If I Die Before I Wake

by Emily Koch

  ‘You’re sick,’ Eleanor spat.

  Rosie stepped in. ‘Keep it down, Eleanor. They’ll throw you out.’

  Bea still didn’t speak.

  ‘No, Rosie. I want to know what the hell she’s up to.’

  What’s going on?

  I was disoriented. Only Bea’s hand on my chest grounded me.

  After a pause, Bea said, ‘Can we talk about this outside? Alex—’

  ‘You don’t want him to hear what you’ve been up to?’

  What’s she talking about, Bea?

  ‘Please,’ Bea repeated.

  Eleanor ignored her. ‘We saw you in the café. Who was he?’

  He.

  ‘She isn’t doing anything wrong, Eleanor,’ Rosie said.

  ‘Apart from cheating on Alex? You can’t go off and shag around just because your boyfriend’s in a coma.’

  Cameron.

  ‘You can’t pick and choose when you’re his girlfriend,’ Eleanor continued.

  I felt sick. My stomach muscles clenched. I’d been so caught up in the news from the police that I’d briefly forgotten about Bea’s smarmy admirer.

  ‘And with everything that’s going on,’ Eleanor said. ‘How could you? You find out someone tried to kill Alex and then you jump into bed with another man?’

  ‘It isn’t what you think,’ Bea said.

  ‘Maybe you should go, Eleanor,’ Rosie stepped in again. ‘Cool off a bit.’

  ‘I don’t know why you aren’t angry too,’ Eleanor fired back at her. ‘I didn’t think you would stoop so low, Bea. You don’t deserve him.’ She spat her final words in Bea’s direction and the door slammed.

  The room went quiet.

  It’s him, isn’t it?

  Rosie spoke first. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I knew something was up.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘It doesn’t feel right to talk about this here.’

  Because of me?

  ‘He can’t hear us.’

  ‘We don’t know that for sure.’

  ‘Come on, I’m not pissed off with you, and Eleanor will come round. I think you’re doing the right thing. Seriously.’

  Bea said nothing. My stomach twisted more.

  ‘Who is he?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Give me something, a name, or how long it’s been going on. Come on. I’m supposed to be your best friend.’

  Bea took her hand away from my chest, and said, ‘He makes me feel safe.’

  Because I can’t.

  ‘That’s good. Have I met him before?’

  ‘Cameron? I don’t think so. Not with me.’

  So it was him.

  ‘Cameron? That’s his name?’

  Bea whistled out a long breath. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it serious?’

  Silence.

  ‘I need a smoke,’ Bea said. ‘Let’s get a coffee.’

  ‘Come here, you,’ Rosie said.

  The rush of fabric against fabric. Bea’s muffled words in her friend’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘No problem, Romero.’

  The pain in my stomach continued to twist and grab, and I sweated through the skin cream.

  I’m not ready for you to give up on me.

  Their footsteps approached the door.

  ‘And don’t worry about Eleanor,’ said Rosie, as they left. ‘She didn’t mean it. All of this – the police stuff – it’s been a shock …’

  Eleanor …

  I tried to forget Bea’s new boyfriend after they left and focused on Eleanor, going over everything she had said. The way she had reacted to seeing Bea with someone else – she was far more protective of me than I would have guessed. Could someone who cared that much about me being emotionally hurt bring themselves to physically injure me? It didn’t add up. It couldn’t have been her.

  Distracting myself only worked for so long.

  Someone wanted me dead and now Bea was leaving me. What had Rosie and Eleanor seen them doing? A bit of hand-holding? A kiss?

  I obsessed like this for about two days. What did he look like? Was he attractive? How had Bea described him? Would he treat her well? Part of me hoped he would. But the devil on my shoulder felt competitive. I wanted to die but I wanted to do so with her as my girlfriend. With her still loving me.

