She recognises it as belonging to one of the volunteer staff.
‘Let me think,’ Helena imagines herself replying. ‘I lay here for a few hours, then I peed into a catheter, had breakfast pumped directly into a tube in my stomach, and tried and failed to hold my breath in a vain attempt to die. What about you?’
She’s being unfair. There is something about this volunteer that is different to the others. She’ll sit with her at night sensing when Helena can’t sleep, holding her hand or reading to her from books and magazines. She seems to understand her, and tells her that if she wants to quietly slip away, it’s okay. She’ll hold her hand while it happens. That her family and friends won’t resent her for it. She says she wishes she could help her, and that if maybe Helena could show her a sign that’s what she wants, then she can find a way. That’s why Helena has been practising trying to close her eyes, so that if this woman asks her if she wants to live or die, she might be able to communicate that she is desperate for the latter.
And then, God willing, this woman, this Laura, might take matters into her own hands.
Chapter 94
Damon
She’ll be arriving soon, so I take one more look around the bathroom to ensure everything is in place. The plastic restraints for binding my hands and ankles together are on the floor, along with scissors to cut them off when we have finished. The bathtub is three-quarters full of ice-cold water. The defibrillators I brought with me are lying on the floor, a green light indicating they’re charged. I am as ready for her as I’ll ever be.
We finally spoke yesterday, when I texted to tell her that I was ready to talk. She was angry, then hesitant when I gave her an address to meet me at. But finally, she agreed. It makes sense to do it here.
I slip my last cartridge into the vape and puff on it as I glance at a mirror above the sink. I wipe the dust clean with the sleeve of my jumper and take in my recently shaven face. My features remain pinched, but at least I look a little less like a character from a Tim Burton movie.
For the first time today, I’m not alone in here. Mum has joined me, and my baby brother is balanced on her hip. He’s no longercarrying the blue chequered blanket I suffocated him with and she is not scarred by fire or spitting embers. Daisy is also here, her face intact, reminding me of the beautiful young girl I fell in love with. Standing next to her is Callum, now without the handkerchief stuffed in his mouth. I can see his lips and his teeth. And there’s also the man who attacked me and whose dead body I dumped in a bin. I still have no clue as to his identity and I don’t care to learn it. But he appears far less menacing than he was when he was alive.
Dad is next to them. His appearance is also different to when I last hallucinated him, bloodied and battered and standing in the aisle of the DIY store moments before I was told of his death. Today, he is uninjured and fresh-faced. He’s no longer balding, bearded or grey-skinned from spending a third of his life behind bars. He is the spit of me before the first time I died: in his twenties, with the rest of his life ahead of him.
At one point or another, I have believed all these hallucinated figures to be reaching their arms out towards me, begging for my help. Now I realise it is the opposite: they were trying to push me away before I could hurt them again.
‘They’re here, aren’t they?’
‘Jesus!’ I shout and turn sharply to face Melissa. Her head is cocked to one side, a shoulder casually leaning against the doorway. ‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ I tell her.
My reaction amuses her. ‘I’m right though, aren’t I?’ she says. ‘They’re in the room with us?’
‘Yes.’
She casts a quick look around. ‘I wish I could see them.’
‘Trust me, you don’t want to. It’s like every terrible thing you have ever done in your life returning to haunt you.’ She makes her way into the bathroom and takes a seat on the toilet lid. ‘Thanks for being here,’ I add.
She shrugs. ‘Not that you gave me much choice,’ she says, ‘but we’ve come this far together, I might as well see it through to the end. Wherever that might take us.’
Melissa is the only person who truly knows everything about me. Even more so than Helena, I realise. She knows who I was, who I became and who I’ve returned to. She has witnessed my best and worst parts. Yet she hasn’t turned her back on me. Still, she remains.
I absent-mindedly pick at the dried blood embedded in the dial of my watch. I’ve scrubbed it and picked at its crevices and crown with an unfolded paperclip, but it won’t budge.
‘Is Fernandez-Jones here?’ she asks.
When the fog of my post-ECT daze lifted during our meeting and he turned his back on me, I raised the machine above my head and brought it down upon him. I remember the crunching sound, then the dull thud as he dropped to his knees before the second blow came.
‘No, he’s not,’ I tell Melissa. ‘So I assume he’s still alive. But he must be only just.’ Amazing how hard some lives can be to end.
‘And you’re sure there’s no link between you and him?’
‘I used a secure network for my initial contact, gave myself a fake name, and only his housekeeper can identify me on sight. Before I left, I took the book Fernandez-Jones was making notes in about me and grabbed my records from his filing cabinet.’
‘What about your fingerprints or DNA?’
‘They’re not on any criminal database. If they track me down, well ...’
My voice trails off, but I know she’s aware of what that means. We both are.
‘Why did you do it?’ Melissa asks. ‘I perhaps understand why you did what you did to the others. But aside from Bobby, it was always out of rejection or jealousy. What Fernandez-Jones did to you was morally abysmal, but he gave you a second chance, didn’the? You had sixteen years of normality. So didn’t the end justify the means?’
