Escape From Evil - Cathy Wilson [53]
But if she’d seemed to hold it together physically, the clues were certainly there in her behaviour. The days she went missing, her lethargy, her constant sickness, her mood swings, her dependence on me – all those things I put down as ‘normal’ were actually classic signs of heroin abuse.
There was a lot more in the newspaper article that Granny didn’t read to me. I discovered that when I was fourteen, when I was finally brave enough to go back to it myself. It was gruesome reading.
Consultant pathologist Dr David Melchett said Jennifer developed deep pneumonia and there was internal infection of the lungs and windpipe . . . and was taken into the intensive care unit at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton. When she regained consciousness she told doctors she had taken fifty barbiturate tablets and was mainlining – injecting drugs into the bloodstream – three times a day.
I couldn’t imagine anything worse than injecting yourself. I still can’t. To this day, I can’t fathom how she was doing this without me noticing. I never saw a needle or powder or foil or liquids or any of the stuff you associate with heroin. I told Granny this.
‘Obviously this is what she was doing when she went out,’ Granny surmised and I agreed. All those times she was out for hours or nights on end, she was high on heroin.
‘So why was it different this time? Why did this time kill her?’ I asked.
Granny had obviously been thinking about it too.
‘Maybe the question is: why didn’t all those other times kill her?’
I wonder when I would have discovered the truth if I hadn’t seen that newspaper by chance during my art lesson. It was yet another example of my grandparents ‘protecting’ me. But look where it got them. I’d been denied closure at the hospital, then at the funeral. I’d appeared to be coping better than expected – better than them, in fact. But it all had to come out eventually.
For weeks I was horrible, hitting, shouting, refusing to do anything but rail, question, accuse – and cry. Finally the tears had come.
It felt good to have such an emotional release, but no sooner had the tears dried than the vicious circle began again and I was looking for answers. Whereas Granny had channelled her anger towards the mythical figure of my father, I just blamed her.
‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth?’
‘Why didn’t you stop her?’
‘Why didn’t you let me say goodbye?’
I was out of control, completely screwed up and thirsty for blame. Someone had to be responsible. I needed that, I needed an outlet. And, I’m ashamed to say, for an unpleasant few weeks, it was my grandparents.
Grandpa did his best to hide away. I’m sure he thought he’d been tested as much as he ever would by Mum’s behaviour and her unnecessary death. But I was something else. There I was, a guest in his own home, accusing him and his wife of not caring. No army training had ever prepared him for this.
‘That’s not true, Cathy!’ he shouted.
‘Then why didn’t you save her?’
‘I tried. We all tried.’
‘Then why did she have to die?’
‘Because,’ Granny interrupted quietly, ‘she didn’t want to be saved.’
Every few days we’d have the same argument. The same accusations, the same answers. Even when we weren’t arguing, I didn’t have a civil word in my head. Doors were there to be slammed, books just things to be thrown whenever I felt like it.
I was awful, I know that now. I had no right to talk to them like that. They’d lost their daughter – no parent should ever experience that – and in the most stomach-churning circumstances. They would have done anything to have saved her: they’d bought the flat, after all. They’d recognized