Blink of an Eye (2013) (24 page)

‘And he’s doing that,’ I said.

‘Well leave it to him,’ she said. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

‘What?’ She’d really got my goat. ‘Embarrassing? A child’s dead,’ I stood up, ‘your sister is at risk of going to prison and you’re worried about being embarrassed?’

‘Don’t shout,’ she said. ‘There’s no point to what you’re doing. You’re like some neurotic crusader, except there’s no crusade, is there?’

‘The truth,’ I said.

‘We all know what the truth is, and it’s ugly and horrible and you won’t accept it. Because you can’t bear to see Naomi in that position. But she is.’

I picked up my car keys and made to leave. Her outburst had shaken me. I was angry and smarting but I did not want to fall out with her and I knew if I stayed I’d say something I’d regret. ‘I’ll give you a ring later in the week,’ I said as evenly as I could.

She gave a nod. Neither of us moved to embrace.

Doggedly I carried on. Some people I rang didn’t respond when I left messages. Perhaps Suzanne had warned them off:
my mum – she’s coming apart at the seams, ignore her.

It’s hard to concentrate. I feel sick and shaky and my head hurts. My brain is a numb grey rock. Thoughts sneak round it unbidden, quick as lizards. And behind the boulder there’s a thunderstorm cracking and raging, a hurricane howling.

The items are there on the chest of drawers.

The vodka from the kitchen: the bottle is dusty, who knows how long it has been there? Mum and Dad never drink it. Perhaps it’s left over from a party. Perhaps Alex and I bought it front-loading before a night out. We had some great nights. The best ever, the one when I knew I really loved him and he loved me back, was up in Newcastle. The bands were awesome, just out there, and everyone dancing, and we were pretty mashed up but in a nice way. No toilet-hugging. We went to chill out for a bit, thirsty and breathless. We got some water and some crisps. And he was staring at me with this soppy grin on his face.

‘What?’ I said. ‘What you looking at?’

‘Move in with me,’ he said.

And my stomach flipped over. I felt so happy that I was nearly in tears. ‘You sure?’ I said.

Then he came even closer, whispered in my ear: ‘I love you. I want us to be together.’

I kissed him and then I dragged him back to dance because I needed to jump about. We went for breakfast at a place near the river. Shared a fry-up because we’d not got much money left.

Now I shake my head; no point in thinking of that. I take another drink of the vodka. Oily and sharp at the same time.

Then there are the pills; three different sorts. From the bathroom and the kitchen. Hard to know if I’ve got enough, but I think so. I’m very tired, my eyes feel dry and sore, but I can lie down in a minute.

I take a load of pills, about half of them, washed down with vodka. I don’t take all of them yet, because the other thing on the chest is the note. Which I haven’t written yet. But I think I should.

I don’t want them to feel bad, you see, and if there’s no note then they might think all sorts and blame each other or themselves. And they mustn’t think I don’t love them. I do love them, that’s why I’m doing this. So they understand that this is the best thing for everybody. Mum and Dad and Suzanne and Alex can get their lives back and I won’t be there dragging them down. Lily’s family – they’ll have their ‘life for a life’, won’t they?

I know I’m a coward because I can’t face another day. Each minute with the storm in my head and the claws gouging inside me. I want it to be over.

I’m sweating now, like when you have a fever, shivering too. So I don’t think I can write a lot.

I put their names at the top. I smudge Dad a bit but you can still read it.
To Mum, Dad, Suzanne and Alex.

The letters wriggle on the page and I have to close one eye. I’m very thirsty so I have another drink.

I thought I might be scared, but the only thing I’m scared of is it not working. That would be awful. I just want the peace; it will be peaceful. Not to feel at all, not to feel anything, not to wake up and have that awful sense of desolation, of hopelessness.

I am sorry
. I write that next.
I am so sorry
.

The dizzy feeling is getting stronger. I take more pills. All of the ones that are left.

I read my note.
I love you all so much
, I write, and the words slope to the left, like they’re dizzy too.
Please forgive me and remember I love you and I never wanted to hurt you.

My fingers ache and I sign my name as quickly as I can manage because everything is moving around.

