Bonding, page 21
Sunny’s flat didn’t smell good. It was a mixture of burnt pizza and deodorant. There were clothes piled on the sofa and the carpet looked as if it had never been hoovered. In the corner was a pile of Mortal Kombat sleeves. In the bathroom, a shelf along one wall had been stacked with various grooming products, multi-coloured gels and pastes, most of which were oozing out of their containers. I noticed a framed photo of his parents. It was a picture of them standing in a garden, his father in an embroidered shalwar kameez and his mother in an elegant red gown.
Sunny opened his laptop. He pulled up a folder of pictures of him and Tom. The two of them looked different when they were young, baby-faced in jeans and T-shirts. Sunny in particular was almost unrecognizable. He’d put on a lot of weight.
By the time it was dark, he had gone quiet, but I got the feeling he didn’t want us to leave. When it was time to go, I had to admit, I was relieved.
‘Is he OK?’ I asked Tom after we’d left.
‘I’m not sure. What do you think?’
‘I think he’s lonely.’
‘I mean, obviously.’
‘He needs help.’
‘He’s been like that for years.’
‘You should say something.’
‘What, though? I don’t want to embarrass him.’
‘Just let him know you’re there for him.’
He looked dubious. ‘I’m not sure.’
I got the feeling he knew better than I did. There was an unspoken understanding between them and words might have made things worse. I didn’t really understand it so I let it go.
•
We’d missed the last train home and were in the town centre looking for a hotel. Luton was busy that night. A sticker on a lamp read: EDUCATE AGAINST HATE. Pools of vomit sat outside the Edge Club. I recognized the star of a reality TV show and a bunch of teens by the fire exit. Passers-by stopped to stare. Some of them even asked for a selfie. He was attracting a lot of attention. I wondered how many of these clubs existed, and how much it cost to book an appearance like this. Probably more than the average band or DJ. This was what had replaced the music scene. The man chatted for a while, then he checked the time and disappeared inside. Some of the crowd trailed behind him while others dispersed across the street.
Towns like Luton, I thought, were English in a way that wasn’t really true of London any more. Despite the number of commuters to the capital and the well-documented racial tensions, Luton was a quintessentially English town. I realized this when I overheard a conversation at the station the next morning.
‘The British have lost interest in their heritage,’ the woman was saying. ‘Look at us compared to somewhere like France or Spain, they’ve retained a sense of pride in their culture. What have we done?’ she asked the man sitting across from her in the waiting room. She seemed furious. ‘The French have banned the hijab. What have we banned?’ She paused for effect. ‘Foxhunting.’ It was fair to assume from her accent that this woman had never joined a fox hunt. She probably didn’t even want to. On every level, she was cognizant of the fact that her chances of entering that sport were, in this lifetime, nil. All the same, it meant something to her. She was keen to align herself with the idea.
‘She’s so angry,’ I said to Tom.
‘People take comfort in tradition.’
‘But it isn’t her tradition, is it?’
‘Maybe not,’ he said, glancing around the grey plastic chairs in the waiting room, ‘but what else is there?’
I’d left Tom waiting for our train on the platform and was in the queue at Starbucks when I heard the crash. The shop window shattered, cracks spattering noisily across the glass. Before I had a chance to shield my face, a second missile hit, shards bursting through the air, raining haphazardly on my head. Outside, a man stood behind the smashed glass, his breath condensed around his mask. Behind him was a rolling crowd of bodies, protesters marching down the street. Someone held up a banner that said: WHY DID THE POLICE TURN A BLIND EYE TO LARGELY PAKISTANI SEX GROOMING GANGS? Behind them there was a long white sheet emblazoned with the tag #BELIEVEBRITISHWOMEN. The letters were dripping and uneven, sprayed in luminous red paint. The crowd advanced in loose lockstep, a woman at the front distributing leaflets saying IT’S NOT JUST ROTHERHAM – GROOMING EPIDEMIC IN THE UK – 1400 GIRLS IN ROTHERHAM ALONE. The man in the mask didn’t move away. Instead he reached for a third missile. I slid down to the floor as he lobbed it hard, this time smashing the glass completely, shards raining over my head as I covered my face. Flecks of beer hit my skin. The sharp smell of urine filled the air and I realized that someone had thrown a can of piss. I felt someone’s body lying on my legs. It was a long time before the police arrived. They approached seemingly out of nowhere, herding the crowd outside into narrow channels. A pair of helicopters circled above. The noise drowned out the chanting on the ground: ‘NO SURRENDER – JUSTICE FOR OUR GIRLS.’ When the arrests began, the marchers fought back. Some of them kicked and screamed at the authorities, while others stood and recorded them for evidence. They tracked everything on their phones, people being handcuffed and led away. I touched my face, there was blood on my hand. When I finally tried to stand up, I realized my leg wouldn’t hold. I made an effort to pull myself up but I couldn’t balance. My leg was swollen, fragments of glass lodged in the skin. I scanned the station, looking for Tom. I couldn’t see him at first: he was cordoned off, on the far side of the concourse. His face looked grazed but otherwise he didn’t seem hurt. There were leaflets all over floor: WHY ARE WE PROTECTING MUSLIM RAPISTS? My heart was pumping. I couldn’t feel my foot. For some reason, I felt transcendentally alive.
