How to Fall in Love (13 page)

‘This thing was what got me into trouble.
Call someone on your emergency list whenever you have a suicidal thought
,
it says. So I had one. First on my emergency list is you. I called you. You didn’t answer. Second should be my girlfriend and third should be my best friend, but they’re not on the bloody list. My mother’s dead and my father’s dying. They’re not on the list. Failing that,
Do something that makes you happy
whenever you have a suicidal thought
.’ He clenched the remains of the note in his fist. ‘Seeing as I’d already eaten my food and had my walk, what other happy thing could I possibly do today? Then I remembered the playground and heard the kids laughing and I thought, that’s fucking happy, maybe they’ll make me fucking happy. So I sat there for an hour, not feeling very fucking happy, and then this garda comes along and asks me if I’m some paedo! Of course I’m going to have an attitude if he thinks I’m some sicko, gawking at kids. So you can take your fucking crisis plan and stuff it up your hole!’ he yelled, throwing the tattered bits of paper in the air. ‘Your friend’s boyfriend left her, her mother died and you’re not doing much better yourself. Thanks for showing me the beauty of life.’

‘Okay …’ I faltered, trying not to be afraid of this man I didn’t know while at the same time struggling to convince myself that I did know him, reminding myself that I’d seen glimpses of Adam being kind, showing his romantic side, being funny. Faced with this darkness and rage, it was hard to believe that other Adam existed. I looked at the door, trying not to let him see me. I could run. I could call the guards, I could tell them what had happened on the bridge, I could tell them he wanted to kill himself, I could end this all right now, because I had failed. I had made a mess of it all.

I took a deep breath in an effort to slow my heartbeat down. His shouting was making me so panicky, I couldn’t think straight. At last there was silence. He was standing there, looking at me. I had to say something. Something understanding. Something that wouldn’t trigger another outbreak of anger. I couldn’t bear it if he hurt himself. Not here, not with me, not ever.

I swallowed and was surprised by how steady my voice was. ‘I understand that you’re feeling angry.’

‘Of course I’m feeling fucking angry.’ But he didn’t sound as angry as he had before. He seemed to have calmed a little at my acknowledging it. That made me feel calmer; maybe I could do this after all. At least I could give it a try for a while longer. I didn’t want to give up on him.

‘I’ve got a remedy for that.’ I side-stepped around him quickly, and went to the kitchen. I took six eggs from the fridge, and wrote on them with a black marker, noticing how my hand trembled. I wrote the names ‘Basil’, ‘Sean’, ‘Maria’, ‘Dad’, ‘Lavinia’ and ‘Christine’ on the eggs, then slid open the kitchen door leading to the long back garden.

‘Come on,’ I called to him.

He stared at me with dark eyes.

‘Come on,’ I said more firmly, trying not to be intimidated, trying to keep things moving. I was in control here, I needed him to listen to me. Reluctantly, he followed.

‘I have six eggs here, with words representing things that are making you angry right now. Throw them. Throw them anywhere you want. As hard as you want. Crush them. Get rid of your anger.’ I handed him the carton and indicated the open door.

‘I’m tired of your
tasks
,’ he spoke through his teeth.

‘Fine.’ I put the carton down on the counter and left the kitchen, going to my bedroom. Though I wanted very much to lock my door, I didn’t like the message it would send him. Instead I sat on my Spider-Man duvet and stared at the magnolia wall, at the grid-shaped shadow the moon was casting through my window pane, and tried to think what I should do next. I had a huge task ahead of me and no idea how to proceed. Somehow I needed to make him see a therapist. I thought about ways I could get him to go. Maybe pretend we were going somewhere else and arrive at a practice? But if I did that, fooled him or tried to trick him in any way, I would lose his trust for good. Then he wouldn’t even have me to help him, useless as I was.

