The two policemen seem thoroughly bemused by all this. One I recognize from when our charity box was stolen last year; he sat in my office with a cup of tea and did his incident report, and I know he remembers me too. He’s probably trying to work out how I went from charity shop manager to bank robber.
‘I’d love to hear it,’ he says, standing next to Mr Atherley, who is still ranting.
I wonder if distracting them by suggesting anger management therapy for him would help?
I can’t avoid it, can I? There is nothing I can say now except the truth.
I look at Leo, his eyes holding mine across the crowd.
This is it. The truth has to come out. In the most public way possible. I should have been brave enough to tell him before, at least it would’ve been private then.
I go to speak but Leo steps forward before I have a chance.
‘This is all my fault,’ he says. ‘She’s not trying to rob the place.’
‘Maybe you could enlighten us on what exactly is going on here then?’ the policeman next to me asks.
Leo’s eyes don’t leave mine as he speaks. Burning and intense, impossible to look away from no matter how much I want to sink into the ground and never have to face him again.
‘She’s pretending to work there so I don’t find out that she’s the girl who saved my life on the night I tried to kill myself.’
My breath catches in my throat. He knows. I’ve gone from angry at the mistaken robbery accusation to blinking back tears. His eyes still don’t leave mine as he continues.
‘This isn’t a robbery attempt. She isn’t casing the bank. I phoned the charity shop instead of the suicide prevention helpline by mistake, and instead of telling me I was an idiot, she made me want to live again.’
He swallows and I think I’d be able to rip these handcuffs off with the sheer force of how much I want to hug him, but I stay still because Leo would probably rather have a hug from a pissed-off porcupine at the moment.
‘I was a mess, and I opened up to someone I thought was a complete stranger because I thought they were an anonymous stranger,’ he continues. ‘And when she realized, she didn’t want to embarrass me by admitting we knew each other. I wouldn’t mind betting that she told me she worked at the bank on the spur of the moment because she realized I’d figure it out if I knew she worked at One Light, but once it was out there, she couldn’t take it back.’
His mouth curves up into a sad smile and his eyes still haven’t left mine. Everyone else fades away as he speaks. Despite the crowd of onlookers, it’s like me and Leo are the only people here.
‘And I think she’s been hopping back and forth for the past few weeks, pretending to be on a break while someone runs through the back way and tells her I’m waiting in the bank.’
His beautiful blue eyes are earnest now, like he’s waiting for some sort of confirmation from me.
I nod and he nods back, and I can almost see the light go out in his eyes. Maybe it wasn’t confirmation he was looking for. Maybe it was denial. Maybe he wanted me to say he’s got it all wrong.
‘True?’ the policeman next to me asks.
‘Unfortunately,’ I mutter.
‘There we go then. Problem solved. No bank robbers here, Mr Atherley.’
‘You’re not telling me you actually believe that?’ Mr Atherley splutters.
The policeman next to him looks between me and Leo. ‘Oddly enough, I do.’
The other one undoes my handcuffs and gives me a pat on the shoulder. ‘Do yourself a favour, Miss Bailey – stay out of the bank until the other guy comes back. I don’t think this one likes you very much. Can’t imagine why.’
It’s over in a flash. It feels huge and monumental, like there should’ve been a clap of thunder and a strike of lightning or something, but there’s just … emptiness. The police car drives away and everyone disperses. Mr Atherley goes back into the bank and makes the ‘I’m watching you’ gesture at me, before telling Casey she’ll be fired if she doesn’t get back to work immediately. Maggie has disappeared back inside It’s A Wonderful Latte, while some of the gathered crowd have gone into One Light so Mary’s followed them back in. Within a few minutes, the only people still outside are the two nameless managing directors, who are looking aghast and having a hushed conversation with each other.
And Leo.
Who’s just standing there staring at the pavement.