  I imagined romantic picnics on the Downs, with Prosecco and strawberries. The kind of thing I never did for her, though I knew she wanted me to. They were laughing. Kissing. I saw this faceless form of a man linking fingers with the woman I loved as they walked down the road, his hand slipping from hers to brush the small of her back, lower …

  I tormented myself with these images. No wonder she had fallen for him, of course he would be treating her better than I had. He would be spoiling her, far more than I ever did in the early days of our relationship. It had all finally happened for us on my twenty-first birthday, at the end of my second year at UCL. Bea came up to London for the weekend to celebrate with me and some uni friends. We went for a curry at Blue Raj, and moved on to the Earl of Essex – all within a few minutes’ walk of the second-floor flat I shared in Angel with Dom and John, two other members of the UCL climbing club. The others went out clubbing but Bea and I walked back to the flat and stayed up half the night talking, sharing headphones to listen to Vampire Weekend and Arcade Fire on my iPod, and drinking cans of Grolsch – sitting side by side against the worn green sofa with our legs pulled up to our chests, like old times outside the counsellors’ dorms. She tried to pull her flimsy summer dress down over her knees, complaining that they were wonky. We opened the living-room window wide to let the muggy air flow in and out, and listened to the night buses and taxis, ambulance sirens, people shouting out on the streets. We watched the thin blue-striped curtains blow inwards with the breeze, and I told her I still thought about Abigail, the little girl who died at camp in Alberta.

  ‘I can’t get her out of my head.’

  She put an arm around me. ‘Neither can I.’

  ‘The thought of her … in the water …’ I was crying now.

  ‘Shhh.’ Bea kissed my head. ‘Shhh. It’s okay.’

  And then, slowly, I tilted my head to look at her, our noses almost touching. And I kissed her.

  ‘I can’t talk to anyone else like this,’ I whispered.

  ‘Me neither,’ Bea said, lifting her glasses off her head to push against her hair, before leaning in to kiss me back.

  I ran a hand up her leg, squeezing her thigh. ‘I just can’t resist a good pair of wonky knees,’ I murmured into her hair. She giggled, thumped me on my arm. And kissed me again.

  I don’t know why it took us so long to reach this point. But it marked the start of everything, of us.

  Did Cameron mark the end?

  With all of this going through my mind, I was glad, one night not long after, when my favourite cleaner came in. Bart was there most evenings, cheerfully introducing himself in a thick Eastern European accent. ‘Hello, my friend. Bart is here to clean room.’

  Then, without fail, he would sing. As a strong smell of disinfectant weaved through the air towards my face, jolly folk tunes danced in my ears. I didn’t understand the words – he sang in Polish. But once every now and then he would explain the story behind it in his stilted English and sometimes I thought I recognised a tune. The slap-slop of his mop held the rhythm, helped along by the occasional stamp he allowed himself. Usually, I enjoyed these performances.

  But on this evening, he didn’t choose a very helpful song. He greeted me as usual, as he moved around the few pieces of furniture to clean. Then he said, ‘Tonight Bart is singing popular song from soldiers in the war. Is about Cossack – you know Cossack?’ I didn’t know how much he understood of my condition, but sometimes he seemed to look for a response from me. ‘Cossack, he falls in love with beautiful girl.’

  Oh great. A love song.

  He started singing slowly, in a deep
, sad voice, ‘Hey tam jishna char ne vody, char dar nar carn corzak mwody …’

  He stopped, and the chair screeched against the floor.

  ‘But then Cossack must say goodbye to beautiful girl for last time. He go away for ever. Very sad. What other Cossack does she meet? Does she fall into love again?’

  You’re not helping, Bart.

  He cleared his throat and clapped once, then set off at double the speed of his introductory lines. ‘Hey tam jishna char ne vody, char dar nar carn corzak mwody, chew lay shev no sense yuh shweena, yesh chew lay zoo cra eena …’

  He began clapping his hands on every beat for what must have been the chorus.

  I tried to let his enthusiasm buoy me up but my mind kept bringing me back to Bea. When he had finished mopping the floor he left me alone once more in the horrible silence, surrounded by images of her with her new man – as if I was watching a non-stop stream of trailers for soon-to-be-released romcoms.

  21

  I DIDN’T KNOW what to expect when Bea next visited. Would she talk about him? Did I want her to?

