At First Sight by Hannah Sunderland (latest novels to read TXT) 📕

‘How are you feeling about tomorrow?’ I asked.

‘Tryin’ not to think about it,’ he said, swigging from the bottle again and passing it to me. The glass was warm from his hand. ‘Scared shitless of seein’ Siobhan. Think she might try’n flay me on the spot.’

‘Don’t worry, you’ll have Carrick and me to protect you,’ I said, although I wasn’t half as confident as I sounded.

‘Ha! I think yer mean you and only you. Carrick won’t want to get blood on his pretty green suit.’

I chuckled and took a swig from the neck of the bottle.

‘Why would Siobhan want to flay you anyway?’

He paused before answering while I took another swig and passed the bottle back to him.

‘When it happened, I completely shut down. I didn’t call anyone and tell them, I just lay on the sofa and spent all of my energy tryin’ to continue breathin’. Then, one day, the coroner rang and asked what plans we had for the body.’ Charlie shook his head, as if trying to shake off the memory. ‘I couldn’t talk about it, couldn’t even think about Abi being referred to as “the body” so I gave him Siobhan’s number and told him that she’d be dealin’ with the funeral arrangements and gettin’ Abi back to Ireland.’ He held a hand to his temple and shook his head. ‘The first thing that woman knew about her daughter being dead was a coroner calling, two weeks after it’d happened, asking her where he should send the body of Abigale Murphy.’

‘Wow.’ I was trying to keep my opinions on the matter from showing up on my face. ‘So, that’s why they’re all so mad at you?’

He nodded. ‘That and the fact that I didn’t come to the funeral or the memorial mass the year after. They think it’s because I couldn’t be bothered to make the trip, but that’s not it at all.’

‘It’s because, if you did any of those things, it would force you to admit to yourself that she was really gone and that there was nothing you could do about it?’

He nodded. ‘And that’s exactly what I’ll have to do tomorrow.’

His voice gave way at the end, a shuddering breath that dislodged sudden tears that ran down his face, collecting in his stubble and sitting there like dewdrops on blades of grass. He pursed his lips and blew a calming breath between them.

‘What happened the first time you went to the clock tower?’ I asked.

He glanced at me, his face blanched by the sterile moonlight shining from the almost full moon. He took a deep, trembling breath and looked back to the dark view. ‘Life just suddenly became so much harder than it’d been before. Breathin’ became a conscious thought, not something that happened in the background. I would have panic attacks if I was in the house for too long and I couldn’t bring myself to even look at the bed, let alone sleep in it. I couldn’t stand the thought of staying with friends because then I’d have to tell them what had happened, so I spent a few nights sleeping on benches around town. This one time, a man brought me a sandwich and put a tenner under the bench while I slept. I found a homeless person when I woke up and gave him the food and the money.’

He took a deep breath to power his next sentence, rolled his neck and continued. ‘About a month after she died, I made a decision. I left the spare key where Mrs Finney would find it and put a note through her door, telling her that I was going to be away for a while and asking if she could look after the cat while I was gone. I wrote a letter to my family and put it on the coffee table and I made my way to the clock tower. I sat up on that ledge for four hours, until I was so cold that I felt as if I was frozen to the spot. I don’t think I wanted to be dead, I just wanted it all to stop. I didn’t want to wake up every morning and have that split second where I didn’t remember what had happened, before reality would click and I’d remember that she was gone and that I could have done something to stop it.’

‘You can’t blame yourself for her death, Charlie. There’s no telling that you could have saved her even if you had checked her earlier.’ I wanted to reach out and hold his hand, but I didn’t know if that was something that he’d want me to do right now. So, I just laid my hand on my knee, ready for him to take hold of if he wanted to.

‘But I did blame myself; I do blame myself,’ he said, more tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘So, there I was standing on the ledge of the clock tower, my heart thunderin’ in my ears. I was completely terrified and after a second, I fell back onto the wall, pulled myself over and curled into a ball on the floor in front of the clock face and cried like a little bitch for God knows how long.’

‘Crying doesn’t make you a little bitch, Charlie,’ I chastised him for his man-up attitude. ‘Why would you have evolved tear ducts if you weren’t meant to use them?’

He took a breath and carried on. ‘I saw the sticker on the wall, called and got through to Ned. We spoke for over an hour and he told me that I should call my uncle.’

I felt a hot rush of panic in my chest at the thought of him there, so close to the edge, so close to never setting foot in my life.

‘Why wait so long between then and the second time?’ I asked, trying not to let the panic run away with itself. It had been so very recently that Charlie had