Last One at the Party Page 18

  Wow.

  I flicked through the book. Jed had removed page forty-five.

  I love you Jed, I hope you had a good and peaceful death.

  It took me just two minutes to read the entire guest book, five minutes to find out which page of the Trump book Jed had wiped his arse with, and then thirty seconds to throw the book back out of the window.

  I sighed and resigned myself to boredom once more.

  But then I saw the pen attached to the back of the guest book and the two hundred fresh pages waiting to be filled.

  I started to write.

  Hi.

  When I was fifteen I was in love with Keanu Reeves. Not a crush or a mere fancy, actual full-on love. I could see and feel his pain. I knew that people who thought him pretty but dumb just didn’t know the real him. I genuinely believed that I would marry him some day and I would provide the light in his life that had been missing and he would provide the mature and constant love that my teenage heart craved.

  I used to write a him a weekly letter, pouring out my love for him, my hatred of my small life and small achievements, my burning desire to write something great, the latest developments on my latest teenage literary tome, my desperate need for my life to begin in some way, in any way. I never sent the letters. They stacked up in my bedside cabinet over the course of about a year until my burning desire for Keanu faded into something more like the warm cherishment of a beloved family pet; someone you have known and loved for a very long time. Keanu was replaced by Steve who went to my college, someone whom I could love in flesh and blood but to whom I never once wrote.

  It might seem weird that I never sent the letters. But sending them was never the point – writing them was. I wanted to write everything down, get it all out of me and then seal it safely in an envelope. I didn’t care that no one would ever read them.

  I don’t care that no one will ever read this diary.

  I just need to get this stuff out of me before the end.

  Because I am still convinced that there has to be an end.

  Sorry, there has been no change of heart.

  In fact, being in the cottage has given me plenty of time to work out my plan for the end. I should probably capitalise that … The End.

  I am going to go to Soho Farmhouse.

  I am going to end my life in the place I spent one of my happiest ever weekends, in the world’s most comfy bed, with an extensive choice of pillows and luxurious 600 thread-count linen sheets.

  I almost can’t wait.

  You don’t know Soho Farmhouse? Well, of course you don’t. You are an ordinary person and not one of the chosen elite who get to experience the wonder of Soho House’s members-only world of happiness.

  Soho Farmhouse is one of the hotels owned by the Soho House members’ club. They have hotels and clubs and meeting rooms dotted around the world that can only be used by members, or by those who are willing to pay an extortionate amount of money for twenty-four or forty-eight hours of temporary access to this joyous adults’ playground.

  I use the word ‘hotel’ loosely, as staying at Soho Farmhouse is more like staying in the luxury complex of a friend who owes you a massive favour and is going to make your stay the best couple of days of your life. James took me there for the weekend two weeks after he kissed me on the platform at Liverpool Street station.

  I loved it.

  I’ll be honest, I didn’t initially want to go; I was worried that we would stick out, that people would know I wasn’t a celebrity, royalty, or actually even a Soho House member, and that they would treat me like a second-class citizen. But they either didn’t know or, more likely, they didn’t care.

  We stayed in a studio cabin overlooking the river. I loved the massive bed, the Egyptian cotton sheets, the bath outside that we sat in during a storm and listened to the rain thrum on the wooden porch and the thunder rumble in the distance and then crash overhead. I loved the wood-burning stove that we lay naked in front of until dawn was breaking, talking about our future in a way that made me feel fully contented and happy for the first time in the longest while.

  I loved the bikes that we rode around the grounds, laughing at the fact that neither of us could quite remember how to ride a bike and joking that the old adage most definitely wasn’t true. I loved the grounds, the endless green fields and rows of lavender that perfumed the spring air and filled our lungs with a healthy flowery scent after the polluted stench of London.

  I loved the farmhouse shop filled with items I couldn’t afford, to use in a life that I would never live. I loved the restaurants with their false rustic charm and delicious homely food. I loved the staff who treated you like you might be a minor European royal, the author of the next hot new novel, or the lead in the next blockbuster British movie. I loved how they seemed to genuinely like their jobs and genuinely not hate serving me.

  I loved that I was in a complete bubble. A bubble of love and of happiness and Egyptian cotton sheets.

  By the end of the weekend I knew that I would love both James and Soho Farmhouse for ever.

  I still feel that way. About Soho Farmhouse. I literally love it so much that I want to die there.

  February 15th 2024

  I have now been in the cottage for twenty-one days.

  I completely over-estimated the number of days of food I had left. I finished the last of the sugar this morning and haven’t had solid food for two days. Lucky hasn’t eaten for nearly three days, as he completely refused the olives.

  I am really, really hungry. My tummy rumbles constantly. I can’t think about anything but food. I am already feeling weak, and dragging myself off the sofa to add wood to the fire is a huge effort. Lucky hasn’t moved from his bed all day. I have been staring out of the window at the nearest cottage, but I am not sure I can make it, it seems very far away. And what if there isn’t any food when I get there?

  I could weep when I think about all the times I wasted or rejected food before. The times I didn’t like the look of something or I only ate half of it.

