I started to carry the switchblade with me everywhere, like it was some depraved comfort blanket. I ate in the kitchen with my mother, the knife tucked into my shorts, pressing against my hip. At night I kept it under my pillow, curled in my fingers. When Millie came over I thumbed its edges inside my pocket. In moments of idleness I flicked it open, measuring its sharpness against my palm.
I thought about using it, wondered what it would feel like to pierce someone’s flesh. Sometimes I really freaked myself out. I used to fantasize about moving away from Cedar Hill and starting a new life as just an unknown girl in a big city, working on film sets, holding a boom mic, adjusting a shot, or helping to run lines with Liam Hemsworth while he fell hopelessly in love with me. Now I was fantasizing about chopping Felice Falcone’s finger off and laughing in his face. God.
It happened almost ten days after leaving the hospital. I had been looking out the window – counting the black cars that rolled too slowly down my street, my eyes vibrating from exhausted concentration. Now I was nearing the edge of unconsciousness, where I knew sleep would come whether I willed it to or not.
My mother hovered in the doorway to my room, a mug cupped between her hands. She raised it in offering.
‘No, thanks.’ My words slurred.
‘It’s chicken noodle.’ She bit down on her smile to keep it from shaking. ‘You haven’t had anything all day.’
Hadn’t I? Had she? ‘So tired.’
She edged into the room, setting the soup down on the nightstand. ‘Sophie, please. I’m worried about you.’
I shook my head, squishing my cheek into my pillow. ‘Don’t be.’
It was almost like a ritual: Won’t you eat a little more, Sophie? Won’t you have a bite of this? Do you want to talk about it with someone? You’re not trying, Sophie. Please just try.
Her blue eyes were wired with red. She seemed tired, too. I felt her hand on my arm. ‘Will you drink some of this at least? It will help you to sleep well.’
‘You have it,’ I said, feeling myself sink. ‘Please.’
She stroked my hair, her voice quiet. ‘I will. I’ll have some too.’
I couldn’t lift my head even if I wanted to. My lids drooped shut and I fell, down, down, down into the blackness that was waiting to envelop me. The shadows swooped. The gunshots rang out.
I woke with a start. It was dark outside but my curtains were still open. The moon was high and full, the stars casting streaks inside my room. Everything was silent. I wasn’t screaming. I wasn’t sweating. I hadn’t woken myself up and my mother wasn’t there, fretting by my bedside like she usually was.
She’s asleep, I realized with such a flood of relief it took me another second to notice the searing pain in my hand. I flicked on the light and stared in horror at the blood on my sheets.
The switchblade was open on my pillow, the knife slicked with my blood. Even the handle was stained, darker beads of crimson sinking into the grooves in the inscription. There was a three-inch gash running across the palm of my right hand. I had cut myself in my sleep!
It was bad enough to drench my sheets and wake me up. It was bad enough to give my mother a horrible jolt if she walked in just then. This was the only uninterrupted morsel of sleep she had gotten in weeks, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to ruin that.
I grabbed a T-shirt and tied it in a knot around my hand. I flicked the switchblade closed and stashed it in my drawer. I flipped the pillow over to its unbloodied side and crept downstairs. Every creak was a miniature heart attack, but my mother’s bedroom stayed silent as I descended. I would disinfect the wound, wrap it up and come up with an excuse for the injury tomorrow.
The kitchen door was ajar and the light had been left on, but it wasn’t until I reached the door that I heard the crying. I peeked through the crack. My mother was sitting at the table, her feet curled around the chair legs. She was dressed in her pyjamas, but it was easy to see she hadn’t been sleeping. Her head was in her hands and her breaths were coming in violent, heaving gasps.
My heart felt like it was crumpling in my chest.
I pressed my hand on the door, and then stopped myself. There was blood all over me. I had become so obsessed with arming myself, even in sleep, that I had ended up stabbing myself. And now my bed was covered in blood and here was my mother thinking she had seen the worst of it already. She couldn’t see me like this. It would only make it a hundred times worse.
I reeled backwards.
I crept back upstairs, where I washed my hand in the bathroom sink and wrapped it in strips of cotton wool. In the mirror, a grey-eyed wisp stared back at me. Where had the blue gone? In the half-light, I couldn’t help thinking of Elena Genovese-Falcone’s words to me. I supposed I did look a little bit soulless. I felt a little bit soulless too.
I found a spare sheet in the ironing cupboard and spread it over my bed, covering the bloodstain on the mattress. I buried myself beneath the duvet and lay on my back, looking at the ceiling as my hand pulsed. When the tiredness came, I stuffed the duvet in my mouth and prayed that when I woke up screaming my mother wouldn’t hear it.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE DOLPHIN PHILOSOPHY