Chapter Seven
Quinn - Present Day
I chose to leave the house just before dusk, determined to watch one last sunset in my favourite quiet place next to the lake.
I’ve always dreamed of having a dog to be able to take for walks and enjoy them together, but I’m glad I never did.
I could never leave them behind, and thankfully, I’m not like my mother in the context of taking the things I love with me.
It’s the one time my brain isn’t so loud, and I can find some semblance of peace.
Watching the different colours blend in the sky, the clouds almost disintegrating as the sky darkens, and the stars' visibility enhances, is cathartic. The monsters become a whisper, no demands, just words, which is surprising considering that on those evenings, I’m a stone's throw away from teetering on the edge of a bridge.
The sun is beginning to set behind the clouds.
It’s still dusky; pinkish-red hues scatter across the sky, reminding me of the saying I’d heard my entire childhood: “Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight.
Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning.
” A rhyme that came into play when England was living in a time where there were no accurate means of forecasting the weather, they would use the little information they could grasp from the sky, put two and two together and usually come up with five.
Not really surprising when back then the sailors and shepherds who used it were men.
Traffic moves along the road below me, a stark contrast to the silence you hear on the other side by the river. It’s almost like the moment you hit the centre of the footpath that separates both sides, the noise from below turns off. I wish it was that simple inside my brain.
I sit on the side of the bridge, my legs dangling. It’s wooden and rickety, with old train tracks running along it that clearly haven’t been used in decades. The gaps between the wooden planks get gradually bigger where the wood has started rotting away. So that’s why the sign’s there.
I’ve been walking up here for months but have never actually trusted myself to get on the bridge.
All I know from local gossip is that they’re planning on renovating it and reopening the entrance on this side to the cemetery.
From where I’m sitting, I have a decent visual of the gravestones and the abandoned church inside.
Most of them are overgrown and forgotten about.
Trees surround the vicinity, keeping it mostly shaded.
It’s not like they’re gonna overheat now, is it?
As my eyes scan the area, I stop at the sight of a man sitting by a grave.
I don’t have my glasses on, so honestly, my vision isn’t great, but from what I can see, he’s tall with dark hair and a jacket on.
Someone I would probably find attractive if I wasn’t going to die today.
It’s not that I’ve never wanted love. I just haven’t ever been lucky enough to know how it feels.
When I was younger and still at school, aside from being friends with Millie, there was always this one boy I noticed who I thought was cute.
He was nerdy, quiet, and kept to himself.
Millie always teased me for talking to him.
But he gave me the attention that I craved.
We were friends. He was my first-ever kiss.
A quick peck with cold lips under the oak tree at the back of the playground as we both sat reading.
We’d met in the library and bonded over our love for fiction.
How the same twenty-six letters in the alphabet could form so many different words to evoke many different emotions depending on the context they were used in.
We even talked about writing our own book.
We would sit together under that old oak tree in the sun, hands clasped, only letting go to turn the pages.
With him, I didn’t feel the need to exaggerate the monsters because he silenced them.
He saw me. He understood me. We had that cute childhood love that you think can stand the test of time, until it doesn’t.
And then, when my mum tried to kill herself, he was no longer allowed to talk to me.
I had a disease. It was the label that anyone with mental health issues got back then because it was misunderstood.
It became hidden moments in the library where the teachers couldn’t see.
Stolen kisses. And then one day we took a risk and met up outside of school.
We had the best time. We found a field full of bluebells that he chased me through, as I squealed like the girl I was, and on the other side of the field we found a hidden lake.
It had that kind of sand that wasn’t real, that was made from construction materials, but we made sand angels in it anyway.
We went swimming in the lake, unafraid of any of the things that could possibly be lurking beneath the dark surface, but I’d never noticed the bridge.
The bridge I’m sitting on now. As we left the field and crossed the road, his dad was driving by, and we were caught.
I never saw him again. Back in the times of no mobile phones or internet, I had no way to find him.
No way to track him down. And I never felt safe with a boy again.
I waited for him to be my first. Hoped he would come back for me.
But it soon became clear that I never meant to him what he meant to me.
I’ve dated. I’ve had sex—if you can call it that.
Two pumps and a squirt, no orgasms, and sloppy kisses full of saliva that made me want to gag.
Nothing stuck because as soon as they met my mother, she’d list all of the reasons I’d drain the fun from their life, and that would be that.
Why did I continue to introduce them, I hear you ask?
Well, I didn’t. She would conveniently turn up in places I would be with them, introduce herself, invite them round for tea and then spend the entire time belittling me.
So I gave up. Until that fateful day in the hospital when my future ex-husband turned up to visit me.
He was one she was in favour of, and that should have set off a nuclear episode in my brain as it was, but no, I was so pathetically desperate for affection I decided it was worth the risk.
I should have fucking listened to my shitty brain for once.
I’m so stuck in the nostalgia of the fond memory of the boy I once loved that when my brain comes back into focus, I notice the man is gone, and I’m sitting on the edge, swinging my legs to and fro.
I’d been watching him the whole time and didn’t even realise he had moved.
There’s another loss of time to add to the very long fucking list.