Chapter 32 Iris
Iris
THEN
So, things went from bad to worse, after Iris came home from Gran’s house in the Lake District.
She didn’t go out, except to go from Crooked Oak Cottage in Holtleigh to Mayflower Farm in Shallowcott – from her mum’s place to her dad’s place – or with Mum to walk on Exmoor, along routes where there was zero chance of her bumping into anyone, let alone anyone she knew.
Millie had blanked Iris that day at school, but outside of it, she acted like nothing was wrong.
She came round every now and then until Iris asked her not to.
Millie went on and on about school and Iris couldn’t deal with it.
Plus, Millie was probably only coming round out of pity, or because Jo and Ian sent her.
It certainly wasn’t for the good company.
Iris’s world was shrinking. She had hardly any contact with anyone in it, besides her family and her counsellor and her driving instructor.
That suited her, but at the same time, she couldn’t go on with things that way.
She had a knot in her stomach and a foul taste in her mouth and they just wouldn’t go away.
Her hands shook a lot and she’d bitten her nails to the quick and started on the skin around her thumbs.
She tried to do breathing exercises, like Mum suggested, but it was a total waste of time and effort.
She was tired. All. The. Time. But when she tried to sleep, she lay awake, her heart pounding.
Either that or she slipped into a light, fitful sleep complete with nightmares.
She had two recurring dreams. In one of them Josh tried to suffocate her; in the other he threatened to kill her with a knife.
She always woke up before he could do either, marinating in a pool of her own sweat, which was just gross.
And pretty fucking scary. Iris would wake up, screaming, and Mum would come rushing into her bedroom to smother her with hugs and rub her back like she was a baby.
‘I hate him, Mum!’ Iris would sob into Mum’s pyjama top. ‘I wish he was dead!’
Melanie said she had to talk to herself in her head and think positive thoughts. ‘Go easy on yourself. Keep telling yourself you’re lovely, you didn’t deserve this and it’s not your fault,’ she said.
But Iris didn’t believe a word of any of the nice things she tried to make herself think. Her inner voice always piped up, drowning out those thoughts and firing words like ‘worthless’, ‘slut’, and ‘stupid’. Victim-shaming. Self-blaming.
She couldn’t see a way forwards. Dad spent God knows how long every single day trying to get the video taken down from various websites.
It was going to follow her all her life, wherever she went.
How could she ever trust anyone again? No other guy would ever want to be her boyfriend.
She had no friends and no one would ever want to be her friend again either.
Any prospective employers were going to find the video as soon as they did an online background check. She was totally screwed. Forever.
It got so Iris didn’t even want to get up in the morning and wished she could go to sleep and not wake up.
It took every ounce of her energy to get up, take a shower and put on some clothes.
She could no longer concentrate on her schoolwork.
The suicide thoughts she’d toyed with before now invaded her mind.
She thought about killing herself non-stop.
She was in a really dark place. In pain.
Suicide seemed like the only way out. It would be better for everyone if she wasn’t around.
She’d caused no end of trouble and her family were all suffering.
The problem would only go away if Iris herself did.
Mum and Dad would take it badly, but they were bound to feel a bit relieved, too. No one else would miss her.
She remembered Josh’s supposed suicidal thoughts and how he’d implied he was considering taking his own life.
And here she was, actually planning to take hers.
Ooh, the irony! How would Josh have done it?
Jumped off a cliff, maybe. Exhaust fumes in his mother’s SUV?
But Iris was sure now that it had only been an idle threat, one of the many manipulative ways he’d used to bind her to him.
They’d talked about suicide once. He said it was the coward’s way out. She thought you had to be really brave to do something so drastic, and, above all, really desperate. She was desperate now. But maybe Josh had been right. She felt like a coward.
She googled how to slit her wrists. Lots of hits for suicide helplines, but once she scrolled past all that, she found some useful tips.
One: use a sharp knife. The one in the kitchen drawer that Mum chopped vegetables with would do the job.
Two: right-handers, use your left hand to cut your right wrist first. The tendons will be damaged, so you’ll need as much strength as possible to cut into the other wrist. That made sense.
Three: slit along the wrist, not across it.
She mimed the gesture along her arm. Four: take a hot bath and some painkillers.
She’d take some of Daniel’s anti-coagulants, too, so the bleeding didn’t stop.
She planned it for the evening of Margo’s parents–teachers meeting.
Margo, Daniel and Mum would be out for a few hours.
Olly had cross-country training, so he’d be back at some point, but he wouldn’t disturb her if she locked herself in the main bathroom.
He had an en-suite bathroom, the lucky git.
She’d scored the room with the best view, though. Margo could have it when she was gone.
She’d written the note the day before. That way she wouldn’t waste time on the evening itself.
She didn’t have much to say. Sorry, mainly.
She was so sorry for upending their lives.
Next, how much she loved them. Mum, Dad, Olly and Margo.
She decided not to put Daniel’s name. He was her stepdad, sort of, but he wasn’t family.
