The Regret

by Dan Malakin

  Everyone else in her life, Konrad, Becca, even her dad, had given up on her – they all had or could easily get Spence’s number, but none had bothered to get in touch, to check she was okay – but Lily loved her, she was sure of that, despite how she’d been at the hospital. How could she desert her daughter? How could she leave her behind?

  Rachel remembered her father in the kitchen talking about her mum. She got rid of me, then she got rid of you…

  Was that really what happened when she went to live with her gran? Did her own mum send her away so she could starve herself to death? Was she doing the same thing? Spence was bound to get sick of her being here, sooner or later, and she’d have to go home. Lily wouldn’t be able to live with her, not in the state she was in. What would happen then?

  You know what will happen then.

  Rachel locked Spence’s phone, her heart wrenching as Lily’s face disappeared into the darkness, and Rachel pressed her fist to her mouth. She needed to calm down. Everything was beginning to whip around inside. Her mum must have felt like this – like she’d failed, like there was no other way, like her daughter would have a better life far from her. Rachel twisted the lid off the Demerol and tipped two of the small white pills into her palm. Fuck it. She shook out another and pushed all three to her mouth, grinding them between her teeth, shuddering at the bitter taste.

  From the kitchen came the sound of a cork being eased from a bottle of wine. ‘Ready!’ Spence called.

  She padded over to the table. ‘You really don’t have to go to all this effort every time,’ she said, as he pulled out her chair.

  He always made it look so special for dinner. On a white tablecloth, washing-machine clean, he’d laid out black woven placemats, the cutlery precisely straight on either side, their wine glasses waiting a barely respectful distance from the last tines of their forks. Between their settings sat a dainty green seawater bowl, heaped with fresh grated Parmesan, the tiny silver spoon buried into the side as though it’d been thrown at the cheese like a dart. The line of chunky tea lights sitting deep in their smoky glasses on the counter gave the kitchen a romantic glow. He didn’t have to do all this, but she appreciated his efforts to make it nice for her, to make the best possible ambiance for her to eat.

  ‘Cheers,’ Spence said, tipping his wine glass towards her.

  Rachel toasted him and took a ten-calorie sip, savouring the dry oaky flavour. ‘It smells amazing,’ she said, lowering her nose to the graceful swirl of creamy pasta, speckled with black pepper and pancetta, on her plate. The muscle in her ribs seized again, but she kept the pain off her face and carried on pretending to sniff while frantically massaging the area with her fingertips until she was able to sit up straight. She prayed those pills kicked in soon.

  ‘Boner appetite,’ Spence said.

  ‘Boners to you too,’ Rachel replied, separating out a strand of spaghetti. She twirled it with her fork, smothering it with sauce, and lifted it into her mouth. She chewed slowly, methodically, taking minutes to finish. And repeat.

  To his credit, Spence didn’t stare. Instead, he ate his food like a normal human being, dabbing with a napkin between bites, and carried on the conversation as though he weren’t sharing the table with an actual mad woman. She didn’t deserve to have such a good friend, someone who’d come back from holiday to defend her at work, who put up with her mooching miserably around his apartment, who had his legs shredded for her, although thankfully it had looked worse than it was, and none of the cuts needed more than a plaster. How much longer would he put up with her? A week was a long time to babysit even the best of friends. Whether she wanted to go or not, she needed to pull herself together and get out of here, before this relationship became as ruined as the rest in her life. She couldn’t bear the thought of that happening.

  She cleared her throat. ‘Spence?’

  He paused, fork halfway to his mouth. Seeing her face, he frowned. ‘Pasta no good?’

  ‘This last week… You could have done so much with the rest of your time off – you could have flown back out to Greece. But instead you’ve put your life on hold to play nursemaid to me.’

  Spence eased his smile into something a bit more relaxed. ‘It’s been such a pleasure, really. How often do we get to hang out? It’s always work, or a quick drink.’

