Page 43 of Deep Blue Lies

FORTY-TWO

Mandy is being a total nutcase – more than usual – now she has the baby.

First of all she won’t let anyone touch it, or even look at it, except me and Imogen.

It’s like she thinks the three of us are best friends just because we’ve known each other for two summers.

Or maybe because Imogen works with her up in reception, and Imogen’s my best friend.

Anyway, she lets us look at it, and hold it, even though neither of us even wants to.

But that’s not the thing. Mandy apparently decided her room was too dirty, and she told the cleaners to come in and give it a proper deep clean.

I only heard this from Imogen, via Kostas, because obviously all the cleaners only speak Greek, but they came in, and it was really hard to clean, on account of all Mandy and Jason’s stuff being everywhere, and all the baby stuff too, but when they were doing it they lifted the mattress and they found a gun there!

Kostas reckons it’s because of all the drugs Jason’s been buying from that Russian dude.

It’s made him even more paranoid than usual.

Or maybe he bought the gun from the Russian dude – I don’t know.

Anyway, they didn’t know what to do with it, so they just put it back, cleaned the room as best they could, then left.

It should be my day off tomorrow, but Jason came past the bar as I was closing, and told me I couldn’t take tomorrow off, because he didn’t have anyone else to cover the bar.

I was so mad. I told Jason it wasn’t fair, but he got super pissed and told me he hasn’t had a day off in over a month.

But that’s not my fault. He shouldn’t have knocked up his girlfriend.

Anyway. I was supposed to be going out with Simon, on the yacht, for a bit of you-know-what with our friend Charlie, but now that’s not going to happen.

June 23 rd

Day off tomorrow, and it’s actually happening this time.

God, I so need it! I don’t remember last year being so tiring.

Anyway, me and Simon have been making this plan, the last few days.

He managed to score again, and he switched his day off with Dan and he’s finally fixed the rigging on the Sigma 27 – so we’re going to sail over to the mainland, and have lunch there, and have a look in the shops, and we might even stay over in the marina overnight, before coming back early the next day.

It’ll just be soooo nice to get away from this fucking place. I soooo need a break.

Or rather (I’m writing this later). It would have been nice.

Here’s the problem: stupid Mandy just grabbed me at the bar and said she really needed my help, because she has to go to Athens tomorrow, for some sort of paperwork for the baby.

I told her to take it with her, but she won’t because it’s four hours on the bus each way.

So I told her to dump it in the crèche, but she went mental and said she didn’t trust them.

She only trusts me. I asked why Imogen couldn’t look after it, but Mandy said she’d gone back to her room feeling ill.

Which is fricking typical of Imogen too.

So I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Tomorrow is my first day off in fricking ages, and the last thing I want to do is spend it looking after Mandy’s fricking sprog.

I’ve so had it with this place. And everyone in it.

I turn the page, expecting to keep reading, but there’s nothing there.

Quickly I thumb forward, but that’s it, there’s nothing more.

This is the final entry. Then the date registers in the wheels of my wildly spinning mind.

June 23, 2001. She would have written this entry the night before Jason Wright went crazy and murdered Mandy Paul. Leaving their four-week-old baby alive.

I stare at the words. Not seeing them now.

Instead I see my hands, gripping the edges of the book.

And suddenly they look wrong, the fingers comically twisted, sickening.

Alien. Like two ugly claws. What am I? I feel the air, in an instant, punched out of the restaurant around me, shooting away at light speed into space.

At once my chest begins scraping, in and out, grasping for oxygen.

But it’s gone. I can’t breathe. I can’t think.

There’s a flutter, then a rush, as panic overwhelms me. I realise this is real. I actually cannot breathe. What is this? A heart attack? A heat in my chest quickly builds to a burn, a screaming terror inside me.

I feel the world. I feel it spinning, trying to fling me from its surface, yet wrenched back by the violence of gravity. Pinning me here, pressing me into my seat. Stuck between these epic forces, powerless and minute.

My final thought, before I’m crushed into nothing, my stopped-heart, oxygen-starved brain flickering in and out of awareness. This cannot be happening.

Not again.