Intention: a compelling psychological thriller

by C. S. Barnes

  ‘Did you say where you were going?’ I asked again, all too aware that I was pushing but far too curious of his answer to stop myself.

  ‘So curious today, GT,’ he said, evidently holding back a laugh. ‘I won’t be long.’

  And he was gone.

  I explored the house – something that I’d done several times already at this stage, but I always managed to find something new – and found myself enamoured by the twenty-one photographs that were dotted around the living room. They were scattered over the tables, the fireplace, tacked onto the wall to make a jigsaw-like feature of themselves – and they watched you every time you moved. I had seen them on earlier visits but had never studied them, not properly, not carefully enough to track one set of physical markers to another. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t match their faces. I couldn’t even find Emily.

  By the time Daniel had been gone for a little over an hour, I had grown frustrated by the photographs around me. I hadn’t managed to tie any two individuals together and it perturbed me, disproportionately so, in fact. I walked from the living room out into the hallway, hoping that there may be signs of life from Emily by now. At home I was always glad of the quiet and solitude but when I was at Daniel’s, there was an instant and desperate need for human interaction. I pressed my ear against Emily’s bedroom door, and held my breath firmly inside my lungs while scrutinising any sounds hidden by the wood. There was an understated hum from one machine or another but beyond that, there was nothing to suggest it was a good time for me to intrude.

  From somewhere inside the kitchen an alarm started to ring; 12:30pm meant that it was time for one lot of medication or another. Inside I found the noise emanating from a small clock balanced on top of a box of what I remembered were painkillers. Emily’s medication had slowly increased over recent weeks and, while various nurses tended to her every whim for their allotted time with her, some responsibilities – more responsibilities – tumbled onto Daniel. ‘There are so many, GT. I just can’t – I can’t chance it, you know?’ He had been frantic when he made this argument, despite my having told him that the alarms were a good idea. I put the clock to sleep, setting it to wake up again in another six hours, before washing my hands thoroughly and unloading three white caplets onto a small saucer. ‘We need to keep things as clean as possible,’ Daniel had said, again frantically, although it had seemed like a perfectly sensible request to me. The first time that I had done this for Daniel – or rather, for Emily – I had only shaken loose one tablet. Now, eyeing the three that had spilled out onto the plate as I took a glass down from the top cupboard, I thought what a testament those tablets were to the worsening state of affairs.

  Knock on Any Door. 1949. Nick Romano. No, wait. John Derek. ‘Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse.’

  ‘Danny won’t even recognise what they put in the ground,’ Emily had said two, maybe three, visits ago. I hadn’t told Daniel. I never told him when we had conversations like that.

  I loaded the saucer and a glass of water onto a tray before dropping four chocolate digestive biscuits onto another small saucer. Daniel rationed these treats now. Despite the utter absurdity of it, he seemed to have convinced himself that a healthy diet might go some way towards counteracting the effects of a fast-advancing stage four cancer. Emily had batted her hand at Daniel’s naivety – or was it optimism? ‘Let him have it, if it makes him feel like he’s doing something,’ she had said, and I had been sneaking her the biscuits since. The sudden influx of memories conjured a tug of affection as I pushed through the kitchen door and wandered out into the hall.

  With the tray precariously balanced on one hand I pushed down the door handle, eased open Emily’s door, and waited for a greeting. It seemed far-fetched to expect a ‘Good morning, Gillie’, but I had expected something, a rustle of the bedclothes if nothing else. There was a mound of blankets on the hospital-issued bed, beneath which, I assumed, was a sleeping Emily. It seemed almost cruel to wake her but missing a batch of medication could upset her system for an entire day, as Daniel insisted on reminding me on a sometimes hourly basis now. I hoped that there would be something – heavy breathing, some signs of discomfort – that would justify my waking her but there was nothing to suggest that she was anything but peaceful at that moment.

