When the phone rang at 3:17 a.m., it didn’t take a genius to work out that something bad had happened, no sound at that hour could be a positive one. The shrill ring bulldozed through the house like a tornado, causing me to jump out of bed like a bolt of lightning, with a pure unadulterated terror in my heart. I heard Mum tearing down the stairs first, so safe in the knowledge that she was about to deal with whatever the immediate issue was, I took a second to calm down the ice cold fear that had encompassed every single part of me.
As I focused hard on my breathing, hoping that by calming that, I could also cool down my heart too, a million-and-one possible horrifying scenarios danced through my brain, however hard I tried to make them stop. Someone had to be ill, or missing, or in some sort of accident. The police would be involved, whatever the case, and I didn’t like the idea of that one bit.
I could hear the muffled tones of my mum speaking, but nothing was coming through clear enough for me to make it out. I was going to have to go down there to face my current biggest fear, because not being in the know had to be a whole lot worse. The tension, plus my crazy imagination, was potentially making everything into a much bigger drama than it needed to be.
I creaked my door open lightly, and tiptoed through the hallway as if I feared I was about to be caught. My heart was in my throat, my calming breathing having done absolutely nothing to slow it down. My mouth felt like I’d been chewing on cotton, and my fingers were actually stinging from fear.
I should have known the second I found happiness, something would come along to tear it all apart. I was never destined to be that lucky.
I peered over the bannister to see my mum clutching the telephone receiver so hard her knuckles had gone white. An air bubble got right in the way of me gasping down air, so while I did my best to overcome that, I listened intently.
“Oh my God, Alex, that’s…I don’t even know what to say.” My mind was so stuck it took me a lot longer than it should have done to realize that Alex was Joe’s father, and this dire situation had something to do with him. “We’ll come now…are you sure? Is there anything…? Well, please let me know.”
She slammed the phone down hard, and sobs racked through her body. I watched her cling onto the wall like she was utterly desperate for some support, which was where I needed to come into the equation. The only problem was my legs had turned to lead, and there was no moving them however hard I tried.
“Mum?” I rasped, far too quietly for her to hear me. “Mum, what’s going on?”
Alex meant Joe, Joe meant—I didn’t want to think about what that meant. I didn’t even want to consider the possibilities. I gripped tightly onto the engagement ring sitting on my left hand, hoping that through sheer wishing I could make him okay. Anyone but him…anything but Joe…
“Mum,” I called, sheer terror causing me to yell a lot louder this time. “Mum, please tell me what’s happening.”
She span around to look up at me, tears etched into her cheeks. Her red eyes, filled with sorrow, her despondent body language, all told me to expect the worst. I physically braced myself in preparation for what was about to come. She shrugged, flicked her eyes from side to side, and stuck a knife into my heart with her next words. “It’s Marie,” she gasped. “She…she’s in hospital. Suicide attempt, from what I can gather. Alex wasn’t exactly coherent, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
I was ashamed to admit it, but the knowledge that Joe hadn’t been affected released the claim terror had on me, and I finally made it down the stairs. I pulled Mum close into me, offering her some comfort with my embrace. “It’ll be okay,” I cooed. “That doesn’t sound as bad as Alex probably thinks it is, and at least now she’s going to get the help she needs.”
I considered Marie, really thinking about her for the first time in my life. I’d never noticed any sign of depression or suicidal tendencies—not that I had any idea what either of those things looked like—but then she’d never really featured on my radar, to be perfectly honest. I’d just never seen her. She was always there, in the background, but Joe was so magnetic he always drew me in, no matter what. I felt bad she’d been so low that she had wanted to do that to herself, but it did sound like she was in the best place now. She clearly needed medical help.
“So, are we going to the hospital?” I pulled back to look in Mum’s eyes. “I know Alex told you not to, but they will probably need us, right?”
“Oh no.” She shook her head far too sharply. “No, we can’t go. This is a sensitive time, and if the family don’t want us there, then we must keep away.”
“But…we’re always there, for everything.” I moved back, totally dumbfounded by her statement. Good or bad, we were the sort of families that supported one another. In a totally selfish, teenage way, I wanted to be the one to comfort Joe, to help him get through it all. “We have to go. Don’t be crazy, Mum. What if they need us?”
She grabbed hold of my shoulders and stared deeply into my eyes, giving me a really serious look. “We need to respect their wishes, Lottie. We have to do what they’ve asked of us. Now I know that neither of us will be able to sleep, so why don’t we go and get a drink or something?”
I nodded, silenced by the cool passion in her statement—she really meant that, there was no changing her mind however hard I argued the case—then I followed behind her like a scared little puppy afraid to be away from its mother. As we grasped our mugs of hot cocoa, that neither of us had any intention of drinking, we were both too shell-shocked to speak, so we simply sat there in a stilted silence instead. Our eyes kept travelling over to the phone, and every now and again one of us would attempt something like a conversation, but in reality time just stilled. We remained in a weird twilight zone, just waiting…endlessly waiting…
Ring, ring…
Ring, ring…
It wasn’t until the sun started to shine through the curtains that the phone actually blared out, and by the time it did, neither of us knew what to do about it. We stared at one another in shock until I shoved Mum towards it. She was the adult, she knew best, there was no way I could tackle this one.
