Smoke in the Room (26 page)

Katie was where he left her, the overturned glass at her feet, a dark patch spreading on the carpet. ‘They say not to operate heavy machinery, but they never warn you about trying to drink water.'

‘I'll make the bed then get you another one.'

‘Jenny says the side effects will lessen. Bloody hope so. This keeps up you'll be putting me in a nursing home and jumping the next plane home.'

Jumping the next plane home
was all he thought about lately, but something in the way she'd said it, or maybe just the word
plane
coming in the midst of another nursing task, made his mind crash. He leant over the bed as though he was fixing the far corner, although it was already tucked in. The plane on the way over here, Eugenie dry retching, the flight attendant's flashing teeth as she explained they were being moved to a different part of the cabin as several passengers had complained about the noise.

Katie murmured something and he straightened up. Her chin had dropped, her eyes fluttered at him.
‘Yadonhavtadooallvis
.'

‘Shh. Come on. Bed's ready.' Adam held her under her arms and pulled her to her feet. She shuffled to the bed, backwards, her upper body weight in his hands.

‘I mean it,' she said. ‘You don't have to do . . .'

Adam covered her with a light cotton throw and turned out the lamp.

Katie hadn't said a word to Graeme since he installed the bars and Adam gave him only the briefest updates on her progress. Frustratingly, for the past month, Jenny had also shut down, speaking to him only about work matters and then with an uncharacteristic brusqueness. When Ann Lewis called to say her daughter needed her another month, but that she'd only stay if Katie was coping all right, Graeme told her the truth. ‘She seems fine. But to be honest, she and I don't have much to do with each other so there's very little I can tell you. You should call Adam. He seems to be looking out for her pretty well.'

Finally, on a Wednesday afternoon, seven weeks after Katie's suicide attempt, Graeme called Jenny into his office. She sat down across from him and crossed her arms. ‘You know I can't talk to you about her, so if that's why you've called me in –'

‘I know you can't give me specifics, but surely you can tell me, generally, how she's going.'

‘You live with her. How do you think she's going?'

‘That's the thing – she doesn't speak to me, leaves the room if I come into it. Adam tells me she's calmer and certainly the flat is quieter, but that doesn't tell me anything except she's not manic. Depression is quiet, isn't it?'

‘Sometimes.'

‘Come on, give me something, Jenny.'

She bit her lower lip. ‘You know, I don't think you ever told me: what
is
your relationship with her?'

‘We share a flat.'

‘Because you sold your house and gave all your money away?'

‘Yeah.'

‘It seems odd.'

He held her gaze. ‘Does it?'

‘A bit. Not just the money part, but the whole thing with Katie.'

‘There is no
thing
with Katie.'

‘Come on, Graeme. Snuggling up, sharing confessions every night. The frankly wounded way she speaks about you, and the intense interest you show in her wellbeing. It all adds up to something more than just flatmates.'

‘Like what? Lovers?'

Jenny shrugged. ‘Well.'

‘Jesus, she's a 23-year-old manic depressive. What can you think of me if you think that I'd –'

‘Sorry, sorry.' She held her hands up. ‘Of course, your behaviour has been unimpeachable. Your intentions are pure. They always are.' Her hands dropped in a gesture of defeat. ‘You know, we mere mortals ascribe our own low motives to others and are usually kind of right, but with
someone like you . . . You must feel misunderstood a lot.'

‘I certainly feel misunderstood right now.'

‘I want to understand you, but you don't give anything away. You don't let people in.'

Graeme resisted the urge to get up and open the window. He forced himself to speak. ‘What do you want to know, Jenny? You already know where I live and who I live with. You know why I live there. You know what I do every day. You know that I'm single and childless, that I'm an aid work lifer. I mean, what else is there? What is it that I'm not giving away, as you put it?'

‘I'm not talking about . . .' She rubbed her eyes. ‘It's just that the way you talk about yourself, your life, it's so . . . so bloodless.'

