Is it true your mammy didn’t really die of cancer? That she killed herself to get away from you?

If I was as ugly as you are, I’d never show myself outside the front door another read.

Your friends are only being nice to you because they feel sorry for you. You’re like their care in the community project!

Nobody wants you.

You are so disgusting. Your friends just hang out with you so it makes them look prettier.

Kill yourself!

Put your head in the oven!

Ugly bitch!

And so it went on. I wanted to block the number but at the same time I was drawn to the messages. Wondered what would be said next. I believed they’d eventually leave a clue as to who was behind them.

I started looking at my friends differently. I started looking at everyone differently. I couldn’t even be in the same space as Ciara, just in case she was behind the messages. And there was every chance that she was. My hatred for myself grew until I couldn’t stand to look in the mirror any more. I stopped taking care of myself. I started finding release in dragging my fingernails as hard and as deep as possible along the top of my thighs, over and over again until I drew blood.

If I thought the sight of blood would disgust or deter me, I was wrong. It felt good. There was a euphoria in being in control of my own pain for once. This was my choice.

Only when the wounds started to heal again, the vivid red scars marking my skin, would my self-loathing creep back in.

The reason my mystery texter was having such an effect on me was because whoever it was was only telling the truth. They were only repeating the same things to me that my own mind had been saying to me for years. The voices in my head were now everywhere.

Chapter Forty-Three

Ciara

Now

I start to shake as soon as Mum tells me the undertakers have arrived. I’m already feeling a little jittery. My altercation with Heidi was far from pleasant.

She almost hit me. She was just a hair’s breadth away from slapping me across the face. I seem to be bringing that out in people today, I think, my face still tingling from where my mother had slapped me. I’m wishing Stella was here as I hear my mother call to me that ‘it’s time’. She should have been back from the shops by now. I’m not sure I can do this without her.

I can hear the tremor in my mother’s voice and it unsettles me. My mother usually stays calm. Even when he left, she kept her cool, despite the fact I knew her heart was shredded. I stand on wobbly legs and grab my coat to stand outside while the undertakers bring my father in. I see Heidi and Alex come down the stairs. Both of them look pale and shaken. I’ve no space to think about them more than that. I don’t care how they feel. I have way too many of my own feelings to deal with right now.