memories of trauma. Caretaker alters exist largely to soothe other members of the system, and are thus a type of protector alter. Other protector alters can be defensive or even destructive, both to members of the system and external people, as their role is to protect the system. Child or teenage alters often hold memories of trauma experienced at a young age - they are part of a wider category of trauma holders - and normally appear in mannerism and mentality like a young person.
A system of alters very rarely stays the same over time. Alters can fuse (integrate together) and in rare cases, with therapy, can go through final fusion - a full integration of all alters into one personality. Integrations can have differing effects on the system depending on the size of the roles of the alters fusing together.
Further, more detailed information can be accessed online, through organisations such as the NHS and First Person Plural (www.firstpersonplural.org.uk).
PROLOGUE
1989
She’d had her eye on him all evening.
The room was full of well-known faces, mingling and chatting as they sipped their bottomless cocktails. Predominantly men, she noticed with an internal eye-roll – it may be nearing the 1990s, but this group had yet to completely catch up in terms of gender representation. That was what this event was, right? A chance for all the big names of the culinary industry to collaborate, make new rivals and get really, really drunk. The guests were dressed to the nines, all starched suits and business faces, although she doubted that their good humour would last much longer as old feuds inevitably reared their ugly heads and the free-flowing alcohol kicked in.
Not that she could see much, anyway. The stage lights were too bright, and she was meant to be focused on singing. But she knew the pieces of her mellow set list off by heart, and the band was fabulous, working with her to catch her voice at just the right moments, and this left her mind free to wander, not to mention her eyes. She was supposed to be avoiding eye contact – after all, she was just the background music – but one man just kept on meeting her eye.
When she got to her favourite piece, she put all her emotion into it, more as if she was a celebrity singer than an ordinary mezzo soloist. He’d obviously noticed, for he turned her way as she finished and nodded his approval. She acknowledged him with a brief smile before purposely looking away and preparing for her next song by pushing her shoulders back and taking the microphone out of its stand. For the rest of the evening, she stole little glances at him between songs, and on more than a couple of occasions she found him smiling back at her.
By the time the manager of the event told her to do one last song and then retire, there were only a few last stragglers left – and he was one of them. She selected her favourite song once more – upbeat and strong, it required more performance than the rest of them – and allowed herself to go to town on it, seeing as there were only a couple of people watching. She was disappointed to see that he was engrossed in conversation at the end of it, but as she discarded the mic and stepped off the stage, he finished his conversation and fell smoothly into step beside her.
“May I say what a wonderful performance you gave tonight?” he said charmingly. “I always say that the quality of the background music does everything for these do’s – it sets the tone, catches those awkward silences, gives a focal point to those potentially interminable conversations. Bravo, Madame.”
“Thank you very much,” she said, not breaking pace nor making eye contact as she headed for the bar. She was pleased to see that he was momentarily taken aback by her accent.
“You hid that very well!” he remarked. “Whereabouts in Australia are you from?”
“New Zealand,” she corrected him. “Glenorchy. A little piece of paradise. But I’m a quarter Spanish, if that makes a difference.”
“You must get that all the time. I do apologise. Let me buy you a drink,” he added as they reached the bar.
“Espresso martini whenever you’re ready,” she told the barman, before adding to her new friend, “I thought that the drinks here were free.”
“Good point!” the man replied. “I like a girl who pays attention to her surroundings.”
“I like a man who pays for other people’s drinks,” she responded teasingly, and from there the conversation between the pair of them flowed. Oblivious to the cleaners beavering around them and the junior bar staff heading home, on they chattered, and they might have been on a park bench for all the notice they paid to their location. Of course, it was only a matter of time before their thoughts started to turn to their next move. Over the course of the drinks, she had been vaguely aware of people giving them odd looks, and when their hands met as they headed upstairs she could see why: a gold wedding ring glinted up at her.
But she didn’t care. She was twenty, young and carefree, her thoughts stretching no further than the delicious prospect of their bodies together in his luxurious hotel bed.
What was the worst that could happen?
