by John Marrs
I’d never had any reason to check up on Charlotte, but she’d left me with so many unanswered questions, she owed me explanations. It was eight o’clock in the evening when I began with her phone and relived our text conversations. I didn’t like that the police had probably read through our private moments, even the mundane crap about whose turn it was to get the car serviced. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed seeing her name appear on my phone.
As Charlotte’s pregnancy progressed, the number of calls she’d made to friends fell steeply but her emails and texts rose. I guess it was easier to hide her sadness behind the written word than to disguise the emptiness in her voice.
I scrolled through her Facebook timeline, and in her last few months she hadn’t posted a single thing. Most mums-to-be can’t wait to talk about what stage of pregnancy they’re at or their cravings or to complain about how fat they’re feeling. But I’d been the only one of us to give our friends status updates or share photographs. Charlotte had gone from an active poster to a lurker.
I leafed through the saved documents on her laptop, but they all dated back to her pre-pregnancy design work. Her music library was full of the cheesy pop she loved so much and there was nothing suspicious about either her browser history or her favourites bar. Most of her emails had been deleted, and then deleted from the deleted folder. Her cookies were also cleared. Just as I feared, there was nothing new to learn about my wife.
I was surprised – and disappointed – that there were no photographs of us at all on her phone or her iPad. I’d teased her about how trigger-happy she was when it came to her camera phone; it didn’t matter where we were – in the kitchen, on holiday by a pool, or in the aisle of a supermarket, the girl loved a picture. I flicked though several folders on her devices, but she’d erased every image she’d ever taken of us. It was like our relationship was so hideous to her that she needed to wipe away any trace of it. Even four months after her death, she was still finding new ways to hurt me.
As midnight approached, I knew from experience that if I continued down this road any further tonight, I’d wind myself up further and further and wouldn’t be able to sleep. But as I was about to put the iPad away, I lost grip of it. My fingers slid across the onscreen keyboard as I scrambled to stop it falling to the floor.
As I picked it up, I suddenly became aware of two calculator apps – the standard operating-system version and another. Who needed two calculators? I clicked on the unfamiliar one and four numbers had already been inputted – 1301. I recognised them immediately: it was the date Charlotte died; a date she had been working towards.
I pressed the equals key but nothing happened. I followed it with the plus, the minus and divide keys, but it wasn’t until I pressed the percentage symbol that an entirely new screen popped up. It was a home screen that burst into a hive of activity as various folders of photographs, documents and notes sprang to life and covered the screen. She’d downloaded an app that allowed her to hide what I was never meant to find.
I took the tablet to my bedroom and propped myself up on the bed. The first documents folder contained dozens of screengrabs she’d taken from a variety of websites, and pages of links to other sites. All of them related to suicide.
Images included illustrations of where best to sever an arm to effectively bleed to death, and documents featured the best combination of tablets needed for a successful overdose. There were hyperlinks as to where they could be purchased online and from which country.
Charlotte had also favourited a link to a message board called The Final Push, which suggested ‘suicide hotspots’ around the country. There were multistorey car parks without safety railings or netting, accessible bridges, railway lines with broken fencing, and stretches of water with powerful undertows that would drag you under in seconds. There were photos, street maps, written instructions of how to find them, postcodes for satnavs, and Ordnance Survey map coordinates. Everything had been thought about in minute detail, and Charlotte hadn’t only read them, she’d bookmarked them, too.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screen, saddened by the desperation of people who were at their wits’ end and sickened at the enthusiasm of others encouraging them to die. As far as I could see, nobody had inserted a link or a telephone number to End of the Line. Nobody had suggested maybe death wasn’t the right way to go about things or urged them to talk to someone.
There were threads from teens who’d had enough of living their too-few years and victims of terminal illnesses and mental health problems. Some came from elderly people so scared of a long, drawn-out death that they wanted to go on their own terms. Loneliness, abuse, depression, war, bullying, sexuality, eating disorders . . . the list of reasons to die was endless.
I scoured the pages for names that might indicate Charlotte was a member of these boards but I couldn’t find any proof she’d posted. Maybe she’d just lurked there like she had on Facebook.
A thread on another message board caught my eye, made just days ago. The subject heading was ‘Need someone 2 Talk 2 As I Die’. The poster had almost three hundred messages numbered under her avatar. She’d chosen a photo of a young Angelina Jolie and the screen-name GrlInterrupted.
So guys, I’ve decided where and when to do it (pills arrived on Wednesday from Trinidad and I’ve booked into a hotel in Birmingham). Also decided that even though I came in alone, I don’t want to go alone. Anyone here want to be on the other end of the phone as it happens? I need company.
Among the many congratulatory replies, nobody in her online support network had the guts to blur the lines between fantasy and reality and take her up on her request. But they were quick to recommend other screen-names who might help.
Whereabouts are you hon? asked someone by the name of R.I.P.
Leicester, UK, she replied.
U know Chloe4 who used to post here? She was a Brit. She used to talk about a woman over there who’d helped friends of hers once and who was now helping her. It must’ve worked as we never heard from Chloe4 again, and we were pretty tight.’
What do you mean by ‘help’?