I leave the note next to me on the bed.

I try to think if there is anything else. The waterfall is in my head. The ink fills my eyes. I am falling, falling and flying.

S
ometimes I checked on her. But not always. Sometimes I had to restrain myself. Bite down on my urges, sacrifice my own need for reassurance for her right to be independent, to be treated like an adult.

I almost didn’t. It was getting late. Nearly midnight. I’d just got back from Evie and Lucy’s. We’d had a meal and a good chat. There were even moments when I forgot about our troubles, so I was more relaxed when I got home than I had been earlier.

I hesitated outside her door and then carried on to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Leave it, I told myself. But the familiar anxiety was rising slowly, and as soon as I acknowledged it was there, I knew I’d not get any sleep until I’d dealt with it. It was almost like OCD: the voodoo that if I checked there’d be nothing to worry about and if I didn’t something terrible would happen to her. A stupid ritual to placate the gods.

So I crept back along the hall and turned her door handle as quietly as possible, though there was always a tiny squeak in the mechanism.

The smell of vomit hit me immediately, acidic and repulsive, making my mouth water, and I gagged in a reflex response.

I snapped the light on and a wave of dread slammed into me. She was on the bed, something terribly wrong in the colour of her face and the sick on the pillow.

My heart hammering, my spine tingling with fear, I touched her neck, calling her name over and over again: ‘Naomi, Naomi, Naomi.’ A chant to summon her.

I couldn’t feel a pulse, couldn’t tell if she was breathing. The panic was bright in me like a fire and I screamed for Phil and stuck my fingers in her mouth. ABC. ABC. The mnemonic from first-aid training in my head. There was nothing in her mouth. I breathed into her, ignoring the sickly smell, and began CPR.

Phil was there, he didn’t need telling; he called an ambulance. They seemed to take forever but later we learnt it was just eight minutes. He was talking as I kept pumping away, telling them the names of the pills she’d taken, answering questions about her status, about her health. He had her note in his hand and this desperate, harrowed look on his face.

I was cursing her, this child of mine, cursing her and praying. I could not bear to lose her. Could not bear it. I would have torn open her chest and squeezed her heart with my bare hands if I’d had the means. There was a tide ebbing and flowing in me, rolling from fear to fury and back, currents swirling as I tried to make her breathe.

I don’t remember much about the ambulance arriving. The paramedics had a preternatural calm about them, as though they were running at a slower pace than the rest of us. I wanted to hurry them, my words spilling like coins from a jackpot, brash and fast and noisy.

They put a mask on her, I remember that, and they used a defibrillator. They injected her with something. I knew, because they did those things, that she had died.

For the second time she had died.

And then we were at the hospital and she was stable, they said, though they didn’t know yet how long she had been without oxygen. Or what the consequences might be.

*   *   *

She was so lucky. There was no brain damage. But she refused to talk to us at first. Shrank from our touch and screwed up her eyes. The mental health service got involved and recommended discharge to one of their rehabilitation units. She was deemed to be at risk of serious self-harm.

To be honest, I was relieved she was not coming home. Not yet. I didn’t trust her, and the strain of watching over her would have been intolerable.

Phil and I went back and talked and wept, him making big barking noises like some seal, which tore at my heart. It was impossible to resist the impulse towards self-recrimination:
I should have seen it coming, should have dragged her to the doctor, should have known!
Yes, I’d realized she was getting depressed but I’d no idea that she’d been suicidal.
I should have known.

‘I was thinking of Petey again,’ Phil said, his eyes watery. ‘Oh God, if you’d not gone in . . .’

‘But I did.’ I held his face in my hands and kissed his forehead.

We tried to put one foot in front of the other. There’s no avoiding the particularly cruel guilt that suicide or attempted suicide bestows on those who love the person involved. Like with Petey’s death, relatives and friends struggle not only with grief but a profound burden of culpability. It’s a false burden – we are not responsible for the person’s choice to end their life, we do not have the power – but on an emotional level it is very hard not to feel that we have failed in our care, in our love. That if we’d only been better, stronger, wiser, more worthy of love they wouldn’t have killed themselves.

