Hell's Doorstep

She's asked me the question that I've dreaded. But we swore that day we'd never tell and I'm not starting now. The Scotch is peeping out of the bag and it takes all my nerve not to grab it. Instead, I suppress the urge to confess, to drink, to scream, as I've trained myself and I avert my eyes from hers, stare at my coffee and shake my head.

There's a pause and I wonder if she can see into my soul and the darkness that smoulders there but then she sighs and I am once more dodging that bullet.

That day, that pact, the good intentions that made it? I could never have anticipated its heaviness and its constant pressure. Everything's easier when you're a kid. It's with the knowledge of an adult that Reality truly lifts its veil and reveals its hideous face.

He killed himself, she tells me. I guessed. We'd all been to Hell's doorstep. Mark crossed the threshold and stayed there. The only one out of us to do it. So far.

She tells me he'd changed: appearance, name, country, like he was trying to shrug off this life. He was running, always running. She's crying: "He begged me to go to him" but she didn't - a massive regret to fill a lifetime.

"When I wouldn't leave his dad, he cut me off." She paused. "I should've just gone." She wipes her eyes. "He lost respect in me and I lost him."

She thinks he was escaping his dad but I know better.

"Mark was 'found',"she said. Didn't expand.

She doesn't live round here anymore, hasn't for years. Too many memories. Visiting her mum today, getting her a few things.

The conversation peters out. It's time to leave. She hugs me, holds onto me more tightly and longer than feels comfortable but I let her.

I walk home, the whisky's siren call filling my head. I take out the bottle, place it on the table before me, unopened.

Mark. Dead. Laney. Dead.

I should let Matt know. I sit, remembering.

The whisky remains unopened but I let my emotions flood out and I sob with the loss of it all.

***

366 words

So, the secret remains with Luke. How will Matt react to the news?

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