Jax came by to visit a couple of times and they had dinner together. He knew she was hurting, but seemed to understand that it was the natural fall-out from a break-up, rather than a residual effect of the incident. After a week he just started calling instead, listening to her outbursts with patient kindness.
Neither of them was particularly surprised when the school called and informed her that her employment had been terminated with immediate effect. Noelle just accepted the news and hung up. In the face of the fact that she’d broken up with Gabriel, maybe forever, it just didn’t seem that important. Her heart was too busy tearing itself to shreds for love to care much about paying the bills.
When there was a knock on the door
in the early evening, almost ten days after her talk with Gabriel, Noelle nearly didn’t answer it. She knew it wasn’t Jax, because he’d already texted her that morning, and she wasn’t up to dealing with Gabriel. She wasn’t in the mood for cold-callers or salesmen either, so she sat on the stairs and waited for them to go away.
When they knocked a third time,
loudly and persistently, she finally caved and opened the door, astonished to find two police officers standing on her doorstep.
“Miss Winters?”
They all looked so young these days. This officer could surely be no more than eighteen, with his clean cut good looks and trendy hair. “Noelle Winters?”
“Yes, that’s me. Is everything okay?” She looked from one to the other as their faces turned grave.
“Miss Winters, may we please come in?”
Gabriel was dead
.
It didn’t matter how many times she said it or thought it, she couldn’t make it seem real. Dead? Gabriel? That vibrant man, roaring with life? How could he be dead? It didn’t make sense. She’d seen him just over a week ago.
At first she’d thought the officers were joking, that the
y were kids trying to prank her, but they showed her their warrant cards and allowed her to call the station. She still wasn’t convinced, right up until they showed her the note. That thick, watermarked paper covered in Gabriel’s elegant, cursive script. She’d seen it a dozen times, watched him jot down lyrics as they passed through his thoughts on this self-same paper.
Kitten,
You were right. I always knew you were the one; I just thought it was for a different reason. I didn’t know you’d be the one that saved me from myself. Please don’t be angry with me that this is how I have to deal with it. Just once, this one time, I wanted to be in absolute control of my destiny. I know you’ll understand. I wish things could have been different. I wish that love was enough. I wish I was a better man, but I’m not. By the time you get this, I’ll be gone. I love you. I always have.
G
And that was it. He had written these few short lines to her and
then opened his veins in the bath tub, while soft music had played in the background.
Noelle
held the letter, shrouded in cold, anaesthetising plastic, and broke down. She had done this to him. She’d had truths that he wasn’t ready or stable enough to hear, and she’d thrown them in his face because he’d hurt her. She was the lowest of the low. A grade A bitch. She should have known he would take back control of his life in the only way that made sense to him. They’d had a whole damn conversation about it, back when they first got together. How could she have been so stupid that she didn’t see this coming? The thoughts crashed and whirled around in her head like a demented carousel, screaming both in volume and in silence, until she thought she was going crazy.
The officers tried to ask her questions
, but she just couldn’t make any sense of what she wanted to say, and in the end they called Jax. He was the only person she could think of to be with her. They needed each other.
When they’d found the note and done the initial enquiries, they’d come straight to Noelle’s house, so Jax arrived with no idea what had happened. The officers broke the news to him and he just fell apart, weeping with a grief that was so raw it shredded every heart in earshot. He and Noelle clung to each
other, like life rafts in a tumultuous sea, as the world buzzed and crashed around them.
Realising they were on a losing battle, the officers gently disentangled
themselves and left them to their sorrow, promising to call back in the morning. With them gone, all sense of reality seemed to fade. Neither could make sense of a world that didn’t have Gabriel in it. How could they go on, just acknowledging his non-existence as though it was something about which nothing could be done? There had to be some mistake. Any minute now he’d come barrelling through the door with some perverse and subversive joke, and they’d know it had all been a mix-up. This just couldn’t be happening.
Finally, in an exhaustion of grief and disbelief, they sobbed themselves to sleep on the sofa in each others’ arms.
It was too much just to face the day.
Noelle woke first the following morning and lay for a moment, wondering what she was doing on the sofa. Her neck hurt and the pale winter sun was stinging her eyes. Why hadn’t she shut the curtains? She made to stand up and the arms around her waist tightened. Just like that it all came crashing back in. Gabriel. The suicide. Jax was here and they’d cried themselves to sleep on the sofa. She remembered now.
Unwilling to disturb Jax, she settled back down and gazed at the fireplace, remember
ing the way Gabriel’s muscles had rippled beneath his shirt as he’d laid her fire. They’d kissed for the first time on this very sofa. It was a bittersweet memory. It had been the start of both the darkest and brightest time of her life.
She sensed when Jax awoke. His arms tightened almost imperceptibly beneath her fingertips and then he
sighed a deep breath across the back of her neck. “Did it really happen?” His voice was cracked and raw, and she shivered.
“Yes. He’s gone.” She still couldn’t make any sense of it herself.
“Oh.” He let out another long, shuddering breath. “I thought...I hoped it was a nightmare.”
“I’m sorry.” She said, helpless to say anything else. She’d had Gabriel for a couple of fiercely joyful, short months. Jax had been his friend for years. She couldn’t imagine how he was feeling.
They got up and made breakfast, moving woodenly through the motions of normality. Noelle felt numb, as though her life had been packed with cotton wool. Everything was muffled and leaden. It seemed a fitting surround. She felt brittle and fragile, like spun glass. Through her puffy, reddened eyes it was as though the world was wrapped in cellophane, each item individually packaged in a weird gloss of newness, now that she was looking at it through eyes that would never be the same again.
