“Even if it’s that,” said Carol, “we provide an expensive service with considerable overheads. We can’t afford to just lose that contribution. If it’s six months without the council contribution then we’re talking five thousand, more or less, every month.”
“Thirty thousand pounds,” said Kate, faintly, doing the math.
She didn’t know how much longer she stared into space after she put down the phone. Slowly it dawned on her she was still holding some paperwork. She scanned it listlessly. There was the “thirty thousand pounds” jumping out at her, halfway through a paragraph, but why was the Portman Brothers logo on the top? She sat up straighter and looked properly. It wasn’t anything to do with the nursing home; it was her employment contract, the copy Sarah had given her. She read it properly. There were no surprises on the first page, just a description of her job, including the usual “anything else we can think of to make you do” clause, along with the dreadful rate of pay. There was some impenetrable stuff about holiday allowance and then, that thirty-thousand-pound figure. It was a paragraph about death in service. Kate read it. And then she read it again. And then she picked up the phone:
“Sarah, this contract you gave me? Am I still employed?”
“Yes. Until the board says otherwise, or until you resign, you’re still employed.”
“And all the rights I have in the contract are therefore still in place?”
“For now . . .”
“You know the death in service bit?”
“Yeees . . .”
“Do I have to die at work?”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Sarah, sharply.
“I don’t know,” said Kate, and she truly didn’t. “But do I?”
“No, you just have to die during your employment. Hang on . . . Kate? Wait a minute—”
Kate had already hung up.
It was all too much to take in. All her problems were tangled around each other in her head like a nightmare piece of knitting. They were separate, but interlinked in a hopeless circle: the nursing home, the school for Jack, her work—or lack of it . . .
She needed time. She needed to think. What she didn’t need was to have to pretend to Jack that everything was all right. Not at the moment.
She texted Seema, asking her to take Jack home with her after school. Seema replied immediately, agreeing and asking how Kate was.
She didn’t answer.
She sat, right in the middle of the sofa, perched on the edge of the seat, staring out of the window. Time passed. At last she stirred, realizing how stiff and cold she had become. Outside it was dark. She must have been sitting there for hours, her thoughts chasing around and around in her head. With half an idea about a cup of tea to warm her, she went to the kitchen. The milk was still out on the counter from breakfast. She sniffed it. Off, and she had no money to buy more . . . Tipping it down the sink, she stared sightlessly at the board she and Seema had made. Twenty-five days ’til Christmas. A new, happy, positive celebration of life for her and Jack. Let’s face it, things weren’t going to plan.
Suddenly, it was as if the problems in her mind, so numerous and huge, seemed to fill the little flat to bursting, pushing at the walls and windows, seeking the space to be seen clearly. Nervous energy surged through her body. What was it Tom always said? “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” That was him. He would square his shoulders and face down the enemy; that was what he would have expected her to do now. She didn’t know how, but she did know the answers didn’t lie in sitting on the sofa staring into space.
She quickly put on her coat and then pulled on the green woolly hat Daniel had given her. Seeing it gave her a pang of regret, remembering him embracing the pink-haired girl. She missed her chance with him and she was painfully, desperately sorry for it . . .
Tough. It was just her and Jack now.
The street was full of happy Christmas drunks, even though it was a Monday evening. People were holiday happy, looking forward to their several days of eating, drinking, and catching up with friends and family.
Sidestepping the drunks and merrymakers, she walked west—along the length of St. Paul’s Road—passing all the bars and restaurants, the charity shops in the poorer areas, the sad bundles of bedding in shop doorways, the grand university buildings lit up like Christmas trees—and she kept walking, without purpose, driven by her demons. She was in a more suburban area now. The houses were filled with happy families, preparing for Christmas, with packed fridges and twinkling decorations, wine at the ready for guests and family, presents piled up at the foot of trees too big for the sitting rooms. Despite the dark, many of the windows had curtains still open, giving Kate a glimpse into other lives—vivid tableaux of the life she was trying so hard to build for Jack. And look at where she was now. No job, no school, no money to help Maureen, not even the jewelry sale evening to bring in extra cash and launch some sort of business. Nothing.
