The blizzard is ferocious. London has given up. This harsh harsh winter has driven many people indoors, but I have never seen the roads around here – Parkway, Albert Street, Gloucester Gate – so utterly deserted.
I am the only person visible. Muffled, and mute, the driving snow is horizontal and vicious, and it stings my face, as I fight my way against the buffeting wind. I cross into the park. In this universal white-out, trees are like gnarled Victorian lamp stands, and the Victorian street-lamps are like frozen animals, their limbs snapped off, dismembered by the cold and hurricane winds.
That’s if they can be seen at all.
The blizzard is so intense I cannot see five metres, even three, in front of my hand. I have to make my way by instinct. And yet I do not feel cold, not deep inside, I feel a warmth. Salvation. A validation. Simon believes me, Simon knows what is happening to me. I knew this already, but now the world knows: I am not mad. And I did not kill my career, I did not kill my friendships, I did not kill my family, I did not kill my mother. It was not me. And at last the truth is out there. But what else is out there? Slouching over to kill me?
I look every which way. But this snow, it blurs everything. Should I go that way? I cannot tell, I cannot tell. Helpless, I shout out,
‘Simon?’ And again, ‘Simon are you there?’
This is stupid. In these gales my voice is as nothing, and I am nowhere near the Inner Circle, the park within the park. And darkness is creeping over the city, with the whitening whirl of furious snow. Dark and white, dark and darker, a cold and paltry light glimmers into nothing. At some point they will shut the park and the gates and rails are high and I will be stuck here, overnight, but it does not matter, I need to find Simon. He’ll know what to do.
A glisten of ice, expansive and sudden, brings me up short. I am near the duck pond. It emerges from the fogging of the wind-blasted snow. I have walked entirely the wrong direction, gone the stupid long way round. But at least I know where I am. I am now heading for the Inner Circle. Yet the winds and snows are so hard, fast and cruel I virtually have to crawl, like a baby, if I want to go further. The wind is making my eyes water, my face is hurting. Despite the layers of clothes, I can feel my body temperature dropping. Fast.
Is this dangerous?
I don’t mind. I do not mind – so long as I can find Simon. But I am inside the Inner Circle. I think: and there is no sign of him, or of anyone. Another crushing blast of snow, with hints of painful hail, almost pushes me over. The trees, weighed with snow, creak hysterically in the freezing gales. I wonder if they might fall. The wind is that strong and the snow is so heavy: a falling tree could kill me. But they – or it, or he, or she – they are trying to kill me, anyway. So what does it matter? This feels like a final chance.
‘Simon!’ I shout, my words instantly lost in the battering wind, my mouth immediately filled with clots of snow. ‘Simon, help, where are you? Simon? SIMON?’
A jingling sound from my pocket. My phone? Taking what pitiful shelter I can, crouching against the wind by a hedge of black rosebushes, feeling prickles of thorns on my freezing neck, I open the call, it’s my neighbour again, Tom the banker:
‘Jo, Jo, where are you?’
I cannot tell him. Not on this phone: my regular phone. The Assistants have hacked it, they will find me.
‘Tom.’
‘What? Jesus, Jo? Are you OK?’
He can barely hear me in the wind. I cup my hand around the phone.
‘Tom, I’m fine. I’m at the shops.’
‘But, Jo, you need to know, this menacing guy, he came looking for you, said he’d seen you going into the park, wanted to know if you were back, upstairs, and Jo—’
‘What?’
‘Jo, he looked dangerous, like a … dunno, like he was a threat. Jo, I think I should call the police, don’t you? This guy is definitely after you. He looked sinister. Manic.’
‘NO!’ I shout. The Assistants are listening to all this. They will get their revenge before Simon can save me. ‘Do not call the police! Tom!’ I shout into the phone. ‘Tom! Stop! Don’t call the police! Tom! It’s just Simon, that’s all – it’s just my ex—’
The call is dead. The entire phone is dead. My cold hands are shivering like I am utterly demented, but I can see, despite the blur, that the screen has gone black.
I have to find Simon. I know he is here. Somewhere. Waiting to help me, to save me, to explain everything. In this terrible, howling, deathly whiteness. This total blur of dark skies and white snow and silent, shrieking shadows – and black cast-iron lamps that look like dead apes, rigid and cold and deformed to amuse.
I am in the centre of the Inner Circle. I can just about see the fountain where Simon and I used to meet when we were courting. The spurts of water are grey crystal arcs. Lines of transparent swords hang from dead stone dolphins.
Now I turn, and, through the blasts of whiteness and cold, I can see the opposite gates. And nothing else.
Simon is not here. Simon has not turned up.
Simon was lying. Why?
‘Simon!’ I shout, forlornly. Into the blizzard. ‘Simon!’
He is not here.
‘Simon? Please? Please, Simon? Please?’
I feel like falling to my knees. With disappointment.
And then I see him. Not Simon. Someone else. The man sent to do me in.
