It’s not an idle thought, nor a romantic one. I don’t wake up and wonder what it feels like to fly, or how the cold metal suspender cables will feel in my hands as I climb up above the bridge deck, or whether the impact of hitting the river will kill me before I drown, pushing my bones out through my skin, snapping my neck. It isn’t a dramatic response to stress, or a morbid fascination, or an indeterminate sense of melancholy, or even a cry for help (unlike this letter).

It’s a compulsion. It’s like I am being called. It’s relentless.

And I just don’t know why.

That’s why I need your help.

I know about your department and your Virtual Experimental Therapy programme. My husband keeps up with that sort of thing – he has a vested interest now, I imagine. I first read about you in a magazine of his, then did some digging. I understand that you are widely considered “unorthodox”.

Well, maybe unorthodox is exactly what I need, because Christ knows nothing else is working.

I understand you accept a limited number of patients on a deferred payment plan basis. I need you to consider this letter as my application to be one of those patients. You see, the thing about my condition is that I can’t hold down a steady job. This means I have no money. I can’t ask my husband for any more help; I have taken enough from him already.

But without money, I can’t afford your services.

So again, these words:

Help me.

Words are funny, aren’t they? They’re like little pieces of yourself, given away. Like the words in this letter. Are they persuasive enough? I hope so. I was a writer, in my better days. I don’t really know what I am anymore. A shadow, perhaps. An echo. An impression of a person, rather than the whole.

I’m drunk, writing this. Ten minutes before putting pen to paper I chased the booze with some of those pills various doctors keep giving me, the ones that don’t help much at all. I keep telling them, these don’t help, but all I end up with is a fresh prescription, a different type of pill. If you listen carefully enough, you might hear me rattle, I am so full.

But you don’t want to hear all that.

There is a point to this.

The point is “The Question”.

And “The Question” is always the same. People always want to know the same thing.

“Why do you want to kill yourself?” they ask.

And I never know how to answer.

Because leaving everything behind would only make sense if there was a reason for me to want to do so, surely.

“Did something happen to you?”