The Probability of Happiness
Adele sat at the kitchen table, spooning sugar-laden cereal into her mouth and staring at the orange Post-it note on the fridge door:
TODAY I WILL LEAVE THE HOUSE
Suzie’s idea. Another ridiculous affirmation. Say it aloud enough and you’ll start to believe it, she’d said. Adele hadn’t though, because she knew what the world was really like. Suzie didn’t have a clue, sat in her office chair with her stupid headset on, looking out of a window that probably had a nice view of a river with swans and ducks on it.
Adele had retrieved the data on going outside, done the calculations. Probability of being hit by bus/car/motorbike. Probability of ambulance arriving in time. Probability of infection by antibiotic-resistant pathogen, of rogue incision by overtired surgeon. The list went on. The results were significant enough to confirm that staying inside was the best thing to do. Her flat was a sanitised microcosm that kept noise and people out, the only place she could guarantee her own safety.
The doorbell rang and a female voice crackled through the intercom.
‘Adele? It’s Suzie. Could you let me in please?’
Adele didn’t move. Yesterday she’d had a voicemail from a number she didn’t recognise. The caller had claimed to be Suzie, said she was using a different number because she couldn’t get through on her usual one. Fake Suzie had emailed too. My messages to you are being bounced Adele – I’m using another account because I really need to get hold of you. Please reply to this as soon as you can or call me. But that was what scammers did, wasn’t it? Used a false sense of urgency to compel you to answer calls and respond to emails and be convinced they were someone you knew when they weren’t. There were stats on that, too. She’d blocked the new email address and the new phone number.
The intercom crackled again. ‘Adele? Please say something.’
She stayed silent. This was how fraudsters operated. Gained your trust and came into your house and stole things. Or murdered you. Or both.
‘Okay, I think we need a different approach,’ said the voice. ‘Your name is Adele Matthews. You were born in Shropshire and moved to London five years ago. We’ve been working together for three months. When you were little you had a pink elephant called Dick Tracy. Our codeword is archaeopteryx because you love dinosaurs. Your favourite number is seventy-three. I have never written these things down because you made me promise not to.’
But what if Suzie had written these things down in her patient notes? And then been burgled? Or what if a secretary had seen them and told someone else? There was no way of knowing for certain.
‘Adele, it’s really me. Please let me in so I can see you’re okay.’
Her hand hovered over the intercom, then moved away.
*
It had been a slow creep. So slow that Adele had barely noticed it happening. Not until the dizzy spells, the headaches, the infinite loops of what-ifs hijacking her every thought. The inability to force her conscious self through the noise and extract the information she actually needed at any given moment. The fog in her head and tightness in her chest, and the knowledge – irrefutable in spite of numerous reassurances from others – that something terrible was about to happen.
She’d been certain she had a brain tumour, but according to the doctor it was nothing that exciting. An excess of one single hormone – cortisol – was causing all her problems. When Adele had been asked what was going on in her life, she’d shrugged. Just work. The doctor had signed her off with stress.
In truth it hadn’t been “just work”. It had been work on a very specific project, for a very demanding client, for a very long time indeed. Checking and rechecking algorithms. Staring at rows of numbers that predicted things with unsettling accuracy. With these numbers, the company promised health-conscious consumers, we can help you live longer.
Their app reduced people to statistics. Risk scores for everything. Diet, exercise, education, socioeconomic status, social interactions. The work had made Adele feel completely expendable. She was just a mathematician helping a computer turn human beings into numbers, so successfully that eventually she wouldn’t be necessary anymore.
Now she was stuck in a constant state of high alert that had exposed the world’s hidden layers. There were people in these layers she’d never have noticed before, all with the same terror in their eyes. People who, like her, knew how much danger they were really in. How had this other world, a world of abject fear, remained in the shadows for so long?
After six weeks of medical leave, Adele had told her firm categorically that she couldn’t come back to the office. The risk index in the outside world was far higher than the one she’d calculated for herself in the flat, where things were controllable to within very small margins. There were fewer variables, it was quiet, there was food and warmth. She’d even converted her spare room into a gym, which allowed her to exercise without other people breathing on her. Her manager had agreed she could work from home temporarily, but only if she attended weekly online counselling sessions. This had seemed like a reasonable compromise.
At their first appointment, Suzie had suggested Adele try reframing her thoughts. For every catastrophic situation she imagined, she should try to envisage a positive outcome too. What was the chance of her meeting a new friend, for example? Adele had laughed at this. There were no reliable stats on meeting people who went on to become friends. Or being smiled at in the street. Or finding a tenner in the gutter. There were, however, multiple stats on the myriad ways in which a person could die. The internet was useful like that. Numbers didn’t sugar-coat the real world like people did. Suzie had acknowledged that some of this was true, but she’d disagreed about staying isolated indefinitely.
