I stare at the screen.
Delete it.
But what will they think?
I press and hold down the InCheck logo on my phone and watch it jiggle.
Delete it.
But I don’t. Instead, I throw the phone on the bed and curse out loud.
Fred and Susana. I’ve been thinking about them all morning. They won’t miss Alice, not really. They’ll move on, as normal adults do, and find another counsellor. A real one this time. But then I think of Lisa, and I pick up the phone again. I have to do this today.
“Cat?” Deborah calls from downstairs.
“Coming!” I reply.
I jam the phone into my pocket. I’ll delete InCheck later, come hell or high water.
After yesterday, I’d felt like crawling into a small space and never coming out. Neil and I were still smoking outside, our dead fathers the elephants in the garden, when Deborah opened the back gate. I wiped my eyes and tried to look as calm as Neil. When she waved and went inside the house, I asked, “Did you know she was coming home so early?”
He shrugged. “No.”
“Don’t you guys keep tabs on each other?”
“We keep to ourselves,” he said. “It’s better for the investigation that she doesn’t know what I do all the time.”
As usual, Deborah was in the mood for wine last night. I watched her throw back glass after glass as I sipped on my Coke. Despite not drinking, I felt unhinged. One wrong look from Neil or Deborah, and I’d probably break down. Talking about my dad brought emotions like that dangerously close to the surface.
This morning, I find Deborah at the kitchen island—ready for work—and Neil standing across from her.
“Morning,” I say.
“Morning, love,” she says, “I wanted to ask you something.”
My eyes dart to Neil, but he’s not looking up from his phone. I look at Deborah again. “Yes?”
“A colleague of mine is going to South Africa in a month,” she says with a smile. “He’s done his research on safaris, but since I know a local, I told him I’d ask you what’s best.”
My ears ring as the words sink in. “A safari?”
“Yes,” she grins. “You know, to see lions and rhinos. Those things.”
“He should go to the Kruger Park,” I say. “It’s the biggest game reserve in the country.”
She shakes her head, wags a finger. “He knows Kruger. He says you sometimes wait for days to see any action. He wants to see lions up close, you know? Almost touch them.”
“Maybe he should go to a zoo,” I mutter.
For a moment, she’s stunned. Then, she lets out a cackle. “Ha! Well, I’ll pick your brain on it later.”
But she looks at me for a moment too long, something else hidden behind her eyes. It’s the same look she gave me last night.
Dislike.
Maybe she senses my panic. Knows what’s happening on a deeper level. What do they call it? The collective subconscious.
“I need to get going,” she says, picking up her handbag. But as she walks past me, she slips and crashes to the floor.
“Damn!”
Neil’s by her side before me, taking her by the elbow. She’s rubbing at her knee.
“You need to be careful,” he says.
She nods, her face twisting in pain. “Bloody knee. It’s still not healed.”
I remember the day she tripped, the shards of glass scattered across the wooden floor, red wine splashed everywhere.
“Can you walk?” I ask.
“I’m all right.”
She brushes us off and walks out of the house with a slight limp. A few moments later, her car disappears down the road. My phone pings.
Mom. Can we call today? Miss you.
I wish she’d stick to texting only, but today the thought of hearing her voice brightens my mood. Sure, I’ll call you tonight?
“Ready?” Neil says.
“Let’s do it,” I say.
It’s straight down to business. We walk to the study and sit in our usual spots. The room is stuffy and I remember how claustrophobic I felt in here yesterday. But today I’m ready. No classes to interrupt me, no personal surprises bubbling to the surface. I’m ready to dive into the hole of my blackouts and dig up what we need.
“Two more calls,” Neil says, taking stacks of InCheck transcripts from the drawer. “Both on the same day. I went over them this morning.”
My mind tries to find something familiar, but it’s useless. I’ve been over this before, trying to pinpoint the last time I spoke to Lisa. I take the papers, scanning through them. A familiar dread washes over me. Only two pages, the last with barely any chats.
How are you feeling today? It’s been a while. Alice’s opening seems normal enough, but when I see the timestamp of the text, it turns my stomach into a hard knot of trepidation.
14 January.
I read on. According to the transcript, Lisa responded a few minutes later. Not sure.
I try to piece together the puzzle in my head. 14 January. I had classes at Sam’s academy in the morning, and had the rest of the afternoon off. Getting through the morning was gruelling, but Sam needed me that day. Luckily, she didn’t remember the significance of the date.
14 January. The anniversary of two years prior, the day my life came crashing down. The day I started feeling like a murderer.
“You okay?” Neil asks.
I scratch at my head. “Just trying to remember.”
I draw the pages closer again. I shouldn’t have called Lisa that morning. Alice should have been professional enough to know that her own mental state was shaky. Especially on that day. Lisa was in an awful state too, judging by her curt responses on InCheck.
And yet, I—Alice—still asked her if she wanted to talk.
Ok. 30 mins? Lisa had responded. She was usually a talker, but how much did I really know about her? We’d only spoken on the phone twice, and she’d been vague in her chats ever since. Not at all like Fred or Susana.
I think of them again. Do they ever wonder where Alice went? Why their counsellor simply abandoned them without so much as an explanation? Have they reported Alice for breaching the app’s terms of service, for not replying to them on time?
Neil brings me back to the moment. “So you and Lisa had a call that morning. January 14th. Do you remember what she said?”
I sink back in my chair. I should be able to remember this call. The one in the morning. Not the second one, later on. The one where I’d come home from the academy and started drinking midway through the afternoon. That one feels like I’m staring into a pot of blackness.
Slowly, little shards of memory start coming back to me.
I had a break between classes that morning. It was enough time to fit in a phone call with Lisa. I close my eyes, trace back my steps. I’d used a private room at the academy, sitting at an empty desk. And then, suddenly, it all comes back to me.
“She sounded terrible,” I say. “Lisa.”
“How?”
I tell Neil how empty and hopeless she sounded. Her sadness seeped through the phone, coating the walls. I remember how hard it was. I felt out of my depth, trying to build some positive energy where there was none.
But I was living through a horrible day myself, and I had little to give.
“Would you say she was suicidal?” Neil asks, eyes searching.
I shake my head. “She sounded depressed. But she was engaging.” Inside me, the dread builds again, fluttering up my throat like angry butterflies. I feel now like I did then. Scared. Like trying to paint a picture with only one colour. Walking a tightrope with just one foot. How can you give advice to someone when you barely know them? When you need all the advice you can get yourself?
“She wanted to make some… changes,” I say.
“What kind of changes?”
“She wanted to get out of her situation.”
“Are you sure she didn’t want to check out of the world?”
I frown at Neil. “No, I just told you she was engaging. Sad, but engaging. Why would you say that?”
He opens the drawer again, this time putting a stack of pictures on the table. He takes one from the middle of the pile and slides it over to me.
“Like I told you, the police found a suicide note.”
I swallow hard.
“Take a look,” he says.
My heart’s in my throat. But I look down. It’s a scanned picture of a handwritten note. I read through it line by line, the bile rising as I do. I try to remind myself that it’s not like before. That this has nothing to do with what happened then. What happened on January 14th, two years ago.
And as I read, a calm descends over me.
“They found it in her bedroom,” Neil says. “At the house down the road.”
I keep reading, the words coming together. I read every sentence twice, just to be sure. And then I meet Neil’s eyes, a newfound conviction growing in my chest.
“You’ve got it wrong,” I say, flipping the photo back to him. “This isn’t a suicide note at all.”