‘It’s just us today, sweetheart.’ He leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. ‘You’re stronger than us. Once you find your anchor, never let go of it. No matter what.’
Before I could ask what he meant, he gently closed the door and turned the lock. I didn’t know what was going to happen in that room, but I had a strong sense that I needed to hear it. So I remained with my ear pressed to the door, straining to decipher their muffled chat. Eventually I slumped to the floor with my back to it, waiting for the thirty-minute deadline to pass. I hated closed doors, because closed doors meant secrets and I didn’t like being kept out of secrets.
Gradually their conversation petered out into silence as they drifted into sleep. I guessed that we wouldn’t be going to the park and crossed my arms in an exaggerated sulk. I was ready to walk away when I felt my body tingle. A few moments later and it happened again. Then a longer time passed before I felt it once more. It was the same warm feeling I’d had on hearing Mum’s last breath.
Only then did I understand what a wonderful gift my father had given me. He’d loved me with such intensity that he wanted our family to live on inside me, the strongest member of our unit. No matter where I was or what I did with the rest of my life, his act had allowed me to hold them all inside me where they would never have to suffer loss or pain.
I padded around the house for days, waiting patiently in case I was wrong and they reappeared from Dad’s bedroom. Sometimes I made the most of having the television to myself, and sat watching dramas and Children’s BBC. But it all came to an abrupt end when my English teacher appeared at the front door to ask why I’d been absent from school for the best part of a week.
Later, when the police cars and ambulances arrived, I was kept behind a closed living room door as a policewoman in uniform held my hand and told me everything would be all right. She was lying. She couldn’t have known that.
I glanced out of the window at the neighbours huddling together on their driveways, puzzled as to what terrible thing had happened in their street that required so many flashing blue lights. Some held each other tightly when black plastic bags containing my family were stretchered out.
‘That poor little lass!’ I heard one exclaim as I was led out, too. The only person not to feel sorry for me was me.
In the following weeks and months, people in authority kept asking me how I was feeling, if I understood what had happened, whether I wanted to talk about it or if I needed anything. I didn’t tell anyone about capturing my family’s last breaths because they wouldn’t understand, nor would they comprehend that thanks to my dad it would become my purpose to help and carry other lost souls inside me when and wherever I came across them.
Six years of foster homes then group homes – some good and some not so good – didn’t do any lasting damage to me in the end. Sylvia taught me how to hide in plain sight, and Olly showed me the value of finding an anchor that keeps you in place despite the storms engulfing you.
The sharpness of the wind around the hotel roof made my eyes water, but I was feeling empowered and leaned further over the railings, balancing on my tiptoes. It might only take a rogue gust to tip me over the edge. But fate hadn’t intervened and it wasn’t my time. I still had work to do. Steven needed me, as would others.
Early this evening he would call me for the last time and we’d run through my plan. There might not be anyone to hear me when I breathed my last, but I’d ensure there was somebody who cared enough to be there for his.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SEVEN MONTHS, ONE WEEK AFTER DAVID
The interior of my Mini was almost silent but for the hum of the engine and the vehicles I passed. I maintained a speed a little below the legal limit of 30 mph so that a road camera wouldn’t catch me.
Occasionally the clipped accent voicing my satnav broke the quiet, but I was anxious that nothing else would remove me from the calm, collected headspace I needed to maintain on the approach to Steven’s house.
Before I left home, I’d texted the girls to tell them I was going to be at the office a little later than planned, but they must have run out of phone credit as I hadn’t heard back from them. I picked a coat to wear with deep pockets on the inside and outside. These I stuffed with gloves, a battery-operated torch, a packet of wet wipes and a steak knife, just to be on the safe side. And as each half-mile counted down to my arrival, my heart pounded faster and faster.
I’d called Steven’s recently purchased disposable phone from the office at six o’clock, as agreed, to get his address, and immediately I’d typed the postcode into an app that offered me an aerial view of the road and another taken from street level. It was as he described. Then I’d visited a property website to view photos posted online the last time the house was up for sale. It was a potentially attractive cottage but quite shabby. However, Steven had warned me that since purchasing it, his worsening depression meant his interest in keeping it maintained had waned. I looked at the floor plan and his bedroom was where he’d told me.
I’d spent the week preparing myself for the moment I was to come face to face with him for the first and last time. It would be nerve-wracking and thrilling to watch as he slipped a rope around his neck using the method I’d suggested, then stepped off the chair and let gravity and nature take its course. His death would be better than anything I had ever imagined I’d get out of joining End of the Line.
I’d prepared myself for what to expect during and after Steven’s death by surfing Internet images of the lifeless, contorted bodies of people who’d chosen the same route. Each one differed from the next. I looked closely at grooves made by ligatures around throats; bloody, crimson-frothed nostrils and mouths; elongated necks; prominent eyes with dilated pupils; swollen tongues and clenched hands. I watched videos that foreign terrorists had uploaded of public hangings, slow suffocations and strangulations. But no pictures, footage or descriptive text could prepare me for the final expression on Steven’s face. And, of course, his last breath.
It felt like an age, but I’d only been behind the wheel for twenty minutes when I arrived on the outskirts of a village. HARPOLE – PLEASE DRIVE CAREFULLY, a sign read. I followed the satnav’s directions along the high street and towards clumps of cottages set back from the road.