A week after stealing the book, he had read through it, digested its grim content five or six times.
Entitled The Suicide Diaries, the book spoke to him. Its stories and descriptions filled his mind, had this way of making him feel less alone… there were other people who felt this way, people who felt as wretched as he did!
Even when he wasn’t reading it, somehow it seemed to soak up all the available space in his head. He barely noticed his classmates’ sniggers now, the way they turned their backs when he walked by and sometimes lingered, hoping, on occasion, to join in with a conversation or two. The way he felt so completely and utterly alone.
Since the accident, as he’d come to conveniently think of it, he’d been unable to sleep more than an hour or two before waking in the early hours bathed in sweat, his heart pounding. His clothes all hung from his newly skinny frame – which he’d disguised thus far with the use of belts and baggy shirts and sweaters.
Worst of all was the lack of interest in everything he used to enjoy. Watching sport on television with his father was one of the rare occasions they spent any time together on his weekend visits home but eventually, after numerous excuses, his father had now stopped asking.
He couldn’t get excited about anything any more. He’d wondered endlessly what was wrong with him. He hadn’t a clue… until he read the stolen book.
Then, and only then, did he realise he was not alone and moreover, he controlled his own destiny.
The book taught him that many people secretly felt this way. He had arrived at the swift realisation that there was, in fact, a way out his living hell after all.
One Friday evening, just minutes after he’d arrived home for one of his short visits, he mustered the courage to tap on the door of his father’s office.
There was a brief silent pause before his father bellowed, ‘What is it?’
He opened the door a crack, enough to crane his head around.
‘Sorry to interrupt you but… I wondered if I could borrow your library card?’
The furrows in his father’s forehead dissolved.
‘Oh, is that all?’ He opened his desk drawer, dug around and brought out what looked like a plastic credit card. ‘Interested in reading now, are you? A late developer, huh?’
His father’s tone was mocking as he picked up the heavy cut-glass tumbler and took a draft of whisky from it.
When the boy’s mother had been alive, that same tone, that same whisky, had often pre-empted one of his father’s violent episodes, causing his mother, with her silent coded look, to send him up to his room immediately.
He’d lie on his bed with his pillows over his head and hum loudly but it still did not stop the sounds of his mother’s pain. He had felt useless, terrified and he had hated him. Had hated himself for his inability to save her.
Yet in that moment, at the office door, he suddenly wanted with all his heart to impress his father.
‘I’ve been reading books about World War II,’ the boy said quickly, stepping into the room. ‘The history is interesting and I know that Grandad—’
‘Just take it, haven’t used it in years.’ His father held out the library card. The skin on his knuckles looked red and raw. ‘Close the door on your way out.’
The next day, free of his crutch at last, he’d caught a bus and called in at the large library in town.
He approached the librarian who most closely resembled Mrs Dunmore and gave her what he hoped was a winning smile.
‘Hello, I’m a student at St Mark’s,’ he began, watching as the private school connection worked its magic. Her slightly suspicious expression gave way to a friendly smile. ‘I’m doing a project about suicide, methods used and reasons people do it. Very sad it is, harrowing. But I wondered if you could help me find possible titles on the subject?’
Within ten minutes he had borrowed two books and the librarian had ordered him in three more to collect on his next visit home.