Maddy could feel it. Knew it was there without even looking. Still. It hadn’t stopped coming, wouldn’t stop. No matter what she put there to stem it, absorb it. Every time she moved her body she could feel that it hadn’t stopped, that it was only waiting. A reminder of what she had done. An admonishment.
In blood.
The tears had stopped long ago. She had cried so much, let so much hurt and pain come screaming out of her body that it left her feeling physically tired. Once the tears and snot had dried on her face she could have just curled up and slept. And she would have done, if she hadn’t been feeling so depressed, so bereft. So empty inside.
That was almost a joke. The kind he would find amusing.
Acid curdled in her stomach at the thought. Of the joke. Of him. Of what she had done to herself. Of what she had let him do to her.
She sat in her bedroom, afraid to leave, afraid to talk to the rest of the house. They would want to know what was wrong with her and she wouldn’t be able to tell them. She had sworn not to, one of the first things they had agreed. That he made her agree to. And she had kept her word, not told a single soul. Not even Ami, her best friend. Ami might have suspected, guessed something was going on when Maddy was being secretive about where she was and who she saw, but she had managed to get round it. And Ami wasn’t the kind to go prowling and prying. So Maddy sat in her room, surrounded by her own things, her tokens and talismans brought from home, her photos and fetishes picked up along the way. Her attempts to accumulate her few possessions into a lodestone she could navigate her future life from. Instead she found herself clinging on to them, like the survivor of a shipwreck grasping any flotsam and jetsam, desperate not to be swept away.
She sighed, looked down at her legs, her groin once more. The slight bulge in the front of her jogging bottoms. She knew she shouldn’t look, but she couldn’t help it. Like picking at a scab and not letting it heal properly. Slowly she pulled her jogging bottoms out, away from her body. Looked down. Her underpants held the slight bulge of the damp pad against her skin. She pulled them away from her body too. Checked the pad.
Blood. Fresh.
She took her hands away quickly, letting her clothes snap back. She was still bleeding.
She felt her body shake, convulse, as another wave of tears threatened to overtake her, sweep her away from the makeshift raft, cast her adrift into nothingness.
‘I can’t… can’t do this…’ The words a whispered invocation between sobs.
It had all started so well. Too well. He was handsome, dashing. Charming. All the clichés her old self would have hated to hear her new self using. But he was different from all the others she had been out with, the clueless boys who strived too hard and missed the mark, just children playing at being men. He had swept her away from them, away from her friends. He had given her a glimpse into a world she knew about but had never been admitted to. Sophisticated, grown up. He had welcomed her into that world, told her she belonged, that he would guide her, shape her, make it hers. And she had let him. Because he had done something else for her too. Something none of the previous fumbling boys had even managed to do. Made her feel like she was the most important person in the universe. In his universe.
How could she not fall for him?
And now this. Her insides scraped out, an unending stream of blood between her legs. Like her life was running out of her. And a broken heart. No phone calls. No texts. No DMs on Twitter. Nothing. Like she’d been put back in her own world. Dumped. Hurt.
Alone.
She wasn’t naïve enough to think that the baby would have bound them together, made them a family. He didn’t want that and she was in complete agreement with him. She didn’t want a baby, not even with him. Or at least, not yet. She wanted him. To herself. Just him. And now she didn’t even have that.
Another wave of despair built up, threatened to crash against her. She couldn’t stand for that to happen, couldn’t bear it. She looked round the room, once her sanctuary, now her prison, where everything she saw, touched, smelled reminded her of him. Her muscles, tired, aching, flexed, spasmed. Her body convulsed as the tears hit, started again. She threw herself to the floor, jamming her fist in her mouth, eyes screwed tight closed.
‘Stop… make it stop… make it stop…’
Her feet hammering lightly on the floor, wanting to get it all out of her but not wanting the rest of the house to know what was happening.
The rest of the house. Maybe she should call Ami. Tell her what had happened. Give her the whole story. The secret affair. The mad lovemaking. The baby. The abortion. All of it. Tell her. She’s a friend, a best friend, let her be a friend.
Maddy’s hand snaked out to grab her mobile, fingers ready to call. She pulled herself to a sitting position, held the phone in front of her. Saw the photo. Him. And her. Smiling, happy, laughing. Looking into each other’s eyes, sharing a joke. The best joke in the world, from the way her eyes were shining, her head thrown back. Taken by a student at a party who probably never guessed, didn’t realise what was happening, what they actually meant to each other.
She stared at the photo. And put the phone down beside her. Carefully cradling it, as if the image might fade and along with it the memory.
She gazed at the image until the phone switched itself off, the screen going black. She sighed, felt another wave of tears about to hit.
No. Not this time. She couldn’t bear another bout, the bleeding, the pain. She had to do something. Make the pain stop. End it. Take it away. For ever.
She got slowly to her feet, her stomach twisting and cramping as she did so, reminding her of what she had done, and started looking around the room, rummaging through drawers, boxes. She knew they must be there somewhere. She knew she hadn’t loaned them out. She found them. Something her mother had made her take to university. Encouraging her to make her own clothes rather than waste money on buying them.
Dressmaking scissors. The blades razor-sharp.
She sat back on the floor, opened out the blades, held one of them along her wrist. The bigger one. It would cut deeper, quicker. That was all it would take, just a quick swipe of the blade along her wrist, a few seconds of pain as the metal dug deep into her flesh, as she pressed it down to the bone and moved it backwards and forwards. Then the same with the other wrist. Then… nothing. No pain any more. Ever again. Just peace. Rest. Nothing.
Blood began to well underneath the blade as she held it down. She felt the metal burn as it went in. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, mingling with snot. She heard herself blubbering, crying, made out words of apology, prayers for herself and her mother.
‘Sorry… sorry…’
She tried to push the blade in further. That was all it needed, just one more push…
Maddy threw the blade across the floor. It skidded under the wardrobe, lay still. She put her injured wrist up to her mouth, kissed the blood away, looked at the wound. There was barely anything to see; it had hardly broken the skin.
She sat with her back against the wall, feeling the blood trickling between her legs, along her wrist. The bleeding girl. That’s who I am. And a coward. Who couldn’t even kill herself.
She thought again of that word. Coward. No. That wasn’t what she was. She had stopped her suicide attempt not because she was afraid of dying, even though that was probably true. She had stopped because in that moment, just as the blade was about to slide through her flesh, she had thought of something else.
Make him pay. Make him sorry.
She stood up, wiping the back of her hand along her face. Heading for the shower.
Maddy was going out. She had someone to see.