Mine To Lose (5 page)

When we arrived in the quiet village, I tried to imagine how Carol had felt making her way to the church, fully knowing what her intentions were. What had finally pushed her over the edge tonight? I wondered.

Not quite there yet, I listened to Jordan direct me to the right street where Carol was apparently standing high on the ledge of a church tower, ready to jump, if she had not done so already. His commands were like white noise in the background of my racing mind and my palpitating heartbeat. I followed his directions, but it was as if I was on auto-pilot with my driving skills to allow my emotions and brain to formulate the words I needed to say to talk Carol around.

‘Katie,’ Jordan urged, his voice loud enough to jerk me from my thoughts. ‘Turn right here!’ He pointed to the sign on the corner, and I turned the wheel, feeling more and more numb as the flashing emergency lights came into view. My mind played a juvenile game with me as we approached, seeing the red and blue lights through the gathering raindrops as ‘
Carol jumped’
and after the windshield wipers cleared the colours, it was ‘
Carol lives’
lights. In my mind, whatever state the colours were in when I stopped the car would be the outcome of the incident.

‘Stop here,’ Jordan spoke again. A police officer appeared by my window suddenly, and I rolled it down to speak to him.

‘I’m sorry, but you can’t pass here. You have to take the ...’

‘I’m Katie Winston, the person Mrs Wicker had asked for!’ I spoke quickly to save time. ‘Is she still up there?’

He jumped to attention and pointed to a space where I could park. ‘Yes! She’s still up there. Park up, and I’ll show you the way.’

I parked the car in the shadows of the brushes in front of the ancient church and hopped out without looking for the outcome on the windscreen after all. Relieved that I didn’t see it, I knew I could not be influenced by my own superstition. A priest was amongst the group of emergency crew and police officers.

‘Katie!’ Martin called out from the bottom of the bell tower, where he was accompanied by another man. ‘Over here.’

I rushed over to Martin and looked heavenward into the darkness as I did so. ‘I don’t see her,’ I told him.

‘You won’t,’ Martin replied. ‘She’s in an enclosed roof.’

‘How do I get up there?’ I asked. The police officer who had escorted me onto the grounds spoke before Martin could explain.

‘I’ll take you up, but I’ll stay out of sight. Now listen carefully. When you get up there, stay by the entrance to the stairs. Under no circumstances try to get any closer to her. I’m going to be on standby,’ he explained.

His words barely registered with me as I took off to the entrance. I ran up the spiral stone staircase, taking two steps at a time until I reached the ringing room. From there, I climbed up
a perpendicular ladder
. I won’t lie and say it wasn’t a frightening ordeal the higher I climbed. It was. But the thought of Carol being all alone compelled me to cast my fear away for the better good. The officer stopped a few steps below me as I neared the top and handed me a torch from the inside of his jacket.

‘Remember what I said. Don’t go anywhere near her.’

I could feel my heart pounding against my ribcage as the angry wind assaulted the corners of the tower. I pulled myself into the circular opening, which was surrounded by nothing but a four-foot brick wall and a pitched roof. The frigid blast ripped my breath right out of me, and I gasped for a few seconds to regain my breathing. A long piece of rope dangled from the ceiling where a bell must have once hung.

As my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, I could see Carol’s silhouette, standing near the edge of the wall barely twenty yards away, her hair standing wildly on end as if her head was filled with static electricity. She must have sensed me there because she turned around immediately. I flashed the torchlight on her, and my heart stopped when I saw her.

Not just her injuries shocked me, but the look in her eyes stunned me to a standstill. Carol’s eyes stared a hole in mine, brimming with despair and hopelessness. As a matter of fact, her stare was like that of a cadaver; empty, decaying and late. Beyond return, she ground her teeth openly, partly from the cold, but mostly from the very real inner turmoil of a battle between her will to live and despair. Carol wasn’t even wearing a coat. Only a shirt hung loosely over her skinny shoulders. Her jeans were bloody and dirty, especially on the knees, and she wore no shoes.

‘Carol, it’s Katie,’ I called to her. I looked to see if there was any spark of recognition in her eyes, but only dead blackness leered back at me.

‘You asked for me, and I’m here. I’m here for as long as you need me, alright?’ I said.

Carol didn’t stir an inch. But I knew I had to keep talking to keep her mind off her intentions. My only consolation was the fact that she had bothered to ask for me, instead of just throwing herself from the tower straight away. That had to be a positive. Such an action proved that she needed to talk, to offer someone the opportunity to persuade her to the contrary. It was a sign that she still allowed a margin in which someone could still state a case against the demons that she imagined had her by the ankles.

‘Carol, can you come away from the wall?’ I shouted. ‘We can’t talk from there. The police won’t allow me to come any further.’ Letting her know the decision was taken out of my hands seemed to have worked. In getting her to talk, anyhow.

