by Lesley Kara
have to breathe soon or I’ll . . .
Water floods my mouth, my throat. I’m breathing it in. Sink-
ing, sinking. My eyes stare blindly at the greenish- brown
murk. Light’s coming from somewhere, but I can’t gauge the
direction. The noise in my ears is deafening. My limbs dangle
uselessly. I’m spinning in a dream. Water everywhere. Above
me, below me. In my eyes, in my mouth, in my nose. So salty
it burns. Whirling round and down, round and down. So this
is what it’s like. This is how it ends. It’s all a terrible mistake, but it’s too late now. It’s all too late. I see Mum’s face. Her beautiful, kind face. Dad’s too. Simon’s. They’re crying. They’re
crying for me. All the things I haven’t done. The dreams that
alcohol stole from me.
The ringing intensifies. The light fades.
Then hands are under my shoulders. Strong arms lifting me
up. My head breaks the surface and water rushes out of my
mouth. Water and puke, all mixed up together. I’m choking on
it. Strong forearms are levered under my armpits, towing me
back to shore. But I still can’t get enough air into my lungs. Just
tiny, useless gasps. I’m still going to die.
My eyes snap open. I’m lying on my back on the sand. Josh’s face
is peering down at me. He looks scared. Voices are shouting. A
siren wails. I don’t know what’s happening. My eyes close. My
head spins.
The next time I open them, more faces bob in and out of
focus over Josh’s shoulder. It looks like the woman who shouted
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at me in the shop. Except now she looks more frightened than
frightening. And oh, there’s Rosie.
‘Hang on in there, Astrid,’ she says.
Josh wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Stay with
me,’ he says.
I want to stay, I really do, but I’m fading into blackness. He’s
spinning away from me.
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48
Behind my closed eyelids coloured shapes and geometric
designs shift and slide like the kaleidoscope I had as a child.
They zoom in and out of focus – my very own psychedelic light
show. Rising through layers of sleep, I have a moment of clar-
ity. Am I seeing the shadows of blood vessels in my eyes?
They’re so intricate and beautiful, like ancient Aztec patterns.
I’m awake now, but only just. Clinging to consciousness like
a drowning woman. The patterns scare me. How can such
timeless art forms be swirling around inside my own head?
I open my eyes and blink in the light. Consumed by thirst,
I reach for the glass of water on my bedside cabinet, the one I
always put there at night. But my hand’s caught up in my head-
phones, and something tight is pinning me down. Sheets.
Tightly tucked sheets. Wait, this isn’t my bed, and these aren’t
my headphones, it’s the tubing of a drip. My left hand is con-
nected to a drip.
Oh shit, not again. I’m in hospital. What’s happened this
time? What have I done? Mum’s going to kill me.
A slow trickle of sensations and images seeps into my head.
The fragments of a dream. A nightmare. I close my eyes against
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the light, willing myself to sink back down into sleep. But now
that I’ve started to remember, the trickle turns into a steady
flow and then a wave. A colossal wave that breaks over me and
leaves me gasping. Because it wasn’t a dream, was it? It really
happened.
Someone places a hand on my forehead.
‘Astrid? Can you hear me?’
The light seems even brighter now, and it takes a huge effort
to peel back my eyelids. When I do, the first thing that comes
into focus is Josh’s face peering down at me. Blond, tousled
hair. Green eyes flecked with gold.
‘Astrid,’ he says, his voice breaking on the second syllable.
‘Oh, Astrid!’
Now there’s another face next to his. Anxious and drawn,
but full of love and as familiar to me as my own.
Mum is here too.
Over the last couple of days it’s taken us all quite a while to
piece everything together. Helen put a drug in my wine. Fluni-
trazepam. Brand name Rohypnol. The hospital found traces of
it in my blood and urine. Not much alcohol at all, as it hap-
pens. She must have been saving those empty wine bottles just
to deceive me. To make me think I’d lost control and drunk
the lot.
‘There’s no way of proving it’s an actual crime, though,’ Josh
says. ‘She’s told the police you found it in her bathroom cabi-
net, that you took it yourself to increase the high.’
Mum shakes her head in disbelief. That kind of thing is way
beyond her comprehension. If she only knew a fraction of what goes on in the world of recreational drug use, she’d be shocked
to her very core.
‘And it’s not as if she got it off the internet or anywhere
dodgy – apparently, it was a private prescription she had years
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
ago, for insomnia. She told the police she never got round to
throwing it away.’
