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| "Despair": from this blog |
The first
time. She’d gone to the shopping centre
and locked herself into one of the cubicles.
It took her a long time to get up the courage to cut the veins in her
wrists. She’d used a Stanley knife. She bought it at the hardware store in the
centre. The woman at the checkout had
smiled at her as if she really cared.
When she cut, she
put the knife against the vein, closed her eyes and sliced. The burn was much worse than she’d expected. At first the blood flowed freely, but then it
started to clot. She began to weep.
“You OK in there
darl?” The voice was smoke-roughened,
gruff.
She couldn’t
answer. The unlooked-for kindness made
her wail even harder.
A face appeared
over the top of the cubicle. Brassy, dyed
hair, grey at the roots, lined face, yellow from cigarette smoke, resigned to
life’s insults and miseries. There was
blood all over the cubicle floor. The
face took it all in in an instant, and then she heard footsteps going away,
brisk, as if to say, I don’t want to know. “I’m going to be left alone to die,” she
thought. “Good!” she added, defiantly. “Free at last.”
But the footsteps
returned, with others. The cubicle door
was unlocked from the outside.
While they waited
for the ambulance, the woman cradled her in her thin arms. She smelled strongly of stale cigarette
smoke. “Don’t you worry now love, it’ll
all be all right, you’ll see,” her gravelly voice and worn face oddly
comforting.
Esmé had shaken
her head in despair.
“What was it,
darl? Why’dja do it?”
Esmé had been too
ashamed to explain. But before the
paramedics had wheeled her away, past the goggling shoppers, her saviour had
taken her hand gently into her own and bent down and kissed her cheek. “Don’t give up, love. I made it.
You can too.”
Esmé never saw her
again. But she never forgot her either.
Episodes 1 to 260 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter
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