The street she was walking down turned into a shopping area again. There were sweet, bijou shops . . . one selling flowers, another selling nothing but macaroons, stacked in pyramids on glass cake stands . . . beautiful shops, pretty things, a charmed life, but not for her and Jack. There were tall, Regency houses now, hugging the hillside, overlooking the Avon Gorge. She had never walked this far with Jack. They got the bus here as a weekend outing in the summer, when she could spare the fare. And there she was, walking up the grass bank that led to the bridge. She remembered Jack rolling down the hill repeatedly in the sunshine. They both had, arriving at the bottom laughing, out of breath and covered in grass. This evening it took all the strength she had to get up there, fixing her eyes on the little brick shelter by the bridge. She was cold now and could at least go in there to escape the bitter wind.
Daniel had had a stressful and boring day, which was a bad combination by anyone’s reckoning. It felt as if all his clients had suddenly realized it was nearly Christmas and were quite unnecessarily using the holiday as a benchmark for getting things done. It meant Daniel had spent the day chasing ongoing deals to completion, struggling with not being able to contact the necessary people either because they were super-busy themselves, for the same silly reason, or because they had already clocked off for Christmas. He had had no time for lunch and was starving. His shift started at eight o’clock, and he would have to go straight there. He could only hope one of the shops on his route was going to be able to sell him a sandwich and a strong coffee.
He shut down his computer and thought about trying to spend a few moments getting in touch with Kate. He had been meaning to all day. There was still the good news to tell about Cara hosting the jewelry party for her tomorrow night. Of course there was the shop at Christmas Steps and the wedding group too. And he needed to go and see Noel in the hospital; that was another thing work had prevented him doing today. He wished, for a moment, he wasn’t on the helpline tonight but then he straightened and took a deep breath. At this time of year, the Crisisline was crucial. Suicides soared around Christmas, when people realized how alone they were, or when they fell out with family at tense Christmas get-togethers. He wondered whose life he would end up dropping into tonight—spending time with strangers at their saddest and their most vulnerable was what it was all about.
He checked his phone again. Nothing from Kate. He bashed out a quick text, asking her to give him a call. Urgently.
In the helpline office, he was amused to see Barbara had been putting up some decorations.
“These are rejects from the box at home. My daughter’s decided she wants to be an interior designer,” she explained. “It makes her ever so snobby about what we have. It’s all teal and copper this year, apparently . . .”
The office had sprouted a random selection of dangling tinsel balls, along with paper chains, and some dodgy looking blow-up decorations including an obese, inflatable snowman that yawed gently in the corner at an angle that suggested it might have had one or two.
“I’m not an interior designer myself,
but I suggest hell might freeze over before your daughter announces there’s a trend for fat, drunk, inflatable snowmen,” agreed Daniel. “How’s it been today?”
“Oh, you know . . . a big influx of daughters dreading spending Christmas with their mothers who never tell them they’re good enough. Fewer men complaining about mother-in-laws, but that’s more about men not talking rather than mothers-in-law being not a problem.”
“I bet you’re a lovely mother-in-law,” said Daniel sincerely.
“It’s easy to be, if I am,” she agreed. “He’s brilliant. Far too good for my daughter.”
3 Days ’til Christmas
It was past midnight now, but there was still a fair amount of traffic going over the bridge, people still out and about, despite the late hour and the cold. It would stop soon. She wandered up to the bit where the bridge began, the first tower. It was beautiful. The bridge was lit with cascades of twinkling white lights that marked out its elegant curves, shining like a vast diamond tiara against the rugged landscape.