•
At the hospital, I watched the protest on the news while I fielded messages from work. Even Lara made an appearance via email after the Dungeness debacle. This was what it had taken to break her silence. I still had her stupid scarf in my bag, wrapped up in crushed Christmas paper. I hadn’t had a chance to give it to her.
I switched my phone to silent and read the news. The Telegraph was leading with ‘White Nationalist Rioters Block Luton Streets’. The Guardian had gone with ‘Far Right Spreads Toxic Propaganda’. The story revolved around a police investigation into the grooming of teenagers in Luton. The authorities had allegedly underplayed the crimes for fear of inflaming racial tensions. Each paper had released a version of the story. Each had a video of the chanting crowd. There was also a photo of a young girl, her mouth taped shut, her placard scrawled with: We want Britain FREE from medieval ATTITUDES towards women.
The people in the videos looked energized, their eyes shining with fervour. Above all, these people were impassioned. They’d been fuelled by something powerful. It wasn’t only outrage, it went deeper than that. It was more like righteous conviction.
The A&E waiting room was packed. There were kids in brightly coloured fleeces with their parents, who were mostly dressed similarly. I wondered how many of these people believed in something. I’d read somewhere that human beings were genetically predisposed to faith, in the sense that – in theory, at least – it offered certain fitness advantages. The scientific revolution might have killed God – and in exchange, conferred predictive powers – but it hadn’t provided a way of life, let alone a step up in the evolutionary playing field. I could feel myself spiralling as I scanned the room. Who were these people and what were their lives like? They weren’t like the people at the protest. A lot of them looked listless. Their joggers were loose, their trainers scuffed. They sustained themselves on bags of crisps and fizzy drinks from the vending machine. I could feel my thoughts swirling faster. It had taken two hundred years for Western institutions to internalize the implications of the Darwinian revolution. Even now, we were in a strange position, caught between upholding Christian values – kindness, equality, personal responsibility – and abandoning all of it in the name of cash. The resulting politics were pretty minimal. They could be reduced to a single idea: follow your heart. How long would it take, I wondered, for these institutions to absorb the science of our own era? The question of free will, for example, seemed to be leaning towards the ‘no’ camp, at least by any classical definition. This wasn’t a minor alteration. Personal choice underpinned everything around us. Without the self-determined individual, what was left for Western culture? I started sweating. Tom looked at me, concerned.
‘Do you want another coffee?’ he said.
While he went to fetch it, my queue number came up. I double-checked my ticket – it was 378. I tried to stand but I couldn’t support my weight, so I waved at the woman at reception. According to the clock behind her desk, it was almost 2.05 a.m. I sat there for a second, trying to catch her eye as the screen flicked to 379.
33
I was stuck in traffic with Tom and Sunny, my leg was throbbing. It had only been a fortnight since I’d injured it but I’d had to drag myself out of the flat because the three of us were on our way to the world’s most excruciating meeting. I couldn’t understand Tom’s enthusiasm for Georgia’s racket but unfortunately, it hadn’t diminished and she’d agreed to see us all at 11. Tom handed me his phone to check his emails.
‘It starts as sadness,’ I read from the message Grace had sent him. It was a quote from one of the patients at Mind.org.uk – a charity whose website opened with an old photo of the royal family, the princes William and Harry half smiling at the camera, turquoise sweatbands around their heads. The bands were emblazoned with the phrase Heads Together. It must have been at least five years old. ‘Then I feel myself shutting down,’ the quote continued, ‘becoming less able to face reality. I want to be enveloped by the darkness that existed before I was born.’
‘Is it true, what you told me?’ I asked Tom, ‘that there’s no real evidence for depression? As an illness, I mean.’
‘Well, the UN are saying no. They’re disputing the biomedical model completely.’
‘I thought it was partly genetic, anyway. Like you’re born with the predisposition. Doesn’t that suggest there’s a chemical component?’
‘To some extent,’ Tom agreed, distracted. ‘Major depressive disorder is hereditary in some people – up to around 35 per cent of it. That’s the current understanding, anyway. Doesn’t mean it’s all just a chemical imbalance.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, there’s epigenetics.’ He flipped off the radio. ‘Painful life experiences, that kind of thing. They can affect susceptibility to stress. And not just in the individual but across whole generations. Stress affects DNA methylation, plus there are other factors involved – microRNAs, histone modifications – they’re all affected by the endocrine system and they’ve all been shown to play a role in psychiatric disorders, which is why they can run in families. They don’t even require a specific gene sequence. Hereditary trauma is nothing new, though. The idea has been around for centuries. It predates science by a long way. What’s new is the prevalence of these diseases.’
