Chapter 18
NICK
So many times over the last few weeks I’d gone to the park and stood looking at the bandstand, wondering whether to step inside.
Would Emma be there? Would she ever be there again?
Maybe she was there right now, waiting for me, hoping I’d come.
Hoping she’d have the chance to explain why she did what she did.
If she was, all I needed to do was to take a step, and I’d be with her.
But in the end, I hadn’t been able to do it. Because I didn’t see how I would ever be able to forgive her for what she’d done.
Even though I didn’t know exactly what she’d discovered about me, the thought of what it could be haunted me throughout my days.
I knew that whatever I imagined could very well be worse than the reality, in which case finding out the truth would help.
But there was always the possibility that it was exactly what I feared, and once I knew, there would be no going back.
Every night I lay in bed trying to sleep, and the demons would flood my mind with images I didn’t want to see.
Some were memories: of Dawn’s last days, of the promises I’d made to her to go out there and live my life.
Others were flashes of what might be to come, of me ill, or dying; endless possibilities cycling through my brain on a loop until I’d have to get out of bed and find something to distract me. The lack of sleep was driving me mad.
‘You need to go get some help, talk to someone,’ Andy told me, over and over.
I knew he was right. But the sort of help he was suggesting felt impossible.
There was no way I could tell anyone about my fears – that I was afraid I was going to die some time in the next twenty years, that I was living on borrowed time – without telling them about Emma.
And if I tried to explain that to anyone, I risked being sectioned.
So instead, I’d agreed to speak to my GP and ask for something to calm my mind and help me sleep.
It had worked too. Because now I had a prescription for three months of antidepressants, and enough sleeping tablets to sink a small ship.
I just had to hope to God it worked, because I couldn’t go on like this.
I needed to get better and get on with living the rest of my life – however much of it I had left.