Phil and I have must have spent most of that ensuing week talking about Naomi, and what she’d tried to do. It haunted us, even more than the accident had done, if that were possible, because this was deliberate, planned, intentional. Our daughter had not wanted to live any more.

I felt as though something had been ripped away inside. I’ve never felt so vulnerable, so hurt. Betrayed, even.

I berated myself for not having spotted the signs; with all my professional training, I should have seen, should have known. Her behaviour in the last few weeks, the way she acted at the committal hearing. Phil listened to me pick away at it. He was wounded too. He rang the Samaritans. He said it helped, it was good to talk to someone completely objective, who didn’t know any of us, whose responses weren’t coloured by shock or surprise. Who could talk very practically about the position he was in and what he realistically could and couldn’t do.

We weren’t allowed to visit for the first couple of weeks, while Naomi was assessed and plans were put in place.

It was a respite.

I was critical of myself, but I found it even harder when Suzanne came round. ‘How could she?’ she asked, looking sad rather than cross. Tears glistened in her eyes. I wondered if she regretted her break with Naomi and had some sympathy for her sister, or if she was actually just sad for us, for what we were going through.

Then she talked about the baby and how Jonty was busy with the editing, and I felt myself growing more and more tense, my comments curt and parsimonious. She didn’t notice. Until I let fly. ‘We needed you, Suzanne;
I
needed you, not just Naomi, and you let us down.’

She flinched. ‘Just because—’

‘No.’ I raised my hand to quieten her. ‘I’ll say my piece. You decided to wash your hands of us, of your sister.’

‘Well, she’d been drinking.’ She stuck her neck out. Raised her chin, still determined to stand her ground.

‘That’s not the issue. Whether she was drink-driving or not, a terrible thing happened: to the little girl and her family, and to your sister, who was in the car and nearly died and is facing a prison sentence. And you have been spiteful and uncaring and judgemental.’

‘Mum . . .’ Her lip trembled.

‘I needed you on my side. You called her selfish, remember? You’re the most selfish person I know.’

Her eyes filled with tears; the spots of colour on her cheeks faded. ‘Look,’ she started, ‘if I’d known she was going to—’

‘Consequences,’ I laughed, ‘that’s the point, isn’t it? We
don’t
always know what’s coming. But family, Suzanne. We will live the rest of our lives under this shadow. Not only what happened to Lily Vasey, but Naomi’s suicide attempt. How bleak do you think things got for her? Can you imagine?’

‘You’re blaming me?’ she said, quivering.

‘No, I’m not blaming you for that. But I am angry with you for letting us down. Naomi spent half her life looking for your approval, desperate to please her big sister. You’ve no idea how much your rejection hurt her.’

‘She tell you that?’

‘I could see it,’ I said through clenched teeth.

There was a pause, and I felt weary, tired to the marrow.

Suzanne cleared her throat, touched her earring. ‘What do you want me to do?’ she said in a small voice.

‘I don’t know. That’s up to you. Think about it. An apology might be a start.’

‘Right,’ she said. And left.

And I swallowed the tears that threatened and tried to stop shaking.

Most of the people on the unit are friendly. There’s one who doesn’t ever talk, who doesn’t even seem to see or hear anything that’s going on. Which must be nice; she just looks through everything. She’s about Mum’s age, dresses quite smart. She has bandages on her wrists.

There are two other women, look a bit like mother and daughter but they’re not related, and they talk all the time. Like something bad might happen if they pause for breath. Nosy, too, but they don’t give you a chance to answer, just talk about their own mental health or what the unit’s like, what treatments they’re on.

Then there’s a really shaky guy. He just looks like he’ll shatter. Everything startles him and he trembles constantly. I don’t know if the shaking is a side effect from the drugs or if he’s got some physical problem or what.

The staff are sound, generally. There’s one bloke, though, and he’s always picking on people, he has this really sneery, patronizing way of talking, but he’s the only one really.

We’re here to be assessed and treated and then hopefully returned ‘to the community’. There’s a secure unit across the way, but that’s for people who might be a danger to others, rather than just to themselves, or those dead set on suicide who have to have someone with them every single second.