At the base of the tower, there was a sign. “Need to talk?” it said. “Call us.” And then there was a phone number. A strange, short one; they must have a special arrangement with the phone company. Presumably people who were just about to kill themselves didn’t have the focus to remember a long one. Kate wondered if it was the charity Daniel volunteered for. She wished she had asked more about it now, and she wondered what he was doing at that moment—out with the pink-haired girl, probably, at some glamorous party.
Hugging herself to ward off the cold, Kate walked, as if compelled by hypnosis, to the very center of the bridge, where the sweeping curves reached their lowest point. She stood there, not moving, a lonely figure, gazing out over the city.
She really should go back to the flat—home—and get some sleep. But it wasn’t home, was it? When she and Jack had blown into town nearly four years ago, the flat, the job, and the school were all the trappings of a life she had hurriedly put together. They would do, until she found something better for them both. But then she had gotten stuck there. And now even these thin, unsatisfactory solutions were slipping through her fingers and she was back to square one. She stared, unseeing, down to the river far, far below at the bottom of the Gorge. Even in the dark, she could see it seething, the current eddying and pulling at the waters, full of endless and implacable forces as the river was drawn out toward the sea.
She and Jack could just go. Anywhere. Start again in a new place, and this time perhaps the dice would fall more favorably for them both. In the West Country, perhaps Cornwall where she and Tom had taken Jack for a beach holiday when he was a baby. They had stayed at a little B & B by the beach, with a kindly lady who adored Jack and babysat him one night so she and Tom could go out for dinner together. People were kind there. The communities were small and close-knit. A village school might suit Jack better—somewhere with mixed-age classes, where a child was an individual, not a number in the league table data, required to fit into a mold predestined for him by an ambitious principal driven by national initiatives. Yes, that could work. There was employment in Cornwall too. From what she understood there was seasonal farmwork, picking flowers and soft fruit . . . the work was hard and the pay was poor, but the idea of tough physical labor, making her so tired at night she could no longer think, felt like what she needed. The jewelry making as a full-time career was a silly pipe dream. She saw that now. Perhaps in Cornwall, when the seasonal work was thin, she could supplement their income with something along those lines, making something simple and cheap to sell to holidaymakers. That was all the jewelry could ever be.
She straightened. Why not act now? She would go back and pack immediately. Once she had the energy for the walk, at least. Maybe she would rest there for a few minutes more. Plus, there were goodbyes, which she preferred to keep to a minimum. Best not to make a big deal of it, just to slip away and keep on moving, that was what Tom would have done. She got out her phone, noticing the battery was on just eight percent. Damn, normally by now it was sitting on the kitchen counter, charging. She noticed a text from Daniel asking her to call. She owed him a response at least, so she tapped out a brief text. Her finger hovered over the X. Should she do a kiss? Thinking of it reminded her vividly and painfully of the pink-haired girl in his arms. Maybe no kiss then. But it would be lovely to talk to someone. Someone who wouldn’t judge, or try to persuade her not to go. Someone who could salve her loneliness and soothe the pain of this new loss in the middle of all her other troubles. This was not only the loss of her life in Bristol with Jack but the loss of the new, desperately tender but hopeful possibility of a relationship with Daniel which she had tentatively allowed herself but which was now—she accepted—never going to happen.
Daniel had just managed to grab himself an instant coffee between calls. He was already exhausted. Two more hours to go on his shift and then bed, thank heaven, for a horribly short time before he went to work for his last day before Christmas and then—on the day itself—he would be back here. Tomorrow was just two days ’til Christmas and he could hardly believe it—after dreading the run-up to Christmas, the pain of being reminded constantly that Zoe wasn’t with him, it had snuck up on him. It had been okay, and Kate was partly to credit for that. His blossoming friendship with her had smoothed the way, salved his pain.
But where was she?
His phone was ringing as he got back to his desk. He nodded to Barbara and picked it up, sliding back into his seat with his mug carefully poised as he did so.