‘What about all the rest of it, though? Sending horrible
threats through the post? Lies? Manipulation?’ Mum closes her
eyes then opens them again. ‘You could have drowned, Astrid.’
She turns her face away.
‘But it’s my word against hers, especially since I got rid of half
of the evidence, and of course she won’t admit to sending them.
Hardly enough to warrant an arrest, is it? The police aren’t
going to waste their time on something like that. I’m just a for-
mer “addict with issues” to them.’
Josh squeezes my hand. ‘If only I’d ignored that letter and
got in touch with you sooner. I was so sure I was doing the right
thing.’
I couldn’t believe it when he showed me, when I read the
words she’d written in my name. In my handwriting too, or
near as damn it. She must have kept hold of the pieces of paper
I wrote my confessions on and copied it.
If you respect me at all, please, Josh, DON’T CONTACT ME. Telling you the truth was a major step forward for me. Now I’ve got to give myself a chance to heal. Our relationship may compromise my recov‑
ery. I should never have let it happen – it goes against everything they say at AA. I KNOW you’ll understand.
Those endless days I spent crying under my duvet, waiting
for him to contact me, to tell me I was forgiven and put me out
of my misery, and all the time he thought he was doing the
right thing. Thought he was following my instructions. Help-
ing me get better.
Mum makes her cross little harrumphing noise. ‘I’ve always
tried to believe that all human beings contain at
least some ele-ment of goodness and truth, however bad they might appear to
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others. And I sympathize with her about losing her son. Of
course I do. But what she did . . .’
‘She didn’t pour that first glass of wine down my throat,
though, did she, Mum? There’s only one person to blame for
that, and that’s me.’
A lump forms in the back of my throat. Because accepting
this means I also have to accept that I’m not responsible for
what happened with Simon. I never was. I close my eyes and
take a deep breath. I do have a death on my conscience, though.
It’s impossible to make amends now, but I’ll do whatever I can
to trace that young woman’s family and make them see how
sorry I am, how I’ll regret what happened for the rest of my life.
If they press charges, then so be it. I need to take whatever pun-
ishment comes my way. I won’t be able to live with myself
otherwise.
Mum gathers up our empty coffee cups and puts them into
the rubbish bag at the side of my bed. ‘I still don’t understand
why Rosie kept her suspicions to herself for so long. If she knew Helen was a fraud, why on earth didn’t she tell you? Why did
she let you leave the shop and go round there?’
‘I didn’t give her much of a chance. I basically pushed her out
of the way and ran off.’
Rosie came to visit me this morning. We talked for ages. I try
to explain to Mum what she said.
‘She didn’t tell me because she didn’t know for sure. It was
just a hunch. She gets these . . . feelings about people.’
Mum raises an eyebrow.
‘She senses things from objects too. It’s something to do with
picking up their energy. I know it sounds weird, but it is a thing, apparently. It’s called clairsentience. She says she doesn’t usually say anything about it because most people take the piss.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Mum says, and I can’t help smiling. Mum
and I, we’re more alike than I realized.
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It was why Rosie wouldn’t let go of his juggling ball, that
time in the shop, and why she kept Simon’s T- shirt, the one
Helen accidentally gave away. The photocopied news report
about Simon’s suicide was folded up at the bottom of the car-
rier bag Helen dropped off at the shop. Helen couldn’t have
realized it was there.
Right from the start, Rosie never trusted Helen. All she felt
when she was anywhere near her was this terrible, hateful anger.
Plus, she’s been around the block a few times. She’s worked with
loads of addicts in the past and she said that something about
Helen just didn’t add up. She had no proof that Helen was con-
nected to Simon, but some instinct kept nagging away at her.
I wriggle my toes under the bedclothes and try to loosen the
top sheet. I can’t wait to get home and have a duvet again.
‘I couldn’t stand Rosie at first. Had her down as one of those
annoying types who think God’s the answer to everything.’
Mum shifts in her chair.
‘Actually, she’s nothing like that. She’s just worked out that
God’s the only thing keeping her sober. She’s tried everything
else, and nothing worked. She was only ever trying to save me
the trouble of finding that out for myself.’
When Rosie came to visit me in hospital she offered Simon’s
T- shirt to me as a keepsake, but it’s time to let go of the past.
T- shirts, juggling balls. They’re not Simon; they’re just things.
‘I wonder where she’s gone,’ Mum says. ‘Helen, I mean.’