She tells people what to do, what not to do, she knows the risks, suggests what to say in notes, etc. Chloe4 called the woman the ‘Freer of Lost Souls’.
Does she post here?
No, she’s pro. She keeps it on the downlow cos she works for a suicide helpline called End of the Line or something like that. Lol. Someone recommended her to Chloe4.
I let out a deep breath I didn’t know I’d been holding, prised my eyes away from the screen and glanced outside. The darkness was making way for a rising sun. An occasional car headlight illuminated the road as commuters began their new day.
I’d spent months searching for something – anything – to explain why Charlotte had ended her life and why it was with a complete stranger. Now something told me that if the ‘Freer of Lost Souls’ actually existed, she would have an answer for me.
CHAPTER TEN
FOUR MONTHS, ONE WEEK AFTER CHARLOTTE
It was like banging my head against a brick wall.
It had taken effort, skill and organisation and where was I? Nowhere. Try as I might, I was no closer to finding out whether the Freer of Lost Souls was a real person or the figment of a morally bankrupt website’s imagination. However, the one thing searching for her had given me was purpose.
The day after first reading the post about her, I did a keyword search on the same message board and four others. Her nickname was buried within hundreds of other posts but she’d definitely been mentioned a couple of dozen times, although not as often in recent years. Like every decent urban myth, nobody could actually verify her existence. I guessed if she was that good at what she did, the proof of her successes were lying six feet under, not boasting about her online.
I still struggled to comprehend that someone who worked for a helpline might have an ulterior motive. I don’t know why though – until a day earlier, I hadn’t realised message forums exist
ed to encourage suicidal people to die. If she was real, I’d hunt her down and lure her out from beneath the rock where she was hiding.
I set up camp on the dining room table and created a profile for my own message board account. When R.I.P. ignored my direct message, I turned to GrlInterrupted instead.
Hi, sorry to bother you, I typed, I just wondered if you had any luck trying to find the woman from End of the Line that R.I.P told you about? The Freer of Lost Souls?
I paced the flat as I waited for an alert to say she’d replied. Within the hour, she had.
No, sorry, bro. R.I.P didn’t know anything more about her. Even called the branches myself but kept getting different folk. Like finding a needle in a haystack, eh? Not sure what I’d have said anyway – ‘hi, which one of you bitches wants to listen to me die?’ Lolz.
I replied with a ‘lolz’ of my own but nothing about this amused me.
I needed air and caffeine so I swapped the flat for a nearby parade of shops. I used to be a regular at the café most Sunday mornings, and I’d return home with a bag of muffins, cinnamon swirls and hot drinks for Charlotte and me. It was the first time I’d gone back since she’d died and it felt peculiar ordering for one.
I asked for a double cappuccino and, as the coffee machine spluttered to life, a wave of guilt washed over me in a sliding door moment. I wondered how different my life might be if only I’d been a better, more attentive husband. A man who wasn’t so insistent that his way was the right way. That Ryan would have realised earlier just how serious Charlotte’s depression was, and listened to her instead of trying to cure her. Now Charlotte would be standing with him in the queue, one hand clutching her purse and the other clasping the handle of Daniel’s pram. I shook my head and the alternate universe melted away like a snowflake.
I took my drink back to the flat, trying to guesstimate how long it might take to prove or disprove the Freer of Lost Souls’ existence. The only way would be to call, and to keep calling the helpline until I tracked her down. The odds were against me. Northamptonshire had ninety-four part-time volunteers, Leicestershire eighty-six, Warwickshire fifty-eight and Bedfordshire sixty. Give or take a few who might have come and gone since the last tally was published in its annual report, I had about a one-in-three-hundred chance of finding her.
I couldn’t think of a way to cut corners and speed up the process. And that was assuming the person I was looking for really was a her. It could very easily have been male. Either way, they’d need to be convinced I was for real.
I devised a backstory for myself. I’d claim depression was ruining my life and that I didn’t see any purpose in continuing. I’d tell them not only had I contemplated suicide but I’d almost gone ahead with it; however, something had held me back. I needed someone to help me take those extra few steps forward because I couldn’t do it alone.
To make it work, I needed to be organised. I opened up a blank Excel spreadsheet on Charlotte’s laptop to make a note of the name of each End of the Line volunteer who answered. I’d add the time of the call and a brief outline of their responses to what I told them. Some likely shared the same Christian name, so I’d type adjectives like ‘old’, ‘young’, ‘nasal’, ‘regional’ or ‘foreign accent’ to separate them.
I’d give them my middle name, Steven, and I’d adjust my sleep pattern to cover all their shifts. The task ahead of me was Herculean. But the quicker I cracked on, the quicker I’d know for sure if I was hunting for a real person or a ghost in the machine. I even got hold of a Dictaphone, and with a little bit of gadgetry bought online, I could plug it into my phone and record all my calls in case it was her.
Each day, I spoke to as many different volunteers as I could. My conversations continued for as long as necessary until I could either include them on my spreadsheet as a ‘yes’, a ‘maybe’ or a probable ‘no’. Patterns began to emerge of who worked when, how frequently, and which days of the week I could find them.
