by Nicci French
He'd offered to make all the funeral arrangements himself, to take the burden off the family, but Mum had told him quietly that it helped her to be busy. He'd answered the phone, filled out forms, made pots of tea, gone shopping, shifted his and Kerry's stuff into my parents' house again, so I could move back in to my flat. They were moving to the house I'd found in just two days.
A week after the death, we talked about the wedding. Kerry wanted to postpone it, but my parents said that love was the only thing that would get us through. Brendan nodded at that and held Kerry's hand, stroking it and saying in a wise, reflective voice, 'Yes, yes, love will get us through,' his eyes shining. At any other time it would have driven me insane with irritation. I still knew it was irritating, but now there were layers of numbness between the irritation and me.
'Here you are, better than tea.'
Bill pushed a tumbler of whisky into my hand and stood beside me while I took a large, fiery mouthful. We had all come back to my parents' house and were standing in the draughty living room, drinking mugs of tea and not really knowing what to say to each other. What is there to say, at events like these?
'Thanks.'
'Are you all right?'
'Yeah.'
'Silly question. How could you be?'
'If he'd died in an accident, or of an illness or something, that would have been one thing…' I said. I didn't need to finish the sentence.
'Marcia's going to spend the rest of her life asking herself where she went wrong, what she did wrong.'
'Yes.'
'That's what suicide does. The fact is, she did all she could. You all did.'
'No. He shouldn't have killed himself.'
'Well, of course not.'
'I mean, I don't understand it. Mum keeps saying she thought he was getting better. And he was getting better, Bill.'
'You never know what's going on in someone's head.'
'I guess.'
I took another gulp.
'He was a troubled young man.'
'Yeah.'
I thought about Troy giggling, making stupid jokes, grinning up at me. I kept seeing his face when he was in his happy phases and energy seemed to shine out of him, making him beautiful.
Bill refilled my glass and took the whisky bottle across to Dad. I wandered out of the crowded living room, into the building site that used to be the kitchen, then through the hole in the wall where once there was a door and into the soggy garden. Ripped, splintered floorboards and pieces of the old kitchen units were heaped up against the fence. I leaned against an old bit of shelving. It was slightly misty, every outline just a bit blurred, but maybe that was the whisky.
After my conversation with Bill, I was in a state wide open for doubts to crash in. The autopsy had been straightforward. Suicide by hanging. I thought of the last conversation I'd had with Troy on the phone that morning, when he'd sounded tired but quite cheerful. I'd told him about finding the house for Brendan and Kerry, and we'd talked about our plans. I'd said how much I was looking forward to sharing the flat with him, and he'd said, a bit gruffly, that he was looking forward to it too. My stinging eyes filled with tears again, though I had believed I was all cried out. I heard Brendan asking me, the day before, what time I would be collecting my stuff from the flat, and me replying it would be about half-past six. I let myself remember pushing the door open at the appointed time and seeing Troy's body hanging there; his chalky face and sightless, open eyes; the chair upturned by his feet.
I was hysterical, I told myself. Mad. I so badly wanted Troy not to have killed himself, so badly wanted not to have to blame my parents and myself for his death, so wanted not to have to imagine the despair that had led him to that moment that I was inventing gothic fantasies instead.
A few drops of rain fell on me. I drained my whisky and went back through the kitchen and into the living room. I hung back by the door, unwilling to talk about Troy and not wanting to talk about anything else. Kerry was standing with her arm through my father's. Her mascara had smudged and there were red blotches on her neck. Across the room, Brendan was on his own. Our eyes met. He looked away and his face crumpled. I suddenly felt that he was staging this just for me, a private drama. Tears coursed down his face, into his neck; he stuffed a fist into his mouth and doubled up as if he were muffling a great howl.
It was Laura who went up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. She just stood there like that while his bulky body shook. After a while he stood up straighter, and she took away her hand. I saw them talking. At one point they both looked over to me.
I turned away and went upstairs to find my mother, who had disappeared from the gathering. She was sitting in Troy 's old room – Kerry and Brendan's room now, I supposed, for their bags were by the door. She was sitting on his bed, plucking at the sheets with her fingers and staring ahead into nothing. She looked tired. Her face was full of lines and pouches that I hadn't seen before. Even her hair was lacklustre. I went and crouched beside her and put a hand on her knee. She looked up and gave me a small nod of acknowledgement.
'I thought I'd leave them to it,' she said.
'It's fine.'
'I don't know what to do with myself, really. Nowhere seems the right place to be.'
'I know what you mean.'
'Miranda?'
'Yes.'
'He was getting better. He was.'
'I know.'
I crouched there for a little longer, then went back to the thinning crowd and to the whisky bottle.
Laura took me home because I'd drunk far too much whisky to drive myself. She steered me upstairs to my flat and took off my coat, then sat me on the sofa and pulled off my shoes. 'There,' she said. 'Now: tea or coffee?'
'Shame to let the drink wear off' I said. 'Whisky?'
'I'll make coffee,' she said firmly. 'And I'll run you a bath.'
'That's nice of you. You don't need to. I'll be fine.'
