Chapter 105
Chapter 105
She gasped desperately, her chest heaving as she tried to suck in the last remaining vestiges of oxygen, but could find no relief. The temperature in her tiny, airless cell seemed to have rocketed in the last few minutes and even though Naomi was now lying on the floor, she still felt as if she was suffocating, overwhelmed by a steadily growing cloud of carbon dioxide. Each breath she managed to take only seemed to make things worse, her attempt to live only serving to ensure her imminent death.
She was past hope, past dreams of salvation; now all she could do was prepare for the end. Naomi felt crushed by despair, paralyzed with terror, but she tried to push these feelings away. If this was it, as it surely must be, she wanted to die bathed in happy thoughts, clothing herself in memories of a time when things were good, when life seemed full of possibilities. She remembered Christmas presents when she was a kid, her first surfer Barbie. She recalled the rescue dog, Pickles, that they’d had for a few months back in the day, before it became too infirm to walk. Naomi even managed to dredge up fleeting images of her dad, kissing her softly on the head, as he slipped her a fiver.
But mostly Naomi thought about her mum. It was hard not to imagine Sheila’s desolation, her fear, her sadness, especially as Naomi was now convinced there would be no discovery, no justice, no funeral. The world was cruel and Reynolds would win, that seemed clear to her, but by sheer force of will, Naomi pushed these negative thoughts aside. She would not go there; she would not let her last thoughts be these dark images of a grieving mother. Instead, she would remember the love, the cuddles, the kisses. Sitting on the sofa together watching I’m a Celebrity , playing with the sprinkler in their tiny garden, walking through Westquay at Christmas time, taking in the sparkling window displays. These were the moments when she’d felt happy, safe and loved. This was her legacy, as limited and unremarkable as that might seem. This was her.
It was time to make her peace with that, to acknowledge that there were some paths you shouldn’t take, some mistakes you can’t recover from. Naomi was finding it harder to focus now, the thinning oxygen robbing her of composure, of clarity. She knew she had to keep still, had to conserve energy and breath, but her body felt clammy, sweaty, itchy, as if she was slowly cooking in this awful hell. She wanted to fight it, she wanted to stay alive, but she wasn’t even really sure which way was up anymore, couldn’t tell if she was still awake or merely dreaming now. She kept her eyes open, straining in the gloom to see something, anything, some object, some sign that would confirm that she was still present, still alive. But her resolve, her resistance was at an end and now, suddenly, everything went black.