‘It’s, I guess, things being unfinished. You always think you have time and that everything will work itself out in the end. But like Dad, am I going to have to finally be the one to reach out and patch things up?’
Yeah, so this was a sore topic. Ben’s dad wasn’t exactly tolerant. If I was trying to excuse him, I would simply say ‘he’s just of that generation’ but I don’t really think that is an excuse. He actually liked me quite a lot, which was nice, but Ben cheating on me with a man sort of annihilated their already strained relationship.
‘More than anything, I just wish I had more time,’ Ben murmured. ‘Time to leave my mark, time to do something of note… time not to be forgotten.’
‘I don’t think you’re ever going to be forgotten, Ben,’ I reassured him. ‘I think I’m going to think about you every day for the rest of my life.’
I let the tiniest smile slip onto my face.
‘Hey, that’s your mark,’ I continued, holding back a laugh. ‘You’ve really messed me up over the years. I mean, look at me, I’m going to continue to be a real grief-stricken old lady from the husband that cheated on her.’
Ben returned the smile, though his a little ashamed, as his gaze wondered around the room.
‘I suppose that’s grief, though, isn’t it? To love someone is to accept the absolute, unequivocal, complete and utter certainty of heartbreak,’ he mused. ‘That’s the price we have to pay.’
‘Where did you hear that, in a TED Talk?’
‘No,Woman’s Houron Radio 4.’
Before I could respond, out of the corner of my eye I spotted Bill through the window next to us, wandering aimlessly through the hospital corridor, looking suitably harried. I raised my hand to try and get his attention, but his head spun away from me simultaneously, and he began traipsing down the corridor in completely the wrong direction.
‘Just a second,’ I said to Ben, as I could see he was beginning to feel a little pained again. I hopped to my feet, walked out into the coolly lit corridor and called out Bill’s name just as he was about to wander obliviously into the gynaecology unit. He turned to the sound of his name and, still looking bedraggled but a little relieved, half jogged back towards me.
‘Sorry I’m late. It’s just been… a day. How’s he doing?’ Bill asked, the hospital lighting making the sparkly beads of sweat glow on his forehead.
‘He’s okay, a bit crabby, so brace yourself,’ I said, smacking him on his arm like a Sarina Wiegman to Chloe Kelly going on at eighty-nine minutes. ‘How was work?’
‘Urgh,’ was all Bill responded as I noticed him tenderly touch the blistering red wounds etched onto his knuckles. Stripper? No, I didn’t put much credence into that theory anymore. Maybe he was secretly a bouncer at a club?
‘Thank you, Ruth. I’ll take it from here,’ he said.
He stepped into the room with a long exhale where he greeted Ben, whose face visibly lit up at the sight of him, with a tender kiss on the lips.
There was a very active part of me still emotionally processing Ben’s diagnosis. I really should have hated him, Greta would have, if she were alive to find out what he’d done to me two years ago. When she discovered her few-months boyfriend was two-timing, she waited till he nodded off, logged in to his beloved Xbox, and fired off enough creative abuse to earn him a lifetime ban from the game he’d sunk a year of playtime into. She could certainly hold a grudge and act on it too.
But with Ben, I couldn’t bring myself to hate him. Like Greta, I wanted to find a way to avenge him, to do something to spite death, to stick two fingers up and blow a raspberry at the Grim Reaper.
But what could I do, really?
I probably stared at them too long, forlornly looking at the way Ben’s face broke into a warm smile at the sight of Bill. I might havecontinued staring, going well into creepy territory, if the buzz from my phone hadn’t shaken me out of my trance.
Every time my phone vibrated with a notification over the past day or so, I’d panicked – convinced it washimmessaging again – only to feel a wave of relief when it turned out to be the Duolingo owl, berating me and threatening to stomp my legs if I didn’t learn French as I’d promised three years ago. But this time, as I checked the notification, that same sickening, gut-twisting dread returned. It was an email from DarkCell, notifying me thathehad replied.
I couldn’t bear to wait a moment longer. With a sinking feeling, heart hammering, my hands shook as I opened the DarkCell message, dreading what I’d find.
It was another photo. But it wasn’t a photo of some letters scrawled in ink on any kind of parchment. It looked like it was written on…
My throat immediately began to tighten like the killer’s grip itself was around it. I instinctively swivelled my head, trying to control my stomach convulsions as I scanned the corridor for the nearest toilet. As my belly churned and gurgled with rising pressure, I sprinted as fast as my short, non-marathon trained legs would carry me. I managed to spot the women’s loo sign, pushed through the door, flung open the first vacant cubicle I saw and collapsed over the bowl, emptying the contents of my stomach with my phone still firmly gripped in my hand.
‘At least you got it in the bowl,’ I heard the cleaner in the next cubicle say, flat and weary.
I’ll spare you the details, but after my stomach had expelled its last contents, I slumped back against the separator, trying to muster the resilience to look at the photos again. If I had a chance to save someone this time, I didn’t want to hesitate. My hand trembled and shivered as I opened the website and forced myself to look at what he had sent.
The photos were grainy and dark, like severely deteriorated and bleached Polaroids that had been lost to time. It took my eyes a moment to decipher the actual subject. His message to me lookedlike he had hastily carved what resembled numbers into the flesh of a corpse, the same corpse, I imagine, he had just extracted a heart from and deposited at the nightclub last night. Had he killed someone just to get to me, or maybe impress me? I didn’t have a clue.
12, 1691, 176, 31, 328, 421, 112
As I wiped my sleeve over my mouth, I realised there was no justifying myself as a victim, this was entirely my fault. I was completely accountable for my actions, and now, of all things, I had a serial killer – one whose voice from two years ago never seemed to leave my mind – messaging me directly. Me. Ruth Watkins, who worked at a funeral directors and owned a horny tortoise called Toast, was being messaged by the chap who everyone in the UK was talking about. And I felt powerless to stop his weird murderous crusade. Deep shit achieved. Deeper shit imminent.
