Another Place by Matthew Crow

Author:Matthew Crow [Crow, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781472105684
Publisher: Atom
Published: 2017-08-03T04:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

To The Lighthouse

13

Somewhere They Can’t Find Me

I spent the best part of a week in bed after learning of Sarah’s death.

A small part of me had been jealous of Sarah when she was gone.

Depression made me want everything and nothing all at once, so that no matter what happened I would never be content. I’d crave company and solitude; light and dark; cold and warmth; love and hate.

Everything and nothing, always and for ever.

I wanted more than anything to disappear.

I wanted to disappear and for everybody to see.

I wanted to be the conductor of my own search party; the chill in the room at my own memorial.

Sarah had managed this. She was an absence and a presence. She had disappeared and she had pulled the attention of the world to the space she left behind.

But now she was gone, for ever.

She’d never get to enjoy her status as the most wanted girl in the country. The one we missed. The one we craved.

The cruelty of the situation weighed me down until I could see nothing else. And so I did exactly what I was so prone to doing.

I hid.

Dad tried for days afterwards to get me out of bed. He’d cook food he knew I liked, and leave my bedroom door open, aware that the promise of a feast would usually rouse at least some form of curiosity in me.

He’d sit on the end of my bed and tell me about his day, something I usually found so unbearable for so many reasons that it would have me up, dressed and out of the house in no time.

He let visitors in and out, to observe my souring lump of a body like an open casket viewing in a mausoleum.

Nothing helped.

Nothing changed.

Sometimes you just have to ride it out. Whatever shut you down will start you back up again, if you’re patient enough and lucky enough.

It took five days before something like light began to cut through the fog, and I rose from the dead like Lady Lazarus.

‘Good evening sleepy head,’ Paula said, as I made my way into the front room, where the soap operas were beginning on television.

The only thing fully penetrating the haze of confusion was the stench that was emitting from every one of my crevices, as if my body were the smelling salts to the fug of my mind. Dad was standing in front of the TV trying to plug in the new DVD player as I sat down on the sofa next to Paula.

‘Piss off,’ I mumbled.

‘Claudette,’ Dad said, before Paula raised her hand to him and shook her head.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, holding my hair flat to my ears as I began to sob. ‘I’m just so sorry.’

‘I know, my girl,’ Paula said, gently drawing me towards her and wrapping her arms around me as I leaked tears and snot into the cream wool of her jumper. ‘We all are.’ She rubbed my back gently. ‘We all are…’

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