  When she did finally come back, it felt like several days had passed since the confrontation with Eleanor. I was facing the window and listening to the building work outside: lorries beeping as they reversed, the whir back and forth of diggers, the clatter of scaffolding poles, the ring of drills. I was lost in the noise and my thoughts as I tried to remember every small detail of the Holly King case, and anything at all about the day I fell. Between Holly’s murderer, Clare and Eleanor, I knew who my money was on as the prime suspect. But as far as I could remember, I hadn’t got anywhere with finding out who the real killer could be when I’d put together the campaign for Ormond’s appeal. Neither had his lawyers, from what they told me. If I couldn’t work it out while I was out in the world with piles of notes and witness statements at my disposal, how would I stand a chance of piecing it together now?

  I didn’t hear Bea come in – my door must have been propped open. I only discovered that she was there when she walked past my face. My eyes had been open – a slit – since I woke up that morning. I saw her white, ghostly shape. I smelled that perfume which I now knew she definitely wore for him. That vanilla scent. It brought a wave of nausea with it.

  The first thing she did was drag the chair from my side down to the end of the bed, leaving me looking again at the dreary wall where it met the brighter greyness of the window. Just like she had on her first visit after finding the letter. Maybe it had been too much to hope that the investigation would bring her back to me. She sat in silence for several minutes, and when she did speak, all she could manage was one word.

  ‘I –’

  Then more silence, and she started picking at her nails. Tck. Tck. Tck.

  ‘What am I –’

  That sentence took her nowhere, either.

  Will you ever talk to me like you used to?

  ‘The police want to come and take away your stuff.’ Her speech was cold with awkwardness, the absence of emotion. ‘Whatever they don’t take I’m going to box up and give to your dad.’

  Tck. Tck. Tck.

  ‘I can’t afford the rent on the flat any more. I’m going to have to move out soon, so I might as well sort it all out. Graham will look after it.’

  No. Don’t give up on us. This is because of him, isn’t it? Does he want you to get rid of any memories of me?

  Tck. Tck. Tck.

  ‘I’ve started sifting through some of it, getting all your things into boxes for when the police come round.’

  There was something on her mind, more than boxes and rent.

  Why can’t you talk to me like you used to? I promise I didn’t lie to you. There was no other woman.

  ‘Christ. After that letter I wasn’t going to come back. Do you know what you’ve done to me?’ She nearly shouted her last question.

  ‘But then there is this big what-if hanging over the whole thing. What if that letter means something else, something different to what I think it does?’

  I don’t know the answer. But you’ve got to believe that I wouldn’t hurt you. Not again.

  ‘And then everything with the police. Even if I want to forget I ever met you, forget how much you’ve hurt me, how can I do that now?’

  Tck. Tck. Tck.

  ‘It’s like you keep pulling me back. I’m trapped. I can’t leave you.’

  Did this mean she was going to ditch Cameron?

  She sniffed. ‘I was getting everything ready for the police, pulling everything out of your wardrobe, and I found this one shoebox, pushed right to the back. I nearly didn’t find it. I was so ready to find photos, notes, anything to explain that letter.’

  I knew that box.

  Her voice softened. ‘I had no idea you’d kept all these things.’ The final word cracked with her effort not to cry. I listened as she riffled through bits of paper and card – she’d brought it with her.

  ‘Cinema ticket from our first date.’ She allowed herself a small laugh. ‘The first Valentine’s card I sent you. These – notes I stuck to the fridge when we moved in together. Sketches I did of you when we went to Portugal.’

  There was a thud as she dropped the box on the floor. ‘Why would you keep all this if you didn’t love me?’

  Had this box given me another chance with her?

  She took a couple of deep breaths in and out.

  Bea. I didn’t cheat on you, I swear. I learned my lesson after Josie.

  She groaned. ‘But how can I believe anything you ever told me?’ She began picking her nails again. Tck. Tck. Tck. Slowly, rhythmically.

  ‘I’m a sucker.’

  Tck. Tck. Tck.

  ‘They want to give up on you, you know that? Your dad and Philippa?’

  Tck. Tck.

  ‘And even after everything, I’m the one standing there saying they shouldn’t, it’s too soon.’