‘Back to London, I suppose. I don’t expect she ever sold her
house. That was another lie. She just took out a short- term lease
on the flat when she worked out where I was.’
Visiting time is almost over and, although part of me doesn’t
want them to go, another part does. There’s something I have
to do – something I should have done by now – and I have to
be alone when I do it.
Josh leans over and gives me a kiss. Not a proper one, not in
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front of Mum, but it’s enough to feel his lips on mine and to
know that whatever happens between us now, he knows the
truth.
‘Dad’s new girlfriend’s coming round tonight. ‘We’re getting
an Indian takeaway.’
I smile. He’s still a bit uptight about it, I can tell, but he’ll come round, in time, and if he doesn’t, well, that’s his problem, not
Richard’s. Everyone deserves a second chance at love. Even me.
I kiss Mum goodbye and watch the two of them leave. Yester-
day, Josh asked me what was going to happen when summer’s
over. Would I go back to London with him?
I couldn’t answer him at first. Because being with Josh is what
I want more than anything in the world. But then Mum wants
me to stay here, with her. And according to Richard, Charlie’s
offered me a part- time job in his shop. Everyone’s been so kind.
Even that bossy old woman with the walking stick turned out to
be on my side. She remembered me saying I was a friend of the
Carter family, that time at the beach huts. If she hadn’t, she
might not have rushed over to Charlie’s flat and asked him to
ring Richard. And if Charlie hadn’t rung Richard, Josh wouldn’t
have known I was in trouble. He wouldn’t have driven like a
madman to the beach. He knew I’d be there. He just knew.
That’s the thing about living in a small town like Flinstead.
Everyone knows everyone else and, even if that gets a bit tire-
some sometimes, a bit claustrophobic, you’re never completely
on your own. People look out for each other. People care. Well,
maybe not everyone, but lots of people. Lots of people care.
Like Rosie. She’s going to help me with my recovery. She’s
moved out of the Oxfam shop at last and into the spare bed-
room of one of Richard’s many ‘mates’, a nice old bloke with
Parkinson’s who needs a bit of help with housework and
cooking.
And then there’s Jeremy. Or Jez, as Richard insists on calling 280
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him. He can’t promise me anything because these situations are
notoriously difficult to prove, and it’s probably going to take a
hell of a lot of paperwork, but he’s working on getting some
kind of restraining order put on Helen. Just in case she decides
to try anything else. I’m lucky to have him on my case. He used
to be a hot- shot lawyer in the city before the drink got to him.
Oh, well, London’s loss, Flinstead’s gain, that’s what I say.
So what I said to Josh was this: ‘We’ll see each other at week-
ends and see how things go.’
‘One day at a time, eh?’
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49
Finally, the moment has come. I open the door of my bedside
cupboard and stare at the brown envelope Mum brought in for
me earlier.
Before I can change my mind, I take it out and open it up,
unfold the paper inside. My hands are trembling and Simon’s
voice fills my head as I try not to cry.
Dear Astrid,
I’m writing this from hospital. I don’t have your number any
more. Mum must have deleted it from my phone. I didn’t tell
you that I’d been staying with her, that she took me in when I
had nowhere else to go.
Even now, I still can’t get my head round Helen being Simon’s
mother.
The nurses say she was here the whole time I was out of it on
a drip.
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WHO DID YOU TELL?
I picture her at his bedside, waiting for him to wake up. Just
like Mum was there for me, and, crazy though it is after every-
thing she’s done, I can’t help feeling a pang of sympathy for her
loss.
It was a mistake going back – I know that now – all she does is
try to control me. It’s all she’s ever done. I really regret opening up to her, telling her things about my life, about you, because it
didn’t take her long to start on at me again. We had a massive
argument yesterday, the worst we’ve ever had, and I flipped.
Told her to get the hell out of here and leave me alone. Told her
it was her fault all this happened in the first place. If she hadn’t tried to keep me as a prisoner, I might not have felt the need to
escape. Might not have bumped into you that day in the park.
I take a deep breath. Reading this was never going to be easy.
I love you, Astrid – you know that. I always have, right from
that very first time you came up to me in the pub and started
talking bollocks about the shape of my head. I’ve never met
anyone like you.
I squeeze my eyes shut. This must have been where Laura
stopped reading.
I like to think that, if things had been different, we could have
stayed the course. We could have ended up an old married
couple with kids and grandkids. But you and I – we’re not
made like other people, are we? When I woke up in this bed
and listened to Mum going on and on, blaming you for making
