Jaddi
‘This is on me. This is my fault,’ Jaddi said.
In the space of minutes the air had filled with a million flakes of feathery snow. A layer of pure white, the colour of printer paper, covered every surface for as far as she could see. An involuntary shaking had taken hold of her body, and yet she couldn’t feel the cold anymore.
‘This is on me,’ Jaddi said again. Her hands quivered as she lifted them to her face.
‘Jaddi?’ Lizzie said, stumbling away from Ben and wrapping her arms around her.
‘This is my fault.’
‘It’s not, Jaddi.’
‘Yes, it is. I came up with the idea. I created the website. I pushed you into it. I convinced you to lie to Samantha. If I hadn’t done those things then she’d still be alive.’
‘Then it’s on both of us,’ Lizzie said.
Jaddi turned her face and stared into Lizzie’s eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’ Jaddi swallowed down a sob; it caught in her throat creating an anguished cry like a wild animal caught in a trap. Jaddi dropped her head onto Lizzie’s shoulder. Hot tears poured down her cheeks.
Jaddi dug her fingers into Lizzie’s back. She felt Lizzie’s shoulders shake as they clung to each other.
‘We should go,’ Ben said. ‘It’s really coming down out here.’
Jaddi pulled in a shuddering breath and lifted her head up from Lizzie’s shoulder. ‘Where?’
‘The hotel,’ Ben said.
Lizzie shook her head before glancing at Jaddi. ‘I need to see her.’
Jaddi wiped her hands across her cheeks and nodded as another sob broke free.
‘You don’t have to do that,’ Ben said. ‘I’ve already done the identification. It’s her, Lizzie.’
‘I know, but I … I just can’t believe you. I have to see her for myself.’
Jaddi swallowed the razor-edged mound in her throat as fresh tears fell from her eyes. ‘Me too.’
A porter in a green uniform led them down a long corridor and through two sets of swinging doors with circular porthole windows.
The only noise was the squeak of their shoes on the polished linoleum floor. The porter – a short man in his late fifties with greying-brown hair and a bald spot in the shape of a perfect circle on the back of his head – had raised his eyebrows at their dishevelled, snowy clothes, but hadn’t commented or attempted the same chit-chat that they’d endured from the taxi driver on their journey towards the East River.
Jaddi felt a cold droplet of mucus run from her nose and realised she’d been breathing through her mouth, like the times she used public toilets and couldn’t bear to breathe through her nose because of the putrid smell of urine and faeces. But this wasn’t a public toilet, it was a morgue, and the odour she didn’t want to smell was death. Jaddi dabbed the cuff of her jumper against her nose and risked a short sniff. Nothing. No decay or death smells assaulted her nostrils. No zesty cleaning products or redolent air fresheners either.
The porter unlocked the door of a small dark room no larger than a broom cupboard and waved them in. He tapped a switch and a long fluorescent tube flickered to life, revealing two plastic chairs and a window covered with navy curtains drawn across from the other side of the glass.
‘It’ll just take a few minutes,’ he said, nodding towards the window.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Ben said.
Lizzie gripped her hand and nodded.
Jaddi closed her eyes as her thoughts flitted between willing the curtains to open and wishing that they never would. It could all be a mistake, couldn’t it? Ben could have made a mistake? That’s what they were about to find out. Someone else’s best friend, someone else’s life was gone, but not Samantha’s. Samantha would be waiting for them in the hotel lobby, furious with them for lying to her, but still alive.
Beside her, Jaddi felt Lizzie’s hand tighten around her fingers. Jaddi’s eyes shot open as the curtains juddered for a second and then parted to reveal another room similar to their own, empty apart from the steel gurney and the body, covered to the chest by a green sheet the same colour as the porter’s uniform.
A wave of elation crashed through Jaddi. It wasn’t Samantha. The lifeless body on the gurney was too small. Her blonde hair was wet and brushed back instead of parted down the middle. Her skin was too pale and her face, whilst familiar, was not the face of the best friend who’d stayed up all night to help Jaddi finish her dissertation on time, and had jumped off a cliff with them in Mondulkiri, and had slept in the next room, washed in the same shower, and eaten at the same table as her for the past nine years. It wasn’t Samantha.
Lizzie let out an anguished sob from beside her.
‘It’s not—’ The rest of the words caught in her throat as Jaddi’s gaze fell to the pink circular marks on the woman’s wrists, and the cut stretching along her right arm where Samantha had hit the nightstand in Vegas.
