The Other Voice

They say if you hear voices in your head you must be mad. But I didn’t think that when I first heard the voice in my head.

I was in the kitchen wiping the counter down. It was covered with crumbs and little blobs of butter from when Leo had made toast earlier and then rushed off to work. I’d put the kettle on to boil while I wiped, and I was running the tap to fill the sink with hot water. Wiping, bubbling, running. There was a lot going on. Maybe that was why the silence hit so hard when the kettle clicked off, I stopped wiping, and turned off the tap. And that’s when I heard it.

Hello, hello, a voice in my head.

It made me jump. I looked around, half-thinking someone had crept into the kitchen behind me. But Leo was at work, and in any case this voice was female.

Hello, hello, it said again. Yes, definitely female. Nothing like Leo, not even when he puts on that silly voice to make me laugh.

Hello.

I put my hands on the counter to steady myself.

You’re OK, Ruth, said the voice. But you need to sit down now before you fall.

And she was right. My legs were shaking. I walked to the living room and sat on the sofa.

Good girl, she said. See? I’m here to help.

I thought about asking who she was, but then thought better of it.

For the first few weeks after that, the voice spoke only once a day and usually just to say hello, though one day when I looked in the mirror she told me I was looking pretty. I remember first thinking it must be my own voice speaking to me, but then I noticed the accent was different, she had a clipped English sort of accent. I remember saying to Leo, “Sometimes I think I can hear a voice in my head,” but he gave me such a look that I turned it into a joke: “The voice thinks you’re cute.” He liked that, so I got away with it.

And I remember feeling genuinely worried the day she didn’t speak. I thought maybe I’d lost her. I even tried to recreate the moment she’d first spoken: wiped down the toast crumbs again (there are always toast crumbs), ran the tap until the sink overflowed, boiled the kettle five times, but still nothing.

In the end I told Leo I had a headache and was having an early night. He wasn’t bothered; he’s used to my headaches and early nights.

I really thought she’d left for good. But just as I was drifting off to sleep she said, Goodnight Ruthie, and I recognised her voice at once and felt so relieved.

After that she never missed a day. I could always rely on her for advice. Like the time she reminded me I’d left the oven on. I have a habit of doing that, but normally I notice when I walk back into the kitchen. That day I was almost out the door.

Remember the oven, Ruth, she said, and I ran back to switch it off.

“That was close,” I said.

Yes, she agreed.

Another time she stopped me making a fool of myself at work. Mr Rees asked if I wanted to give the presentation at the next team meeting. “You’ve been working so hard on it, Ruth, and you know it inside out, it really should be you presenting.” And I was just about to say yes when she spoke:

I don’t think it’s a good idea.

And I knew she was right. I’d fall apart. So I told him I couldn’t do it. He looked disappointed but said he understood.

But the best advice she gave me was about Leo. He’d been acting strange, constantly checking his phone. One day while he was in the shower she told me to check his messages. So I did. And there were a lot from my friend Anita. They were talking about me, and it wasn’t nice. When he came out of the shower I told him to pack his bags. It was my house after all. He was shocked, denied everything, said they were “just worried about me”, but I wasn’t having it, and in the end he left.

And then it was just me and her.

And for a while it was great. But then things changed. She started lying to me. Barefaced lies that left me shaken. It started while I was sorting out the attic. Leo had taken all his things by then and the house was looking bare, so I was looking for some old paintings to hang. Instead I found a box of school books. I was flicking through one when suddenly she said:

Remember when you cheated?

I almost dropped the book.

“I never did,” I said.

Yes you did, you copied Louise’s answers in that maths test. She saw you. She told the teacher. You denied it and they believed you, not her, and she got in trouble. Remember.

“That didn’t happen,” I said. “Please be quiet now.”

And she was until the next day, when I was raking leaves in the garden.

Remember that time you left your rabbit out all night and he froze to death.

I stopped raking.

“I didn’t do that,” I said. “My brother forgot. It was his turn.”

She was silent, but it felt like she was shaking her head.

The next day, looking in the mirror, she spoke again:

As you get older you look more and more like her.

Or she might have said like me. I wasn’t sure. But I knew who she meant.

“I look nothing like her,” I said firmly, emphasising her.

It’s the eyes, she said. Then she fell silent.

From that point on I knew I couldn’t trust her. And so I decided to do the opposite of everything she said.

It felt freeing. When she advised me not to crack a joke at work, I ignored her and said it anyway. One or two people laughed. When she told me again not to do the team presentation (Mr Rees wouldn’t give up, apparently it would help my appraisal since there’d been a complaint about the joke), I said yes. And when she said OK then, but you’d better prepare, I refused. It went about as well as you’d expect, but at least I was the one in charge.

And when I was running late for work and she told me to get a shift on, I immediately turned around and went back to bed. That would show her and everyone else who thought they knew what was best for me.

Eventually work stopped calling and I heard Leo and Anita were engaged. I didn’t care. I was fine at home, keeping to myself. The voice seemed to come round to my way of thinking.

Yes, Ruthie, she’d say in a soothing voice, stay in bed, you work too hard anyway, you need to rest.

Yes, Ruthie, you were right, you never cheated. Louise was a bloody liar, and ugly to boot.

Yes, your brother deserved the beating your father gave him. It was a long time coming.

And for a while she almost fooled me with the niceness. I almost started listening to her again. But there was one thing that gave her away.

I sat on the sofa, pulled out my pocket mirror, looked at my reflection and said, “Tell me I look nothing like her.”

Silence.

I tried again. “Tell me I am me, not you.”

(I knew it was time to drop the pretence.)

Still she said nothing. She had always been stubborn. But I can be stubborn too.

I told her I wouldn’t move until she told me what I wanted to hear. But she still refuses to speak. Neither of us will move until one of us breaks.

And as always with her, I fear I will be the first to fall.