Her eggs on toast tasted like ashes on her tongue and when it was her turn to shower, she stood beneath the water and let her tears mingle with the
flood. She had done this. She had pushed him into killing himself and there was just no coming back from that.
As the news spread, and people didn’t find Jax at home, her house became the gathering place for those that had loved the enigmatic singer. Away from the prying eyes of the press, they sat around her living room in shaken silence, staring wide eyed at a future without their leader. All the band members were there, along with the manager John. They kept shaking their heads, as though to reaffirm that it wasn’t true, that he wasn’t really dead.
When the Police arrived around eleven, they weren’t really surprised to find everyone there, but it made finding somewhere quiet to speak to Noelle slightly difficult. They ended up in her bedroom. She perched on the bed and they sat on her dressing table stool and window sill, trying to get comfortable.
Jax brought them coffee and for the first time they appeared a little star-struck. It shocked Noelle out of her numbness enough to raise the ghost of a smile.
“Surreal isn’t it?” She said. “They behave like normal guys and then it suddenly occurs to you that a megastar
, who earns more in an hour than you do in a year, just brought you a coffee and called you ‘mate’.”
The cops laughed, embarrassed, as Jax sat on the bed next to Noelle. “I’m just a regular guy.” He said sadly. “I’m lucky. That’s all.” Noelle took his hand and leaned into his side for comfort.
“Miss Winters, I know this is difficult and it must seem pointless to you, but we need to ask a few questions about the circumstances of Mr Hallow’s apparent suicide.” The older cop, a kind looking woman with soft brown hair, stated.
“You can ask.” Her throat was threatening to close, but she swallowed it down.
“Can you explain the contents of the note to us? It was clearly a private message.”
“Gabriel was...”
brilliant...beautiful...sensual...vibrant...inspiring...
“...damaged.” She swallowed again, thickly. “He was badly abused as a child. It went on for years. It left him with certain...hangups.”
“We found his...ah...equipment.” The woman said delicately and Noelle nodded, grateful she didn’t have to give details.
“He told me it was all about control. That he had been controlled so absolutely as a child, he couldn’t let go any more until he knew that everything in his world was utterly under his command. It was what broke us up – I didn’t know how to deal with it. Back when we first got together, I asked him about those teenagers...the ones that had committed suicide. I wanted to know why he hadn’t spoken out against suicide. He told me that he understood exactly why they’d done it. He couldn’t blame them for just once wanting to be in control over their lives. It was the last ounce of power they had and no-one could take it away from them. He respected that choice...thought it was brave.”
“So how did it come to this?” The officer asked gently. “Was it the breakdown of your relationship?”
“Sort of.” Her breath was trembling in her chest and she took a moment to compose herself. “He came to see me after it all blew up on the news. A week last Thursday. It was night time. I was walking back from town and found him waiting on my doorstep. He begged me to go back to him, told me he’d do whatever it took. We argued. I told him that he was wrong...that it had never been him in control. He’d given me the power when he gave me a safe word. I told him he wasn’t looking for control, he was looking for himself...but this time someone who wouldn’t break. I told him that someone wasn’t me. He ran out and that was the last I saw or heard of him.”
The officers exchanged looks. “Do you know the name of the person that abused him?” The younger one asked carefully, and Noelle shook her head.
“I just know it was a woman, a friend of his parents, and that it happened between his ninth and sixteenth birthdays.”
“Do you know anyone that might know?” They persisted and she shrugged, too exhausted to really give it much thought.
“If his parents don’t know, his pastor might. They were close. He took Gabriel in when he ran away from home to escape.” There was silence as they noted that and she felt dizzy. “Am I going to be in trouble?” She asked shakily.
“Why would you think you were in trouble?” The woman asked carefully and Noelle swayed.
“Because it was my fault. If I hadn’t said what I did, he’d never have killed himself.”
“Miss Winters, Noelle, this is not your fault.” She said kindly, abandoning her notebook on the dresser and coming to kneel at Noelle’s feet. “You didn’t do this. It’s clear that he was a deeply troubled man and was on that edge, whether you argued or not. Guilt is a natural part of the grieving process. You will all feel it to some extent, but you can’t blame yourself. This is on
Gabriel, and on him alone. Is that clear?” Noelle nodded, appreciating the sentiment, but knowing the officer was wrong. She
had
pushed him over the edge, and no amount of pretty words could take that away.
Moving back to her seat, the officer took up her pad again. “Do you know who his next of kin is? He’s estranged from his parents and we’ve had no luck tracking them down.”
“It would have to be his parents.” Jax answered, when Noelle looked mutely at him for help. “He didn’t have any kids. Apart from the band, he had no-one.”
“Right.
In that case, we can register the death. Do you have any idea who his solicitor was? An executor would be able to step in and manage the details until such time as we’ve located his family.”
“It’s the same one we all use.” Jax was clearly still in shock, speaking slowly as though he couldn’t remember the details. “John, our manager, will have their contact number. He’s downstairs.”
“Okay, we’ll catch a word with him on the way out.” She smiled kindly again and looked directly at Noelle. “Miss Winters, again, I know this is going to be difficult, but are you aware of any plans Mr Hallow may have had in relation to proposing to you?”
“He asked me to marry him several times.” She
admitted, guilt and sorrow stinging afresh at the opportunity she’d missed to declare her love to him now that it was too late. “I kept telling him it was too soon. I thought we had our whole lives together.” She frowned. “Why are you asking? What does it matter now?”