CHAPTER ONE
May 2018
Cass
She’d never been a fan of long distances, and London to Cornwall was nothing if not one of those.
As Cassandra stopped at what she estimated was the fiftieth traffic jam of the day, she rested her flushed face on the steering wheel for a second and sighed. Having long since abandoned the various local radio stations for their lack of consistent signal, she looped her Metallica album back to the start yet again. Her right foot twitched along to the beat as she crawled forward. The car jolted, and she forced herself to stop, knowing that she’d make herself nauseous before too long. She’d purposely chosen that album to accompany her on the ‘doable in a day’ drive down to Miltree – it couldn’t have been further from the music alongside which she had been raised. She had been tempted to put on her favourite CD, one of her mum’s that she knew down to each individual chord, before she remembered that she was meant to be leaving everything connected to home behind. Except one very important thing.
That was the point of the move, after all. To reconnect with the very foundations of life itself, after nearly thirty years of living the high life in built-up, commercialised London. Doc Martin had been a particular favourite of hers over the last few years, comforting her through her darkest days, and it was this that had convinced her that Cornwall was the place to be. The sunny tranquillity couldn’t have been further from her life as it was now, and since any thoughts of the past now caused a pain that felt like a knife in the ribs, it was the right thing to do.
In the handbag beside her was a wodge of folded-up printouts of emails, dating back about three months. The exchange had started with what appeared to be a colloquial email between a therapist, Ryan, and his aunt, with all the a
Mabel was the name of her new next-door neighbour. Mabel Gladstone. And her daughter was Felicia Wilson. Cass had spoken both names aloud several times, to get a feel for them. In the email Mabel had offered scant details about the two of them, so Cass assumed she was a quiet, private person with a quiet, private daughter. She had, however, described the village with such enthusiasm that Cass had half-jokingly asked Ryan if his aunt was a travel agent. Miltree shines with community spirit… rough population of two or three hundred… a quiet, secluded beach… all the shops and amenities you will ever need… all you could ever want, really. And then she had written the line that sealed the deal. Cassandra would be most welcome. Here is the landlord’s number…
Other sheets in the packet included everything from TripAdvisor reviews of the surrounding area, tourist guides about local attractions and, most excitingly, the details of her new job as a teaching assistant at the village primary school. The headteacher had apparently delegated Cass’s interview to her deputy, who had met her across Skype and offered her the job, subject to a seven-week paid trial period. For the kids’ sakes, Cass had almost hoped that she wouldn’t get the job. After all, she’d always worked in secondary schools and colleges in the past, and young children had always kind of scared her. She’d survived without a job for the last two years – a sizeable inheritance from her mum (a former celebrity singer) would keep her going for the rest of her life if she was careful – but Ryan had insisted she get one, for the social aspect if nothing else. “It won’t do you any good to isolate yourself, like you have been for the last two years,” he’d told her.
“But it’s such a big change,” she’d replied mournfully at the time, but she knew he was right, and so she’d applied for the post of teaching assistant. Petra, the deputy head, had seemed impressed at her CV despite the two-year gap. And when Cass had looked at the school’s website and Facebook page, the first flutters of excitement had started to stir inside her. An unfamiliar feeling, but it was definitely there. Her memories of primary school were charmed ones, and maybe if she could relive her childhood, this move wouldn’t be so bad after all.
No. No, no, no. That was not the point of the move, she reminded herself now. The point was to stop the past sneaking up on her. No more nightmares, no more flashbacks. The past was the past, she reminded herself. This was it. A clean cut. She had to leave it all behind, even if it did mean this excruciating journey behind the world and his wife on the motorway. What had happened to her, anyway? She used to love the idea of travelling.
Maybe it’s because you haven’t opened Mum’s letter yet…! Her inner voice taunted her in a sing-song tone. And, like Ryan says, you won’t be able to properly move forwards until you do…!
Cass growled and turned Metallica up a few notches. That was a problem for another day.