Not really. And finally, not to blame themselves. This was all her fault, not theirs.
Before leaving for the meeting, Mum and Margo came to her bedroom, where Iris was pretending to do her homework, to say goodbye. Iris held them too tightly and for too long.
‘Are you all right?’ Mum asked. ‘I can stay if you don’t want to be alone. Daniel can go.’
‘No, no, it’s fine,’ Iris said, panicking. She needed to act normal.
She listened out for the front door closing behind the three of them and then heard Daniel’s car roar into life outside. The noises galvanized her into action.
She ran a bath with hot water, as hot as she thought she could stand.
But instead of getting into it, she crumpled to the floor.
She couldn’t say how long she sat, naked on the bathroom rug, holding the knife in her hand and shivering.
The whole room was clouded with steam and her eyes were clouded with tears.
Was she too much of a coward to take the coward’s way out?
She didn’t know Olly had come home until he hammered on the bathroom door. She wondered if he’d heard her crying or if Mum had texted to ask him to keep an eye on her. She didn’t find out until afterwards that he’d found the note she’d written.
‘Go away!’ she shouted.
‘Let me in!’ he yelled back.
You could unlock the bathroom door from the outside with a coin in the lock, which had come in handy once when Margo got stuck in there and couldn’t turn the lock herself from the inside.
When Olly went quiet, Iris thought he’d left her, but then she heard the lock turn.
When he burst in, she felt a strange mixture of shame and relief.
Without a word, he took the knife from her hand, wrapped her in a towel, warm from where it had been hanging on the radiator.
Then he took her dressing gown from the hook on the back of the door and helped her into it, like she was a child.
He knelt down next to her and held her in his arms as she sobbed.
‘It will be OK, Iris,’ Olly said, over and over. ‘I’ll ring Dad.’ His voice wavered and cracked, but he held it together. For her sake, perhaps.
But then she heard him sniff and felt his body tremble. Iris knew without looking at his face that Olly was crying, not loud sobbing like her, but quietly. She felt bad about upsetting him.
It took Dad about half an hour to reach Crooked Oak Cottage.
Iris and Olly were still in the bathroom, their backs against the radiator, Olly’s arm around Iris’s shoulders.
Dad barged into the bathroom. He was wearing his suit and had obviously come straight from work.
He’d let himself in and came upstairs to the bathroom without even taking off his shoes.
Daniel would not have been impressed. Weird how her mind came up with things like that at a time like this.
The next few weeks went by in a bit of a blur.
Iris was pretty much wrapped in cotton wool.
She was prescribed new medication, she had more appointments with Melanie, everyone watched Iris like a kettle of hawks around the clock, a team suicide watch.
Mum didn’t get much work done during the day.
Olly moved his mattress into Iris’s room and slept on the floor, so there was someone on call for her at night.
Iris couldn’t have made another attempt on her own life if she’d wanted to. She was never alone.
She didn’t want to, though. Not anymore. She still didn’t want to fight; she definitely didn’t want to face a court case. But she didn’t want to be a victim all her life. She needed to turn this around somehow.
It took some time, a lot of time. Dad was still finding her video and reporting it after seven months.
It was like trying to put out wildfire with a water pistol.
But the fire would die down eventually. Even if it left embers.
Iris had to get back in control of her life.
She needed to start by actually getting a life.
It was her birthday in July. Her seventeenth.
It should have been a big deal, but there was no way Iris was going to celebrate it.
She woke up feeling depressed about having to get up at all.
But Dad had bought the best present ever.
He handed her this big cardboard box, which seemed to be wiggling.
The lid of the box wasn’t taped down and it wasn’t wrapped and Dad said she had to put it on the floor and open it quickly.
She did. Inside was the cutest puppy. Iris squealed.
‘He’s a golden retriever,’ Dad said.
‘What’s his name?’
Dad shrugged. ‘You can name him.’
‘Where did you get him?’
‘I found an advert on the internet. I got him from this family in Somerset. Near Cheddar Gorge.’
‘Cheddar. That’s a good name for a dog,’ Iris said. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘It’s an excellent name,’ Dad agreed. ‘He’s exactly the right colour.’
‘Does Mum know about this? Is she OK with it?’
‘Yes. And so is Dandruff.’
‘I bet he took some persuading.’ Iris rolled her eyes.
‘You can say that again. Anyway, there are some conditions if you want to keep him.’
‘Anything! Go on!’
‘One: you are responsible for him. You have to look after him, take him for walks whatever the weather and remember to feed him, brush him and wash him.’ That sounded easy enough. ‘And two: you have to go to puppy training classes. I’ve enrolled you in the Kennel Club in South Molton.’
Ah. Now that was harder. That meant actually facing people.
People who may have seen her video. Iris hesitated, but only for a few seconds.
She had to get back on the horse or the diving board or whatever.
She had to start somewhere. This was as good a place as any.
She wouldn’t be completely alone. She’d be with her dog. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I can do that.’
And just like that she felt she was taking control of her life again. Baby steps, maybe, but she could do this.