  There were times with James when I would reject whole meals because I was dieting or wasn’t hungry or I was in a bad mood so would just pick at them. There were times I didn’t eat just because James wasn’t there to eat with me.

  I was an idiot.

  The time I think about most often was a random Saturday afternoon. James and I had been living together for six years, and we decided to go out for a few drinks.

  It wasn’t a special occasion, just a lazy Saturday of drinking.

  We grabbed a Chinese takeaway on the way home and stuck it in the oven while we had sloppy, drunken sex. Afterwards James fell asleep. At first I thought he would wake up, so I lay next to him, lovingly watching him.

  An hour later my arm was numb and I knew he wasn’t waking up that night.

  But that left me without plans too. Did I eat the Chinese on my own? Did I wake him and tell him I was eating the Chinese? Did I leave the Chinese and eat something else? I was starving, but completely unable to make a decision for myself.

  In the end I turned the oven off and climbed back into bed beside James with my tummy rumbling, and waited for sleep to come.

  It took a very long time.

  I should have eaten the food.

  February 17th 2024

  It is day twenty-three. My tummy hurts.

  I am either going to the next cottage today or I am going to eat Lucky.

  I went to the next cottage.

  Lucky stared at me the whole time as I got dressed to go outside.

  I tried to explain to him that this was actually better than the alternative plan of me eating him. He didn’t understand.

  When I went to leave, he tried to block the door. I was too weak to carry him, and the snow was now past my thighs so there was no way he could walk there himself but, obviously, he didn’t understand any of this. I locked him in with the fire banked up with logs and an extra duvet in his basket.

  I could hear his howls un
til I was halfway there.

  With only an empty rucksack to carry, the walk was nowhere near as bad as it had been from the Defender, but I was very weak and hungry so it was extremely slow going. Once Lucky’s howls had faded it was also completely and utterly silent. I stopped and listened. Nothing. Not only was there no human-made sound, there was no natural sound either. No birdsong, no rustling trees, no scurrying animals.

  Complete silence.

  I started to walk again and realised that the world might have been completely silent but I was a veritable cacophony of sound: the crunch of my boots in the snow, the swish of my waterproof trousers, the rustle of my rucksack, the trumpeting elephant snort of my breath as I gasped my way forward.

  In fact, I was so busy listening to myself that when I heard the howling I assumed it was just Lucky again. But I was too far away to hear Lucky, so I stopped. This wasn’t a Lucky howl. This was the sort of howl you hear in horror films just before something really bad happens. A bone-chilling howl. The howl of something that is going to eat you and enjoy doing so. Reluctantly I turned to look for the owner.

  Wolves.

  Five wolves standing on the ridge about one thousand yards away. I had no idea where they had come from. Did Scotland always have wolves? Had they escaped from somewhere?

  The zoo-going, animal-loving part of me thought, ‘Oooh, wolves! So cute!’. The part of me that didn’t want to get eaten thought, ‘Fuck. Run!’

  I went with, ‘Fuck. Run!’ and part jogged/shuffled/staggered the last 200 yards to the cottage.

  The wolves didn’t move.

  I didn’t want to break a window, now that I knew I might not be top of the food chain, so I prayed that one of the doors was open. The back door was and, once I had shovelled snow away from it, I entered straight into the kitchen and didn’t even bother going into the rest of the house. I immediately ransacked the cupboards, which were stuffed with food. I found a tin of corned beef, which I opened and ate in one go, and a tin of ham, which followed the corned beef. There were tins and packets and crisps and biscuits and a couple of cheap, obviously irradiated, Victoria sponge cakes that were still in date. I rammed things into my face and into the rucksack in maniacal glee.

  Soon both the rucksack and my stomach were stuffed full and I was exhausted. I knew I needed to get back to Lucky, but I wasn’t sure whether I should leave with the wolves there. I had seen wolves before at Woburn Safari Park, and those fuckers move. Even in the snow I was willing to bet they’d be down from that ridge and eating me within minutes if that was what they wanted to do. I couldn’t see the ridge from the kitchen, so went into the front room to take a look out of the window.

  And there she was.

  The proof that I had come to remote rural Scotland for.

  The glass of water, the empty T600 pack, a comfy chair – the last rites of 6DM. She was old, maybe late eighties, and frozen solid. She had a rug over her knees and a cat curled up in her lap. A perfect picture of domesticity if it hadn’t been for the telltale signs of the sick bowl next to her and the thin trickle of blood coming from her nose.

  I poked the cat with a stick to make sure it was really dead. It was.

  When I finally looked out of the front window the wolves were gone, so I was charging back through the hallway to the kitchen to set off back to the cottage when I saw the dead woman’s landline phone sitting on the hallway table.

  Or rather I saw the answerphone message light flashing on the machine on her hallway table.

  Maybe it was because it had been years since I’d seen a working answerphone, maybe it was because the flashing light surprised me, or maybe it was because I had some kind of premonition or sixth sense. Whatever.

  I pressed play.

  The metallic voice chimed out.

  ‘You have one new message. Message received December 14th at 4.39 p.m..’

  ‘Doris, it’s Susan … your sister.’