I rub my wrists as I approach him. ‘Leo, I’m so sorr –’
‘Don’t, George. I get it. If you’d said you worked at One Light, I’d have known it was you. I understand why it came to this.’
‘How long have you known?’
He does a self-deprecating laugh that doesn’t sound like he finds anything remotely funny. ‘If I’m honest with myself? Since the day after. You came into the shop and your voice sounded so familiar, and you asked me what I’d done the night before and you bought me a coffee, and I was sure it was you. I saw the moment you realized it was me cross your face, and I’ve only just understood what that look meant. I thought I must be imagining it. Projecting. Wishful thinking. I wanted it to be you, George.’ He kicks at a piece of broken concrete edging. ‘And then we started spending time together and you said so many things that you’d said on the phone, and I kept thinking it was you and then telling myself how stupid I was being, it couldn’t possibly be you.’
I want to say something, do something, march over and pull him into my arms, but he’s tense, his shoulders drawn up, his back hunched over in a harsh curve. He’d look more approachable if he was surrounded by barbed wire and holding a ‘leave me alone’ sign.
‘And, well, we’ve established before that you’re a terrible liar. I knew something was going on with the bank. No one has that many breaks. You don’t know the first thing about banking. Everyone else in the bank wears a uniform. And mainly, I once said to you that someone saved my life, and you didn’t ask me about it. I know you well enough to know that you would’ve pounced on that and not let go until you had an answer – unless you already knew. Bernard calling you Clarence suddenly started to make blinding sense in a way that I understood on some level but I still didn’t make the connection. It was only on Saturday night that I understood what I didn’t know I didn’t understand until then.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘I didn’t want to know. I meant what I said on Saturday. I didn’t want this to end. If I knew what I didn’t know then I’d know.’
‘In any other context, that would probably be the strangest sentence you’ve ever uttered.’
He doesn’t smile like I was hoping he would, and I sigh, feeling like the few feet between us on the pavement is six miles wide. ‘I am sorry, Leo. I know you don’t want to hear it but I never meant for it to come to this.’
He goes to speak but nothing comes out. He shakes his head and looks the other way.
I want to touch him. He looks like he always looks when he needs a hug, and every inch of me wants to cross the few steps between us and, at the very least, slide my hand across his shoulder and squeeze. But I know Leo. Sometimes you can get away with pushing him and sometimes you will only succeed in pushing him further away, and I know that if I touch him now, it will be the latter.
‘It’s fine,’ he says eventually. ‘Like I said, I understand why it did. You don’t have to explain yourself.’
This is all so wrong. Everything feels wrong. He says it’s fine but nothing has ever felt less fine than this.
‘Thank you for what you did that night.’ When he turns around again, he’s biting his lip so hard it looks like he’s trying to give himself a new piercing with his teeth. ‘You saved my life. I shouldn’t have asked you not to hang up, but I don’t know what I would have done if you had. You made me feel normal. I’d been feeling alone for a long time and for the first time, I wasn’t alone that night. And I haven’t been since because you made sure I wasn’t.’
He doesn’t seem angry, or
hurt, or … anything. His voice is low and monotone, and his face is expressionless.
He looks at my two managers who are now standing to one side and furiously consulting between themselves and a conference call with someone else on a phone the man is holding up. ‘You’ve got the best manager in the business here. Above and beyond. I get that she’s probably going to be in a bit of trouble for all this, but don’t be too harsh. It was my fault, not hers. I phoned the wrong number and begged her not to hang up on me. She saved my life and she’s been working night and day to save my livelihood because of what I told her. She should be rewarded, not punished.’
‘Are you seriously trying to save my job?’ I say in surprise. ‘You must hate my guts right now.’
‘I could never hate you, George. And you saved mine, so tit for tat.’
‘Tit for tat?’ I don’t try to hide the confusion on my face. ‘We’ve come to that now?’
He shrugs.
This is so unlike Leo. He’s cold and emotionless and his smile seems like a distant memory.
