The Secret World of Maya Alexander

Chapter 25

The leisurely pace with which the mother and daughter had taken their time to make the most of the beginning of their journey had meant that it had been quite a rush through passport control and onto the Eurostar bound for Paris.  It was 13.15. They had not picked up any lunch for their journey but Jackie had managed to talk themselves into a free upgrade in a more spacious carriage with lunch. She was a frequent traveller for her job and was familiar with the patter required for an upgrade.

Maya had had an early start on the Newport train that morning and had been too distracted to think about breakfast. She had managed a bottle of water and a cup of tea on the early journey as she tried to read the free newspaper provided for commuters . The sickly feeling that had been so overwhelming when she had been in work had begun to fade a little since she had been on leave. Maya did not like to think that work was a source of stress for her so had not spent too much time thinking about the decline of her sickness. That morning getting dressed, she noticed that her stomach was bloated as she tried to fasten her jeans. She wondered of its cause. Had she been eating too many biscuits during her leave? She switched the skinny jeans for some leggings and a smock dress to conceal her bulge. She had become used to seeing her frail arms and legs so had been surprised to see this protrusion across her middle.  Maya wondered briefly about whether she should go to the doctor to see if there was anything medically wrong with her, but felt sure that she would just be told it was stress induced irritable bowel syndrome and did not want the shame of being told she was suffering from stress. After all she was supposed to be a practising psychologist who should therefore be familiar with the various physical manifestations of stress.

Despite the reduction in her nausea, Maya's eating habits remained disturbed. She was often so busy drifting in and out of the world following her feathered friends and wondering of the journey that they laid before her, that she forgot to make proper meals. Since Stephen had left there was nobody to monitor how well she was taking care of herself. Maya continued to sleep in the guest room with the large mirror where she could escape to the wonders of nature on the days of nights when she was able to summon the motivation to rise from her bed.

Except for June, her mother and sister Alice, no one had called Maya during those few weeks of solitude. Helen and Marge sent a few text messages, as did her friend Charlie. She gave minimal responses. Enough for people not to worry. Enough for them to leave her be. She would have been happy to stay in that room and not bother with the trip at all, but the obliging part of her brain was still alive with the guilt of the destruction of her husband's hope so she did not have it in her to let her mother down too. Maya became a master of pretence during those phone-calls of preparation from her mother. She could switch between feeling and unfeeling so instantly that had anyone been around to watch her they would have sworn that she was a well trained actress.

Maya had also retained the capacity to manage planning her journey to London and packing her bag with a sufficient range of clothes and toiletries for the duration of her trip. She was able to set an alarm and get herself up at the unsociable hour of 3am to take a taxi, which she had phoned the night before to order. She could do all this even though there had been several days in the last week when she had hardly left her room. When she had chosen to stay in bed and sleep, or sneak through the mirror to a place that was void of people. It did not mean that she was mad, she assured herself. It meant that she was having some time for herself.

In her youth, family, friends and school teachers would have accused her of being 'distant' or ''isolating herself'. Like when Jackie used to save all year to take the girls to a villa in Spain, and her middle daughter would disappear all day without a word of her whereabouts. If Jackie was ever particularly relentless about pressing her daughter about her movements, then Maya would simply explain that she had been 'watching the ocean'. Maya always returned eventually. She could never understand the despairing look upon her mother's face. Perhaps that is where her interest in Psychology began. Trying to understand other people. Perhaps even trying to understand herself in relation to others. Everyone was a puzzle and for most of her life Maya truly did want to solve each puzzle and prevent those looks of despair that had become some familiar to her.