‘You think they’re getting worse?’
‘According to the research.’
‘Isn’t it just that more people are being diagnosed?’
‘Well, there’s that. Plus we have to rely on self-reporting for these numbers.’
‘But why would people exaggerate their symptoms? What’s the point?’
‘A cry for help? Anything’s possible. Although that scenario begs the question why. If some of this is just about attention – a desire to be noticed or “seen” – why do so many feel “unseen”? Has the world become more self-absorbed? More competitive? More narcissistic? There are theories around that too – that modernity incentivizes self-interest, that it weakens trust on some level. There’s an idea that more people lack stability because they lack strong relationships. Without role models, family, friends – even social norms like belief systems – it’s more difficult to regulate mood. And I’ll tell you what’s even more difficult – formulating a vision of the future. That’s something that’s fundamental to depression. Depressives are people who have nothing to look forward to.’
‘So you think life is just getting worse?’
‘It’s possible. In certain ways. And the data suggests that unhappiness accrues.’
‘Generationally, you mean?’
‘Yes, but not just through genetics. Culturally, politically, economically. Mood effects are extremely complex. The brain grows 100 billion neurons in the womb – and it never stops evolving. It’s not possible to quantify the number of random events that take place. The level of uncertainty is vast, even if you try to control for other factors. Regardless of the evidence we actually have, the truth is, we just don’t know very much. We can’t separate out the causes. Which makes it virtually impossible to identify targets for drug intervention.’
‘So you think these medications are all a scam?’
‘Look, we’ve spent the last hundred years trying to distinguish between nature and nurture. All we know about depression is this: genetic factors notwithstanding, it’s caused – on some level – by stress. Why is there so much interest in these drugs? Because the market is exploding. Because what these patients are suffering from, arguably, is exposure to the twenty-first century. Depression is already the number-one disease burden for women in the world. By 2030, that figure will include men. Life expectancy is dipping in the West, mostly due to deaths of despair – alcoholism, addiction, obesity and suicide. The numbers are colossal and they’re escalating, which means anything in pill form is a licence to print money. Do these drugs alleviate suffering? Long term? I haven’t got a clue. No one does. It’s all just speculation. No one really knows how anyone else is feeling.’
He stopped abruptly behind a truck with the message Axis Transport – Value To Be Together. The front of our car grazed its tailgate, prompting the driver to stick his head out.
‘Cunt,’ he yelled, flipping Tom the finger. Then he revved his engine, flooding us with fumes.
•
Georgia was late so we started without her. Lara was curled up in a pouffey chair. She’d kicked her shoes off and had ordered Aliya to bring us green tea, which arrived in a tall glass pot with a slice of lemon floating on top. In her hand was a report from the focus group that Georgia had commissioned the previous week. It was an overview of their attempt to collect early consumer insights on Eudaxa. Tom, Sunny and I sat quietly while she flipped through the document. She refused to meet my eye or Tom’s. It was the first time I’d seen her in weeks.
‘So, the results were mixed,’ she said. ‘Based on first impressions’ – she barely looked at Tom – ‘your product scored highly in the “concept” category: 86 per cent “extremely like”. However, people felt it lacked something – “neither like nor dislike” – when it came to packaging.’
Georgia burst through the door. She was in a pair of red vinyl trousers. She pulled out a tablet and a small folder from her bag.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, plumping herself down on the chair next to Lara’s.
‘So, one of the groups,’ Lara continued, ‘and I think this point is crucial, said the product felt “too clinical”.’
‘Too clinical?’ Sunny looked perplexed.
Tom made a note on the corner of his pad.
‘They found it dry,’ Georgia added. ‘It’s too distant.’
She peered at Sunny with curiosity. For some reason, he was wearing a shirt and tie. I thought he looked good in them, although I wished I’d thought to tell him that he shouldn’t.
‘They’re saying the product looks too clinical?’ Sunny repeated.
He stared at the pile of boxes on the table.
‘They are a bit dated. Is that Helvetica?’ Georgia said.
‘They always look like that,’ he said.
‘Well, our testers thought the packaging was blah.’
‘And it’s not just the packaging,’ Lara continued. ‘It’s about your whole approach. The way you’re handling this is simply not reflective of the society we live in.’
‘But they are clinical,’ Sunny said, still processing the earlier point.
‘Basically,’ Georgia ignored him, ‘the socio-historical background here, the lens through which you’re viewing mental health – it’s all too male, pale and stale.’
Sunny looked at me then back at Georgia. There was a weird tension between them. She seemed morbidly fascinated by him, as if she’d discovered a whole new genre of man, a curiously novel specimen that she’d never encountered in the wild before. I don’t think she was used to meeting people so diametrically different to herself.
