They didn’t know where he had got the drugs, but together with the alcohol there had been little chance that he could have been saved even if they had found him sooner. He had lain on the bench in the park until mid-morning, when a dog walker had noticed that he hadn’t moved since she had first seen him almost an hour before. And so they came and took him away and they had searched her out and told her because friends had said he lived with her.
“He was my lodger for just a little while. That’s all.” And they accepted that as fact, after all she was old enough to be his mother wasn’t she?
Mary had stayed with Jane and together they visited the funeral directors. He looked peaceful. The way out that he had chosen hadn’t disfigured his fine face. She had reached and pushed back the heavy fringe while trying to focus on the positives, to let go the horror and to hold back the tears.
The days following his suicide were a blur. She knew that she could never go home again. At the last he had stolen her vestiges of love for her marital nest and forced her to move on. Her mum and dad were surprisingly supportive and bit back the questions they longed to ask, and so the small room of her childhood and youth welcomed her back and simplified her life for just a while.
It was time to change and to grow, she saw that and signed up for a course to train as a counsellor. She would take what she had learned and try to help others.
The clergyman’s droning voice wound down to the dreadful end. They moved to take a turn to toss flowers and earth onto his coffin. Finally as the small gathering dispersed, she walked with her friends down the tree lined path and left the splendour and the catastrophe that had been Jacob behind them in the cold ground.
The End
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PICTURES OF YOU: a gripping psychological suspense thriller Page 20