  That was true, and if any positives at all could be gleaned from this horror show, it was that their friendship had deepened from the time they’d spent together. Who knew, for example, that he dressed as smartly sitting around watching morning telly as he did when he was off for a night out? Meanwhile, she hadn’t changed out of her trackie bottoms in days. Every time she saw herself in the mirror – hair like an eccentric scientist, the same complexion as someone slid out on a tray in a morgue – she shuddered. Although, thinking about it, perhaps he was trying to make the same point. All the more reason to go before her stay became unwelcome.

  ‘You’ve been so kind to me,’ she said. ‘But I really think–’

  ‘The worst thing you can do is rush back before you’re ready.’

  ‘What about work? Aren’t you due in tomorrow?’

  ‘Fuck them. For how they’re treating you. I was thinking of leaving anyway.’

  Spence had spoken to Linda a few days ago, but it didn’t look great. Somehow, all the backups for the eMAR records had become corrupted. Of course, the tribunal could see this as evidence the whole eMAR system was faulty, but Linda had checked the records of pretty much every other nurse who’d worked at the hospital, even the bank nurses who’d only been there days, and no-one else had such inconsistencies with their paper records.

  ‘It’s not their fault the backups got corrupted,’ Rachel said.

  ‘You’ve worked there two years.’ He forked some pasta into his mouth, covering his lips as he chewed. ‘Isn’t that worth something? And I told Linda all the Griffin stuff was true. So not only are they calling you incompetent, they’re calling me a liar!’

  Rachel shook her head. First his relationship, now his job. No way was she going to be responsible for that. She was like a vortex, sucking anything good from people’s lives. ‘I’ve got to get out of your hair.’

  ‘I like you in my hair. You’re fine in my hair.’

  ‘But what about Lily? I need–’

  ‘She’s fine. You saw the text from Mark, she’s doing great.’ Spence gave Rachel’s hand a reassuring squeeze. ‘Focus on you for a change.’

  Rachel thought of trawling through the mess waiting for her at home. The unpaid bills, the investigation at work, the dying relationships littering the battlefield of her life.

  Spence picked up his wine, took a thoughtful sip, then put it back down again. ‘Let’s be honest, Rach. The state you’re in, I wouldn’t be able to let you go home. I’d have to take you to a hospital. You know that, right? So you either recover here, watching Millionaire’s Secret while your fabulous best friend takes care of you, or you go to some cold miserable clinic where they prod you and weigh you and threaten to stick tubes in your tummy. Okay?’

  The first warm flickers from the Demerol started in her chest. She breathed out, her eyes slipping closed. Why was she always fighting herself? Why did she always have to make it so difficult? Wouldn’t it be nicer to hang around here for a bit longer, until she felt ready to face Griffin again?

  ‘I mean, you’re eating, right?’ Spence said. ‘I’ve seen you scoffing those chocs!’

  It was true – she was eating. Maybe not as much as he thought, but a little, every day. That was a big part of recovery, and couldn’t be dismissed.

  ‘You’ve been here before,’ Spence went on. ‘This isn’t the first time you’ve beaten this thing.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she murmured.

  ‘Allow yourself the time and space to recover. Griffin will still be there when you go home, so give yourself the best possible chance of beating that bastard. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Don’t let him win.’


  She opened her eyes, and smiled. ‘I won’t.’

  Spence nodded to her plate. ‘Now go on, do your wacky eating thing.’

  She laughed and picked out a strand of spaghetti with her fork. ‘Yes, master.’

  As she twirled it, carefully, her vision splitting a little, she glanced at the tall pepper mill and the short salt grinder beside the Parmesan bowl. Something in the angle of the three made her remember her parents, an argument, her father pacing the kitchen, hunched, head down, her mother in pursuit, barely up to his shoulders, her fleshless lips flapping as she shrieked insults. Round and round they went, hating each other, while she, six if that, stood and watched.

  You were the cheese. Worthless calories.

  Spence lifted the Parmesan bowl and offered her a spoon. ‘You want?’

