Our week was up. She had gone. The house was empty again. Just me and my thoughts. Our last night together had been spent in my bed, my arms wrapped around her as she slept, trying to get used to the fact that she’d be gone in the morning.

And the morning had come. I hadn’t wanted it to. A week wasn’t enough time to get to know her. She’d brought light into my darkness in a way I still didn’t really understand. It had all seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. One minute she was screaming to be let out of an empty room, the next she was far wiser and more mature than me, taking me by the hand, guiding me through my pain. It was something I could never have predicted would happen.

I had been so sure I was on the right path.

I was alone again. I stood in the garden, looking at the spot on the wall where she’d stood, the tail dangling down between her buttocks, her body presented ready for me to take. It was a happy memory tinged with pain. I doubted I’d ever forget it. Each time I walked into the garden, I’d see that vision of her, the poignant reminder of the person who’d come into my life like a lighthouse, illuminating the blackest night and guiding this old sailor back to port.

Walking back to the house, I wondered what she was doing now. Had she shown her family the cheque? A million pounds for lasting the week in my house. She’d earned it. She’d earned far more. But she refused to take more. It had been hard enough persuading her to take the million. In the end I’d had to point to the contract. She had insisted on staying the week. I was able to insist she got what she was due.

They would be happy with her. They would be more than happy. She had solved their problems.

She’d told me in bed about the mortgage arrears, about how close they were to losing their home. There was no chance of that now. She had been justly rewarded for surviving the fucked up guy that I was. She’d lasted a week. It was a week in which everything had changed.

There was her bedroom. If I breathed in deeply enough, I could still smell her. The bathroom where I’d bathed and shaved her. The room where she’d first been brought. All of it a reminder of her, a reminder of the loss I felt now she was gone.

I found the blindfold, carrying it in my hand as I walked back downstairs. The hallway, guiding her in and introducing her to my world. It felt like it had happened a lifetime ago. She had been gone less than two hours and already my heart ached for her. I missed her so much.

I walked into the study, settling behind the desk and pulling open the drawer. “You didn’t win,” I said to Emilia’s photo as I held it in my hand. “Because I stopped playing the game.”

I tore it in half, tossing the two sides down onto the desk. It was over. I picked up my suicide note and read through it. A multitude of emotions ran through my head as I finished. A weight of expectation settled on me as I put it down next to the two halves of the photo, leaving it open, the words visible in the corner of my eye as I reached down into the drawer.

I brought out the bottle of pills. The whisky bottle was already there on the desk, ready for me.

I had bought the pills when the idea first came to me. They were not officially legal grade medicine but you’d be surprised what money can buy you. It would take no more than three to kill a man and there were ten in the bottle.

“Goodbye, Emilia,” I said, pouring a glass of whisky out. “I am grateful for what you did. Because of you, I met Zoey.” I lifted the glass to the photo before taking a sip.

I picked up the bottle of pills, holding it up to the light. Ten tiny little pink capsules, so innocent, so small and innocuous, just waiting patiently for what I was going to do next.

I thought about my life, about what it had become, about what it had been. Had it been a success? A failure? Or something in between. How did it compare to Zoey’s? To Emilia’s?

I thought about my father, about my childhood, my siblings. So many thoughts all came to me as I rolled the bottle round in my fingers, still staring at the pills, the sunlight behind creating a kaleidoscopic effect, the light refracting and changing as I looked in at the bottle.

A bird called outside. It hopped onto the sill, looking in at me. What do you think of me? I asked myself as I looked at the bird. Do you think I’m a good man or a bad one?

Zoey had thought I was a good man. Would a good man do what I was about to? Would a good man do what I’d done with my life?

I had so much money.

The thing about money is that it brings as much stress as it takes away. I might not have ever had Zoey’s fear of being made homeless but I had a deeper fear for many years, that somehow circumstances would conspire to wrest my empire away, leave me with nothing. I had gripped onto my money with inhuman strength, fighting off any attempt to reduce it. I bought and bought, vacuumed up one company after another.

In the end, of course, it hadn’t been circumstances that had conspired against me. It had been my own mind. It had twisted and reshaped itself until I had forgotten what mattered in life.

What mattered was connecting. What was the point in infinite wealth if you were alone? Zoey was gone. I was alone. I set the bottle down on the desk and unscrewed the lid.

“Goodbye,” I said out loud before picking up the bottle and pouring the contents into the bin next to the desk.

Once that was done, I reached across the desk and grabbed the phone, dialling the number I knew by heart, wondering if it was still the right one.

The line rang, once, twice, and then the click of a connection.

“Hello?” the voice said at the other end.

“Hi, Dad,” I said. “It’s me.”