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If I were you, I’d be asking why I didn’t simply phone you. I could’ve done that, called you at your work, but I was scared you’d hang up on me, like I’m scared you won’t read this, and also scared you will. I’m still a mess, and really I’m learning the way I am has much less to do with having a brain injury than I thought. I didn’t miss out on becoming the world’s greatest singer/songwriter because of my injury. I didn’t get there because I gave up on myself. Like I gave up on you, on us.
Anyway, I wrote because, difficult as it is, I can express myself clearly, or at least I hope I’ve done that, not that this is a literary masterpiece by any means, but I think you’ll know what I’m trying to say.
So now I’ve gotten to the part where I need to close this missive. You know I let this sit for a week before I got to this bit. Closing is as difficult as the first sentence was to write, which will turn out to have been a stupendous waste of time if you’re not in fact still reading.
I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am about what happened to us, about what I did to you. You were the sunshine of my life until I covered you with storm clouds and pelted all over you with ice. I thought I’d start typing and decent words would come. You know how I am that way, never short of a word on a good day, but I was very wrong. Everything I’ve written reads like bollocks. I wish I was brave enough to get on a plane and come find you and tell you all this to your face, but I’m not because, well, when was I ever brave, except when the concept was forced on me. And then I thought bravery was overrated and hashed it up by being grumpy and obnoxious. You were the brave one. You took me on when you needn’t have and you stuck with me when I deserved to be put out with the garbage.
So anyway, assuming I haven’t now bored you to death with all this, Georgie, I am most humbly sorry and most terribly guilt stricken and dear God, dear God, I’m hoping you are well and happy and making a new life full of all the things you didn’t have with me.
I want there to be someone who will love you like I wasn’t able to. I wa
nt there to be work you enjoy, not just work you could do and still have time left over to care for me. I want you to have millions of friends who make you laugh like you used to, and most of all, most of all, I want you to be happy again.
With my heart firmly in my mouth and no expectation of a reply. Please, please don’t think you have to.
Hamish.
27: Chokehold
Damon rolled over on the sofa, waking from his drugged slumber. He’d dreamt he was at the movies: champagne, a private screening, the colours so bright, the movement so quick and the sound so loud he had to shake his head to tell awake from asleep. It was his own voice he’d heard strong and certain, maybe that was what woke him. It took a moment, sitting with his head in his hands, to know he was wrong, and then he was instantly on alert.
Someone in the house was crying.
He scrambled to his feet. He had no idea what time it was, had stopped wearing his watch because it hardly mattered, one day trying to evade his thoughts eked slowly into another.
He had to stop himself calling out. He stilled and listened. The sound had stopped. Whoever it was had heard him getting up and didn’t want him knowing.
Georgia had shared her fears about Avocado going under. She was worried, had started searching for a new job. He’d done what he could, touching base with industry contacts to see if anyone had anything going. Was she more upset than she’d let on?
Taylor was off about something and not giving. She’d lah, lah, lahed every time he’d asked her in a note and she’d resisted all his forms of attack, including sitting on her and tickling her till she just about wet herself.
It could be either of them.
And it could easily turn into a game of hide and seek he could never win. Frustration, never far from his grasp, simmered in his chest, boiled in his gut. He slapped his hand down on the wall in the doorway between the kitchen and the lounge. That choking sound had come from further inside the house. He moved into the kitchen, every sense straining, picking up only stillness and peripheral noises; his own movements, birdsong, the sprinkler system from outside.
Fuck this.
There was a bowl of fruit on the counter. He swept it to the floor with a backhander, the bowl shattering, the fruit bouncing and rolling.
Running bare feet. “Damon.” Georgia in the room. “What happened?”
He frowned and pointed at her.
Her breathing was uneven. “Stand still, there’s glass everywhere.”
He needed to know right now what was wrong with her. He slammed his hand on the countertop.
She sniffed, little gasps of breath. “Don’t move while I clean this up.”
He slid a bare foot towards her, and another.
“Damon, don’t.” Her voice cracked.
He took another and met something sharp under his heel but kept moving. Her breath caught, a strangled sob, and when he opened his arms she came into them, no longer able to hold it together.
He lifted his heel, something embedded in it and stoked her hair, held her while she sobbed, convulsing. Her face was wet, her neck. This couldn’t be about her job. Jesus Christ, had someone died? She wasn’t saying anything, couldn’t catch her breath to. He scooped an arm down to her knees and lifted her, limped out to the deck where he could bleed without making too much more of a mess.
Two strides past the doorway, two left, he found the lounge and sat, holding her on his lap. She curled into his chest, clutched at his neck and he was so afraid of what was happening to her. He rocked her, breathed her, held her tight, his foot buzzing, a scream building in his head.