'It's nothing.'
She filled the kettle with water and plugged it in.
'We were going to share this flat,' I said.
'I know. Do you want something to eat?'
'I've got a horrible taste in my mouth,' I said. 'What did Brendan say, then?'
'Say?' She looked confused.
'You were talking with him. After he'd done his great weeping act.'
'That's not fair, Miranda.'
'You don't think so?'
'He's heartbroken but doesn't think he can show it in front of all of you. He has to be strong for the family.'
'That's what he said?'
'Yes.'
'Oh well, who cares?'
'He does,' she said. 'I know what you feel about him, but he cares a lot. After all, you're the only family he's got. He thought of Troy as his little brother.'
'You too,' I said, infinitely tired.
'What?'
'He's got you on his side too.'
'It's not a question of sides.'
'That's what he says too, but he's lying. He's on one side and I'm on the other. Now more than ever. You can't be on both sides at once, you know. And you can't be some fucking United Nations mediator. You have to choose.' There was a pause. 'You've crossed over, haven't you?' I could feel my speech thicken. My head was aching with the whisky and the wretchedness.
'Miranda, you're my best friend. Don't say things like that.'
'Sorry,' I said. But I couldn't let it go: 'You liked him, didn't you?'
'I felt sorry for him.'
She poured boiling water over the coffee grounds and stirred vigorously. I stood up and fetched the whisky bottle from the shelf.
'Look at that,' I said. 'How've I drunk all of that since the day before yesterday?'
I was almost proud of myself. It was an achievement, of a kind. I sloshed a generous measure into a dirty wine glass, closed my eyes and took a gulp.
'You'll feel lousy tomorrow,' said Laura.
'One way or another,' I said.
'Do you want me to stay the nig
ht?'
'No. You've been lovely.'
'Are you going to work tomorrow?'
'Obviously. It's a working day.'
'I'll ring you in the evening, then.'
'You don't need to.'
'No, but I will'
'What would I do without you?'
I finished off the bottle. If I shut my eyes, the room tipped sickeningly, so I kept them squinted open though the lights were hurting my head. I padded into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. Which had been Troy 's bed for a bit. Although I'd changed the sheets, some of his things were still there – his watch on the bedside table, his jacket hanging from the hook on the door, his books scattered around the place. I fancied I could still smell him. I picked up a book he'd been reading about bread-making and held it against my chest.
'Oh dear,' I said out loud. My tongue was thick in my mouth. 'Oh dear, Troy. What shall I do now?'
Later, about two in the morning, I staggered out of bed and was sick, leaning over the toilet bowl and retching until there was nothing left in my stomach to vomit. My eyes stung and my throat hurt and my head throbbed, but I felt a bit better. I drank three beakers of water and went back to bed. I couldn't get to sleep at once. Thoughts swarmed in my head. I heard Troy 's voice, his last words: 'See you later, then.' He wouldn't see me, but I'd see him. All the time.
CHAPTER 23
If I'd felt bad in the middle of the night, I felt unspeakably worse when I woke the next morning. I was going to die and when I was dead I was going to be pickled and put in a large jar and put on display with a label identifying me as the first person ever to die of a hangover. It was hard to think because it hurt. It hurt to do anything.
At about half past nine I made an attempt to get up and then lay down again. No hangover had ever been quite like this one. I had the usual symptoms, in a more intense form: the parched leathery tongue, the headache which felt as if small rodents were eating my brain from the inside, the general feeling of being poisoned, a shivery creepy-crawly sensation over my skin. Additional bits of my body seemed to be hurting. Even my hair was sore. The particular innovation was that I still felt drunk, but it was like an evil, stale parody of the previous night's drunkenness. All the good bits – if there had been any good bits – were gone. But the floor-swaying was still there. The room-revolving was present and correct. That was why I had to lie down again, but even so it felt as if I were on a water bed. People didn't die of hangovers, but they did die of alcoholic poisoning. Could it be that? I remembered that I had a book about medical problems. There were a couple of snags. The first was that I didn't have a maid who could get it for me. The second was that I kept it with the cookbooks, so when I finally staggered across my flat to get it, stomach heaving, I had to see things that made me think of food. I tried not to think of food, but then the idea of a huge trifle came into my mind and I could only eject that by thinking of the smell of overcooked cabbage and then I thought of Troy and that was worse, the worst of all.
I took the book back to bed. There was no entry for alcoholic poisoning, but there was one for hangovers. The book recommended me to drink plenty of water, to go for a brisk run 'even if you do not feel like it'. If nauseous, and I felt very nauseous, I was to take something called magnesium trisilicate. Right, I decided, I was going to be positive. Previously I had wanted to curl up under the bedclothes and die, like a wounded animal retreating into its hole. Now I was going to adopt the opposite plan. I was going to attack the problem. I would not only get this drug, but would also run to get it. And I would have a drink of water first.
