Though Beth was grateful for a moment alone with Celia, she was suddenly nervous to hear what she had to say. ‘So, what do you think? About Mum?’
‘Oh, honey.’ Celia reached across the table and took Beth’s hands. ‘I can’t be certain, and like you said, I didn’t know your mum very well. But this program I watched? I found the main point really interesting. They had experts discussing the similarities and differences between certain personality disorders and autism.
‘According to the experts,’ Celia said, ‘some autistic people are misdiagnosed with a personality disorder because so many of the traits overlap. In many cases, exploring the motivation behind the behaviours is essential for a correct diagnosis to be made.’
‘Right.’ Beth was so confused. She’d been to school with an autistic boy for a brief time, and he’d constantly been on the move, bouncing on the spot or flapping his hands. Oh, and he’d never spoken a word to anyone—at least, none that she’d heard.
She told Celia as much.
‘Well, not every autistic person displays the same traits. On the program, they made a point of saying that if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person. No two are the same.’
‘Okay.’ Beth nodded. ‘Are you saying that … that maybe Mum didn’t have a personality disorder? That you think she was autistic?’
Celia squeezed her hand. ‘I’m not saying that at all, honey, but if you’re wondering whether Pru was onto something about your mum, the show is definitely worth watching. It’ll give you a better understanding of the different personality disorders and autism. And if nothing else—’ she smiled kindly, ‘—it makes for interesting viewing.’
Beth thanked Celia and got back to work, though their chat had done nothing to alleviate her troubled thoughts. If anything, they’d multiplied.
After sending Ellie back to her table to eat her brunch, Beth made use of the lull between the breakfast and lunch services to tap out a message to Noah, letting him know that something had come up and she wouldn’t be heading out to the farm later. Then she searched online for the program Celia had mentioned and bookmarked it.
It looked as if she had another long night of research ahead of her.
* * *
Beth ran the paint roller down the length of the wall, her mind, once again, elsewhere. She’d learned so much during the last week but was still trying to come to terms with it all. She suffered in silence, though, unwilling to give voice to her fears, because talking about it would only make it seem real.
When she’d returned to the B&B after that disastrous shift, Ellie had gone unexpectedly easy on her. Beth had found her in the front sitting room and rather than pounce on her with a barrage of questions, Ellie had simply glanced up from her book.
‘So, you and Noah, huh?’
Beth mustered a sheepish nod. ‘I was going to tell you. Eventually.’
‘Bah, I don’t care about that. As long as you’re both happy. Now—’ she patted the spot beside her, ‘—tell me about this business with your mum.’
Beth flopped down onto the couch, exhausted and emotional, and told Ellie all about the letters Flo had unearthed and her dad’s response to Pru’s suspicions.
‘And what do you think?’ Ellie asked.
‘Honestly? I don’t know what to think.’ She hadn’t wanted to divulge what Celia had told her, about the parallels between personality disorders and autism, at least not until she’d looked into it further.
Which she’d now done. And what she’d learned had caused her whole world to tilt off its axis.
She’d started by watching the program Celia had mentioned, which had blown her mind—because it was the autistic traits that sounded distressingly relatable. Then afterwards, when she’d done a deep-dive into autism, she’d stumbled on a piece of information that had set off astoundingly loud alarm bells.
According to the experts, more and more women were discovering in adulthood that they were autistic. Why? Because girls are more likely than boys to mask their autistic traits in order to fit in with their peers. They grow up feeling different from everyone around them and mimic the behaviours of others so they don’t feel so alone, weird or alienated. That had hit home. Because hadn’t she always pretended to be cool, calm and unaffected by those around her?
From that point, Beth wasn’t just researching for Rosie, she was researching for herself.
She came across an online screening tool, a quiz with eighty questions designed to assess the likelihood of a person being on the spectrum, and her result was well above the threshold for someone considered neurotypical.
Her hands had shaken as she’d googled ‘autistic traits in women’. She trawled through countless articles that described everything she’d ever struggled with: starting conversations, stuttering through conversations, avoiding conversations for that very reason; the difficulties she’d had with making friends, making eye contact, making small talk; her sensitivities to noise, light, textures—and, oh my god, yes, shedidhave a favourite spoon! Some of her most common behaviours—the hair twirling, the mouth chewing, the feet rubbing whenever she was relaxed, falling asleep or waking up—were actuallystims. Her meltdowns, her shutdowns, her debilitating anxieties—there was a reason she experienced the world in this way, and now she knew why … the reason wasautism.
Perhaps Rosie had been autistic, perhaps she hadn’t, but the more Beth read, the more certain she became thatshewas on the spectrum herself.
And that was how she came to be painting walls alongside the man who knew every inch of her body, and told her every day that he loved her, and all she could think about was the fact that she had a hidden disability. Her house was only weeks away from being finished, but she honestly couldn’t care less.
‘Okay, enough is enough. Let me take that.’ Noah prised the paint roller from her fingers and dipped his head to get a better look at her. Clearly, he didn’t like what he saw, because a deep crease formed on his brow. ‘What’s wrong?’
She shook her head and looked away, unwilling to tell him what was on her mind. ‘Nothing. I think it’s just the paint fumes. They’re giving me a headache.’