  If I make enough noise, I remember thinking, she’ll wake up on her own. I was disproportionately desperate to escape the guilt of disturbing her. I set the tray down with a deliberate bump on the dressing table and forced out an embarrassingly chirpy ‘I think you’re due some tablets, Emily.’ I made my way closer to the bed, glass of water in one hand and a saucer of pain relief in the other, and although I was walking towards her, it wasn’t until I was a mere three steps away that I saw it. The relaxed expression, the unblinking eyes, the tinge of blue that was already chasing its way around the edge of her lips. In an accidentally dramatic gesture I dropped both the glass and the plate and then, without fully considering why, I reached forward to touch her. I ran the back of my hand against her cheek, tucked my fingers firmly around hers, fighting against the onset of rigidity. It was the most peaceful that I had ever see her. And I couldn’t have felt more disappointed.

  Chapter 19

  Under normal circumstances I had a reliable method of emotionally dealing with life incidents. It wasn’t that I didn’t experience emotions, you understand, more that I couldn’t – still can’t – decipher them adequately and, because of that, my verbal and physical responses to certain stimuli leaves something to be desired. I flicked through my reference bank but struggled to find what felt like an appropriate media representation of someone reacting to the death of a person they weren’t biologically related to. Sadness seemed to be the general theme, but I needed something more specific. And something told me that my fail-safe plan of calling my mother for advice wouldn’t be appropriate this time.

  American Psycho. 2000. Christian Bale. ‘I have to return to some videotapes.’

  I called Daniel three times, only to be immediately bounced to his voicemail as though his mobile was turned off or lifeless. On the fourth attempt I heard ringing, but I still didn’t get an answer. In the hallway I searched through the drawers of a waist-high unit, on top of which sat the house phone. I hoped to find a letter, a name, a phone number, but instead found dozens of letters, about scans, appointments, and every second, third, and fourth opinion available on the severity of Emily’s condition. All I found was overwhelming evidence of how hard Daniel had fought to keep her alive, and I felt a sudden pull on my insides then at realising I would have to be the person to tell him that he’d failed in that endeavour.

  Unable to find any remotely useful paperwork on how to proceed, I had no other option but to call the police, or an ambulance; I wasn’t sure. In my best mock tones of anxiety and panic, I communicated that confusion to the woman on the other end of the phone who asked what my emergency was.

  The paramedics came, saw, and confirmed it, on the off chance that I had been stupid enough to miss a pulse or mistake the beginnings of rigor mortis for something else. It looked like it had all happened at some point in the last four hours. Her levels of Adenosine Triphosphate had long since drained from her face and, I suspected, many of her larger muscles were likely affected by now as well. The paramedics didn’t explain this to me – ‘It looks like she’s been gone a little while, pet’ was their preferred delivery – but God, how I wanted them to explain it. They talked me through what happened next, who I needed to call, and what I could do until then.

  ‘I’m not the next of kin,’ I rushed out, thinking this was something they should know – like it would influence Emily’s current state.

  From the mass amounts of paperwork that I had managed to wade through, I eventually found a name and a doctor’s surgery. The female paramedic offered to call for me, while her male counterpart repeatedly offered his sympathies before asking exactly who I was – a question that should have occurred to him sooner, I though
t.

  ‘The doctor is coming out now, pet.’

  The doctor, fortunately, knew me as Daniel’s friend, so at least she could verify my involvement with the family – sorry, with the deceased. While the medical professionals held their conference together in Emily’s room, I paced the hallway with my phone pressed to my ear and my thumb punching the green call button and red cancel button alternately, every time Daniel’s answer machine informed me that the person I was calling wasn’t available to take my call at the moment. I shut out the chatter and listened carefully, just in case Daniel’s forgotten mobile was buried about the house somewhere.

  ‘Come on, Daniel, answer the bloody phone.’

  ‘Miss Thompson?’

  ‘Yes? Sorry, I’m trying to get hold of Daniel.’

  ‘We need you to, really. We can’t proceed any further without him.’