  You’ve got to let them. I want it all to be over.

  ‘After I found that box, I had to run it all off,’ she said. The chair legs scraped slowly as she stood up, and immediately I saw her in my mind. Walking down the steps outside our front door. Checking her watch. Then: running. Running. A sheen of sweat on her brow. Elbows pumping at her side. ‘Running it off’ was what she did when problems were bouncing around in her mind. When things got too much, she ran. When things weren’t enough, she ran.

  ‘I went up to the Downs,’ she said. ‘I needed – I don’t know. I needed the greenness. The clean air. I did laps up there, Upper Belgrave Road, Stoke Road, the Circular, Ladies Mile …’

  Pictures came into my mind. These were roads I hadn’t thought of for many months, and they led me up to the vast grassy expanse of the Downs: I saw myself as a little boy flying a cheap diamond kite with Dad, Saturday afternoon football league games, the brave lone saxophonist practising his blues licks in a clearing. At the far edge I saw the ice-cream van parked up by the viewing point overlooking the Avon Gorge. I looked up, at peregrine falcons soaring overhead, their fledglings leaving their nests and shrieking in the sky through June and July. I looked down, leaning over the green-painted railings, to the wide, muddy river banks far below: the Avon meandering between steep limestone cliffs and dense woodland, flowing into the distance underneath the magnificent suspension bridge and on towards the rest of the city. I heard the hum of cars on the Portway, its four lanes hugging the nearside bank of the river.

  The Gorge: where I had fallen. It was mostly a trad climbing location, meaning that you had to ram pieces of protection into cracks in the rock as you went, which you then clipped your rope into to stop you hitting the deck if you fell. But there were also some sport climbs – where there were permanent bolts in the rock to clip into. They were faster and a challenge in a different way. I liked doing a bit of both. Standing at these railings, my two favourites would be just over the edge of the clifftop. Was I doing one of them? Morpheus, a classic trad route taking you diagonally across the sea walls. Gronk, just to its left – dif
ficult but stunning, full of hidden holds. Another trad route, Transgression, with its risky ‘wall of blocks’ to negotiate before the final easy section of scrambling to the top. Then, my favourite: The Crum. The one that appeared nightly in my dreams. I always loved the stories behind the names, and The Crum had one of the best. Routes were named by the first person to get up them – often there was a pun involved (I’d always wanted to attempt A Steep Climb Named Desire in California), or reference to the features of the rock itself, or a connection to a historical event. The Crum was named in honour of a group of prisoners who escaped from Belfast’s Crumlin Road Gaol, during the Troubles. They escaped using rope ladders thrown over the wall and became known as the Crumlin Kangaroos …

  Thrr-ud, thrr-ud, thrr-ud.

  Bea started drumming her fingers on the windowsill to my left, pulling my attention back to her. She slowed to a rhythmic tap. ‘My iPod ran out of battery, so I had words going through my mind instead. I was pacing myself with the beat of them. Breathing in and out in time.’ She kept tapping and spoke on the beat. ‘BREATH by BREATH. STEP by STEP. WORD by WORD. KEEP RUNNing. WORK it OUT.’

  Her fingers stopped tapping.

  ‘Everywhere I looked I felt like someone was watching me. People sitting on benches, other runners.’

  Everywhere? It can’t be more than one person.

  ‘I’m telling myself, it’s nothing, you’re being paranoid.’

  I let myself hope that she was just imagining it, after all. Maybe there was no stalker. Maybe.

  ‘And as if this isn’t enough, I got another call from Daniella while I was running.’

  I knew the name, but couldn’t remember how.

  ‘She left another one of her messages. “You must consider coming back again,” she says. “You shouldn’t tackle grief alone.” Even when she’s trying to be persuasive she sounds unfriendly, for fuck’s sake.’

  That was it. She was the grief counsellor, wasn’t she?

  ‘Three messages, and I’ve not been back. You’d think she’d give up …’

  With that, she moved away from the windowsill and I felt her take up the beat of her tapping again by hitting my leg, with increasing force, as she stood by my side.