‘I only called you here to say goodbye,’ she said in a low buzz of a voice that gave me chills deeper than the cold ever could. ‘Look!’ she smiled eerily as she climbed up onto the wall. She lifted her anchor foot on this side so high that it would soon topple her over the wall. My immediate reaction was to lunge forward, but I managed to stop myself in case she saw it as an attempt to grab her.

‘I could join a circus and do the tightrope act!’ Carol burst out laughing and just kept her foot in the air, minding her balance ... for now.

‘That would be great, Carol. You know you can be anything you want.’ I could hear the nervousness in my voice and was grateful the sound of the wind was masking it.

‘No, I’m afraid where I’m going I won’t be needing a job.’ Her lips curled back and revealed gaps between her teeth. They must have been knocked out in the latest assault, I realised with great sorrow.

‘Hell.’ She sang the word with a high falsetto that matched a sudden gust of wind.

‘I’m coming over there,’ I said as casually as I could manage; I was several feet across the roof before the police officer could pull himself up and restrain me. Looking back, I saw frustration on his face.

I had never been so terrified, not even that day when I fell from that plane and straight down at the earth below. As I stepped closer to Carol, I felt an impending evil quiver through my body, and it was all coming straight from her. I was never a spiritual person, but at that very moment, I felt true malevolence emanating from her as if she was ambushed and annexed by a devil of sorts. Look, I don’t entertain such superstitions in the stead of psychological scrutiny, but I distinctly felt the sensation of something holding onto Carol, influencing her actions.

In that case, I was completely under-qualified.
Perhaps the priest would have been better suited.

Time seemed to freeze as we stood barely a few feet away from each other in a stalemate on the tower roof. I could feel the cold bite into my bones, my extremities burning from its claws. Without even thinking about it, I removed my coat and held it out to Carol as I tentatively moved closer.

Keep talking, Katie. Keep talking to her.

‘Put this on or you’ll catch your death,’ I said, not realising the aptness of my words to the situation. Carol rolled her eyes, threw back her head and laughed heartily at my choice of words.

‘Nobody would give a damn. No one cares.’

At that moment, I don’t know what possessed me, but I just couldn’t stand her nonchalant manner anymore. Her indifference toward her impending death or insulting me by implying I didn’t care after driving all this way in this godforsaken night ...

Inadvertently, I felt the same miserable mood grip me as when I spoke to Martha. That same dismissal of my efforts and contempt for my honest endeavours to make everything better for everyone seeped through Carol’s mockery.

‘Are you being serious?’ I seethed at Carol. Her laughter ceased abruptly, replaced by disbelief and a smidge of confusion. ‘No one cares! All I’ve ever done is try to help you, and this is the way you repay me? By throwing it back in my face.’

From behind me, I could sense the police officer’s fear. I knew what he was thinking. If Carol jumped, and I tried to grab her, I would be pulled down along with her.
Hopefully, that’s not even going to be an issue.

Carol stood frozen in her spot, an ashen face of shock. Now and then, her body would tremor under the icy hand of the gale as my words cut through the din around us. I had her attention. Now it was time to soften a little.

‘Is this how you treat the few people who actually care what happens to you, Carol?’ I asked her. ‘If nobody cares about you, why am I here? Why is Martin downstairs beside himself with worry? Or the police or the ambulance services? Bloody hell, even my husband’s down there because he’s worried about you! This will break me if anything happens to you, Carol. Is that what you want? James to break the both of us? For him to win?’’

That’s it, I thought, play the pity card. I was willing to play the entire damned deck if it meant getting through to her once and for all. Before she thawed to the shock, I hammered some more. ‘Jesus, Carol, I can understand that you really want to jump considering your situation. I really do. But your life isn’t worth losing over someone like James. It really isn’t.’

I sniffed from the freezing air that made my nose runny, but maybe Carol thought I was crying. Her eyes softened. She stared at me for a while, and then she slowly stepped down from the wall and sat on it. I handed her my coat, and she slipped her arms into the sleeves and waited for me to say something.

‘Have you got any cigarettes?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘Smoked my last one an hour ago.’

I looked over at the policeman. ‘Excuse me, Officer, have you got any cigarettes on you?’ I knew he had to have. With those strong hints of brown on his teeth, he was definitely a smoker.

‘Aye,’ he said, looking surprised on so many levels. Almost smiling, he carefully advanced toward me and passed me the half-crumpled pack he still had in his chest pocket under his coat.

‘Thank you,’ I said. I looked inside the cardboard and yelped happily. ‘What do you know! Four fags to burn and a lighter!’

‘But you don’t smoke.’ Carol frowned.