  When the doorbell sounded – three times in rapid succession – I knew that it was him. He never took his house keys now, not when I was with Emily. He would ring the bell, steal a kiss, and Emily would be none the wiser. Behind the door now he was panting, sweating, and although I was half-prepared to break the news to him myself – in what I hoped would be a soft and appropriate tone – the ambulance that was blocking his driveway had been the only announcement that he needed.

  ‘It’s happened, hasn’t it?’

  In the days that followed Daniel wasn’t himself. But I suppose that was to be expected. Real people aren’t themselves, necessarily, when they’re grieving. There were flashes of his normal character but they were quickly undercut by fidgets and awkward stretches of silence. Nevertheless, I went to his house every day without fail. I never thought to ask whether he wanted me there or not, but I do remember thinking: where else would I be?

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Chipper, with a cold front of melancholy sweeping in from the west. Which I think is probably normal.’ He stepped away from the doorway and gestured me inside. ‘I’m not convinced it’s all properly gone in yet, but sorting out the funeral stuff helps, I suppose.’

  I followed him into the kitchen.

  ‘Emily had a folder of funeral things,’ Daniel explained.

  ‘Plans, you mean?’

  ‘I always told her that she was morbid for doing something like that, and that…’ Daniel was facing away from me as he spoke but the crack of emotion in his voice was as unmistakable as the beginnings of tears. ‘But maybe she knew that this would happen. Maybe she knew that when the time came I really would be this fucking useless.’

  I stood behind him and wrapped my arms around his body until my hands came to a halt on his stomach. I don’t know where the gesture came from, but Daniel seemed pacified by it, a deep sigh escaping him as my hands settled. My chin sat level with where I estimated his first thoracic vertebrae to be, such was our height difference. I breathed in his stale smell – a T-shirt that hadn’t dried properly – and on my exhale, I pressed my sympathies into him.

  ‘I’m so sorry this has happened to you, Daniel.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry, Gillian; you’re not what killed her.’

  Daniel didn’t ask whether I wanted a hot beverage but he served me a small mug of hot chocolate anyway. I deliberately sat down on the seat next to him rather than opposite. He propped an elbow on the table and balanced his forehead in the palm of his hand as he stared into the drink.

  ‘You just need to give him some time,’ my mother had told me, noting the frustration in my tone earlier that day when I had told her that Daniel was fine – too quiet, but fine. ‘That’s normal, Gillian,’ she said. But his quiet was too much for me.

  ‘Is there anything that I can do?’ I pushed.

  Daniel sighed so hard that his frame drooped. ‘I think you’re already doing everything that you can, GT.’

  I put my arms somewhere around his shoulders and torso then, and pulled him towards me. My fingers hovered at the edges of his hair until his shoulders sagged against me, and the by-products of his sobs were quickly seeping through my T-shirt. It was the first time I thought I may actually be of some use to Daniel.

  ‘I’m just so angry at her, Gillian,’ he said, the words muffled against my shoulder. When he pulled away from me, I could see the skin beneath his eyes was red, swollen, glossy from tears that hadn’t made it either down his cheeks or onto my clothing. He looked lost. The longer I watched him, the more pronounced my own feelings became. Sympathy, rage, and something that felt much softer battled it out for space in my stomach.

  ‘Why are you angry at her?’

  Daniel rolled his eyes as if I should already know the answer. ‘Weren’t you angry, when your dad died?’

  Yes, I thought, but probably for a different reason.

  I reached out to him and gave his right thigh a small squeeze. I hoped he might find something comforting in the gesture. He inhaled deeply and pushed the air back out in an elongated stream, trying to steady himself.

  ‘This is what she wanted, right?’

  He looked across at me for an answer. I nodded.

  ‘She asked me to do this, more times than I can even – Christ, this is absolutely what she wanted. And I understand that, deep down. I understand she wanted things on her terms and she wanted – control? I guess, maybe. This is what she wanted.’ He repeated the phrase like an affirmation, reminding himself that Emily was ready for this, until he changed his beat: ‘She gave no thought to me, GT. No fucking thought at all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I pushed again. I knew it, in my gut, but I needed to hear him say it. I wondered how beautiful the words would sound in Daniel’s voice.

