Panic coils through my body like a bitter snake, I can feel it creeping through my veins, working its way over my stomach, in my intestines, surrounding my heart… it’s changing me, wrecking my insides, tearing me to shreds. A scream starts in the pit of my belly and it works up through my chest until it explodes past my lips.

“Where is he?” I demand. “Where the hell is he? Where’s Peter? Why can’t I find him?”

“Shh, shh, shh.” A pair of reassuring hands rest on my shoulders. “It’s okay, sweetie. It’s fine.”

I dart my eyes up to the pair of eyes that I married. The deep brown eyes that I’ve been staring at for ten long years, finding comfort, searching for love, and I look at the comfort he’s trying to give me. I want it to work, I need it to work, but to be honest I don’t think he has a chance in hell today. I’m all messed up.

“Bryan, I need him,” I weep. “Where the hell is he? I can’t do this anymore.”

My chest gets tight. I clutch on to it and claw as if I’m trying to rip it open. My lungs need air, they’re screaming at my brain to suck a while load in, but it isn’t happening. My mouth and throat won’t obey.

“You’ve been drinking again, Savannah.” Bryan rests my head in his hands and I lean into him willingly. “You know it isn’t good for you to drink. It makes things a little… confusing.”

“I… only had one.” Is my voice slurring? It’s hard to tell. “I didn’t mean to have one, I just needed to…”

To what? Forget, I suppose. To dull the pain. It isn’t working though, everything hurts now and I don’t know if there’s a damn thing to calm that sheer ache down. I could drink all day and I’d still feel it.

“Peter,” I mutter pathetically. “I need Peter, where is Peter?”

“He isn’t here anymore, is he? You know this Savannah. I don’t know how to keep telling you that.”

“No.” I shake my head vigorously. “He isn’t gone. I won’t accept it. I refuse to.”

Bryan’s fingers begin to clutch a little too tightly around me. I can almost feel them digging in and piercing my skin. I try to wriggle away from him but I guess I am a little drunk because my motion isn’t great. I can’t seem to escape him. Anger flashes across his expression. It’s clear I’ve gone a little too far.

“Savannah, you’re starting to make me mad now. I can’t keep talking about him. It’s over, okay?”

A single tear leaks down my cheek, I brush it away rapidly before he can see it. I know that will piss Bryan off, he doesn’t want me crying over Peter ever again. I suppose I can understand his point of view, he wants to move on with our lives, but am I supposed to just have no heart? I can’t just switch off my emotions.

“Now, Savannah, since you have been drinking,” Bryan continues through gritted teeth. Rage flies out like a bullet with every single word “I think it’s much better if you get to bed now, isn’t it?”

“But don’t we have…” I wave my hand, trying to search for the right words. “A thing?”

“I am not letting you out in public like this, Savannah. It’s fucking embarrassing.”

The curse word makes me flinch. I cringe under the power of it. Bryan’s rage is like a freaking hurricane. It tears through the house and my life, leaving a trail of devastation behind me. If I hadn’t been drinking - and to be honest, I might well have had more than one - then I’d be so much more aware of that.

“I’m… I’m sorry… I don’t mean to be…” I stammer, only winding him up more. “I don’t want to…”

“Savannah, stop it now. I’m not arguing with you about this anymore.” He shakes his head and slides away from me, almost as if he can’t stand to be near me. “I’m trying to be sympathetic with you, I want to help you out with all you’re going through, but you’re making it very hard. This has been going on too long.”

The tears fall thick and fast now, I’ve lost all control of myself. “Where is he?” I whimper again. “Where the hell is he, Bryan? I can’t take this anymore. I can’t accept it. I don’t think that he’s… he’s gone…”

“Dead, Savannah. Let’s just be frank about this now. You might start taking this a bit more seriously if we say it for what it is. Peter is dead, he’s gone. There was a funeral and everything. It’s time to move on.”

Dead… gone… funeral… move on… accept it…

No, the words are impossible. I can’t seem to digest them and I don’t think I ever will.

“Here.” Bryan slides me a drink. “This will help you calm down. Drink it and I’ll take you to bed.”

I don’t want to go to bed, sleeping feels a million miles away from me, but I know Bryan’s temperament and it’s just much easier to go along with what he wants. I grab the glass and knock the drink back, sucking it down as if it’s a shot of vodka. It isn’t alcoholic, but it does leave me a little woozy.

“I… I…” I push myself into a standing position, instantly noticing how jellified my legs are. “I need to go to the bathroom, I think. I …” I clutch onto my forehead, wishing I could see a little better. It’s blurry, the whole room is spinning. What the fuck was in that drink? “I think I just need to… to…”

“You need to get to bed, don’t you?” Bryan grips onto my arm to hold me upright. Again, I find myself leaning into him because even when he’s angry, he’s the only rock I have. “I’ll get you to sleep, okay?”