Pain stretched out of her heart. Tears spilled down her face and over her lips until she could taste the salt of them in her mouth. An unbearable energy exploded inside her. She wanted to bang on the glass and shout wake up, wake up, wake up. She wanted to run to the next room and pound her fist against Samantha’s chest until her heart started beating again, until Samantha started living again, but Jaddi’s feet refused to move, just as her eyes refused to look away.
Ben stepped towards both of them. He wrapped an arm around Lizzie and, a moment later, she felt his hand on her shoulder and allowed herself to be pulled into his embrace. Something warm dripped onto the top of her head. Ben’s tears.
Jaddi’s legs buckled from beneath her and her body slipped from his hold and onto the hard floor. It was her fault that they were in New York. It was her fault that they’d argued on the street. She was the reason Lizzie hadn’t raced after Samantha. This was on her. Samantha was dead because of her. She was the reason that they’d lied to Samantha. She was the one who’d supported Lizzie’s decision, helped her hide it too, so Lizzie wouldn’t have to explain herself, or be convinced to change her mind.
One of her best friends was lying dead in a morgue because of her, and another would be joining her soon. All because of her. Jaddi pulled her knees up to her head and covered her face with her hands as tears poured from her eyes.
A moment later the porter returned. ‘We have a bereavement room,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d like to use it.’
Jaddi felt Ben’s strong arm on hers, pulling her to her feet and guiding her three paces across the corridor and into a larger room with gleaming white walls. Two large canvas prints of the New York skyline hung on the walls.
Loss wound through Jaddi’s body. It wrapped itself around her in a cocoon of despair. Samantha would never travel to the top of the Empire State Building and see the New York skyline for herself. She would never get to travel back to Mondulkiri like she’d wanted to and care for the elephants. She wouldn’t do anything again, ever.
‘There’s tea and coffee facilities. Please help yourself, and stay as long as you need,’ the porter said, before closing the door.
Lizzie dropped onto the sofa, bent forward and buried her head in hands. Ben moved over to the table and, a moment later, the whirring noise of a kettle boiling filled the room.
The sound made her think of Samantha. Samantha was always the first one up in the morning. Always the first one to flick on the kettle and make three cups of tea, delivering them to Jaddi and Lizzie without a word. How many times had Jaddi joked with Lizzie about that? ‘It’s the best indicator of how late I’m going to be for work if I’ve overslept,’ Jaddi had always laughed. ‘Lukewarm – marginally late; tepid – very late; cold – time to call in sick.’
Ben pushed a steaming mug into her hands before passing another to Lizzie.
‘I don’t know what to do now.’ Jaddi shrugged, looking between Lizzie and Ben. ‘Are we supposed to carry on? Because I don’t think I can.’ Her voice rose and ended in sob.
Lizzie shook her head before turning to Ben. ‘What will happen to her now?’
‘Channel 6 are arranging to have her body flown back to London. Caroline’s contacting her mum.’
‘Yesterday was the first time I’ve ever heard Samantha talk about what it was like for her growing up,’ Lizzie said.
Jaddi drew in a sharp breath. Fresh pain sliced through her. Yesterday, Samantha had been talking and laughing and planning her future. Yesterday, she’d been happy to be in New York, and teasing Jaddi about the cold. Today, she was gone.
‘I’m not sure she’d have wanted her mum to organise her funeral,’ Lizzie said.
‘We should do it,’ Jaddi nodded.
‘I’m not sure she’d want us to do it either,’ Lizzie said.
‘Liz—’
‘We were all she had. We hurt her and we killed her.’ Lizzie’s cheeks shone wet with tears.
Ben sat down beside Lizzie and touched her knee. ‘Lizzie, you can’t blame yourself.’
Lizzie let out a howling gasp. ‘I don’t blame myself. I blame Jaddi.’
Jaddi drew in a breath, her eyes finding Lizzie’s. A darkness crossed Lizzie’s face. She frowned, holding Jaddi’s stare.
‘You were right before, in the park,’ Lizzie said, ‘when you said this is on you. You pushed and pushed, just like you always do. Egging us on, bullying us into things. I’m sure you think you’re doing it for us, for me, but it’s not. It never is. It’s always about what you want. You wanted to go travelling. You saw a way to make it happen.’
Jaddi recoiled. Her head smarted as if Lizzie had slapped her face. Jaddi had had the same thoughts, she’d blamed herself, but hearing it from Lizzie cut to her core.
Lizzie stood up and stepped towards the door.
‘You wanted to know what harm it could do?’ Lizzie cast her eyes around the room. Tears fell from her eyes. ‘Here’s your answer.’