The Nightmare Place Read Online Free PDF Page A

unhappy time. Even if she had known that it was right for both of them, the feeling of loss had seemed insurmountable at times. There had been genuine grief for the relationship, as though it had been a living thing, and the final few weeks a prolonged period of watching it suffer and die. Jane knew how much it hurt. As she listened to Gary now, she felt it again.
    ‘She’s on holiday.’ The first words came out like sheezon . ‘Here with him. Last year we were living together and now she’s here with him, and so I’m here too.’
    ‘You’re there too?’
    ‘Yes. Same hotel. It’s on the coast. So when they find me, she’s going to know how much I cared about her. She won’t be able to ignore me then, will she?’
    Jane licked her lips, thinking quickly. She understood now what Gary was planning to do. Not just take his own life, but do it close to his ex-girlfriend. After all the unanswered calls and texts, he was going to force Amanda to listen to him.
    It sent a frisson of horror through her – but then, she wasn’t here to judge. She wasn’t here to stop him, either. It was against the rules of the helpline to intervene; she could only do so if he explicitly asked her for help. Even if she’d wanted to, there was no obvious way of doing so.
    She thought carefully.
    ‘Do you want to tell me which hotel, Gary?’
    ‘I saw them earlier.’ His words were increasingly slurred: hard to make out now. ‘This morning – from out of the window. There’s a settee in the room here, and you can just sit. They were walking down the promenade. Hand in hand. I don’t know when they’ll be back. I don’t care any more.’
    ‘Gary,’ Jane said. ‘I have to ask. Would you like me to call someone for you?’
    ‘Don’t.’
    ‘I won’t,’ she said quickly. ‘Not without your permission. But if you change your mind about what you’re doing, I can get someone out to you very quickly.’
    ‘It’s too late. It feels good.’
    Jane’s heart was beating too fast, and she forced herself to breathe slowly. Sensing that there was nothing more for her to say, she allowed the silence on the line to stretch, imagining Gary filling that space with whatever he needed to.
    ‘It feels good,’ he said eventually. ‘It feels far away.’
    And a moment later, the line went dead.
     
    Jane felt light-headed as she walked out of the open booth and rejoined her training group. She’d been too lost in the call to notice, but reality had set in now, and her whole body felt feathery and strange. She sat down carefully.
    The volunteers were divided up at random at the start of each session. This evening she was with Simon, Brenda and Rachel. Rachel – a small, punky PhD student in her mid-twenties – was the only one she’d really talked to before, and she gave Jane a smile now, along with a small thumbs-up from the hand resting on her thigh.
    Jane smiled back weakly.
    A moment later, Richard emerged from a second partitioned-off space, beside the one she’d been seated in. He was holding the sheaf of papers he’d been reading from.
    ‘Well. That was pretty intense, wasn’t it. Are you okay, Jane?’
    She nodded. ‘I think so. But … yes.’
    ‘Intense. You did really well, though. That was a difficult one, and I thought you handled it brilliantly.’ He sat down with the volunteers. ‘Okay – questions from the group. Do any of you have any thoughts? Anything Jane might have done differently?’
    Jane looked around the group, nervous. While talking to ‘Gary’, she’d been able to suppress the nerves and self-doubt and disappear into the conversation. It had been like she didn’t exist, but now she was very much present again, and the other three were looking at her. She could already feel herself blushing, and her eyes began to water slightly.
    Don’t look at me .
    Rachel said, ‘I thought she was perfect, actually.’
    Jane dared a look at her, and the girl gave her another smile, then looked away. It was a