In The Garden Of Stones Read Free Page B

depressed my OCD and ADHD exceeded the
limits of my medications, exacerbating to the point where I could
barely function.”
    “ So you thought you had to take back control,” Mal says,
“and the only way you could find to do that was to...?”
    “ Put a stop to it once and for all. To go into that deep
dark hole where everything is still and quiet and peaceful, where
no one would make demands of me or criticise everything I said and
did, where no one could tell me what to do or what to say, what to
feel and what to think, where to go and when - or who with.
Remember the strong pills my doctor prescribed, but I never took? I
didn’t throw them away. I stuffed them at the back of my sock
drawer as a 'just in case' measure.”
    “ And you felt this was a 'case'?”
    “ Yes.” A brittle, sardonic laugh. “You’d think swallowing
every last one of them and washing them down with half a bottle of
vodka would do the trick, wouldn’t you? Noooooo. Not me. I made an
arse of it, just like everything else in my life. I couldn’t even
kill myself properly. Can’t do anything right. Never checked the
label. Turns out the bloody things were past their sell by date.
They’d gone off, lost their effectiveness and didn’t do their job.
Never checked the label on the vodka bottle either, so that was
probably fake; methanol mixed with horse piss or something. City’s
swimming in the stuff. All I managed to do was pass out on the
bedroom floor and have a seizure, puking everything up onto the rug
and then, as a final indignity, wetting myself. Can I have a
biscuit?”
    Mal
offers her the plate and its tempting contents, and she takes one
of the gaily wrapped oblongs, teasing off the wrapper and forming
it into a neat holder. She takes a savage bite, talking through her
mouthful.
    “ My reward for my sterling endeavour - three days in
intensive care on a ventilator in a medically induced coma, to see
whether I’d given myself brain damage, followed by enforced rest on
the lockup ward –”
    “ Followed by a compulsory visit to my delightful domain?” he
says.
    She
sighs deeply and takes another bite. She really is hungry. She
follows the mouthful with a swig of her coffee. The mixture of
coffee, chocolate and caramel flavours, is like angels dancing on
her tongue, so why doesn’t she feel cheered? Tunnock’s wafers have
always been her go to feel-good food. Have they lost their magic
too?
    Mal is
sooking chocolate from his fingers. “Have you spoken to anyone
outside since your admission? Friends? Family?”
    Grace
pushes the last of her biscuit into her mouth and picks up the
discarded foil wrapper, smoothing it against her thigh. “No. There
is no one.”
    “ What about your flatmate, the one who brought you
in?”
    “ Alec? It was his rug I puked and pissed on. It was a really
nice rug, too. Hand made. Brought it back from Tunisia, or was it
Morocco. Some North African Whereverthehellristan. Probably cost
him a fortune, so he’ll be pretty pissed off with me for ruining it
and won’t want to speak to me.”
    “ Would it help if I told you he’s rung the ward every day to
find out how you are?”
    Grace
feels her stomach shift. “He has?”
    “ Twice some days.”
    And turn
over. “Really? Nobody told me. Why didn’t they tell me?”
    “ I don’t know, but they should have. Maybe he asked them not
to. Do you want to give him a call, just to let him know you’re
okay?”
    Shrug.
    Mal
lifts his chin and looks down his nose at her. “What’s the real
reason you don’t want to talk to him?”
    Silence.
    “ Truth be told? I’m too embarrassed,” she admits. “I made a
real show of myself, left him to clean up an awful mess, and
–”
    “ Nobody ever died of embarrassment, Grace. It’s an
uncomfortable feeling to be sure, but it’s completely natural, and
people who care have short memories.” Mal screws up his foil
biscuit wrapper into a tight ball and drops it onto the plate,
where it sits like a