My feet become heavy, I can barely drag them behind me. Bryan lifts me up, carrying every inch of my dead damn weight. I feel sad, pathetic, a damn mess. Now I’ve got to the stage where I can’t even cry anymore.

“We need to have a talk about this, don’t we, Savannah?” he mutters as he drags me along the ground. “This is just getting ridiculous. We’re going to have to do… something about this. I’m getting sick of it.”

I feel sick of it too, but in a very different way. I get the feeling that Bryan just doesn’t like me. My unhappiness is entirely with my life as it is. I can’t switch that off no matter what.

“Peter,” I mutter pitifully. It doesn’t even matter that Bryan’s fingers become tight again. I’m sure I’ll be bruised but I can barely feel it. I wonder if something was in that drink because I feel so weird. “Peter.”

Either Bryan flings me onto the bed or I fall, I’m not quite sure. Either way I end up spread eagle across the sheets. I face plant the pillow and sob into it. Bryan might be my rock but he’s also my hard place and I feel incredibly stuck with him. Much as a minute ago all I wanted was him, now I want to be away from him.

“Savannah, this is going to be the last time I say it to you.” His finger flaps in front of my face. “We will not talk about him anymore. It’s done. It’s over. We are not going to mention him again. Understand?”

I nod and clamp my lips tightly together. It takes a while, he remains in the room, probably fussing about so he can keep an eye on me, but eventually he leaves. While he’s in the same room as me I pretend to sleep but I soon jump up when he’s gone. I get an immediate powerful head rush, once that almost sends me falling back downwards, but I keep as strong as I can to scrabble around to find my cell phone.

“Pippa,” I mumble. “Pippa, I need you right now. Pippa, where are you?”

I don’t normally like to talk to Pippa about my husband, especially if it’s a complaint because she already doesn’t have the highest opinion of him, but today I need to. Today I need to speak to someone who will care.

“Hi, this is Pippa. Sorry I can’t come to the phone right now.” I groan loudly because she’s not there. “Please leave your name and number after the tone and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Pippa, are you at work?” I stammer. “Can you… you speak to me? I know you’re probably working because you always are, but I need some… some help.” I hiccup loudly which is very embarrassing. “Sorry, that probably makes me sound drunk. I’m not drunk at all. I only had one. I just… Bryan is just…” The words start to fall apart because I don’t really know where I’m going with this. “I don’t know. I just miss Peter. That’s all.”

I don’t hang up for a while, I just sit there breathing heavily into the phone like a freak. As a phone call, this is a terrible one. But as a cry for help I suppose it’s effective. Not that Pippa can help me. She’s tried. Over and over again. I can’t be helped, there is no way out of this. It’s a mess.

Once I hang up the phone I still don’t feel satisfied. I need to speak to someone else, but I don’t know who. Because of everything that’s happened, I don’t trust anyone. There isn’t a single name in the contacts list in my cell phone that I can trust. They are all on his side. I gave up everyone in my life a long time ago…

But then my eyes fall on one name. A number that I’ve kept despite the fact that it’s pointless. There’s no way in hell this person will ever want to speak to me again, not after the way we left things. But Peter doesn’t belong to him, he’s a part of my life. My life before. He’s mine.

I mean, of course he isn’t. He never has been and he never will be, but he’s someone I could trust.

The yearning to speak to him is almost overwhelming and because of the booze, plus whatever the hell came with that drink, makes me feel a little braver. I hover my finger over the dial button and actually consider it.

If I do this, I’ll unlock a whole can of worms that I won’t be able to shut…

But I kind of want to do it anyway.

But Bryan will go mad, he’ll lose his shit.

But he loses his shit with me all the time anyway. More and more.

I collapse back onto the pillow and groan loudly. I feel like my head and heart are always in battle, only this time I might actually let the other side of me win out. It’s scary, it’s dangerous, it could cause everything to implode… but considering the way everything is anyway, is that really so bad? Is my life really so amazing that I’m scared to lose it? If I’m honest, I don’t think it ever has been.

“Fuck it,” I mutter while staring at my cell phone screen once more. I narrow my eyes, trying to make my vision straighter. “Why the hell not? Fucking bullshit life anyway, nothing else matters now.”

I don’t give myself a chance to talk out of it, I hit the button and I press the phone to my ear and I listen to the ringing sound. I don’t know where this cray phone call will lead, but I’m diving in my head first.

Why the hell not indeed?