Later, having finally escaped the motorways, she mused that she’d never realised that anywhere could be so green. As the motorway gave way into winding country roads with more adrenaline than a rollercoaster, Cass felt as though she was driving through a child’s drawing, a haphazard effort with the colours sprawling out of the lines, but overwhelmingly innocent and pure. The only grey in the scene was the roads, framed by hedges that varied in their thickness, sometimes even disappearing entirely to let the pale gold fields leak through. The sun bounced off the odd passing car. Primarily Land Rovers, she noted, towering over her little red and black Vauxhall Adam.
She flicked the air conditioning off and wound down the window, a thing that she rarely did in London for fear of inhaling any more pollution than was necessary. Here, the air was clear, tinged with a sweet scent that she could only describe as nature. As she crested one particular hill, she gasped out loud as the village presented itself to her in the distance. It was beautiful. Finally, she had a definitive target to reach.
CHAPTER TWO
Mabel
“Are you sure you don’t want to come out and meet her? She’ll be here any second.” Mabel asked her daughter for the millionth time.
“No,” Coral said firmly, for the millionth time. “I have stuff to do. It’s our day off work, and I intend to make the most of it. Not sit around waiting for some woman that our long-lost-cousin has sent our way.”
Mabel bit her tongue. Her instant retort was ‘Stop acting like a bloody teenager!’ but she knew that saying it would be pointless. The person she was talking to was, to all intents and purposes, a teenager. Her daughter’s Dissociative Identity Disorder meant that her mental age varied. Some of her daughter’s alternate personalities aged with the body – like Heather, the dominant alter who for the most part ran their life – and some did not, like the five-year-old Kylie, and the sixteen-year-old she was currently talking to.
“Okay,” she said instead. “You do you. You go and do some writing, whatever it is you write on that computer, and Heather can meet her later, when she’s fronting again. Be warned, I intend to invite her over for dinner. So you and Daniella might want to make yourselves scarce this evening.” She knew that the alter Daniella’s anxiety would probably be triggered by meeting a new person.
“Heather’s thrilled to hear it,” Coral said after a moment. Mabel narrowed her eyes for the briefest second, then realised that the teenager wasn’t actually being sarcastic. She could hear what dominant alter Heather said in their ‘headspace’, after all. Daniella, Heather and Coral could all hear each other – and everything that one of them could hear, the other two could too. Despite it being ten years since their diagnosis, it still freaked Mabel out the tiniest bit now and again that three people could hear her when she felt she was only talking to one.
But such was the nature of DID. This was why they didn’t tell people about it.
“Well, I’m glad someone’s thrilled,” Mabel sighed.
“Why, do you expect me to be?” Coral asked. “As far as I’m concerned, our new neighbour, who you’re already so enamoured by, is just another person to hide from. All of us are hiding under the identity of Felicia, this body’s birth name, because we’re scared of what people might think if we told them the reality. Because people might reject us, or worse, if we do. The reality is that there are five personalities living inside Felicia’s brain – me, Heather, Daniella, Autumn and Kylie – but only one in control of the body at any one time. That Heather, Daniella and I can communicate with each other internally, at all times. And that Autumn is so scared of everything that she gets destructive and hysterical. It’s such an apparently freaky concept that we are forced to hide ourselves so that we don’t become social pariahs. Heather and Daniella don’t mind as much, but I do. So forgive me if I don’t jump up and down with delight at the prospect of meeting a new person.”
Mabel closed her eyes, although inwardly she was seething. “Okay,” she said again. “I’m going out to mow the lawn. I’ll see you later.”
CHAPTER THREE
Cass
After another thirty minutes of driving around in circles and even out the other side of the village at one point, she found the house she was looking for. Water’s Edge, it was called. She didn’t know how she’d missed it – it was pretty, at the end of a row of five on a road just entering the village, with a greying-white painted exterior and a pale blue front door. Next door, attached to Water’s Edge on the left side, was completely different: brown bricks, a sheltered porch and what Cass guessed to be the original oak front door. All the windows were open there, as was the garage door, and there was a robust-looking white woman in her late forties or early fifties angrily yanking at her lawnmower in the neat front garden.