‘I know,’ I said taking one out. I sat down bedside her and tossed her the pack. ‘But hey, I think this situation merits a bit of a let go, for once. It’s not like I smoke every day.’ I winked and bent forward to let Carol light my cigarette in the shelter of my cupped hands.

We sat there for a few minutes, smoking in the strong wind that threatened to extinguish the glowing ends of our cigarettes. I didn’t inhale, but it looked convincing. My wince at the awful taste amused Carol. It was time to talk.

‘I see James hit you again?’ I said.

I expected her to roll her eyes at me for asking such a stupid question, but she did nothing of the sort. On the contrary, Carol composed herself and revealed the reason for her behaviour in all honesty.

‘Yes, and it’s never going to stop. I realise that now. I don’t have the strength to leave him, and I don’t have the strength to stay,’ she said as she sucked the smoke into her lungs. ‘Does that make sense?

I nodded.

She pointed to the long drop beneath us with her cigarette between her fingers. ‘This way seems the only way out. The emptiness helps,’ she revealed. ‘When you’re void of love or hope, you quickly notice that you’re also void of fear or remorse. I guess what I am trying to say is I think I would be better off dead. Nobody would care if I died tonight.’

‘I would,’ I said truthfully.

‘Look, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, Katie, but you’re not enough,’ she lamented.

‘It’s kind of hard not to take that personal,’ I said trying to inject humour into my voice.

Carol clutched my coat, pulling it tightly over her chest. It wasn’t to fight the cold but to hold onto something while she admitted something she felt uncomfortable with.

‘It’s wonderful to at least have someone out there who knows I exist and who tried to help me, but ...’ she hesitated.

‘You can say it. Come on, out with it. You can’t lose me, remember?’ I smiled. I could see the tension subside from her shoulders.

‘When you and I are done talking, you go back to your life, and I go back to mine. Not to be nasty, Katie, but your life is happy and safe. You have a job, and you make something of yourself. When I go home, there is nothing for me, just a mean bastard who beats me black and blue or ignores me as if I don’t exist,’ she said.

‘But we’re going to get you out of there soon. Don’t lose sight of that, Carol,’ I reminded her.

Suddenly Carol’s face was hard again. ‘It’s too late,’ she said. ‘He’s won. I haven’t got any fight left within me.’

‘No, Carol, don’t give up. Not yet. We’re near the end of the road. I’ve got an appointment to see a solicitor this week to see if we can get around the red tape. When I show her the photos, I’m sure she’ll be able to help,’ I assured her.

Carol did not respond this time. She just sat there, inhaling deeply until the butt almost scorched her fingers. Her eyes briefly caught mine, and then she looked down to her bare feet.

‘Thank you, Katie. For everything. I would never have made it this far without you. And I’m truly sorry for any hurtful things I’ve ever said to you.’

‘Hey, don’t be silly. I know you never meant it.’

Carol looked up at me, her tears glistening in the glare of the bright spotlights the police had mounted down in the street. I wanted to hug her but could not interrupt her while she was getting everything off her chest.

I could hear her breath shiver as she forced out more words. ‘You know what? All my life, all I ever wanted was a child. If I’d have had one, at least someone would have needed me. I would have gone home to someone who needed my company and my nurturing, you know? But that bastard even took that chance away from me. He had a vasectomy without even telling me.’

I shook my head in sympathy, waiting for her to get it all out.

‘Maybe I would have felt worthy, regardless of what James thought of me. A child; children, would have given me a reason to go on, because when they grow up, you’re rewarded for your work,’ she said dreamily.

I realised how right Carol was. Until now, I couldn’t quite put my finger on the need I felt for a child, but she made it clear. And I felt the same. Like Carol, I wished for that meaning, that purpose in life. At Carol’s age, it was unlikely she could still have children, but I still had an opportunity to make it happen for me. Her ordeal was an unfortunate sign for me to follow my heart. Carol Wicker, I felt, was sent to me for a reason.

‘You’re so very right. Children give us something to look forward to, no matter what life throws at us,’ I said with a smile.

She smiled sorrowfully at her missed chance. ‘No matter how James belittled me or beat me, my children would have thought the world of me, filled my life with meaning,’ she reiterated.

My instincts told me that her continual statements were not a good sign, but as I considered the psychosomatic reasons for her repetition, Carol simply leaned backwards and sank beneath the other side. The last thing I saw was her smile and her hands clutching my coat, instantly disappearing as she plummeted to the concrete below.

I heard a blood-curdling scream and realised it was mine. I tried to stand, but my legs failed me, and the last thing I recall was the icy wetness underneath me as my head connected with the roof floor. From my fading consciousness, I only heard the police officer’s concerned voice. Before my eyes closed, I saw him lurch over me in the vicious and merciless gale force wind.