‘I don’t know if she would want me to tell you. Or Mum.’
‘I won’t say anything, Olly,’ Ash promises. He doesn’t need to say he’ll tell Carla. That’s a given. The kids know he and Carla tell each other pretty much everything. ‘Is there something I can do? Do her parents know?’
‘No, there’s nothing you can do. Fuck, there’s nothing evenIcan do.’ Ash doesn’t scold him for his language, although he has never heard Olly swear like that before. He notices tears well up in Olly’s eyes. ‘And, yes, her parents know.’
‘Will she prosecute? Has she prosecuted?’
‘No. There’s no point.’ Ash doesn’t push this. Iris didn’t want to prosecute Josh and he gets that. It was too much for her to go through the first time. She couldn’t have gone through it again. He imagines it’s similar for Liv. ‘Who was it? Was it someone she knew?’
Olly shrugs. ‘Just some guy at a party.’
Ash gets the feeling he’s only being given part of the story. Something doesn’t quite add up. What isn’t he seeing? Olly opens his mouth, presumably to say something, but instead a sob escapes. Ash pulls Olly towards him and wraps his arms around him. Olly is an adult, almost as tall as he is and certainly as muscular. An image appears, a memory sputtering to life. Olly, tears coursing silently down his cheeks, as he sat on the bathroom floor at Crooked Oak Cottage, leaning against the radiator with his arm around Iris. Was that the last time he saw his son cry? It’s a bad memory, a terrifying one, and Ash banishes it from his mind.
Olly pushes Ash away and seems to pull himself together. His face is wet and his nose is running. Ash digs a tissue out of his pocket – he has no idea if it’s clean, but it will have to do – and hands it to Olly, who won’t meet his eye.
‘If there’s anything I can do, Olly, anything at all, please tell me.’
Olly nods into his chest. ‘You’ve done enough,’ he says.
Ash doesn’t know what his son means by that. Does Olly mean Ash’s prying has made him cry? But it didn’t sound sarcastic. Ash lets it go. ‘Do you want something to drink?’ Ash asks. ‘A cup of tea? A beer?’
‘Yeah, a beer would be good, Dad. Thanks.’
Ash fetches two bottles of lager and a bottle opener. Olly selects an action film on Netflix and they watch it together. But Ash can’t follow the plot. He can’t concentrate on the film at all. He thinks of Liv and he thinks of Iris. And he thinks of Olly, who had to deal first with the fallout of what Iris went through and who is now doing his best to help Liv get back on her feet.
When he and Carla moved to North Devon, it was partly for a fresh start, but it was also because they wanted to bring up Olly and Iris somewhere safe. It seemed idyllic when the kids were small – the countryside, fresh air, not far from the ocean. They live out in the sticks, away from the big dangers of the city, but trouble has found them here. Ash can’t help thinking that he hasn’t done a great job of keeping his family safe.
Chapter 32
Iris
THEN
So, things went from bad to worse, after Iris came home from Gran’s house in the Lake District. She didn’t go out, except to go from Crooked Oak Cottage in Holtleigh to Mayflower Farm in Shallowcott – from her mum’s place to her dad’s place – or with Mum to walk on Exmoor, along routes where there was zero chance of her bumping into anyone, let alone anyone she knew. Millie had blanked Iris that day at school, but outside of it, she acted like nothing was wrong. She came round every now and then until Iris asked her not to. Millie went on and on about school and Iris couldn’t deal with it. Plus, Millie was probably only coming round out of pity, or because Jo and Ian sent her. It certainly wasn’t for the good company. Iris’s world was shrinking. She had hardly any contact with anyone in it, besides her family and her counsellor and her driving instructor. That suited her, but at the same time, she couldn’t go on with things that way.