  ‘I mean she begged me to help her finish things and she gave no thought to what happened afterwards, no thought to me, no thought to how I’m meant to live with this.’ Daniel’s speech was staggered with caught breaths and unfulfilled sobs as he tried to communicate, and so it took me a moment or two to decipher the words. This was it: Daniel was in an obvious state of emotional turmoil but I couldn’t reach him; I was on the opposite end of the spectrum somewhere, with winged creatures occupying my lower abdomen desperate for the big reveal that I now knew was coming.

  ‘I killed her, Gillian. She asked me to help. I did, and now I fucking hate myself for it.’ His eyes were clenched shut as the words fell from him, as though he were bracing himself for an inflamed or hurtful response. I tried to beat down a swell of curiosity and excitement but there was only one question I could settle on long enough to ask out loud.

  ‘What happened?’

  And he told me. Going back to their first conversation about it, Daniel revisited Emily’s most recent hospital stay and sifted through the doctor’s report on how the cancer was advancing. ‘We can treat you, but I’m afraid it will only be an exercise in lengthening your life at this stage,’ the doctor had told them both.

  ‘And what use is that, really?’ Daniel interjected into his own narrative. It had been a lot of use at the time, I wanted to remind him, flashing back to when he had scorned Emily’s refusal for treatment, but I didn’t for fear of disturbing his sequence. She had asked calmly, Daniel said, like she had reserved this request for a time when she would really need it. ‘How can anyone make that decision? Like, why would you just give up like that?’

  For fear of providing an answer that Daniel didn’t want to hear, I instead nodded and urged him to continue.

  ‘She kept mentioning it after that and I kept telling her that it wasn’t an option. Then you came along.’ He paused and fashioned an expression that may have been construed as loving or admiring under different circumstances.

  ‘What did I have to do with any of this?’ I asked, feeling disproportionately pleased by my alleged involvement.

  ‘She said life moves on and that I’d found someone to spend mine with now.’

  Again, under different circumstances, and had I been a normal girl, this would have perhaps been the moment when an extravagant cast of woodland creatures would have poured in thr
ough the doors and windows to join me for a musical number. It wasn’t quite that reaction, no; I’m no Snow White, after all. But I still struggled to hold back a smile.

  Daniel continued with the retelling – of how Emily had repeatedly asked him to help her and how he had repeatedly denied her that – until we got to their most recent discussion, which had taken place a week ago. Daniel and I had been out for the afternoon; Emily’s orders. ‘The girl is hardly making the most of her summer,’ she had said to Daniel, urging him to whisk me away somewhere. I wondered now whether this had somehow been part of her plan.

  ‘She’d been bringing up more and more fluids,’ Daniel said, diplomatically referring to the blood and mucus that had to be cleared away from Emily following every cough. ‘She knew that things were getting worse, and I did as well, and I was just… worn down, I suppose. Not with her, I don’t mean,’ he added, quickly, as if trying to save face. ‘I was worn down by her asking me to help her, and me running out of ways to actually help her, because I couldn’t.’ He dropped both hands flat against the table, his head angled towards the wood in a way that allowed him to avoid my stare completely. ‘You can’t always help. Her medication box.’ He lifted his head to gesture towards where it used to live. ‘They’ve taken that as well now. But her box with all the heavy stuff in – Christ, it’s so wrong to even talk about this.’ He massaged his forehead roughly; the skin turned white from the pressure.

  ‘Daniel, you need to tell me what happened,’ I said, desperate for the details.

  ‘I told her that I couldn’t do it. I’m weak, and I couldn’t. But if she wanted to, if she really felt like that was what she needed to do, then she could take extra. From the box.’

  The soliloquy continued but was disturbed by repeated apologies and growing sobs that became so violent I was concerned Daniel may slip into a panic attack. ‘I killed her. I killed her, and I have to be okay with that and I don’t even know how–’