For the first time since I’d agreed to this challenge, I was beginning to think I might not be able to deliver. Thoughts of him killing himself made me physically ill and I rushed to the toilet and locked the door. As I crouched in there, bent double, I heard him groan as if he was in pain, as if he’d been punched. Startled, I composed myself, splashed my face with water and hurried out. I stopped at the kitchen door. The light behind me spilled out into the black garden, which had been neglected since my green-fingered great-aunt Christine passed away. Now there was nothing but a long rectangular patch of grass, which hadn’t been properly tended in at least a decade, and not at all in these winter months. I remembered how my great-aunt used to feed us strawberries plucked straight from the vines, edible flowers, wild garlic and mint, eating more for the token of it than the taste. I could picture her, picking gooseberries for her jam, her wide-brimmed straw hat shielding her face from the sun, her wrinkled skin drooping on her neck and chest, creasing and wobbling as she worked, and all the while her raspy voice breathless from emphysema explained what she was doing. The garden was a long way from that now, yet the memory was there in a corner of my mind, the brightness of my youth on a sunny day when I felt warm and safe, contrasted with this cold dark night with fear and panic locked in my heart.

Out in the garden, Adam was looking down at the tray of eggs in his hand, choosing thoughtfully. He picked one up and gave it an almighty throw down the end of the garden. He let out a yell and it crashed against the end wall. Looking more motivated, he went back to the egg carton and picked another. He threw it, screaming as he released it into the air, watching as it smashed against the back wall. He repeated the process three more times. When he had finished, he stormed back into the house and slammed the bathroom door behind him. I ducked into the bedroom to give him space. The shower went on. I heard his angry sobs getting lost beneath the falling water.

I went outside to the carton. There was one egg left. I crouched down, picked up the egg and tears sprang to my eyes. The name on the remaining egg was ‘Christine’.

I was in bed, propped up on pillows, tense and alert, unable to relax while he was in that mood, when he appeared in my bedroom doorway. Instinctively, I pulled the covers around me, fearing for my safety. Seeing my reaction, he winced, hurt by my fear of him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘I promise not to behave like that again. I know you’re trying to help.’

I saw this was a different Adam from the one who’d raged at me earlier and I relaxed.

‘I’ll try harder,’ I said.

‘Ignore what I said. You’re doing fine. Thank you.’

I smiled.

He returned the smile.

‘Good night, Christine.’

‘Good night, Adam.’

11

How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found

At four a.m., I had an epiphany. Adam had been right the night before: I needed to do better. He hadn’t said it but he’d intimated it. I could see how vulnerable he was. I had to do better. Wide awake, my mind too wired now for sleep, I got up and threw on a tracksuit, then made my way as quietly as possible through the living room. The room was dark but Adam was sitting up, his troubled face illuminated by the glow of his laptop.

‘I thought you were asleep.’

‘I’m watching
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.’

It was one of the things we had listed on his crisis plan as a distraction for when he dipped.

‘Are you okay?’ I tried to study his face but the computer screen didn’t give off enough light to reveal his innermost thoughts.

‘Where are you going?’ He ignored my question.

‘To my office. I’ll be back in a few minutes – if that’s okay?’

He nodded.

When I returned, his computer was overturned on the floor, the cord from the charger was wrapped around his neck and he was hanging off the edge of the couch, his eyes closed and his tongue hanging out of his mouth.

‘Very funny.’ I kept walking, my arms overloaded with paper, pens, highlighters, and a whiteboard, which I set up in my bedroom.

Adam claimed he didn’t want emotional help, insisting his needs were material, tangible physical ones. He wanted to get his job with the Irish Coast Guard back, he wanted his girlfriend back, he wanted his family
off
his back. I had assumed I could tackle this by helping him emotionally, but I had very little time. Perhaps what I needed to do was to treat his physical needs as I would his emotional. Emotionally he had his tools, he had his crisis plan. What was missing was a set of tools to cope with the physical needs, and I was going to give them to him.

Too curious to hold out any longer, Adam appeared at the door.

‘What are you doing?’

I was making plans, charting things in a frenzy. Drawing grids, mood boards, highlighters, bubbles, all kinds of things were flying around on large white boards.

‘How much coffee have you had?’

‘Too much. But there’s no point wasting time. Neither of us sleep anyway, so why not get started now? There are twelve days left,’ I said, urgency in my voice. ‘That’s two hundred and eighty-eight hours. Most people sleep eight hours a night – not us, but people do. That gives us sixteen hours a day to do what we have to do, which leaves us with only one hundred and ninety-two hours. Not that much time. And it’s four a.m. so officially we’ve eleven days left.’