‘That's me. A bloodless saint.' He remembered another woman saying it many years ago, back when such words had the power to hurt him.

‘I didn't say that. I worry about you. It's not healthy to be so detached.' She swept her arm out across the office. ‘All the stuff you've seen, the bloody Sisyphean job you do here – it must get to you. But it never shows. You're like a machine.'

Machine
.
Bloodless
.
Detached
. Yes, all right. Good.

He gripped the arms of his chair under the desk, out of sight. ‘I only wanted to know if Katie was getting better,' he said.

‘I know. I'm sorry. Bad week, letting out my own issues.' She bent her lips into a small smile. ‘It takes time, you know. But I think, yes. I think she's improving.'

After Jenny left, Graeme sat with both hands flat on his desk, staring at the closed door, waiting for the tremor to pass.
This feeling – like being seven years old, alone in a house full of strangers who know more about your life than you do, the feeling that an answer you give may cause terrible trouble although you thought at the time it was exactly right, that people whose existence you're barely aware of might suddenly smash lamps or cry or talk of broken hearts because of something you've done or said or been.

By the time the anxiety passed it was 5.45. He checked to make sure everyone else had left, made a cup of coffee and went back to his desk. He opened up the internet browser and navigated his way into the corners of cyberspace populated by the fetishists who got off on swapping stories of survival and near-misses. People with little grasp of the social world but with encyclopaedic knowledge of pharmaceuticals, firearms and physiology. Pornographers who collected photos of death scenes and suicide notes, who regurgitated existential despair in between gorging themselves on suffering.

Repulsive though they were to him, Graeme sought them out because it was important that he did this right.

As he read through the bulletin boards and forums, it was impossible for him not to recall all the fast, easy deaths he'd witnessed or avoided. A nail bomb, a poisoned water supply, a speeding car around a blind bend, an ancient helicopter, a gangrenous leg wound, a single incident of unprotected sex, a midnight walk alone. Mosquitoes, parasites, cancers. Children with machetes, starving men with guns, teenagers with homemade explosive vests. Droughts, floods, earthquakes. So easy to kill and be killed; so very difficult and expensive to stay alive, to keep others alive. A lifetime's work doing just that. And yet, these
online ghouls made it sound so complicated. They created spreadsheets and graphs; formulas to determine the probability of paralysis or brain damage.

Jumping from a height into deep water seemed to be the most reliable. You have the fall and then the impact with a back-up of drowning. Unlike with pills or razors, second thoughts are useless. Once you make it over the edge, there's minimal risk of interruption and resuscitation. Jumpers from the world's most popular suicide bridge – San Francisco's Golden Gate – had a ninety-eight per cent success rate.

Graeme studied the stories of those who survived there and elsewhere. Legendary among the online obsessives was the paraplegic bloke who drove off Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain. The man fell 250 feet before getting caught on a line of trees. He survived with only superficial injuries.

But those cases were rare. The most likely scenario was this: assuming a free fall from a great enough height – 300 feet to be sure – the body would weigh, at the moment of breaking the water's surface, around 7500 times its usual weight. The ribs would snap, their shards piercing the lungs, spleen and anything else in their way. The blood vessels would burst and the aorta would tear free of the heart.

If by some cruel miracle you survived the impact, your body would spasm, thrusting towards the sky, instinctively trying to stay above water as though drowning were the real threat. Drowning was likely, of course; the lungs would already be flooded. But before you asphyxiated, even as your nose expelled frothy saltwater, the internal bleeding would end your body's struggle.

It was said that no matter how unafraid you are, imminent death causes the body to go into shock and the mind to scream with terror. The second after you jump, everything that makes you human rises up and protests. No fear ever experienced in life can compare to the panic that grips you as you hurtle towards the bone-cracking, internal organ-splitting water.

He armed the security system and stepped out into the street. It had been taken over by a team of child cricketers. He smiled his thanks to the dusty faced girl who'd called a halt to the game to let him cross the road. As he reached the other side he heard
game on
and looked back over his shoulder to watch for a moment the skinny arms arcing, hands catching, bare feet dancing on the hot asphalt.