A little over a fortnight later and my spreadsheet went on for pages, packed full of names, dates, times and descriptions. But there had been no obvious ‘yeses’.
I felt shitty for abusing End of the Line’s resources by calling so often and for pulling the wool over their eyes, especially as they seemed like good people. They didn’t try to talk Steven out of wanting to end his life; instead, they listened, helped him explore what he was feeling and let him find his own way forward. Without exception, every voice was coming from a place of goodness. I had to keep reminding myself that so was I.
There were times when I found their kindness so warm and heartfelt that my guard slipped and Ryan came out. Then it was me admitting to feelings of hopelessness and me who was struggling.
I began painting mental pictures of what the Freer of Lost Souls might look like. She was in her late fifties, a spinster with pale skin that was beginning to loosen and hang from her cheeks and neck. There’d be deep lines etched across her forehead and her shoulders would be hunched from the weight of the guilt she carried but refused to acknowledge. On the surface, her eyes would seem charitable but if you stared into them deeply enough, you’d catch a glimmer of the woman inside – a dark, cold soul who thrived on the pain of others. She was like Judi Dench in that film Notes on a Scandal. Only even more devious.
Whoever she was, the Freer came to dominate my days, my nights, my waking thoughts and my unconscious dreams. While she had given me a function, I’d also made her an obsession that was delaying my healing. But I knew that if I threw in the towel now without completing what I’d set out to do, I’d forever wonder if she actually existed.
Of course I didn’t tell my family or friends what I was up to because they’d think I was mad. But judging by the number of frustrated voicemails and texts they left, complaining that my phone was permanently engaged, they had an idea something was up. So I started joining them just often enough for drinks at the pub, a family dinner at home or a get-together at a restaurant to convince them that over four and a half months after Charlotte’s suicide, I was on the road to recovery.
In part, it was true. I was on a road. And, eventually, it led to the woman I was looking for.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FOUR MONTHS, TWO WEEKS AFTER CHARLOTTE
Eighty-two people. That’s how many I’d lied to and misled before I found the person nicknamed the Freer of Lost Souls.
‘Good evening, you’ve reached the End of the Line, this is Laura speaking. May I ask your name?’ she began.
I pressed record on my Dictaphone like I did with each call, and with the earpiece in place I slipped quickly and easily into my alter ego, Steven, like a comfortable pair of slippers. I trotted out the same reply I’d given the last eighty-one times. ‘I’ve not called somewhere like this before. I don’t know where to begin.’
‘Well, let’s start with a name. What shall I call you?’
Like most of the other volunteers, there was something reassuring about her voice. She was well-spoken, her tone friendly and soothing. I could imagine her reading a bedtime story on children’s television.
‘Steven,’ I replied.
‘It’s nice to talk to you, Steven,’ she continued. ‘Can I ask what made you decide to call us this evening?’
‘I’m not sure. I – I feel like I haven’t got . . . anyone. I don’t think I want to be . . . here . . . anymore.’ I’d read the script so many times recently that I knew it off by heart. I knew where to sound choked and where to pause for dramatic effect. If an Oscar were ever awarded for Best Dramatic Role via the Telephone, I’d be a dead cert to win.
‘Well, it’s great that you’ve called,’ she said. ‘Tell me about the people who love and care about you. Who do you have in your life who falls into that category?’
I pretended to think for a moment. ‘Nobody really.’ I exaggerated a deep sigh. ‘I’ve got no one at all.’
She asked if I had friends I could turn to and sympathised when I said I had none. Her responses were textbook. My f
ingers slid quietly across the laptop keyboard, adding her to my spreadsheet. Laura wasn’t an unusual name but she was the first volunteer that I’d come across with it. Already I could tell she was a glass-half-full kind of woman.
Unlikely, I typed.
‘Have you seen your doctor and told them how you’re feeling?’
‘Yes, and she put me on antidepressants.’
‘And how have they worked for you?’
‘It’s been four months and I still don’t feel there’s anything to get up for in the morning. Sometimes I think I’d be better off just saving them all up and . . . you know . . .’
‘Sometimes or often?’
Again, I hesitated. ‘Often,’ I whispered.
Our conversation wasn’t going any further than the last eighty-one times with her predecessors. I heard a faint rustling and guessed she was new and consulting a manual. If nothing else, I’d be good practice for her. I stifled a yawn and started to look at the football results on the BBC Sport website.
‘You don’t need to be embarrassed, Steven. We’ve all thought about ending our lives at some time or another. Have you ever tried to do it before?’
Hold up, did she just say ‘we’ve all’?
None of the other eighty-one helpline staff admitted that. Maybe she just wanted me to believe that she really did understand me.
‘No,’ I replied, as if I were ashamed. ‘But I did plan it out once.’
‘You planned it out once?’
I followed the advice I’d read online and told her about making it easier for those I’d leave behind by getting my affairs in order before I died. I looked at a page of notes I’d made and brought up the railway track near Kelney that could be reached through a broken fence. She listened quietly as my imagination did the talking.
‘Perhaps, deep down, you aren’t serious about ending your life,’ she said. It was less of a question and more of a statement. And then something in her voice switched from warm and comfortable to accusatory.