‘You’re forgetting one crucial aspect of the risk index, Adele. Humans are social animals and need to be around other people. Loneliness kills too.’
‘I can see people online.’
‘You’re a very intelligent young woman. I think you know that’s not enough.’
‘It is for me.’
‘Okay, well maybe we can discuss this again at our next session.’
They hadn’t though. Or, more correctly, Adele had vetoed it because she knew she was wrong. She’d been on enough video calls to note the detachment she felt when interacting with others. The unreality of the people on the screen, her own inhibitions disappearing. She’d deliberately closed Zoom once during an online team meeting because she was bored, subsequently blaming her absence on a broadband issue. She hadn’t even felt guilty.
Suzie had changed tack at the next session, trying to encourage Adele to go outside with stories about the healing power of nature, photos of Japanese people forest-bathing. She’d even found statistics and research papers to support her suggestions.
‘I have plants,’ Adele said, lifting her laptop so Suzie could see them on the windowsill.
‘A spider plant and an aloe don’t really compare to a whole forest, do they?’
Adele couldn’t respond to that, because she didn’t remember what being in a forest felt like. But she did know there were too many other variables involved to make it a good idea. Wild animals. Zoonotic diseases. Fungal spores. Biting insects.
Not. Worth. The. Risk.
In the weeks that followed, her negative thoughts began to mutate, the dangers outside replaced with dangers inside. The darkness didn’t help. It was late November, and the grey skies and shorter days provoked her fragile mind even further. As the sun disappeared in the late afternoon, fear seeped into her like ink on tissue. Be afraid! shouted her brain. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, just be afraid! And then, in the moments before she drifted off to sleep, her mind switched on suddenly and intensely, imagining in graphic detail the potential disasters that would force her to leave the flat. Electrical fires, black mould, burglars, infestations, volatile chemicals, carbon monoxide. Sometimes several worries looped at once. On other nights one would dominate, weaving itself into an intricate web of interrelated catastrophes.
When she woke in the early hours the same thing happened. An endless cycle of worries. A frequent need to pee, then drink water because her mouth was so dry, then consider whether she might be diabetic even though she’d already been tested. Twice. But she probably was, because the people testing her blood had likely mixed up the samples. So someone else thought they were diabetic now when they weren’t, and Adele remained undiagnosed and untreated.
This went on, every night, until she was so exhausted during the day that things no longer seemed better in the light.
*
Adele had missed her last counselling session after falling asleep. When Suzie and her manager had tried to call her she’d ignored the phone, so consumed with worry over losing her job and her home that she was wholly incapable of rational thought. They’d tried emailing too, and Adele’s exhausted mind had identified conspiracies in every message. The simplest solution was to block the emails and the callers, silence the noise until she felt calmer. But she hadn’t felt calmer. She’d barely slept, and when she finally got up she was more afraid than ever. And now, even though she knew categorically that the woman outside her flat was Suzie, she was still inventing reasons not to open the door.
‘Adele?’ The voice came again. ‘This is the last time I’m going to ask. I have people ready to break in if you don’t answer.’
Her hand trembled as she pressed the button. The door clicked open and she waited, counting in her head. One minute and twenty-seven seconds later, a Golden Retriever led Suzie into the hallway.
Adele pictured the neat structure of her world unravelling itself before her. Warning! screamed her brain. Danger! The flat smelled different, felt wrong. Everything she had so painstakingly managed during the weeks of her self-imposed isolation destroyed in an instant. She watched, frozen to the spot, as the dog sniffed the floor, then licked it. She’d have to sterilise everything. She just needed to make sure it didn’t touch her.
‘Are you okay?’ Suzie asked.
Adele backed into the lounge, Suzie and the dog following a short distance away.
‘This is Samson,’ Suzie said. ‘Remember we talked about him? He’s a therapy dog. The same breed your parents had. I thought we could walk him together.’
‘I c-can’t.’ Adele forced the words out, her heart beating so hard she could hear it. When she moved her head the room blurred. She steadied herself on the sofa, slowly sitting down.
‘I think you can.’ Suzie took a step forward and placed the dog’s lead in Adele’s lap. Samson nuzzled against her hand, sending electrical signals through her fingertips. She took a deep, gasping breath, and felt herself pulled down as if from a great height. You are right here, her mind told her. In the now.
The dog sat on her feet and lifted a paw, dropping it into her hand. His pads were rough, his fur like velvet. Adele reached out tentatively and stroked his head, watching as he closed his eyes in contentment. Was happiness really that simple? The warmth of another creature’s touch, their unconditional affection? The vastness of the world collapsed inside her mind, distilled into a pinprick of golden light that exploded outwards in a sea of numbers. She reached for them, squinting against the brightness, and saw a lone digit emerge from the chaos: the number one, signifying certainty.
When she looked up, Suzie was smiling. ‘Let’s go outside,’ she said.
Category: Writing