He is a big, menacing figure, heavily disguised in a balaclava and scarves. Coming through the southern gates. He is barely a silhouette, but a huge dark silhouette. And I can see he is twice the size of Simon. He wants me, he is here for me, to finish me, he will be able to do it in the dark and the snow and no one will know. Push me in the frozen lake maybe. Oh, she got lost and fell in. The ice cracked open. She drowned. It would be so easy in this terrible blizzard. This man has been sent to end my terrors.
I hear a shout as the wind howls. And then this shadowy figure walks towards me, then runs towards me. A basic, reflexive fear fills my lungs, my soul. If you don’t kill yourself, I will send someone to do it for you. I turn, that way, this, trying to work out the best way to go, to flee, this big man is jogging towards me, with slow malevolence. Determined, yet calm. A killer. Professional.
And I have lost all sense of space, time, all sense of sense. My mind is full of terrors, real and imagined. And this blizzarding snow is perfect, an absolute blinding whiteness. Desperate, shivering, I run right, the gates are automatically closing, I run through them, I am in the road that runs through the park, but behind me the man comes, jogging, still coming to kill me, knowing he will corner me, and get me. Push me under the ice. And kill me. I sprint left, slipping on snow and ice, now I can’t see anything behind me, but that is because there is nothing to see: just a wall of snow and wind, and darkness, darkness. I slip over entirely, flailing, falling, twirling on shining ice. A ballerina doing the dying swan.
Is the man near? He could be three yards away, ready to kill.
I scream, loudly, and wait for someone to come. But this is hopeless. There is no one within half a mile. Apart from me, and him. Yet somehow I find some energy, a final urge to resist, and I climb to my feet, and scrape across the road to the pavement. Here is a gate. I have no idea where it leads; the path seems to slope down a bower of ice and trees and ivy, another part of the park, like a maze. Never been here before. Regent’s Park is so weirdly big. Huge hedges are hung entirely white with snow. Everything is weighed with snow. I am running in a maze and I hear the man coming after me, breathing heavily, ready to kill me.
Walls of whiteness. Darkness above. Death is just one corner behind. The big man who will always find you in the end, the mugger who will always, one day, get to you, before you reach your front door. This is my time. I have finally run out of places to hide.
Yet still I try. I race left, and right, past hedgerows, frozen fountains, hung with daggers of bluish glass, I run under green arbours turned to dead arches of white, of clear ice and snapping icicles, I have no more running left in me, I can see the man still coming, in his balaclava, huge shoulders, thick coat, he is the other side of the maze, and he can see me, and he knows I can see him. I duck down and sprint, deeper into the labyrinth.
I think I have lost him. For the moment. But I have also lost myself. I am at the edge of exhaustion, I am finished: the cold is too strong, the call of quietness, and acceptance, is too alluring. I almost want to give up. There’s no way out. I just hope if he does get me, he kills me quick. The gates are now locked and all the railings are way too high to climb. I run through one final iced-black archway of roseless thorns, into a circle of soil and ice, where I confront another statue, a gracious cast-iron maiden, hung with glass weapons, and in the corner I see a pretty little wooden bench. I will lie there.
This is it, this is it. Enough enough enough. I am so tired. I cannot escape. They have won. Either the man will get me, or the cold will eat me, because I am defeated, I am so tired. It is enough. It is enough. I killed my own mother. Even though I didn’t. Yet that was my mother’s dying thought: that her own daughter hated her.
The blizzard is howling to its end, and I am following.
Slowly and carefully I lie on the bench. I am so cold I am beyond shivering. This is what suicide must be like, when you ultimately accept death must happen. When you leave the glass of milk and the plate of bread. When you tape shut the doors. When you go to the kitchen and lie down your head on a tea-towel. It is a quiet thing.
I am laying my head on the bench. I shall die here. Even if the big heavy-set man cannot find me and kill me, I cannot get out of the park. I will freeze to death even if I am not drowned or strangled. And I really don’t mind. Why should I mind? Death is not such a bad thing, not such a poor thing, not if you are me.
I feel the last shivers run through me. My heartbeat slows. And slows. Death is close now. I remember my father, and the little apple tree. Oh Daddy, oh Daddy, I’m through.
‘Hey.’
I stir from my very last dream. That dream of an apple tree, of Daddy lifting me in his arms, his bright loving smile. I open my freezing eyes.
It is a voice I know.
It is Cars. Cars was the man following me. Cars.
‘You.’
I open my mouth, taste the snow. Spangles of ice. Trembling. I am unable to speak.
He says, through his balaclava, ‘I saw you come in here. Saw you was in trouble. Came to help.’ He shakes his head. ‘Jo. Got to help you, here to get you.’
Again I cannot speak.
He picks me up in his arms, like I weigh nothing, because I am dead and souls are weightless. I feel him carrying me out of the circles of hedges, the gardens, and then I pass out into the deep and dreamy strangeness of oblivion.