I think part of me dies with her.
“I’m sorry she died,” says Belladonna, after five silent minutes of me kneeling beside her with my head in her hands.
My voice sounds alien, distant and muffled. “I wouldn’t have wanted you to put yourself at risk.”
“She’s probably better off this way,” she says, and it fractures this illusion I’ve had that I want to be exactly like Belladonna one day, because it’s such a cold and callous thing to say. If being strong means dulling your emotions to things like this, I don’t think I want to be strong at all.
It’s only another few minutes before a few of Rocco Morello’s men arrive, shining flashlights on the ugly scene in front of us, shining a flashlight on what I did to a woman who deserved so much more, and as they start to clean up the remnants of her existence, only one thought rattles through my brain.
It should be me.
Chapter 17
OPHELIA
The house isn’t much different than when I left it just after New Year’s, save for the overdue bills on the doorstep and the fresh layer of mold on the damp windowsills.
It’s eleven degrees outside, but somehow inside feels even colder. I wrap my flimsy brown jacket tighter around myself, the thick white socks that sit over my tights doing nothing to dull the sting.
It hurt coming back to this house before Christmas, with its empty bookshelves and dusty furniture, but now, where memories of Alex and me sit between the grief and the decay, it’s somehow even worse.
I didn’t see what Morello’s people did to clean up the scene; I just walked, mute and stiff back to Belladonna’s car.
I let their questions wash over me.Are you hurt? Would Laura have been working with anybody? Does she have family we need to silence? Where do you want to go now? Can we clean the cut on your hand?
I only had one answer: Please don’t take me back to Sorrowsong.
Instead, I had Belladonna’s men bring me some clothes and my laptop and drop me here, not that I’ve bothered to change. My leggings are caked in mud and there’s blood beneath my fingernails that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to truly erase.
I’mdisgustedwith myself. Disgusted at what I did to her. Disgusted that I was so desperate to leave the snake pit of loss and loneliness and anger and despair that I climbed out of it and took the ladder with me.
I ignore my phone ringing incessantly on the chipped laminate worktop in the kitchen. It takes one, two,threetries for my shaking fingers to plug in the kettle, another two tries to prize open the rusting tea bag tin and throw one into my dad’s favorite mug.
I don’t know what to do.
Sorry wouldn’t cover it, even if she was still alive for me to apologize to.
My tears drip onto the white envelopes as I slice them open. Water, gas, electricity, tax. They amount to almost nothing, but so does my bank balance.
And I’m currently in no state to call the care home and ask for a job.
I hiccup a sob as I bring the mug to my lips, the steam scalding my nose, red and raw from crying.
Tea is pointless without milk.
I flip my phone over, daring to look at the screen. Ten missed calls from Colette. Ten more from Divya and Magda. Four from Vincenzo. Three from Mack, two from Brendan. One from Belladonna.
Endless calls from Alex.
It should warm my heart. It’s all I’ve hoped for.
But it’s a reminder of Laura, of what her phone must’ve looked like: empty, save for anonymous messages to a girl who let her down.
I put down the phone before the tearsreallycome. Before the regret and the desolation and the self-loathing that I’ve held in for the past eight hours finally hit. It reduces my knees to jelly on the small, square landing at the top of the stairs, folds me at the middle, spreads a migraine like hot oil through my skull.
For the first time in four and a half long years, I stagger into the larger of the two bedrooms and pull back the pristine covers, slipping beneath the duvet with puffy eyes and a broken heart. My scream of frustration is muffled by the pillow. “I need you,” I sob into the dusty fabric. “I need you both, and you aren’t here.”
I AMBLE THROUGHthe council estate, corner store bottle of milk dangling from my pinky and lollypop hanging out my mouth. I lasted four hours without a decent cup of tea before I gave in and shuffled my way down the street in what I am sure is a flattering combination of Alex’s sweatpants and my mom’s old sandals.