  ‘No thanks,’ she replied. Push those thoughts away. Take a leaf from Spence. Positive, positive, positive! Enjoy the Demerol buzz. You might as well. Rachel smothered her spaghetti strand in sauce and – Go on! Live a little! – speared a cube of pancetta. At least twenty calories, but worth it. She grinned, her brain feeling floaty. ‘How about we lock the doors, block out the windows, and stay here forever?’

  Spence dabbed his mouth. ‘What happens when we run out of Millionaire’s Secret?’

  ‘There’s a new one, I think. These hot blokes compete to date a woman who turns out to be trans.’

  ‘Sold to the hot momma in the ten jumpers!’

  ‘How do you know I’m a momma?’ Rachel took a reckless swig of wine. ‘What if I told you I had a foot-long salami down here?’

  Spence cackled with laughter. ‘I don’t know… Marry me?’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Lily

  It wasn’t a dream, Rachel wasn’t asleep. It was more a spaced-out scenario, her thoughts playing through a fantasy, one she used to have all the time in her teens.

  She was a young girl, curled in bed, hands folded beneath her pillow, pretending to be asleep. The bedroom door opened, and her mum – she could tell by the weight of her footsteps, the perfume of her soap – came into the room. Rachel’s heart beat faster. She’d come back. Finally, after waiting for so long, she was back.

  Her mum lay on the bed behind her, weighing so little that she barely caused a dip in the mattress. Rachel felt the press of her body, the soothing flow of her breath on her neck, and a sense of deep contentment, one she could not remember experiencing before, settled in her chest.

  ‘It’s time for me to go,’ her mum said, her voice already far away.

  No, she thought. Not yet. Please not yet. Please, please–

  She tried to say something, but she couldn’t speak. She tried to turn around, to face her mum, but she couldn’t move. As the image faded to black, she screamed and thrashed in her mind, although her body remained perfectly still.

  Rachel opened her eyes. The vision had been so vivid, the loss of her mum so acute, it brought to her heart such an aching grief that she was suddenly back to being ten years old, lying in her bedroom on the evening of the funeral, weeping by herself.

  This will be Lily soon. Yearning for the mother’s love she will never have, because you’ll already be dead.

  What time was it? She didn’t have her phone, and the echo of moonlight coming through the curtains held no answers. Her head was pounding and her sheets were wet from the melancholy fever dreams, each more heartbreaking than the last, that had been coming and going for hours. She shouldn’t have had three Demerol, they’d smashed her sideways, but it had been fun at the time, a welcome release, sitting up with Spence, finishing the bottle of wine, listening to MistaJam play dance anthems on Radio 1 and swapping jokes about some of the crazies on the ward. But worse than the comedown, that last dose had pushed her body into dependence. She could tell from the withdrawal twitches in her limbs, the sensation of insects crawling over the surface of her brain, the nervy edge to the voice telling her she really should take some more, because she was in pain, right? Every part of her body was hurting, and what good was it doing her lying here hurting like this?

  She turned on the bedside light, gritting against the jolt of agony in her shoulder. Even pressing the button made her finger hurt. Was it any surprise? She knew she needed to stay active, that her muscles seized up if she didn’t, but instead of listening to her body she’d shut it up with sedatives, and now look at her. She couldn’t blink without wincing. Her skeleton felt like it was made of cracked glass, with every movement causing more fractures.

  Recovery?

  Such bullshit. She was getting weaker by the day.

  Her hand went to the nightstand drawer. The plastic bottle of Demerol was inside. Why not admit the truth for once? She longed to be back in the hospital, back on the psych ward, locked away from the world, where all her failings in it no longer mattered, where she could drift light as a ghost through the pale corridors, mind effortlessly blank, a hazy smile touching her lips. So at peace, so relaxed. That was why she had the stash at home. That was why every time something went wrong, her first reaction was to not eat for a day. That was why she was allowing herself to wallow at Spence’s place when she should be at home, fighting Alan Griffin.

  She slammed the drawer shut and tossed onto her other side, the wrought iron bed frame squealing in protest. Look at what she was doing to the people who cared about her, to Lily, to Mark, even her dad. Wasn’t a sad masochistic part of her secretly pleased she’d driven them away?