“Crisisline,” he said. “Jonathan speaking. I’m listening . . .”
“My name’s Kate,” said a hauntingly familiar voice.
Daniel froze. “Hello, Kate, how are you?” he said at last.
“I just wanted to hear a friendly voice.”
“It’s nice to talk to you. Would you like to tell me how you’re feeling?” he asked. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears. Should he tell her it was him?
“I’m okay now, actually. I’ve been really sad, really worried, but I’ve decided now.”
“What have you decided, Kate?”
“I’ve decided the answer is to just go.”
Daniel froze, and dread flooded through his body like a tidal wave of freezing water.
“Kate,” he said carefully, thinking fast, “I can get you help. I can get someone to come to you. Would you like me to do that?”
“No, I’ll be fine thanks,” she said. Gosh, she wasn’t expecting that level of service. Although a lift back to the flat would be fab, she was sure that wasn’t what this man was offering. “I just want to talk,” she said.
Daniel thought again, frantically. “That’s okay, we can just talk. We’ve got as much time as you need. There’s no rush. Do you have children, Kate?”
“I’ve got a little boy.”
“Would you like to tell me about him?”
“He’s called Jack.”
Daniel shook his head in silent anguish. It was definitely her. No doubt about that now. “Where are you, Kate?” he said, trying with all his might to keep his voice even and relaxed.
“I’m on the bridge,” she said. “It’s really beautiful. What did you say your name was?”
“Jonathan.”
“You sound like someone I know,” she said.
“Do I?” he hazarded. Now wasn’t the time . . . “Yeah, I get that a lot.”
“He’s lovely. He’s sad too, like me . . . but he’ll be all right. I’ve wanted to say things to him and—well—I know now, I’ve missed my chance. It’s never going to happen, so I’ve decided it’s right to just leave everything behind.”
“How about Jack. Will Jack be all right? If you do this, who will look after him?”
“I’m doing it for him. He’ll be fine. It’s important that I do this because when I do, everything will be all right.”
Daniel thought frantically. She said she was at the bridge so it had to be the suspension bridge. There was no other b
ridge she could have gotten to without a car. It went against every policy for him to do what he was just about to do, but he would worry about that later.
There was a beep.
“Was that your phone?”
“Yeah, the battery’s nearly dead. Doesn’t matter. It’s been nice talking to you. I think it’s because you sound like my friend. I thought . . . we nearly got it together—me and him—but I said ‘no’ and I should have said ‘yes.’ I’ve made lots of mistakes, you know. Lots of mistakes.”
Daniel had a thought. “Maybe you haven’t. Why don’t you call him?” he said. “I am sure he would want to help if he knew how you were feeling.”
“I think it’s best if I don’t,” said Kate. “I don’t want to get in the way. I’ve sent him a text.”
“Really?” said Daniel, his voice cracking. “Are you sure he’s received it?” As he spoke, he grabbed his phone, checking the screen for text notifications. Nothing. “I mean . . . he might not have received it.”
Kate was unperturbed, although a little puzzled at Jonathan’s urgency on the issue. “Well, no,” she said. “They can be delayed, but that doesn’t matter does it? He’ll get it in the morning. I expect he’s asleep in bed.” Another agonizing image of Daniel with pink-haired girl popped, uninvited, into her mind, this time both of them sleeping, draped around each other in Daniel’s compact cabin bedroom.
The beep came again.
“Oops,” said Kate. “That’s me gone, I think. Thanks anyway. It’s been nice talking to you.”
“No! Don’t go, Kate . . .”
But the line went dead.
“Kate!” exclaimed Daniel in anguish, his agonized tone making Barbara jump up and come over to him.
“What?”
Daniel was fumbling with his phone, his fingers shaking and slowing him down. He held it to his ear expectantly, staring at Barbara as he listened.
“This number is currently unavailable,” the recorded voice of a woman announced calmly, oblivious to the gravity of the situation.
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