I’m tying myself in knots now. Is there a bit of … of gladness? Relief? That the Author didn’t kill me after all? Because I honestly thought she was setting things up to make me the human sacrifice. I’ve had this … this axe … hanging over me for what feels like … But then … then … this? Carla?

Gone?

I broke down. I was on my knees in the mud and the rubble, blubbering. And after a while, my mother turned up and begged me to come home with her. Then my dad, who was acting up a storm in front of the policeman, but I could tell he was livid that he’d been dragged out of bed three hours before milking. I wouldn’t leave, though. I had it in my mind that I should stay until daylight at the very least. It sounds calculated, I know, but I just wanted to be there when the sun came up. I could imagine how great it would look in the book if I stayed. The first, fragile rays of the sun would rise over this scene of total devastation and there I would be, midst the ruins, caked in mud, hairy, howling, like some prehistoric being. The Author keeps suggesting the word ‘primal’, ‘a “primal” scene’. Yes. I can see that. The end of something, the beginning of something.

Primal.

I had already made my silent pact with God by this point. All that ‘screaming into the abyss’ etc. was hours ago now. The tears. The slamming from room to room calling her name, over and over. Punching my fist through a wall (a thin wall). The fight with a police officer who didn’t think I should be there … An argument with the fireman because I couldn’t bear for them to turn the TV off. In case she came home and … I don’t know why. ‘I think she might be videotaping Coronation Street!’ ‘But she doesn’t own a video recorder, sir.’

I don’t really know why that happened. Looking back it all seems a bit … pathetic. ‘Please don’t turn off the light! Please, no! Not the light!’ Pathetic. Especially for someone who has worked so long in the Lifeboat Service.

A hell of a lot of stuff happened. Mum called Alice who arrived (hair arranged into dozens of tiny plaits – she was frizzing it. Don’t ask me why) at around 4 a.m. A difficult exchange took place in which I told her that Carla was the only woman I had or could ever love, and that it was over between me and her. The engagement was off. She said a lot of nasty stuff about Carla always being in love with Bran Cleary. Everybody knew it. I said I knew it too but I didn’t care.

I didn’t care.

Lots of stuff happened, but at the same time, hardly anything happened. Because there was nothing we could actually do but stand around and … and … ‘emote’ (her word). The Author is sniggering. I don’t think she … I mean I don’t think she is actually capable of …