Chris Cleave - Incendiary

—Nah. You’re alright. It doesn’t sound like my cup of tea.

—Nor mine, said Jasper. I just wanted to grab Petra and get us out of there as soon as humanly possible. But Petra wasn’t in her office. I asked around and nobody knew where she was. I started to worry. I was beside myself. I thought maybe something had happened to her in all the panic. And it had. Of course. Petra being Petra.

—Was she alright?

—More than alright, said Jasper. I found her in the editor’s office writing the leader. She was the only person in the building not running around like a headless chicken. I saw her through the glass wall. She was sitting there very calm and composed drinking a Diet Coke and writing 500 words on A NATION UNITED IN HORROR. I watched her nails clicking on the keyboard. Petra has lovely nails. I tapped on the glass and she looked up at me. That’s when it hit me. She looked at me as though I were a complete stranger. There was just this look of absolute blank incomprehension on her face. Then slowly I watched it change. I could see the precise moment when she recognised me. Me. Her partner of 6 years. Then I saw her raise one of those lovely manicured hands to her mouth and gasp. And I knew. She wasn’t gasping because I looked a mess with my broken nose and blood on my jacket. She wasn’t gasping from relief that I’d survived. She was gasping because this was the first moment since it had happened that she had even remembered my existence in the world. And she knew that I saw this.

Jasper wasn’t looking at me any more. He was looking out of the window. He was talking quietly.

—So I stepped in to the editor’s office. Petra took her hands off the keyboard but she held them hovering just above it. As if I were interrupting her for fuck’s sake. We didn’t say anything. We just stared at each other for a minute and then I walked out. I walked all the way home 5 miles through the chaos. My face was swelling up and people were saying things to me that I couldn’t hear. It was like watching fishes in an aquarium. I just walked home and sat there very quietly on the sofa and when it got dark I just sat in the dark. Thinking. Petra turned up around 10 p.m. and switched the lights on. Look she said I’m sorry okay. I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’m glad you’re fine. I’m not fine I said to her. I can’t believe you would go to work before you even thought about me. Oh god Jas said Petra. I’ve said I’m sorry. But they let me write the leader. The leader Jas. Don’t you understand? They ran my leader word for word. This is just the hugest thing for me.

Jasper sighed. He looked pale green in the fluorescents on the ward.

—I just looked at her, he said. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so low. I looked at Petra and I thought god you are so pretty and so clever and so much fun and such a total fucking cold heartless bitch. And I could see her looking at me and thinking don’t do this to me you prick don’t make me feel guilty when I know damn well you’ve been playing away from home. She knows you see. She knows about you and me. God knows how but she knows. Maybe she just saw it in my eyes. So there we were. Looking at each other and hating each other but not saying anything. And that’s when I started to feel afraid. I looked at Petra and suddenly I realised it wasn’t just her. Everyone I know is cold and heartless. Nobody rang me that night to see if I was okay. And you know why? Because I am a fucking cold heartless cunt too. Why would anyone ring me?

Jasper Black shrugged.

—I think you put it rather more delicately, he said. When you said I didn’t have a selfless bone in my body. But it amounts to the same thing. My life is pointless. I have the kind of friends who aren’t that curious whether or not I have been destroyed by suicide bombers. Still. There’s always cocaine.

I looked at Jasper’s face pale and sick under the striplights. Behind him in the night a million other lights flashed like cheap jewellery. I sighed. Bloody London. Jasper stood up from the chair and kneeled down by the bed. He laid his head on the covers by my knee.

—This world is all fucked up, he said.

—Yeah but we were born here so what can you do.

I couldn’t move. I just watched him lying there. We stayed like that till visiting hours were over and then Jasper went off to spend the night with Petra Sutherland.

I slept even less after that. You burned up sleep Osama when you burned up my husband and my boy so I just used to sit in the brown plastic chair looking out over London. Jasper came back a couple of times and he brought me vitamins and things from my flat. I didn’t need all those things half as much as I needed him to lay his head on my bed again but I never could seem to tell him.

One night I sat looking out. Jasper was meant to of visited that evening but he never turned up. It was full moon and the barrage balloons shone very still in the sky. It was Friday night but the streets were empty. There was a curfew on and it was just the police vans drifting up and down. They had numbers on their roofs and they were driving round in a pattern. I counted them coming round again and again but I still wasn’t sleepy. They say to count sheep when you can’t sleep Osama well I hope they work better than police vans. Where you are you probably have sheep or goats or little dead hostages to count I bet you sleep like a baby.

I lay awake and I listened to the ladies on the ward coughing and snoring and moaning for the nurse. I was so miserable that night Osama. I had no one. I looked down at the lights of London switching off one by one. I never knew there was so much light to go out. About 3 a.m. I couldn’t stand it any more. Normally I would of put the telly on to take my mind off it but there wasn’t any telly on the ward only Radio 4 so I decided to kill myself.

It isn’t easy to kill yourself in Guy’s Hospital. I suppose they make it that way on purpose I mean I probably wasn’t the first girl who’d had enough. For starters the nurses don’t leave anything sharp lying about. I wanted to cut my wrists but the nearest thing I could find to a knife was the edge of a plastic food tray. I snapped it in half and sawed away at my veins with the broken edge. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to cut your wrists with a hospital tray Osama well I wouldn’t waste your time if I were you. It’s more itchy than anything and after about 10 mins your wrists will be a bit red and sore but that’s it.

I looked around the ward for something else to try. I’m a simple girl Osama there isn’t much to me. Once I get an idea in my head I don’t think about it any more. So now I’d decided to kill myself it was making me nervous that I was still alive. I decided to poison myself and quick sharp. I crawled up the ward collecting all the other ladies’ pills and I ground them up into powder under the wheel of my IV stand. There must of been 20 pills at least in all shapes and colours. They made a nasty grey powder. I pricked a little hole in the top of my drip bag and I poured the powder in and gave it a good shake. The powder swirled around and the nice clean liquid in my drip bag went all mucky and vicious-looking. I was very pleased with it and I lay back down on my bed and looked out of the window and waited to die.

I was never scared. Not for one second. While I was dying there was just me and the streetlights below and this orange glow overhead like I was all alone between heaven and central London. It was very peaceful and it gave you shivers like being in church. I started thinking about my boy and whether I was going to see him in heaven when I was dead. Funny really because I never did believe in heaven. I believed in my chaps and my chaps believed in Arsenal football club and I don’t know what the Gunners believed in. That’s where the trail goes cold.