by John Marrs
‘Perhaps you might want to send a memo out reminding people of that?’ I suggested.
Janine gave me another one of her withering glances, so I made my way back to my booth, willing a terminal illness upon her. Not a short one that developed quickly and snuffed her out within a couple of months, but a long, nasty one that ate the bitch alive.
It felt like it had been a close call. As a precautionary measure, I needed to protect myself, so I promised myself I’d take a step back from lining up any future candidates. But only after Steven and I finished our work together.
There are five rules I expect each candidate to follow if our relationship is to prove effective, and Steven would be no exception if he was to make that third, all-important call.
The first rule is that I am the one in control. Ultimately it will always be a candidate’s decision whether they live or die, and there’s nothing I can do about that. But I need to make them understand that without my help, their attempt to leave this world with minimal fuss will likely fail.
I’ll throw statistics at them to prove my point, like how three-quarters of people who try to take their life end up botching it because they’re ill-prepared. Mentally they might be ready, but if they think they can slice into any vein or hang from a tree and ta-da, that’s it, game over, then they’re wrong. Pain-free, romanticised suicides only ever happen in television dramas. When it’s done incorrectly, an attempt can leave a person with crippling, life-changing injuries.
My second rule is that a candidate must trust me because I know best. I am a walking encyclopaedia when it comes to ways and means. I have done my research. I have read up on all feasible methods online, in public libraries and in medical reports. I have attended inquests of suicides and I have learned from the successes and failures of the dead.
I know how to jump from even a relatively low bridge or building and have the best possible chance of a fatal outcome – even a seven-storey plunge has a decent survival rate if you don’t get it right. I know the most effective painkillers and benzodiazepines to combine, and which countries export them with no questions asked. I know which DIY shops sell the strongest, best-quality ropes and I know the angle they need to be knotted. I know how to fatally land in water from a great height, and what length of a barrel to hack from what make of shotgun to stretch from mouth to trigger finger. I even know the best saw blades to use to cut it. I know how to properly secure a pipe to a car exhaust. I know how to suffocate and self-strangulate and the local bodies of water where riptides and sea tides will sweep you away no matter how strong your anchor. I know all of this because I am an expert.
The third rule is that a candidate must agree to do it within five weeks of our arrangement. If they can’t get their affairs in order by then, I’ll know they’re wavering and I’ll cut them off. There will be no second chances. I don’t like wasting my time.
Number four is that they must leave most of the nitty-gritty work to me. I will plan for every eventuality once we agree on a preferred method. I’ll set to work tailoring a package, with attention to detail that is second to none. Time, location, cost of materials, where to purchase them from . . . there’s nothing I won’t have thought of. All they have to do is make sure they leave no mention of me or our relationship anywhere. Under no circumstances must they ever write down my name or that of End of the Line, not on a piece of paper or even in the notes section of their phone.
My fifth and final rule is that I demand just one thing in return for my efforts – transparency. I expect candidates to tell me everything there is to know about themselves before we part ways. I want to hear their most cherished memories, their darkest thoughts, their unreached goals, their biggest regrets, their dirtiest secrets, who they are leaving behind, who won’t care and who they’ll hurt the most. I want to know about their everyday lives and the lives they don’t want their best friends to know about.
I liken it to putting livestock in the lushest pasture, feeding them the best grains and allowing them plenty of access to light and sun – do that and you will always have a better-tasting meat. For me, by really knowing what makes a candidate tick, their last breath will sound sweeter to me than any other sound in the world.
CHAPTER TEN
FIVE MONTHS AFTER DAVID
On my return from visiting Henry’s residential care home, and before I started at End of the Line, I made a diversion to a coffee shop in town.
‘Here or to go?’ a disinterested young man behind the counter mumbled. His face was familiar but I couldn’t place him.
I glanced at my watch – I was still too early to start my next shift. ‘It’s for here,’ I replied. He filled a mug with a latte, then rolled his eyes when I asked for a spoon.
I chose a table in the middle of the busy room and sat with my eyelids tightly shut, listening carefully to the conversations of strangers gathered around their circular tables. If I concentrated hard enough, I could block out the rest of the noise in the café, like the cappuccino machine, dishwasher and even the radio, so that all I heard was the communication between customers.
It was the buzz I got from listening to snapshots of others’ lives that had first drawn me to offer my time to End of the Line. I recalled how Alice, then four, was in the living room scribbling pictures of farmyard animals on sheets of paper spread across the coffee table. Effie was nine and doing her maths homework. I was on the sofa, supposed to be watching over them, but admittedly more interested in checking my messages on Internet suicide message boards. It used to be exciting knowing how much I was helping people by encouraging them to end their pain. And over time, I gained a reputation in certain dark corners of the web as the go-to girl for no-nonsense, detailed advice on the best and worst ways to do it, based on research I’d collated. I even gained a nickname, the ‘Freer of Lost Souls’. It made me feel necessary.
But online posters were transient and anonymous. They were scattered far and wide and when they ceased leaving messages, I’d never know if it was because they’d carried out their threats to kill themselves or if they’d just changed their minds and stopped posting. Rarely would I learn of their outcome, and eventually it wasn’t enough for me.