  She got rid of me, then she got rid of you…

  And she was doing the same to Spence, imposing on him. She’d even stolen his bedroom! It should be him in here, lying awake in the middle of the night, maybe sharing sweet words with some hot new stud, not his fucked-up mate sweating out her opioid addiction after ditching her family.

  She turned back to the drawer, yanked it open. She shook out two Demerol, picturing herself lying back and waiting for the warmth to come in and smother the hunger, the pain, the panicking voice. She stared at the small white pills in her palm.

  Maybe it would be better for everyone if you just went home, and waited for the end.

  Something inside Rachel seized at that thought – not out of the horror of it, as she would have hoped, but out of excitement. She could go home, lock the door, and let nature do what it does best when it’s deprived of sustenance. Who would be there to stop her?

  No-one.

  An urgent queasy feeling swamped her stomach. She saw Lily as a teenage girl, tall as a willow, with a slender serious face. Her long brown hair was side-parted, a single braid going past her exposed ear. She was crouching by a gravestone, frowning but sad, like she’d been told something important, and she’d said she understood, but really she had no idea what they were talking about, and knew she never would.

  She’s too young to remember you. Probably best to do it now, rather than wait.

  What, like it’d been for her? Not knowing whether her mum died because she was ill, or because she didn’t love her enough to stay alive? Haunted by her skeletal presence in every fucking thing she did. Is that what she wanted for Lily?

  That was if they even let her die, which they wouldn’t. Mark would burst through the door, call the ambulance, and she’d be dragged off to the hospital, cast into the wilderness of shrinks and psychiatric wards. Committed for what, five years? Ten? Before they deemed her sane enough to live unsupervised. She’d be huddled in some damp council hovel, weathered away from years of starvation, fingers creaking as she logged into Facebook to see what Griffin had posted on her timeline today.

  She’d be absent from Lily’s life, desperately wanting to be a part of it, but not able to be because she’d messed it all up. And by the time she was out and ready to reconnect, to say sorry for all the lost years, Lily wouldn’t want to know her, same as she didn’t want to know her dad. Imagine what that would be like. A living hell. A living death. She saw it, the two of them meeting, the same disgust in her daughter’s face that her dad no doubt s
aw in hers. No matter how many times she’d try to apologise, to explain her absence, to plead for another chance, Lily wouldn’t want to know. She wouldn’t want anything to do with her.

  Rachel pushed out of bed, her body in agony, but she had to do this. If that were true, if that was how her life played out, then it would be worse than anything Griffin might do to her, worse than any torture she could imagine.

  She grabbed the Demerol from the drawer, hobbled to the en suite, and flushed them down the toilet. As the pills disappeared into the u-bend, she knew it was a stupid gesture, that Spence had plenty of other pharmaceuticals to pilfer in the morning, but she also knew that didn’t matter. There’d always be more drugs. There’d always be more reasons to punish herself. That had nothing to do with Griffin. So many excuses, and she was sick of them. Sick of them.

  Even if she did somehow get rid of Alan Griffin, even if she managed to make Mark and Becca and Spence see her as a normal human being again, and not some mental case they’ve been lumbered with, even if Lily wasn’t so scarred already, inside and out, then something else would happen, some other drama, and she’d be right back here again. Alone and miserable in the middle of the night, starving.

  This was the last time. This had to stop.

  In the morning, she was going back to the clinic, to check in as a day patient. She needed to accept she still had a problem, that if she didn’t understand this fact and take the appropriate steps then, like a cancer, it would keep coming back and coming back. No-one should lose their mum so young, but it had happened, and she had to come to terms with that. Finally, that had to happen.

  Mark wasn’t like this. He’d not had a relapse in over three years. Maybe there was something in his food diaries, his mindful meditations, his claims that he welcomed anorexic thoughts instead of beating them down. Who was she trying to beat anyway? Herself? No wonder the battle was futile. All that happened was one side, her good side, her conscious mind, got tired and gave up, letting the bad side win.