She watches as Adrienne paces the kitchen once again, trying to push together pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit.
‘You keep telling me you wish Damon would move on,’ Adrienne continues, ‘but you’re not allowing him to. He isn’t the only one clinging to the past.’
‘I’m not clinging to anything.’
‘You have allowed and encouraged this co-dependent relationship to develop. I think subconsciously, you want him to keep needing you.’
‘No, it’s not like that.’
‘If we are to stay together, you cannot allow this to continue.’
‘Listen to me, I won’t do it again,’ Melissa pleads. ‘I promise you.’ And she means it. No matter how desperate Damon is and how much he begs or threatens her, she is unwilling to risk losing what she has with Adrienne.
Adrienne shakes her head. ‘No. That’s not enough. You and him ... it must stop. Right now. Tonight. You do not see him or speak to him again. You block his number, you delete his texts and that video.’
Melissa’s heart sinks. ‘I can’t do that,’ she says. ‘What if he tries to die again without me?’
‘That will be his decision, not yours. I’m warning you now, if you are willing to throw your freedom away for his crazy obsession, then you are throwing away our relationship too. And that’s already on very shaky ground, because I don’t know if I can be with someone who is willing to kill another human being. And I don’t care how good your intentions are.’
Tears stream down Melissa’s cheeks as she watches Adrienne storm up the stairs and hears the slamming of their bedroom door behind her.
Chapter 66
Damon
So he did it. He killed all of them. Daisy, Callum, Bobby and, most likely, my mum. Four deaths and no explanation. Dad’s words ring in my ears like tinnitus.If you ever come back again, what I did to all those kids will be nothing compared to what I’ll do to you.I hope if I see him again, he’s in the back of a hearse, en route to his funeral.
It’s unlikely he’ll ever tell me why he did what he did. Do I even need his reasoning? No, probably not, because it’ll never make sense to me. There’s no justification for taking another life. Then the man I ran over in the car park comes to mind. Well, perhaps there is, sometimes.Case-by-case basis, then.
Point is, I know for certain I am the son of a serial killer, and I don’t know if I have the mental space right now for what that means. But this isn’t over now I have the truth. Because I still don’t know what those kids want from me or why they haunt me and not him. And if they won’t tell me, how am I supposed to find out? Or will they live rent-free in my head for the rest of my life? I really hope not because I don’t think I have the strength for much more of this.
I stop by a chemist on the way back to the station to buy painkillers, and a kind pharmacist takes pity on me and tapes up my sprained or broken fingers. I can still move my shoulder, so I don’t think my collarbone is fractured, but it feels like I’m being stabbed by something red-hot and jagged.
Then I call Melissa as I board the train but it goes to voicemail, so I leave her a message asking her to ring me back. I pick a seat in the corner of the carriage, curling up against the window, my arms wrapped around my chest and stomach, as if protecting myself from an imminent attack. I spot the reflection of a man about to take a seat next to me. He changes his mind when he clocks the state of me and I start coughing and spitting blood into a paper tissue. He moves to another section instead. I don’t blame him. I’m a mess.
I begin to replay the events at my father’s house. I don’t know who that person was who attacked him. It certainly wasn’t me. At least not the me I have known for twenty-eight years. It was as if someone else took over. Dad unleashed a primal rage in me. I wanted him to grasp the gravity of what he has put me and others through. And I truly believe that had my grandmother not interrupted us when she did, I’d now have two deaths on my conscience. She’s fiercely protective. The maternal bond must be a powerful one for her to allow Dad back under her roof. I’m almost jealous of it.
I wish I knew where Helena is. She might be able to help me glue together the fragments of sanity I have left. I’m desperate to hear a familiar voice, to be reminded of who I am and not who I was in the presence of my dad, so I call Melissa twice more but I don’t leave messages.
An hour and a half later, I’m back in the lobby of my flat, collecting post from a box I haven’t opened in two weeks. I wait until I’m in my kitchen before I begin sifting through the letters.Some are bills – reminders or final warnings – but two are from the Human Resources department at work. The first informs me they have been trying to get hold of me to discuss my continued absenteeism. I’ve been deleting the voicemails they’ve left without listening to them. The second warns they have no choice but to begin disciplinary procedures and lists the reasons why. They can fuck off. I don’t open anything else and sweep them all into the recycling bin.
In the process, the postmark on one of them catches my eye. 9 May. I look at the date on my watch. It’s 11 May. It was my birthday two days ago, and I missed it. I wasn’t alone in that. So did Melissa and every one of my friends. In my twenty-ninth year on this earth, I’ve been forgotten by everyone I have ever cared about.
I curl up on the sofa, knees bent, arms across my chest again, lonelier than I have ever felt. I have no one. Absolutely no one. People have stopped calling because I don’t reply. I’ve deactivated my social media accounts so I don’t have to watch them living their lives while I’m trying to end mine, over and over again. I’m not dead, but I’m not living, either. I’m a year away from turning thirty and have less to show for it than when I was twenty. I’m stuck fast in purgatory, and I don’t know how to escape. Or even if I can. Perhaps this is it for me. Somehow, sleep catches me and carries me away.
A throbbing in my knuckles and shoulder awakens me sometime in the early hours. I push two painkillers out from a blister pack and swallow them with water, followed by another two for good measure. I’m always fully stocked with medicines. Melissa used to tease me for having so many in this flat that I could open my own pharmacy. Even in less complicated days, every now and again I’d experience phases of debilitating headaches. It feels like a pressure expanding inside my skull that leaves me dizzy. She nagged me to see a doctor, but they’d only refer me to the hospital for CATor MRI scans, and there is no way in hell I’m going inside one of those machines, my head in such close proximity to the electrical currents used to generate magnetic fields and radio waves. So I self-medicate instead.
I’m about to return the pack of pills to the medicine cabinet when a little voice in the back of my head stops me. Swallow them all and you’ll get all your answers, it urges. It won’t solve the problem of how I bring myself back to life, but does that even matter anymore?
I survey what I have. There are boxes of paracetamol, aspirin, co-codamol for an old work-related back injury, ibuprofen, and even some antidepressants I was prescribed after Melissa and I separated.
The little voice is not so little anymore. It’s big and booming and ever so persuasive. It guides my hand and I remove everything from the cabinet and carry its contents into the kitchen. Then I empty each bottle or packet, one by one, into a cereal bowl. Finally, I remove a bottle of San Miguel from the fridge, twist open the cap and return to the bowl.
I am powerless to stop myself picking three different-coloured tablets and swallowing them. Then another three.This is it, the voice tells me above the sound of waves crashing.This is where you’ll find your truth.I’m about to continue when a message flashes up on my phone. I don’t recognise the number so I’m ready to ignore it until I see there’s an attachment. Curiosity gets the better of me. It’s a video, so I press play. And the moment I do, I wish I hadn’t.
It’s footage of me in the car park below, driving over and deliberately killing a man.
Chapter 67