  A human voice.

  It was the first time I had heard another person speak since I spoke to Tom Forrest about burying James.

  I was so shocked I sat down on the floor and burst into tears.

  ‘I … I know we haven’t spoken for a while. I wanted to see if you were okay. If you were sick yet? I’m not sick.’

  I stopped crying.

  ‘I was watching the ambulances going to the hospital at the end of our road. There were loads of them, but they’ve stopped now. I haven’t seen any for over a week. I don’t suppose that’s good news. Jess rang and she’s got it, and the kids. Jack went to see them a few days ago. He hasn’t come back. I’m here alone. Well, the cat’s here too I suppose. Anyway, I hope you’re all right. Call if you can. Bye.’

  I played the message again. And again. And again.

  The message was received on December 14th. James had been dead for nearly a week. Everyone had been dead for nearly a week.

  Or so I thought.

  I rifled through the table drawers.

  Address book.

  Susan.

  Susan Palmers. 17 Collister Avenue, Easington, Banbury, OX15 6BN.

  Telephone Number: 01295 657823

  I picked up the phone. No dial tone.

  My mobile was back at the cottage.

  I ripped the page out of the book, grabbed my rucksack, and ran out.

  The wolves returned to the ridge when I was about halfway back, but once more they just sat, stared, and howled.

  I hardly noticed them.

  I opened the door to the cottage and was immediately knocked flat by an ecstatic Lucky. He chuffed little barks of happiness and licked my face as I hugged and petted him and only moved away from me when I emptied two cans of corned beef and one of Spam into his bowl.

  I grabbed my phone and dialled Susan Palmers’ number. Beep, beep, beep.

  Of course I had no signal.

  Motherfuckers.

  I sat on the floor and resisted the urge to hurl my phone at the wall.

  Lucky came over to give me Spam-flavoured licks, and I hugged him and whispered into his ear.

  ‘We’re going to go to Banbury. We’re going to find someone else.’

  And then I laughed. Out loud. It was such a strange sound to my ears that I did it again, louder.

  I don’t think Lucky had ever heard me laugh that loudly before, because he skittered away and hid under the sink.

  That night I was woken up by a sound I didn’t recognise.

  The wind was howling as normal, but something was also drumming rhythmically against the house.

  Part of me wanted to see what it was, but a bigger part of me knew that I would be up in a couple of hours anyway and if I got up now I was bound to need a wee and that would be a whole load of hassle that could be avoided if I just went back to sleep …

  By the time I woke the next morning the noise was gone and I had forgotten all about it, so I went about my morning ritual as normal. I put two more pairs of socks on and vowed to get slippers as soon as possible, stuck two jumpers back on and tried to ignore the stink coming off me, put more logs on the fire and got it burning strongly again, gathered all the dirty plates and cups from the night before and walked from my gloomy sitting room, through my gloomy hall, into my gloomy kitchen. I dumped the dirty plates and cups with the other dirty plates and cups (I rarely bothered to wash up), filled the kettle, got clean plates and cups, and took them back to the sitting room.

  As normal Lucky whined and stared at my mixing bowl/potty and, as normal, I yawned and said a grumpy, ‘No’, so as normal we trudged back down the gloomy hallway and I opened the front door to let him out and HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK!

  Green. Everywhere. Green.

  The sky was still grey and threatening, but the snow was gone.

  Completely gone. The sound I’d heard must have been rain, and it must have been coming down pretty hard, because now instead of snow I could see the loch and the houses on the shoreline and the mountains in the background and paths and roads and trees and grass
and green, green, green.

  I rushed out of the cottage without my boots on and stepped straight into a huge pile of Lucky’s faeces.

  Karma.

  I didn’t care. I ran around the side of the cottage and I could see the Defender. The fields to it were clear and the road was clear.

  I could leave.

  I could go and find Susan Palmers.

  Soho Farmhouse would have to wait. I might have to put it off for ever.

  I’m good at that, putting things off

  It was James who finally persuaded me to get help.

  I had been putting it off for years, thinking I was doing a good job of hiding my panic and depression.

  I wasn’t.

  James and I had been together for seven years. We’d bought our flat, had birthdays and Christmases together and with our families. James was the advertising director at his company now and had his own office and executive assistant. I’d been promoted three times. Ginny had moved jobs and just met someone called Alex who she was spending increasing amounts of time with. Xav had remodelled his roof and was slowly turning his house into the premier party venue of West London.

  I’d had a thousand small moments of joy that added up to a life well, and happily, lived.

  On the whole.

  Once experienced, panic attacks and depression never truly leave you; even if they aren’t physically there, the memory is, like an imprint in concrete.

  I’d had good days and bad days. Whole months without one panic attack and then weeks where I found it hard to step outside the flat and most definitely could not get on the underground or into the lift at work. I’d had days filled with sunshine and days where I lay in bed pretending to have a migraine but really blanketed in a cover of fog that would not lift. I’d had days that were exactly how I wanted them to be and then days where I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. Days where I felt whole and days where I could feel tiny pieces of myself floating away, pieces that would be lost for ever.