Cath Staincliffe - Blink of an Eye

Becky and Steve come round. They talk about her wedding dress, then fall quiet and she looks a bit funny. She says, ‘You might want to take your Facebook page down.’

Steve goes bright red, like a tomato. ‘People mucking about.’

I grow cold. ‘What’ve they done?’

‘It’s just juvenile,’ Becky sighs, ‘prats.’

‘What is it?’

‘There’s a wreath, your name on it.’

‘And comments about your driving.’

‘Right.’ I get my laptop then and there and go to the page. I don’t want to read any of it but some of the words jump off the screen: slapper, crazy bitch, killer . These must be people who know me, people who are my Facebook friends.

‘We could report them,’ Becky says.

I shake my head. ‘Not worth it.’ And anyway, most people would probably agree with them.

I deactivate my account. I’m gone. Don’t exist any more.

When they’ve left, I look on Alex’s page. It says: Status: single . I feel like I’m trespassing. I close it down quickly. It’s like I can’t be part of that world any more.

Carmel

Evie came round for the evening. Naomi was up in her room, which gave me a chance to tell her about the rift between Suzanne and her sister.

Phil had been relatively sanguine about it. ‘Give her time, you know Suzanne. High horse, higher principles.’

‘She’ll be feeling things more intensely after the baby,’ Evie pointed out. ‘Perhaps when things have settled down…’

‘When have you ever known Suzanne to change her position?’

‘Here.’ Evie filled our glasses. ‘Suppose Naomi’s found not guilty? There is a chance of that?’

‘According to Don, yes,’ I said.

‘How would Suzanne see it all then?’ Evie said.

‘Well, she’s pedantic, so in theory she’d accept the legal arguments, but she’d probably say that morally Naomi was still guilty. She’s so… righteous.’

‘There’s nothing you can do really. Just keep the channels of communication open, keep seeing her and Ollie and Jonty,’ Evie said. ‘What about Naomi, have any of her friends been around, been here for her?’

‘Yes, Becky and Steve, they’ve been brilliant.’ Naomi hadn’t kept in close contact with many friends from schooldays, but Becky was one of them. She had gone to work in the family business after school, where she met Steve, who’d just started as their online sales manager.

‘And when’s she next in court?’ Evie took a drink.

‘Next month, for the committal hearing,’ I said.

Naomi

Waking up, and the dream starts to dissolve. I try and snatch it back, catch it, cling to it. I was happy. We were in a hotel, Alex and me, a plush room and a trolley with food on it, white curtains billowing. An outside terrace, ours, with steps to the beach. Alex had been surfing, he came running up the beach and I ran to meet him and he kissed me and his lips were warm and salty. Not cold like someone fresh from the sea. And in the dream I wasn’t frightened, there was no fear, no sick apprehension, no cold ball of shame in my belly. It was like Adam and Eve before the fall or something. How we used to be.

But now the dream is just an aftertaste, sweet in my mouth, making it fill with saliva, an urge to retch coming. In the toilet, I heave but nothing comes up. It happens a lot. I mentioned this at the hospital, at one of my outpatients visits, but they didn’t have any theories about it. Certainly didn’t think it was anything significant in comparison to all the other physical stuff I’ve got going on.

I know what it is.

I can’t stomach myself. I make myself sick.

Naomi

I go to the cemetery. It’s huge. There are old graves from hundreds of years ago, and tombs too, smothered in green, some of the stones cracked and tilting.

There are roads and pathways. I don’t know where to start. There is the chapel. I remember vaguely coming here when Nana Baxter died.

I follow a woman who is carrying flowers into the office building with the clock tower. I’m holding a bouquet too, brightly coloured, red and yellow and purple and white. I didn’t write anything on the card. I don’t want to upset anyone. I shouldn’t think Lily’s family would want me here. I’m sure if they saw my name on the flowers they’d tear the heads off and shred them into little bits.

In the office I give Lily’s name. The woman checks on the computer and tells me it’s in the section on the other side of Nell Lane, and gives me a plot number.

It’s quite a walk and I’m sweating and my ankle is very sore. The trees on the way are vast and old and the air is full of flies and butterflies, and where the sun cuts through the trees, dust swirls round and round in long spirals.

There are no trees in the new bit, lots of new graves. The main road runs close by, the traffic loud and constant. My mouth is dry. I didn’t think to bring any water with me.

Lily’s grave has a marker but no headstone yet. I suppose they have to get it carved. There are lots of toys and flowers, cards and helium balloons that have sunk to the ground now.

There are three vases with flowers in. It’s hard to find space to lay my flowers down without disturbing anything, so I put them off to one side.

There is a lovely photograph of her in the centre in a white frame. She’s looking at the camera full on and laughing and she has a straw sun hat on. Perhaps it’s from a holiday.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper, ‘I’m so sorry. I am sorry.’

The blare of a horn from the motorway startles me and my heart jumps in my chest.

I walk back to the bus stop and go home.

‘It’s good you’ve been out,’ Mum greets me when I get in.

I’m parched. I get a drink of water and gulp it down. ‘I went to the grave,’ I say.

She pauses. I can see she’s wondering what to say; she wasn’t expecting this. In the end she says, ‘All right then,’ and gives a nod.

They say she died instantly. That she didn’t suffer. But the people left behind, the people who loved her, they must be in agony.

I keep thinking of prison, being locked up, and the sort of people who’ll be in there, and the bullying. It frightens me. But everything feels scary these days. Most of all the inside of my head. I have these horrible thoughts, like a commentary scrolling on a loop, like the way on the news they have a running stream of headlines at the bottom of the screen. And it never stops and it continually distracts you from what the newsreader is saying.

My commentary goes on and on. It’s even worse when I’m with other people and I’m trying to act normally but I’m worried that they can tell what I’m really thinking. And see what an awful person I am.

Like Becky and Steve come over and Becky talks about stuff at work or a band they saw or the latest on the wedding, and I look like I’m interested but in my head I’m like, And why do you think I care? You with your happy face and your dull, pretty boyfriend and your safe little lives. Why are you here? What are you for, exactly? Awful, nasty thoughts.

I hate myself for being like this. I am such a fake. I am full of poison. Pathetic. You think they’d have noticed by now.

My last regular visit to the surgical consultant. The person who deals with me I’ve never met before. They ask the usual questions and I don’t have to undress or anything. I’m still losing weight but I tell them it’s because I’m eating more healthy food. It’s what they want to hear and it doesn’t really matter. I’m still a size ten, hardly fading away. I like the thought of fading away. Nothing drastic or sudden but a slow decline. So I’d go from like I am now to slightly see-through like a ghost and then eventually drift into thin air.