“Go on, go and see,” I hissed, my heart racing in my throat. “We need to know.”
Throughout the night, I had gone back and forth in my mind, trying to work out what Marie had going so badly for her, why she would have done it. Maybe it was just an attention thing and it had freaked her parents out, maybe it was all just a misunderstanding, maybe…
I didn’t know, I really had no clue, it could have been anything in the world. I just didn’t want it to be bad news. I wasn’t sure I could stand it.
“He…hello?” Mum stammered, winding the telephone cord around her fingers. After that, nothing. I could hear someone talking on the other end of the line, but she wasn’t answering at all. Nausea swirled, a sickness spread, then as I watched her slump to the floor in horror, I knew. I didn’t want to know, my brain was dead against accepting it, but rationally, it was the only answer.
Marie was dead, she was gone. She’d actually done it.
If only we’d taken more notice of her, if only me and Joe had tried to be her friend, if only…
“She’s dead,” Mum howled, dropping the phone to the ground with a loud clatter. “She’s dead, and Helen knows.”
Huh? Helen knows? I didn’t want to tell Mum that of course Helen knew, that she was likely at the hospital with her husband at the time too, but she was obviously going through some sort of funny moment, so I held her close to me instead while she curled up into the foetal position.
While she sobbed and I hugged her, I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t crying myself, why I felt totally numb. It was as if all the emotion had been stripped from my body, and there was none of me left. I should have been going through the saddest feelings ever, but there was absolutely nothing inside.
Did that make me a cold hearted bitch? Or had I just shut down while I comforted the person who needed me?
“Is that a car?” I gasped, what felt like hours later. “Are they home?”
I dropped my mum like a lead balloon and raced to the window in a heartbeat. Mum had been looked after by me all night and all morning long. Right now, Joe needed me more, he had just lost his sister, his parents would be wrapped up in their own grief, so I would have to put him first. Mum would understand, I felt sure of it.
As I spotted the familiar maroon colour of the Davies’ car pulled up into the driveway, I practically ripped the door off its hinges to run outside. It didn’t matter that I looked a sodden mess in my pyjamas, I didn’t care that my eyes were red and puffy, and to be honest, I wasn’t much thinking about anyone else’s feelings either, only Joe’s. I just needed to hold him, to make everything all right again.
Helen stepped from the car first, looked ashen and green all at once. She stared through me, as if I wasn’t even there, before spinning on her heels and stalking inside. Normally I might have taken a moment to be offended by that attitude, but today I knew I was the last thing on her mind. She couldn’t care enough to hate me, or to worry about what I wanted to do with her son, not when her only daughter was gone.
Gone forever…that concept felt a little hard to grasp.
Alex soon followed, looking quite frankly like shit too, but I didn’t really focus on him. My eyes were on the back of the car, waiting for Joe to come out.
Thump, thump…
My heart was so loud I could hear it clearly in my eardrums.
Thump, thump…
Where was he? I needed him, I felt utterly frantic without him. How could I comfort him if he wasn’t there?
Thump, thump…
And then the door swung noisily open…
“Oh my God, Joe,” I gasped as he moved out of the car, fixing his eyes only on the ground beneath his feet. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”
I flung my arms around him and squeezed him tight. I was so wrapped up in him, so grateful he was back with me, that it took me a while to notice that his arms were still planted firmly by his side. I stepped back slowly, terror encasing my heart once more. As I looked into his eyes, I already knew everything had changed, before he even said anything. He wasn’t even looking at me like I was human anymore, and I didn’t even have to wait long to find out why.
“This is all your fault,” he spat at me, irrationality ruling his brain. “All of it.”
“What…what do you mean?” I stammered, feeling myself stumble, as if my body wanted to escape, as if my feet were aware of something my brain hadn’t quite caught up with just yet.
“What do I mean?” he sneered, showing me a vile, nasty side of him I’d never seen before. “You, you dragging all the attention away from Marie. If you and your whore mother hadn’t moved in next door, then maybe we could have spent more time with her.”
“What? How is this my fault? And what did you call my mum?” My head was spinning, I could barely even think anymore. How had this gone from me comforting my fiancé, to him blaming everything on me? I didn’t even know Marie, how could her death be my fault?
Unless that was the point…
Maybe I should have known her, she was my next door neighbour, our families were really close. It was sort of terrible that she’d slipped under the radar for all of us. Maybe we all played a role in this tragedy.
“You don’t know? You honestly don’t know?” He tugged at the ends of his hair, sending me a look as if I meant as much to him as dog dirt. “Well, everyone else does, so you might as well now. Your mum and my dad have been fucking in secret for years. Mum knew about it, at least for a while, so I guess all of us were too self-involved to care about Marie.”
Why would he say that if it wasn’t true? Could that be possible? I didn’t even know how to begin processing that one. Which was probably the reason that my brain decided to do the most selfish thing it could, the worst possible action in that moment, and it completely shut down, turning the whole world to black…