16

DAISY

I hadn’t felt that numb feeling for so many years. I didn’t know this time if it would pass. Perhaps it wouldn’t. Perhaps I would need drugs to make me feel something, to give me a lift. Or to just take me to where Eve was. Even easier. I didn’t want to think about minutes, hours, days from now and how I might feel. Whatever was going to happen I knew it was going to be long, it was going to be painful and I was going to have to go through it without Eve. From here on in, everything would have to be without Eve. It didn’t make sense. Not yet.

Ben opened the door to the incident room where I had been sat alone for… minutes? Hours? I didn’t know. They had questioned me briefly, but nothing too heavy. I doubted that they thought I did it. I didn’t care. They could lock me away and throw away the key.

Ben didn’t say anything. He fell to his knees and threw his arms around my waist. His shoulders were shaking. I placed my hands on them and rubbed them. I found a strange release in giving comfort to someone else. As though my own loss was suddenly irrelevant.

‘Shh,’ I heard coming from my mouth. He was wearing his black leather jacket and I inhaled the familiar scent of him, mixed in with something foreign, brought from where Ben had been for the last few days. He pulled back and stood up then sat on the chair next to me. The blanket I had had on since nine o’clock last night had slackened and Ben pulled it back up and over my shoulders.

‘I don’t know what to say, Daisy. If you want to talk, then go ahead. If not, then I’m here anyway.’ Ben paused and looked at me. Then he continued, speaking in a slow quiet voice. ‘The guys excused me. From the meetings. I understand the protocol, signed all the relevant paperwork. They understand. I think they liked me, it’s fine…’

I thought how it was funny how even in extreme cases, people carry on saying the most mundane and normal things.

‘She’s gone, Ben.’ I interrupted Ben’s ramblings. My voice sounded croaky. I didn’t recognise it as my own. Ben put his arm around me and pulled me towards him as much as my limp body would allow.

‘I don’t know how, Daisy. I just don’t understand. I don’t know how this could have happened.’

‘Me neither. It makes no sense. One minute she was with me in the bar and the next minute, she’s dead!’ I spat out the last word.

‘You don’t have to, but if you want to tell me…’

‘I don’t know, Ben, they’re talking about an explosion of some kind. We won’t know anything until a full investigation has taken place and… an …autopsy.’ My head fell into my hands. I was silently crying but then a small laugh found its way out, and then I was laughing louder. ‘A fuckin’ autopsy Ben! We used to laugh about that all the time, whenever we watched Silent Witness or, what’s that other one called…? I don’t know any more. Eve would joke about it… we would laugh about them waking up in the middle of it…’ I trailed off.