The Lake by Louise Sharland (best ereader for pc txt) 📕

my mother’s face, something I would never have been allowed to do when she was alive. Her expression is serene, as if death has finally granted her some peace. I wish for tears – would welcome them – but all that comes is a numbness so profound I could push a sewing needle through my finger and not feel a thing.

What else is there to do? Talk to her, kiss her icy cheek? Instead I sit upright staring at the wall until my eyes ache. I think of my blue pills; sadly only two left, certainly not enough to make a dent. If there had been more, a multitude of blue babies, I would have taken them all without hesitation, all with a gulp of cold tea and a smile.

At some point a nurse comes in and tells me that they need to move her body to the hospital mortuary. When all is done, and the body is removed to that little white room on the lower ground floor, I find myself on the pavement outside the hospital, watching as the hopeful and desperate are ejected and engulfed.

On the way home, I stop for a large bottle of vodka and some painkillers. My head throbs and my shoulders ache from sitting for so long. It is after midnight by the time I make it to the house. I don’t bother with proper food, just a tall shot and a packet of crisps. I run a scalding bath and lie amongst the lavender-scented bubbles trying not to think. There will be funeral arrangements of course, and the house to sort out and sell. The thought of it all makes me feel dizzy. Not for the first time, I wish I could sink into the water and never re-emerge. Next to me on the bath is a disposable razor. I run my fingertip across the blade, wondering briefly if it is strong enough to sever a vein. A drop of blood trickles into the bathwater and I watch it swirl amongst the bubbles.

Once downstairs, I continue working my way through the vodka, hoping instead of numbing any feeling, it will evoke some.

By two in the morning I am near oblivion. Staggering my way to the stairs, I bump against my mother’s display cabinet. A glass giraffe quivers and then topples, shattering into sparkling pieces that scatter across the cabinet top. With a shaking hand I reach for a white glass swan.

After being cast out, my mother had seemingly replaced religion not with helping her youngest daughter negotiate the ins and outs of teenage motherhood – you got yourself into this mess after all – but with an obsessive desire to collect tatty glass animals. God forbid anyone even dream of touching her menagerie. When Michael was three he had toddled over to examine a newly acquired penguin family. She had pulled him away so fiercely that he had gone hurtling to the floor. I vowed then to get us out of that house.

Cold, hard, unmoving, the swan glitters in the overhead light. I close my hand around it and squeeze. Squeeze until the glass wings shatter; squeeze until the long white neck breaks in two; squeeze until the blood runs down my arm.

As I drift in and out of sleep I think I can hear knocking. My eyelids flicker but the front door is just too far away. There is a sound of a door opening, and then someone is screaming.

‘Kat!’ I recognise Grace’s voice through my alcohol fog. ‘What the hell have you done to yourself?’

My sister reaches for the phone. I put a blood-stained hand on hers.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m calling an ambulance, what do you think?’

‘No.’ I sit up quickly, causing my head to spin and the wound in my hand to reopen. ‘No ambulance! I don’t want an ambulance.’

‘But Kate, you’re bleeding.’

‘It’s just a few cuts.’

I grab the towel I had been using to staunch the bleeding and wrap it around my hand. Grace’s attention shifts to the display cabinet.

‘Sit back,’ she says. ‘Don’t move!’ She returns a few minutes later with a bowl of warm water, disinfectant, and plasters. Pulling up a chair next to me, she carefully unwraps the tea towel. My left hand is a crisscross of cuts and puncture wounds. ‘Jesus,’ she mutters. ‘At least there doesn’t seem to be any glass in there.’ She gently dips my hand into the warm water. ‘What the hell were you thinking?’

‘I don’t suppose there was any thinking involved.’

Grace gives a shaky sigh and after drying my hand with a clean towel begins bandaging it. ‘Kat,’ she says after the last plaster has been applied. ‘This isn’t like before, is it?’

I know exactly what she means. Grace is asking me if I’m having another breakdown.

‘I’m okay,’ I say. ‘Really.’ She looks at the small pile of broken glass on the cabinet top.

‘Did it make you feel any better?’

‘At the time, yes,’ I reply sadly. ‘Now, maybe not so much.’

The unforgiving darkness brightens into morning. Sunlight streams in through half-opened curtains and my eyes wander to the mantel clock, then I drift back to sleep. When I open my eyes a few hours later, I momentarily forget the night before, yawn and stretch, then wince in pain as my injured hand protests. On the settee next to me, my sister stirs.

‘What time is it?’ says Grace, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

‘Nearly eleven.’

I feel the settee give as she moves closer. ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ she asks, and then unexpectedly kisses me on the cheek.

‘Yes please.’ I smile, realising I have never felt so grateful for my sister’s presence in all my life.

We sit on the sofa, cover ourselves with a throw, and eat hot buttered toast washed down with sweet, milky tea.

‘What are you doing here anyway?’ I say, just beginning to feel like myself again.

‘I’m not really sure,’ Grace replies. ‘The only thing I know is that the minute I put down the phone after