What message boards lacked was a human connection. Reading typed words was not the same as hearing pain in a person’s voice. I needed to suck up their angst, their uneasiness, their desperation and their confusion. So when I read in the local paper that End of the Line had a shortage of volunteers, I wondered if I could take my skills and knowledge in an important new direction.
Curiosity made me call their number to learn first-hand how their advice differed from the frank and honest encouragement I gave online. I made up a story about feeling desperately lonely and that I was seriously contemplating taking my own life. Except there was no advice. Instead, the woman on the other End of the Line offered calm, caring words and the time and space to talk and break down my problems. Mary still has no idea that I was the one she’d answered the phone to.
There was something habit-forming about making that first call and hearing her awful, non-judgemental, anodyne response. So, over the next two weeks, I called again and again and got the same perspective from multiple Stepford volunteers. I tested these poor misguided souls under various guises, citing debt, rape, a cheating husband, childhood sex abuse and the horrors of war as reasons for my woes. I was curious as to how long they could maintain their saccharine-sweet words before their masks slipped and they told me what they really thought. But they never did. Not once.
And that was precisely why End of the Line needed me – someone who could offer their callers an alternative viewpoint, a truthful take on their predicaments. I would be willing to go that extra mile for the right candidates and, where necessary, offer them a gentle nudge over the finishing line.
A clock on the wall in the café chimed and I opened my eyes. I put my empty mug back on the counter and received a weak smile from the boy. I looked at his name badge. Matt, it read, and sudden
ly the penny dropped – I’d found his pictures on Effie’s phone. He’d been encouraging her to send him photos of her semi-naked body.
My mood darkened as I walked towards the office. With my head bowed and my phone in my hand, I logged in to my daughter’s Facebook account. This time her inbox contained a naked and aroused photograph of Matt he’d sent her – and by the look of the decor around him, it had been taken in the back of the coffee shop. I was furious at him, and just as angry at her for not deleting it. He was a seventeen-year-old man sending a fourteen-year-old child pornographic images.
If I reported him to the police, in all likelihood he’d receive a slap on the wrist. So I took matters into my own hands.
Nothing was confidential anymore when it came to young people and social media. So if Matt was so eager to share and be validated by the world, let’s see what he thought when they started judging him by his less-than-impressive genitals. He’d been foolish enough to keep his face in the shot, so I screen-grabbed the picture and tweeted it using my anonymous account to the international chain of coffee outlets that employed him, stating his name and the branch where he worked and had taken the picture.
Then I logged on to the fake Facebook account I’d created to investigate candidates’ profiles if they gave away enough of themselves. I posted Matt’s picture to his own timeline for all to see, then to the timelines of anyone in his friends list who shared his surname. I posted it on the school’s own Facebook page, plus all those set up by parents for each individual year group. Then I logged back into Effie’s profile and posted it on her page. Finally, I changed her password so that she couldn’t take the picture down.
By the time I reached the office, I was satisfied that it was going to be the End of the Line for Effie and that boy.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The corridors leading away from the high-dependency unit at Northampton General Hospital were eerily quiet for mid-afternoon.
I’d just missed visiting hours, but that hadn’t stopped me from turning up unannounced to check if there’d been any improvement in Nate’s condition.
We’d been in this building many times over the years, for various conditions common to the homeless. Hepatitis B, bronchitis, infected foot calluses, gum abscesses and, more often than not, his early-stage cirrhosis of the liver stemming from frequent alcohol abuse. Now tuberculosis had poleaxed him, a direct result of the damage to his immune system caused by his HIV. Each disease was speeding up the progress of the other, leaving his body in constant turmoil.
His NHS records listed me as his emergency contact. Tony didn’t understand my need to stand by Nate no matter what the predicament or self-inflicted ailment that was knocking nine bells out of him. My husband had urged me many times to ‘do myself a favour’ and wash my hands of him. But I could never do that.
The doors to his ward were locked to prevent the spread of infection, so I peered through the windows that stretched across three sections of the room, but still I couldn’t locate him. Last time, he’d struggled to breathe, so – while he was heavily sedated – a noisy machine did the hard work for him. A plastic mask had been taped to his mouth and a pipe inserted into his throat, making his chest rise and fall. It had been heartbreaking to watch.
Living rough, he’d wear layer after layer of clothing. He’d told me it was easier to carry them on his back than risk leaving them somewhere and having them stolen. I remembered how emaciated and angular he’d looked in just a blue, paper-thin hospital gown, barely making a dent in the bedsheets. I’d remained by the side of his bed for the best part of a week, like I had when Henry battled pneumonia, and I wondered how much of my life I’d spent willing someone I loved to fight for their life.
I scanned the room again; perhaps I hadn’t recognised Nate because the nurses had cleaned him up. He’d likely have been scrubbed and bathed, his beard trimmed and his hair cut short. He’d hate that. He hated any resemblance to the boy I’d shared a foster home with.