The sun was bright but low. The breeze was spirited enough to press his shirt to his chest, but not – as summer breezes so often did – to throw up leaves and grit into his face. It was the nicest evening they'd had, he thought, since the beginning of summer. He decided to walk home the long way.

Two minutes after he'd closed his bedroom door, there was a knock, and for the second before he opened the door he let himself hope. But it was Adam, looking as serious as ever. He stepped back, let him enter.

‘I was wondering,' Adam said, leaning back on the desk, ‘what your long-term plans are? I mean, I have to go home eventually and I need to know if anyone will be around to watch out for Katie.'

‘She won't need taking care of soon. She's doing so well. Isn't she?'

‘She'll need someone to make sure she takes her medication and doesn't drink too much.'

‘You should call her grandmother. Find out when she'll be back in Sydney. Or else you won't ever be able to leave her side.'

Adam sighed and stood up straight. ‘Listen, man, is there anything in particular that's troubling you? Anything I could maybe help you sort out?'

‘Nothing at all,' he said. ‘In fact, you're the one who has some problems that need sorting out. Visa issues.'

‘I don't know why I bother,' Adam said and left.

Graeme knew why. Adam bothered for the same reason people made doctors' appointments and bought birthday presents and took their kids to the park and volunteered at soup kitchens and put photos in albums and painted their walls and quit smoking and took up tai chi. Bothering was what people did. When you stopped bothering, you stopped altogether.

Adam opened his eyes and waited for the memory to come. It was a Thursday and, from the bright bleached light coming through the closed curtains, he guessed it was around noon. He had to accept that a fifth consecutive night had passed without dreams of Eugenie.

The honk of an aggressively-blown nose came from down the hallway and his legs swung out of bed and propelled him across the room. His body, at least, accepted the new reality – caring for Katie, washing dishes, sleeping without solace.

He found Katie sitting in front of the TV, a box of tissues on her left, a pile of scrunched tissues on her right. He sat next to the box. ‘How are you?'

‘Good.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes.'

He muted the TV. ‘Because you look kind of –'

‘I look kind of upset. I am. I've been crying. It's because I'm feeling better. I can think clearly and remember things
and that makes me . . . You know how when you wake up after a really big night and you can't remember much but what you can is awful? I'm waking up from a big night that lasted years. All I can remember are things like . . . The nasty stuff. I can't remember anything good and I don't know if that's because my memory is stuffed or because there really was nothing good.'

‘Maybe –'

‘See, you don't know me. I'm twenty-three years old and I've never achieved anything. Never held a job for more than a month. Never finished high school. Never had a real relationship. Lost friends as quickly as I made them. I don't own anything or belong to anyone. I was thinking about my mum, about how she made so much effort with me and I never saw it. Everything she did looked like rejection. I lost her. I don't even know my little brother. Gran's stubborn, thank god. You too, for some weird reason. But it
is
stubbornness, I know. It's not love or even like. It's not because I'm so charming or brilliant or anything that you'd think it important I stay in the world. I'm nothing because I've had years of learning nothing, doing nothing.

‘I sound self-pitying but I'm not. I'm just seeing clearly for the first time in a long time. I am getting better. Healthier. This is not depression talking, just grief.'

Adam pushed the box of tissues to the floor and took her hand. ‘And grief is survivable.'

‘Yeah.'

‘Mom, it's me.'

‘Adam! Where are you? Are you okay?'

‘I'm still in Sydney. I'm fine.'

‘Addy, when I heard – I tried to find you. I called everyone I could think of. Eugenie's people, too. I was getting ready to alert the embassy, put out a missing person alert. Why didn't you call me? Call anyone?'

‘I'm sorry. I needed to . . .' He went from calm to sobbing in less time than it took for her to say, ‘Oh, sweetheart.' The sobbing stung his throat. His stomach cramped up and he had to press his knees to his chest to calm the spasms. ‘Mom?'