SUICIDE NOTE

It didn’t seem to matter anymore. When Tom had not turned up as usual that Saturday she called in the babysitter and made her way to his flat. She had an inkling. After all this was Mr Reliable.

Jessica still had keys. When the front door wasn’t double locked she feared the worse. He had not been answering his phone. There it was. Unplugged. The flat was unnervingly cool. It even felt like death. She made her way slowly toward the bedroom. There was the occasional sign of abandonment: a shoe in the hallway.

The door to his bedroom was open and she stepped in. On a desk in the corner of the room she could see a screen saver turning and weaving its geometric pattern, and on the other side, furthest from the window, the bed. Light chinked in through the crack in the curtain.

Father Peter had said to her that nothing looked more like death than the dead. She stood there for an instant. This was fear she felt. Two semblances of life vied for her attention. The body, lost somewhere in the soiled sheets and that other final message. She could not face it just yet.

While she called 999 on her mobile she moved over to the laptop and sat down. She jogged the mouse, explained the situation over the phone, and then started to read:

“What it is to be stupid. I should know: years at it. Aeons finding myself: perhaps one of the most stupid people in the room. There’s no “perhaps” about it, surrounded by other children who had more of a grip on things than me.

And on top of that to have my face rubbed in it. Ritual abuse. I remember being instructed to write my name. Version after version: each one as wrong as the last. Finally the agony has ended.

“ Here, that’s how you spell it. Thicko”.

And thinking, “I’m sure one of my versions looked something like that” but having no recourse to justice.

I’ll never know if I was dealt a wrong, but it felt like it. Maybe one of my scrawled spellings had been a correct one after all. What did it matter amongst so much error?

Why was there an H in my name anyway?

Who’s big idea was that?

And why put me through the pain of trying to do the impossible?

They were nasty little events, which, while masquerading as a sort of care and interest, had neither at heart. Little wonder I trust no one. I hold out no real hope of help in moments of need. Not from family… friends. Those who cry usually do so in the privacy of their own home.

OK. So I’m on my knees. So what?

Abandoned after seven years by someone who still loves me. That’s ‘love’ used as an accusation by the way...”

Jessica twisted her lip. She wondered if she should have a thought about that now or save it till later. Her neck was seizing up. It could keep. She kept on reading.

“That’s why I’ve always been drawn to a joke and a cause celebre. They are small stories one can tell that bear no relation to ones own personal life. Not really. Not directly. They keep the topic of me and who I am at bay. They circumvent the fact that I’m a loser and a fool. But… I’ve been into save the whale/dolphin/seal for as long as I can recall.

It turns out now doesn’t it that it was just a device for deflecting myself from myself: and those around me.

I remember thinking once, “I don’t mind if someone hates me for my beliefs so long as they don’t hate me for who I am”.

I wonder how old I was then. Did I already have a notion that I wasn’t like the other kids? That somehow deep down inside there was a gay teenager…”

Jessica broke off.

“Gay?” she thought. Her mind kept a cool blank for a second. “Shit!” She thought. “What a fool.”

She backtracked a bit, “That somehow deep down inside there was a gay teenager waiting to blossom with puberty. I must have known it. Despicable really. It’s not a pretty combo: stupid and gay. It doesn’t fit with the stereotype. I wanted nothing to do with it. I just wanted love and marriage but… It’s all long ago now. Surely it’s time to let bygones be bygones.

No point in dragging round the past. Except I know what you’re thinking: How much has really changed Tom over the past thirty years? Are you straight all at once? Are you clever now? Isn’t this just a bad joke?”

It stopped there. Jessica was hot and her breath was coming fast. It was incomplete. There was no apology.

“What a moron” she said. “What an absolute moron.” How could he have been so selfish? There were the children. She would deal with this just as she had dealt with so much. She reached forward and deleted the file. Click. Click.

She turned in her chair and looked towards the bed. The covers were down. Tom was up on one elbow looking at her. In the distance they could both hear the siren’s wail.