I crossed out the figures and began feverishly working them out again. We had work to do in Dublin and pretty soon we would have to go to Tipperary to deal with the rest of Adam’s problems.

‘I think you’re having a nervous breakdown,’ he said, amused, arms folded as he watched me.

‘No. I’m having an epiphany. You want my services full-on, one-on-one? That’s what you’re going to get.’ I opened the wardrobe and pulled out a torch, checked to see if the batteries were working. I stuffed a bag with towels and a change of clothes. ‘I’d suggest you get something warm on and bring a change of clothes because we’re going out.’

‘Out? It’s freezing and it’s four in the morning. Where are we going?’

‘We, my friend, are going to win Maria back.’

He almost smiled. ‘And how are we going to do that?’

I pushed by him in the doorway and he had no choice but to throw on his coat and follow me.

St Anne’s Park is open all hours, though not the safest place to be at four-thirty in the morning. It had been the setting for attacks in the past and possibly a dead body or two had shown up there over the years. It wasn’t particularly well lit after dark, which was a detail I had forgotten from my teenage drinking days.

‘You’re crazy,’ he said, following as I lit the way with a torch. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit dangerous to be wandering around here?’

‘Absolutely. But you’re big, you’ll protect me,’ I said, teeth chattering at the cold. The further we moved into the park, the more the caffeine hit wore off. The beer cans and fresh graffiti on display each morning were enough to tell me that we wouldn’t be alone in the park, but with the countdown focusing my mind, there wasn’t a second to lose. I did not want Adam’s death on my conscience or I would never sleep again.

Even with the torch I could see only a few feet ahead of me and the sun wasn’t due to rescue us for hours yet. But what I did have on my side was knowledge of the park. I grew up in that park and knew the five hundred acres like the back of my hand. But that was when it was bright; it had been at least fifteen years since I’d stumbled across the park in the dead of night, while out drinking with friends as a teenager.

Suddenly I stopped, pointed the torch left and right. Then I spun around, trying to get my bearings.

‘Christine,’ Adam said, warning in his voice.

I ignored him, trying to picture the place in full light. I took a few steps right. Then stopped, turned in the other direction.

‘Jesus, don’t tell me we’re lost.’

I didn’t say anything.

Adam shivered beside me. There were voices coming from the trees to our left. Then bottles clinked.

‘This way,’ I squeaked, heading away from the gang in the trees.

Adam was mumbling under his breath.

‘Oh, what do you care, you want to die anyway,’ I snapped.

‘Yes, but on my own terms,’ he protested. ‘Death by skanky drunk is not what I was planning.’

‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ I found myself quoting Dad.

Thankfully we made it to the pond, and thankfully the lamps were on, to stop the likes of the gang in the trees from falling in.

‘See?’ I said, pleased with myself.

‘I’d call that luck. An odd, fucked-up luck.’

‘Well, don’t just stand there – get the lily pad.’ I stamped my feet and rubbed my gloved hands together. I felt his eyes on me.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Why else do you think I told you to bring a change of clothes?’

‘It’s minus four! I’m surprised that water hasn’t iced over. I’ll die of hypothermia.’

‘If you weren’t so choosy about your time of death, you’d make everything much easier. Well, if that’s the way it has to be …’ I took off my coat and the chill ran straight to my bones.

‘You’re not going in there.’

‘One of us has to, and you’re clearly not willing.’ I geared myself up, looked around the pond to find the right lily pad.

‘But, Christine, think about the people who love you,’ he said, mock-serious. ‘They wouldn’t want you to do this.’

I phased him out; I wasn’t leaving the park without the lily pad. From the edge of the pond I scoured the lake for the nicest pad. Some were ripped, dirty looking, and I wanted the greenest, most circular pad I could find, one that Maria could use again to hold the things she treasured and loved, and hopefully Adam’s photo frame would find itself upon it again. Maybe he’d throw his loose change on it when he came home from work before climbing into bed with Maria, or leave his watch on it while he took a shower, occasionally thinking about the crazy woman who helped him fish it out, that freezing cold night way back when he was having problems.