‘I don’t care about my job, Leo. I don’t care about the bank or nearly getting arrested. I only care about you. This all got so out of hand. I never meant –’
‘Okay, thanks for all you’ve done.’ He looks me straight in the eyes again and his gaze lingers for so long that I think he’d take less time if one of us was off to the electric chair. ‘Have a nice life.’
Have a nice life?
I don’t think there’s much life left given the way it feels like my heart actually stops beating.
‘That’s it? You’re just going to walk away?’ I shout after him.
He comes back. ‘What did you expect me to do, George? I trusted you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone in my life. I have never opened up to anyone the way I did to you.’
‘But I didn’t use anything you told me. Everything you said on that phone is completely confidential, I didn’t –’
‘I’m not talking about the phone call. I’m talking about you. I held back on the phone. I didn’t hold back with you. I’ve been feeling things for you that I’ve always thought were never going to happen for me. And now I feel like I’ve been conned. You’ve been lying to me for weeks. I thought I felt something special with the girl on the phone but even that was a lie.’
‘How could I tell you I was ten minutes down the road? I wanted you to talk, you needed to talk, and you’d have stopped if I’d said that.’
‘Yeah, and I suppose everything else was just a token agreement too? All that stuff about feeling trapped and being frightened of being alive? Feeling like I felt? Hollow words to prevent another loser on another bridge becoming yet another statistic.’
‘No! My God, Leo, for the first time in my life, someone put into words the feelings I’d had for years and had never had the courage to confront before.’
‘Forgive me for not believing you.’
My breath is coming out in fast, sharp pants, and I can feel myself panicking because he’s going to walk away and there’s nothing I can do about it.
‘This whole thing is an elaborate con. Everyone who I felt comfortable with, people I thought were my friends, our friends who helped us decorate the other night, and everyone knew except me. Everyone was lying for you. Bernard, your dad, Casey, the bank manager, Mary from the shop.’ He glances up towards It’s A Wonderful Latte. ‘I bet even my mum knows, doesn’t she?’
I can’t answer without giving him the answer he doesn’t want to hear.
‘Your silence is enough of an answer.’
I can feel myself losing him and I don’t know what to say to make this better. ‘But no one knew why. I never told anyone that.’
‘I don’t care about that. Let everyone know. Talk about mental health. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50. Someone attempts it every forty-three seconds. Even people who are happy and friendly on the surface can be suffering. Anyone can smile in public and in their heads, they’re mapping out where the nearest bridge is. I’m not embarrassed about that. I’m not trying to hide what I nearly did. We shouldn’t be acting like mental health is something to be ashamed of. It affects everyone. No one is immune. Everyone is fighting a battle that we know nothing about.’ He pushes a hand through his hair. ‘I’m not embarrassed because I tried to kill myself. I hope that what happened this morning gets put up online and goes viral so other people see that this can affect anyone. Even people who seem happy on the surface. I hope others see it and know they don’t have to suffer in silence, that there are helplines like yours, that there are people who care, people like you out there who’d go to such extreme lengths to help someone. To save someone.’
‘I didn’t stop you jumping off that bridge, Leo. You stopped yourself. You called me because you wanted to live. I didn’t do that.’
‘You’ve done it every day since. Don’t you get that? You saved my life because I could suddenly picture a future with you. You gave me something to live for, George. Something to look forward to every morning. And I don’t just mean since the phone call. I’ve looked forward to seeing you every day since I opened. For years, I’ve hated Sundays because I don’t get to see you.’
‘Me too,’ I say, feeling abnormally tearful. That’s the kind of thing I’ve wished I could hear Leo saying to me for years, but it’s all so wrong now.
‘I’ve always liked you, and I’ve never had the courage to say anything, and then I got to know you and you were not just my favourite customer, you were my perfect person. I thought you understood me, but it’s easy to “understand” someone when they’ve already told you exactly what they want to hear.’
