This does not warrant a murder investigation, Miss Blacklock.”
“Get out,” I said. The ice around my heart seemed to be melting. I could feel that I was about to give way to something very stupid.
“Miss—”
“Get. Out!”
I stalked to the door and wrenched it open. My hands were trembling.
“Get out!” I repeated. “Now. Unless you want me to call the captain and tell him that a lone female traveler asked you repeatedly to leave her cabin and you refused. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY CABIN.”
Nilsson hunched his head into his neck and walked stiffly to the door. He paused in the doorway for a moment, as if he was about to say something, but perhaps it was my face, or something in my eyes, because when he looked up and met my gaze, he seemed to flinch and turn away.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Miss—”
But I didn’t wait to hear any more. I slammed the door in his face and then flung myself on the bed to sob my heart out.
- CHAPTER 15 -
There’s no reason, on paper at least, why I need these pills to get through life. I had a great childhood, loving parents, the whole package. I wasn’t beaten, abused, or expected to get nothing but As. I had nothing but love and support, but that wasn’t enough somehow.
My friend Erin says we all have demons inside us, voices that whisper we’re no good, that if we don’t make this promotion or ace that exam we’ll reveal to the world exactly what kind of worthless sacks of skin and sinew we really are. Maybe that’s true. Maybe mine just have louder voices.
But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. The depression I fell into after university wasn’t about exams and self-worth, it was something stranger, more chemical, something that no talking cure was going to fix.
Cognitive behavioral therapy, counseling, psychotherapy—none of it really worked in the way that the pills did. Lissie says she finds the notion of chemically rebalancing your mood scary, she says it’s the idea of taking something that could alter how she really is. But I don’t see it that way; for me it’s like wearing makeup—not a disguise, but a way of making myself more how I really am, less raw. The best me I can be.
Ben has seen me without makeup. And he walked away. I was angry for a long time, but in the end, I realized, I don’t blame him. The year I turned twenty-five was pretty bloody awful. If I could have walked away from myself, I would have.
But that didn’t excuse what he’d done now.
“Open up!”
The sound of laptop keys stopped, and I heard a chair scrape back. Then the cabin door opened cautiously.
“Yes?” Ben’s face filled the gap, his expression turning to surprise as he saw me. “Lo! What are you doing here?”
“What do you think?”
He had the grace to look slightly abashed at that.
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, that. You spoke to Nilsson,” I said tightly.
“Look—” He put up a hand, placating, but I wasn’t to be soothed.
“Don’t look me. How could you, Ben? How long did it take you to spill all the beans—the breakdown, the meds, the fact that I almost lost my job—did you tell him all that? Did you tell him about the days I couldn’t get dressed, couldn’t leave the house?”
“No! Of course not. Christ, how could you think that?”
“Just the pills, then? And the fact that I was broken into, and a few other spicy details to give the idea that I’m definitely not to be trusted?”
“No! It wasn’t like that!” He walked to the veranda door and then turned to face me, running his hands through his hair so it stood on end. “I just— Shit, it all came out. I don’t know how. He’s good at his job.”
“You’re the journalist! What the hell happened to ‘No comment’?”
“No comment,” he groaned.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” I said. My hands were clenched into fists, my nails biting into my palms, and I forced myself to unclench them, rubbing my aching palms on my jeans.
“What d’you mean? Look, hang on, I need a coffee. Want one?”
I wanted to tell him to sod off. But the truth was, I did want a coffee. I nodded curtly.
“Milk, no sugar, right?”
“Right.”
“Some things haven’t changed,” he said, as he filled the espresso machine with mineral water and slotted in a foil pod. I shot him a look.