Chapter 103 Sally
Sally
Carolina and Addo were all too eager to leave Helena’s bathroom the day they discovered Damon’s body inside it. However, Sally didn’t beat quite such a hasty retreat when she went to retrieve his phone.
Death had always held a bleak fascination for her.
She’d ruminated on life’s fragility ever since witnessing a classmate being mown down and killed by a car outside their school.
As others around them had screamed and cried, the then ten-year-old Sally had been captivated by the unnatural angles of little Poppy Harrison’s contorted body and strawberry-blonde hair splayed across the road.
But it was her serene expression that lingered in Sally’s memory for the longest time.
In her last throes of life, a faint smile had tugged at the corners of Poppy’s mouth.
It was as if, as she slipped away, she stopped feeling pain, and something else was holding her attention.
Something far greater than this world could provide.
Then, within the blink of an eye, she was gone.
In the years that followed, barely a day had passed when Sally didn’t picture a dying Poppy.
Or of standing behind her that day, both girls between parked cars, waiting for a gap in the road to cross.
And of how light Poppy had felt when Sally pressed her hands into the small of the girl’s back and shoved her into the path of oncoming traffic.
It was a spontaneous act, but one that had been brewing for a long time.
All the way back to year one, with Poppy’s refusal to invite Sally to her birthday party because she didn’t want anyone there with ‘dirty skin’.
It hadn’t seemed to bother Zara Chopra or Thandiwe Nkosi, but a humiliated Sally was more sensitive, more perceptive to injustice even at such an early age.
Likewise, when Poppy had mocked her Afro hair or the brightly coloured clothes Helena wore to parents’ evenings.
Then there were the elbows to the ribs in the school changing rooms, her papier-maché volcano that was mysteriously flattened in the classroom, and the mobile phone she left in her desk one lunchtime and returned to find doused in a sticky soda drink.
Sally had been left with no choice but to retaliate.
Long after Poppy’s death, Sally had wished she could witness it all over again, before the wish developed into an obsession. She’d admitted to her therapist Dr Dahl that she fantasised about hurting people who deserved it, but stopped short of confessing she’d once acted on those urges.
Five years later, a second opportunity to end a life presented itself.
In the silence of the house she’d once called home, a dead Damon’s skin colour fascinated her.
Why had it remained white? Where were the purple patches where deoxygenated blood had pooled?
It was when she moved closer to him that she got her answer: the faintest breath coming from Damon’s mouth.
It was so light, it was barely perceptible.
She froze, unsure if she was imagining it.
And then it happened again. So she crouched by his side, carefully placed her index and middle fingers to his neck, then his wrist, searching for a pulse.
It was faint, but it was definitely present.
Her half-brother was still alive.
Sally turned her head sharply, ready to call her aunt and uncle who were waiting downstairs, but hesitated.
Instead, she allowed herself to imagine what it might’ve been like to have had a father and an older brother in her life.
A traditional family unit instead of only her mum.
As loved as Helena made her feel, there had always been something missing in Sally’s life.
And the cause of that was lying on the bathroom floor before her.
She felt a sudden rush of anger towards Damon, a resentment for what he took from her, and what he had stolen from countless other families and friends of those he’d killed.
He’d got away with so much. As with Poppy Harrison, a sense of injustice reared its head. She was going to make it right.
So she took a handkerchief she kept in her pocket for unpredictable nosebleeds brought on by high blood pressure and stress, then she covered his mouth and nostrils with it and held it there. The fight had already left his body, so he didn’t try to retaliate. He was dead in under a minute.
Sally felt only a grudging gratitude towards her brother for presenting her with the opportunity to watch a second person die.
And in the final moments of his life, she saw something pass in Damon as she had seen in Poppy.
A serene calm, far beyond Sally’s understanding.
She carefully wiped her prints from his skin and left.
It empowered her with the confidence to encourage the passing of her mother too.
On Sally’s sixteenth birthday, Carolina was downstairs in the nursing home’s café when Sally was alone at Helena’s bedside.
There, she took the same, familiar handkerchief, and within a few short minutes, brought her mother’s cruel suffering to a merciful end.
By the time Carolina returned with coffees in both hands, the handkerchief was tucked back inside Sally’s pocket.
She and Carolina held each other and wept for their loss.
Sometimes Sally dreams about Damon. He reminds her they are the same.
That because they share DNA, they share the same urges.
She argues with him, but he refuses to listen and, in her frustration, she wakes up with a jolt and reminds herself she is nothing like him.
She only does what she does for the greater good.
The world is a better place without Damon and Poppy in it, and her mum didn’t deserve one more second of pain.
Three deaths, each for a very different, altruistic reason. Each justifiable in its own way.
Sally wishes she could talk to her mum more than she does.
She hallucinates Helena every so often, but she can’t control where or when.
When she’s here, she looks as she did when Sally was a child.
A strong, beautiful and passionate woman, not the shell she became.
She keeps Helena up to speed about events in her life.
How it won’t be long before she begins her BSc Forensic Science with Criminology course at the University of West London.
How Carolina and Addo helped her find a buyer for the family home and that she hopes to purchase a flat not too far from the campus.
And how, next week, she will meet for the first time a guy she’s been chatting to on a dating app whom she has a good feeling about.
He’s funny and handsome but a few years older than her.
Twenty years older, to be truthful. She’s never shown much interest in boys her age, but there was another older man she’d felt powerfully connected to.
Helena had been so horrified to discover her fourteen-year-old daughter had been dating a twenty-four-year-old man that she had reported him to the police.
Now, Sally can’t help but wonder if growing up with only a mum has made her subconsciously seek father-like traits in relationships.
Not that it really matters. As she once heard somewhere, the heart wants what it wants.
Sally hasn’t told Carolina about this latest man because she is sure her aunt won’t approve of the age gap, or that he has a child with his soon-to-be ex-wife.
Or that he knows a thing or two about the complications families can bring.
But Sally has a good feeling about Finn.
She is sure they already have a lot in common.
Carolina’s voice returns Sally to the present.
‘I think we should go before the rain starts,’ she suggests, her head pointed up at the sky. ‘Are you ready, sweetheart?’
Sally agrees, but this time as they make their way back through the cemetery and to the car, it’s not only Damon she hallucinates. Poppy is with him, her hair and face stained with blood. They are standing in the arched doorway of a church, alongside Helena.
Something tells her that once she starts university, it won’t be long before they will need to make space for others.