The tears pooling in my eyes spill over. I try to speak but the only thing that escapes is a huge sob.
‘I understand why you did it,’ he says gently, looking like he’s about to cry himself. ‘But how can I ever trust you again?’
And that says it all, doesn’t it? I know Leo well enough to know that betraying his trust is one of the worst things anyone can do to him. I know he’s shared things with me that he’s never had the courage to tell anyone before, and I’ve just undone all of that.
‘Once again, your silence is answer enough.’ His voice breaks on the final words and he turns around and walks away.
And I don’t know how to stop him. It’s like I’m outside of myself, watching on, unable to do anything to stop it happening. There is nothing I can say to make this better.
No matter the intention, nothing changes the fact that I have broken his heart as much as I’ve broken my own.
Chapter 19
I feel empty when I get back inside One Light. Desolate. Stupid. Why didn’t I see this coming? Did I honestly think I could keep up the pretence forever without him finding out? I care about him more than the momentary embarrassment that telling him it was me would’ve caused, and now what? He’ll never trust me again. I doubt he’ll ever even speak to me again. He’ll probably never trust anybody again. Next time he needs to talk to someone, what’s he going to do? Because I know one thing for sure – he won’t phone One Light again.
‘You okay?’ Mary asks as I traipse through the shop, aware of all the eyes on me. For once, I’m not exactly pleased at the number of customers we’ve got.
I shake my head, knowing I’m going to break down in tears if she looks at me too kindly.
‘I hate to say it but both managers are waiting for you upstairs in the office, and they don’t look happy.’
Of course they don’t look happy. I trudge up the stairs feeling drained, each foot taking too much energy to lift. As if everything they’ve just heard wasn’t bad enough without adding the almost arrest, the handcuffs, and the very big, very public spectacle. It doesn’t exactly reflect well on the charity, does it?
In the office, the man is doing something on his tablet and the lady is sitting in my desk chair with her hands folded in her lap, waiting.
There are no spare chairs and I can’t be bothered to drag one out of the ki
tchen, so I sit down on a plastic bag full of rags that haven’t been collected yet. It’s probably the most informal spot for what I’m sure is going to be a formal firing.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ she shakes her head. ‘Answered a critical call, pretended to be someone else, disobeyed the fundamental rules this charity exists on, used a brilliant marketing strategy to help a competitor rather than benefit the charity you work for. The list is endless.’
‘Leo’s not a competitor. Between us, we’ve been helping the whole street so everyone benefits,’ I sigh. ‘And I didn’t pretend to be someone else. He knew he’d phoned the wrong number. I just didn’t tell him when I realized it was him. I told a little white lie that got out of hand.’
‘Georgia, you answered a call meant for the helpline. The people there are trained in dealing with those calls. They know what to say, how to act, how to handle those sorts of issues. You do not. You could’ve said the wrong thing and pushed a suicidal person over the edge.’
‘But I didn’t.’ I know my response is half-hearted at best, but I’ve given up trying to defend myself.
‘What about you?’ she asks. ‘Training is in place to help both staff and the people who use our service. How would you have felt if he had jumped? You can’t save every person who phones. How would you have handled it if you had heard him take his last breath and drown?’
Tears fill my eyes at the thought and the look on her face softens for a moment. ‘I’ve worked on the phones, Georgia. There are some things that you can never un-hear. It might seem harsh to you, but our rules are in place to protect everyone – our staff and the suicidal people.’
‘You know what, maybe you shouldn’t class them as suicidal people like there’s something wrong with them, like they’re different to other people, a race all of their own. Everyone is individual. Everyone can hit hard times and end up in a place where they never thought they’d be. Sometimes the only thing anyone needs is a friend.’ If I’m not well on my way to being fired here, snapping at the managing director will certainly speed up the process. ‘And you know what, if he had jumped, I’d still be glad I’d answered that phone because at least he’d have known in his final breath that someone cared about him.’
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