She had a knot in her stomach and a foul taste in her mouth and they just wouldn’t go away. Her hands shook a lot and she’d bitten her nails to the quick and started on the skin around her thumbs. She tried to do breathing exercises, like Mum suggested, but it was a total waste of time and effort. She was tired. All. The. Time. But when she tried to sleep, she lay awake, her heart pounding. Either that or she slipped into a light, fitful sleep complete with nightmares.
She had two recurring dreams. In one of them Josh tried to suffocate her; in the other he threatened to kill her with a knife. She always woke up before he could do either, marinating in a pool of her own sweat, which was just gross. And pretty fucking scary. Iris would wake up, screaming, and Mum would come rushing into her bedroom to smother her with hugs and rub her back like she was a baby.
‘I hate him, Mum!’ Iris would sob into Mum’s pyjama top. ‘I wish he was dead!’
Melanie said she had to talk to herself in her head and think positive thoughts. ‘Go easy on yourself. Keep telling yourself you’re lovely, you didn’t deserve this and it’s not your fault,’ she said.
But Iris didn’t believe a word of any of the nice things she tried to make herself think. Her inner voice always piped up, drowning out those thoughts and firing words like ‘worthless’, ‘slut’, and ‘stupid’. Victim-shaming. Self-blaming.
She couldn’t see a way forwards. Dad spent God knows how long every single day trying to get the video taken down from various websites. It was going to follow her all her life, wherever she went. How could she ever trust anyone again? No other guy would ever want to be her boyfriend. She had no friends and no one would ever want to be her friend again either. Any prospective employers were going to find the video as soon as they did an online background check. She was totally screwed. Forever.
It got so Iris didn’t even want to get up in the morning and wished she could go to sleep and not wake up. It took every ounce of her energy to get up, take a shower and put on some clothes. She could no longer concentrate on her schoolwork. The suicide thoughts she’d toyed with before now invaded her mind. She thought about killing herself non-stop. She was in a really dark place. In pain. Suicide seemed like the only way out. It would be better for everyone if she wasn’t around. She’d caused no end of trouble and her family were all suffering. The problem would only go away if Iris herself did. Mum and Dad would take it badly, but they were bound to feel a bit relieved, too. No one else would miss her.
She remembered Josh’s supposed suicidal thoughts and how he’d implied he was considering taking his own life. And here she was, actually planning to take hers. Ooh, the irony! How would Josh have done it? Jumped off a cliff, maybe. Exhaust fumes in his mother’s SUV? But Iris was sure now that it had only been an idle threat, one of the many manipulative ways he’d used to bind her to him.
They’d talked about suicide once. He said it was the coward’s way out. She thought you had to be really brave to do something so drastic, and, above all, really desperate. She was desperate now. But maybe Josh had been right. She felt like a coward.
She googled how to slit her wrists. Lots of hits for suicide helplines, but once she scrolled past all that, she found some useful tips.One: use a sharp knife. The one in the kitchen drawer that Mum chopped vegetables with would do the job.Two: right-handers, use your left hand to cut your right wrist first. The tendons will be damaged, so you’ll need as much strength as possible to cut into the other wrist. That made sense.Three: slit along the wrist, not across it. She mimed the gesture along her arm.Four: take a hot bath and some painkillers. She’d take some of Daniel’s anti-coagulants, too, so the bleeding didn’t stop.
She planned it for the evening of Margo’s parents–teachers meeting. Margo, Daniel and Mum would be out for a few hours. Olly had cross-country training, so he’d be back at some point, but he wouldn’t disturb her if she locked herself in the main bathroom. He had an en-suite bathroom, the lucky git. She’d scored the room with the best view, though. Margo could have it when she was gone.
She’d written the note the day before. That way she wouldn’t waste time on the evening itself. She didn’t have much to say. Sorry, mainly. She was so sorry for upending their lives. Next, how much she loved them. Mum, Dad, Olly and Margo. She decided not to put Daniel’s name. He was her stepdad, sort of, but he wasn’t family. Not really. And finally, not to blame themselves. This was all her fault, not theirs.