Our foster mother, Sylvia Hughes, was the greatest manipulator I’d ever met. The only positive experience from my time spent living under her roof was learning how to convince the world you are one thing when, inside, you are someone altogether different.
She’d convinced everyone of importance that she was providing a safe haven for the dozens of foster children she’d welcomed over the years. But to those of us in her care, we were there to serve a purpose.
Even now I can remember the taste of fear that lodged in my throat and how my pace slowed when I turned the corner on the approach to her apartment block. When the weekend loomed, I’d dread returning to the tired, ten-storey, grey-concrete building. Being at another new school with no friends was still more appealing than being in Sylvia’s company for a whole weekend.
I can remember every minute of that last weekend with Nate, right from the moment I walked up the staircase on a Friday afternoon, holding my breath as I turned the door handle. I crossed my fingers and hoped Nate would already be home, but the flat was silent.
Social services had us listed as living in the apartment next door. It was a pleasantly decorated place with two spare bedrooms packed with toys, and a kitchen with a fridge full of food. However, we were only rarely allowed inside, when social workers made appointments to check on our well-being. ‘Hell-being’, Nate had renamed it. The flat where we actually lived was very different.
I kicked a clear path through the old newspapers and bags of rubbish clogging up the corridor, and with a rumbling belly I opened the fridge door. But, as was often the case, all it contained was a broken light and an avalanche of freezer frost. Inside was a solitary frozen cheese and tomato pizza that I placed under the grill.
I cut it into symmetrical slices as the front door opened and Sylvia and Nate entered. My heart sank. By the dazed look on his face, I knew where she had taken him. Through half-closed eyes, he tried to pretend everything was okay by offering me an absent-minded smile that we both knew was disguising something else. At fourteen, Nate was on the cusp of manhood, but his height and slender frame gave him the appearance of a boy much younger. At thirteen, I too was small for my age. He stumbled into his bedroom and closed the door behind him.
‘How was school?’ asked Sylvia, and grabbed a slice from my hand, vacuuming it up like a snake swallowing a mouse. As her T-shirt rose up and exposed her belly, I noted it had fresh puncture wounds. She must have given up trying to locate a vein in her arms or legs that hadn’t already collapsed. She relied on long-sleeved tops to mask the fact that she was a functioning heroin addict.
‘It was okay, thanks,’ I replied.
‘Good girl,’ Sylvia replied, then sparked up a joint and made her way to the living room. ‘I’m going next door to chill.’
I waited to hear the sound of the television before tiptoeing to Nate’s bedroom and quietly pushing the closed door ajar. I hated closed doors. He awoke with a start, throwing himself back against the wall like a cornered animal.
‘It’s okay, it’s me,’ I whispered. ‘I’ve brought you pizza.’
‘Thank you,’ he croaked, his throat sore, and he calmed down.
We remained in silence, sharing the food from the plate as I tried hard not to acknowledge the bruises on his wrists and neck, or the dried crusts of blood inside his nostrils. I noticed the red spotting in the underwear he’d left lying in a heap on the floor, still inside his trousers. But I knew better than to ask what’d happened or who’d been responsible.
He slowly drifted into the safety of sleep to the sounds of the radio being played loudly next door, permeating the walls. I squirmed my way in front of him, protecting his skinny frame with my back. I moulded my body into his and pulled his arm over my chest.
‘I love you, Nate,’ I whispered, knowing that we were safer together than when we were apart.
‘Hello, Mrs Morris, isn’t it?’
The past evaporated at Dr Khatri’s voice. I hadn’t heard him approach, and I recoiled when he tapped me on
the shoulder. ‘What brings you to High Dependency?’
‘My friend Nate,’ I said.
‘Oh, right,’ he replied, a puzzled expression on his face. ‘I wasn’t aware he’d been admitted.’
‘You said last time he was here that he needs to make some serious changes to his circumstances or you were worried about his future. Well, I don’t know what else I can do. I’ve begged him to start getting his CD4 cell count monitored, to stop drinking, and I’ve even offered him a room in my house to get clean. But he refuses.’
My lips began to tremble and I curled my toes and fingers to stop myself from crying. Dr Khatri nodded sympathetically, as if he understood my predicament and had seen it many times before.
‘Unfortunately, that’s about all you can do,’ he replied with a kind smile. ‘I can try to talk to him again if you’d like?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Okay, leave it with me.’ He smiled again before leaving me alone outside Nate’s ward.
I left without seeing Nate, but hoped he could feel my presence.
CHAPTER TWELVE
FIVE MONTHS, ONE WEEK AFTER DAVID
There were thirty or so members of the Northants Women’s Circle inside the function room of Great Houghton’s village hall.
They queued at a table, on which was a tray of biscuits and an urn of hot water. They dropped teabags and spoonfuls of instant coffee and sugar into mismatched mugs. Most of them looked as if they were knocking on heaven’s door, and they’d come to hear Mary and me discuss our voluntary work at End of the Line.
Janine had only sent me there with Mary out of spite. She was well aware that my comfort zone extended only as far as charming local businesses, applying for National Lottery grants and organising bake and jumble sales. It most definitely did not include this decrepit audience.