Everything felt wrong. The water was too late for my arid mouth. It seemed to run over its surfaces without being absorbed. I could barely lift my legs to get my feet into my shorts. I pulled the T-shirt over my head. It hurt my head. It hurt my arms. I tied the laces of my shoes slowly, trying to think how to do it for the first time since I was about six years old. I clutched a five-pound note in my hand and shuffled out on to the pavement. The bright light, the cold air on my skin and in my lungs, made me gasp. I don't know if it was making me better in any way, but there was a new clarity. In a way it felt good to be hurting and I wondered if this were a welcome continuation of last night. To be drunk, to ache, to be confused, to be in pain, perhaps anything would be better than opening my eyes and looking into the sun, truly facing up to what Troy had done to himself and done to us.
The chemist was only a couple of hundred yards away. I asked the pharmacist, a very tall Sikh, for the magnesium trisilicate. It had a sickly minty taste, but I sucked it desperately and headed back for home in an approximation of a jog. I had a shower, put some grown-up clothes on and lay on my bed to think. There was a metallic taste in my mouth and when I swallowed it felt to me as if there were something bristly stuck in my throat that wouldn't go down. My skin felt clammy. I felt sick but I wasn't going to be sick.
There was no doubt about it. I was in slightly less of a dreadful state. The day could now begin. What was the time? I reached out to the bedside table for the watch, Troy 's watch, that was lying there. Quarter past ten. That was another thing. I knew why the watch was there. Part of Troy 's problem was that there was never any balance, any compromise in his life, and for him even normal behaviour was a moral challenge. He was either completely wired, wildly funny, incredibly enthusiastic, or he was somnolent, slow, detached, often just fast asleep. Even in his good times he would have big sleeps in the afternoon, like a small child or a cat. He didn't just flop in a soft chair. He pulled the curtains, took his clothes off, got into bed. It was like night time. When he was medicated he was almost in a coma. He had been sleeping in my bed, and he had taken his clothes off and put his watch on my bedside table. His clothes were on his dead body, but not his watch. He may have forgotten. He was depressed, after all.
There was another thing. I closed my eyes and made myself do it. I pictured my dear, lost Troy hanging from that beam. The rope. It was easy to remember, shiny green, synthetic, rough. I remembered the strands as I'd cut it through with the knife to bring him down. For the first time I thought of suicide as a human activity that needed organizing. You need to plan it, you need to obtain materials.
I was clear-headed now. I got up and felt a wave of nausea and dizziness, but it passed quickly. I didn't have the time to be ill. I had things to do. My flat was so small that there wasn't much to search. I couldn't remember having seen that rope before, but I had to make sure. Under the sink there was a bucket, some washing cloths, various bottles of cleaning fluid. In the cupboard there was the vacuum cleaner, a broom and a mop, a rolled-up rug, a shoebox containing screwdrivers, a hammer, nails, screws, a couple of plugs. I looked on top shelves, behind the sofa, under my bed, everywhere. There was no rope. It could be that he just found a length of rope and used all of it. Or bought the length he needed and used all of it. Or…
I phoned my mother. It was difficult not to begin every sentence I spoke to my mother and father or sister by asking how they were. We could spend the rest of our lives asking and thinking what to say in return. I just asked if I could come round and she said, yes, that would be good.
On the way, I thought of something else. A few months earlier I'd been stuck in a tube train on the Piccadilly Line for more than an hour. An announcement came over the tannoy apologizing to all customers and informing us that there was a person under a train at the next station. To which the obvious answer would be, well, tell him to get out from under it so that we can all be on our way. But of course that is a euphemism for throwing yourself in front of the train and lots of unimaginable things happening to the person on their way to being underneath. I had a lot of time to think about it and one of the things I thought about was: do you owe anything to anyone when you kill yourself? If you throw yourself under a tube train, the driver is only about three inches in front of you as you go under, with whatever godawful scrapes and bumps and crunches that ensue. The tube driver takes early retirement after a suicide, mostly. And wha
t about all the commuters who suffer half an hour of irritation? Do all the missed dental appointments, toddlers left standing outside schools, the burned meals, do they do some damage to your karma?
I let a thought come into my mind that I had managed to exclude until that moment. In my flat. Troy had killed himself in my flat. I wondered if even thinking this was an obscenity, but I couldn't stop myself. He had hanged himself where I might find him. His dead body hung there, rotating slowly until it came to rest, in the space where I slept and ate and lived my life. How could he do that? I wanted to think to myself that Troy could never have done that. I loved Troy. And surely, even when his fog of misery was at its thickest, he loved me. Would he have done that to me? Something I could never forget. I tried to tell myself that when you kill yourself you are beyond thinking of other people in any way except that they will be better off without you. Or was it worse? I made myself consider the possibility that Troy 's suicide, and the manner of it, and the place of it, was a statement to me: There, Miranda, there. You thought you understood me. You thought you could help me. Well, here you are. Here is what I've come to. Do something to help me now.
I expected my mother to start crying when she saw me, but her mind seemed somewhere else. Even when she opened the door, she was looking over my shoulder as if she expected someone to be with me.
'I'm glad you came, Miranda,' she said, but it sounded as if she were speaking lines someone else had written for her. 'Your father's out.'