Before leaving for the meeting, Mum and Margo came to her bedroom, where Iris was pretending to do her homework, to say goodbye. Iris held them too tightly and for too long.
‘Are you all right?’ Mum asked. ‘I can stay if you don’t want to be alone. Daniel can go.’
‘No, no, it’s fine,’ Iris said, panicking. She needed to act normal.
She listened out for the front door closing behind the three of them and then heard Daniel’s car roar into life outside. The noises galvanized her into action.
She ran a bath with hot water, as hot as she thought she could stand. But instead of getting into it, she crumpled to the floor. She couldn’t say how long she sat, naked on the bathroom rug, holding the knife in her hand and shivering. The whole room was clouded with steam and her eyes were clouded with tears. Was she too much of a coward to take the coward’s way out?
She didn’t know Olly had come home until he hammered on the bathroom door. She wondered if he’d heard her crying or if Mum had texted to ask him to keep an eye on her. She didn’t find out until afterwards that he’d found the note she’d written.
‘Go away!’ she shouted.
‘Let me in!’ he yelled back.
You could unlock the bathroom door from the outside with a coin in the lock, which had come in handy once when Margo got stuck in there and couldn’t turn the lock herself from the inside. When Olly went quiet, Iris thought he’d left her, but then she heard the lock turn. When he burst in, she felt a strange mixture of shame and relief. Without a word, he took the knife from her hand, wrapped her in a towel, warm from where it had been hanging on the radiator. Then he took her dressing gown from the hook on the back of the door and helped her into it, like she was a child. He knelt down next to her and held her in his arms as she sobbed.
‘It will be OK, Iris,’ Olly said, over and over. ‘I’ll ring Dad.’ His voice wavered and cracked, but he held it together. For her sake, perhaps.
But then she heard him sniff and felt his body tremble. Iris knew without looking at his face that Olly was crying, not loud sobbing like her, but quietly. She felt bad about upsetting him.
It took Dad about half an hour to reach Crooked Oak Cottage. Iris and Olly were still in the bathroom, their backs against the radiator, Olly’s arm around Iris’s shoulders. Dad barged into the bathroom. He was wearing his suit and had obviously come straight from work. He’d let himself in and came upstairs to the bathroom without even taking off his shoes. Daniel would not have been impressed. Weird how her mind came up with things like that at a time like this.
The next few weeks went by in a bit of a blur. Iris was pretty much wrapped in cotton wool. She was prescribed new medication, she had more appointments with Melanie, everyone watched Iris like a kettle of hawks around the clock, a team suicide watch. Mum didn’t get much work done during the day. Olly moved his mattress into Iris’s room and slept on the floor, so there was someone on call for her at night. Iris couldn’t have made another attempt on her own life if she’d wanted to. She was never alone.
She didn’t want to, though. Not anymore. She still didn’t want to fight; she definitely didn’t want to face a court case. But she didn’t want to be a victim all her life. She needed to turn this around somehow.
It took some time, a lot of time. Dad was still finding her video and reporting it after seven months. It was like trying to put out wildfire with a water pistol. But the fire would die down eventually. Even if it left embers. Iris had to get back in control of her life. She needed to start by actually getting a life.
It was her birthday in July. Her seventeenth. It should have been a big deal, but there was no way Iris was going to celebrate it. She woke up feeling depressed about having to get up at all. But Dad had bought the best present ever. He handed her this big cardboard box, which seemed to be wiggling. The lid of the box wasn’t taped down and it wasn’t wrapped and Dad said she had to put it on the floor and open it quickly. She did. Inside was the cutest puppy. Iris squealed.
‘He’s a golden retriever,’ Dad said.
‘What’s his name?’
Dad shrugged. ‘You can name him.’
‘Where did you get him?’
‘I found an advert on the internet. I got him from this family in Somerset. Near Cheddar Gorge.’
‘Cheddar. That’s a good name for a dog,’ Iris said. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘It’s an excellent name,’ Dad agreed. ‘He’s exactly the right colour.’
‘Does Mum know about this? Is she OK with it?’
‘Yes. And so is Dandruff.’
‘I bet he took some persuading.’ Iris rolled her eyes.
‘You can say that again. Anyway, there are some conditions if you want to keep him.’
‘Anything! Go on!’
‘One: you are responsible for him. You have to look after him, take him for walks whatever the weather and remember to feed him, brush him and wash him.’ That sounded easy enough. ‘And two: you have to go to puppy training classes. I’ve enrolled you in the Kennel Club in South Molton.’
Ah. Now that was harder. That meant actually facing people. People who may have seen her video. Iris hesitated, but only for a few seconds. She had to get back on the horse or the diving board or whatever. She had to start somewhere. This was as good a place as any. She wouldn’t be completely alone. She’d be with her dog. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I can do that.’
