She glances around the beach, but it’s only the four of them. ‘What boy?’
Damon turns to her, finds her eyes.
‘The boy I think I killed?’
Part Two
Below
Chapter 5
Two Weeks Later
Damon
The music is playing so loudly I’m struggling to hear my friends. So I find myself nodding or smiling along even when I don’t really understand what they’re saying. Mum told me I once fell over as a kid and hit my head on a coffee table, rupturing my right eardrum. The hearing in that ear never completely returned so I struggle with it at the best of times. And I think there might be some water left in my other ear because I’ve been plagued with a whooshing sound ever since I drowned a fortnight ago. Together, they make me feel like Aquaman, minus the chiselled jawline, six-pack and scales.
Shake it off. Act as if you’re having a great time.
I actually argued against going out tonight. Back in October last year, I downloaded a ‘150 Films To See Before You Die’ list, and Melissa and I have been working our way through it ever since. I’d have been happier staying in the flat with her, eating my body weight in caramel popcorn and marking another movie off the list. Or even having our friends come over for a poker night. But they insisted on dragging me out on this bar crawl to celebrate.
‘Coming back from the dead means you get to do the dumb stuff you did in your teens all over again,’ Tommy explains.
A bleary-eyed AJ agrees. ‘If I was you, I’d be out every night trying to sleep with every girl who so much as smiled at me. No offence, Mel and Ade.’
‘Non taken, Tragic Mike,’ says Adrienne.
‘Like so many girls gave you the time of day first time around,’ Tommy reminds AJ. ‘Can’t see things changing much second time around.’
Banter. Friends poking fun at one another in a good-natured way. That’s what I usually love about this group – they take me out of myself when I burrow down. But even though I’m trying hard, my heart really isn’t in it. All my conversations require effort these days. I don’t think any of them have truly grasped how close they were to never seeing me again. Why? Because they haven’t asked. Melissa told them what happened and I’ve exchanged voice notes and Snapchats with them. But they have yet to say, ‘Damon, how are you really doing after what happened?’ And I’ve yet to tell them, ‘I’m a bit shit, actually.’ I have seen things they haven’t. Things I can’t explain. Things I keep replaying every time I close my eyes. Things they will never understand.
I wish I could drink tonight, as booze might’ve helped to blur the edges. But I can’t mix alcohol with the broad-spectrum antibiotics I’ve been taking. They were prescribed as a precautionary measure in case the water I swallowed was contaminated and gives me an infection. That’s the last thing I need. Well, drowning wasactuallythe last thing I needed, but the horse has already bolted and the stable door is flapping in the breeze.
I’m in need of a moment to myself so I make a joke about having the bladder of a toddler and needing the bathroom, but I head outside into the beer garden instead. I lean against the wall, taking the deepest breaths my damaged lungs will allow. I cough,another lingering side effect of swallowing so much salty water. I catch sight of the others through the window. They may be here to celebrate my second chance at life but none of them understands what it’s like to have actually died. To have come within a whisker of losing these faces and places, of swapping everything for nothing. I should be grateful I’m still here but I’m struggling to move past what I so very nearly lost forever.
I catch Melissa keeping a watchful eye over me out here, from in there. Without her, this would be my wake. She’s giving the appearance of having fun, but I suspect she’s also finding it difficult. What happened that day in the sea has changed us both. I wonder if, like me, it has taken more of a toll on her than she’s ready to admit.
Chapter 6
Damon
The train journey from Brighton back home to Northampton was a blur of images, past and present. Melissa kept trying to engage me in conversation, but my replies were perfunctory. I was still too overwhelmed from watching my life flash before me. Such a cliché, but I’d never imagined what it might be like in practice. At least for me, it meant thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of images escaping from my subconscious, encompassing all eras of my twenty-eight years. And in the fortnight that’s followed, I’ve been dipping in and out of those memories, dwelling on some and reliving others. But always trying to make sense of one in particular.
The boy I think I might’ve killed.
A red-headed lad, his crumpled body on a pathway separated from a road by trees and bushes. I am standing over him as he lies there, watching him bleeding from his mouth and left ear. Suddenly his eyes open, he reaches out his hand and I stretch out mine. But that’s where my recollection ends. If it is a recollection.
Melissa said he was the first thing I spoke of on the beach as we awaited the ambulance. Then I kept repeating it on the way tohospital, where I spent two nights under observation before being discharged.
‘You were imagining him,’ she told me during visiting hours. ‘You haven’t killed anyone.’
‘The way I saw him ... it was like my other memories, absolutely crystal-clear.’
‘You wouldn’t have forgotten killing someone.’
‘But you know some of my memories as a kid are patchy. So it could only have happened then.’
She shook her head. ‘Come on, Damon. That’s not something you’re likely to forget.’
