Читать книгу Jenny Valentine - 4 Book Award-winning Collection - Jenny Valentine - Страница 31

Before the tape, everything connecting Violet and my dad had felt like guesswork. It seemed ridiculous that the two of them were linked at all really, apart from by their absence. And then suddenly, listening to them talk, it seemed to me that it was exactly that, their absence, that bound them together in a way I could never have imagined in a thousand years.

The thing I knew for sure was this.

Violet asked my dad to help her die.

And then what?

Did my dad say yes or no? Because if he said yes, it changes things.

Because if you agree to help someone die and disappear shortly after, there’s a good chance those two things are connected.

I’ve been trying to remember what my dad was like in the months before Violet died and he left us, when I was ten and strange (apparently) and probably not helping much with all my staring.

Was he thinking the whole time about helping an old lady die?

Or was he just dreaming up ways of escape?

I’ve thought about it a lot and I’m guessing things went something like this.

After Violet asked my dad to kill her, after the tape recorder got switched off, after she maybe repeated the question, my dad said NO.

He might have got up and paced the room a bit, but mostly he would have felt pretty calm in the knowledge that there was no way he was going to help her however much she begged him.

My dad didn’t do much for others, remember, and this was quite a lot to ask.

If you don’t remember birthdays and anniversaries, if you never take your kids to school or the zoo or the London Planetarium, if giving someone a lift to the station is a major inconvenience, then assisted suicide is way out of range.

It’s just one favour too far.

But what if Violet changed his mind?

It’s not impossible.

How would you go about something like that, convincing someone to kill you?

You’d have to be very persuasive.

Pestering and nagging and just going on about it would never have worked. My dad ignored such methods.

Appealing to his better nature would be hard, like finding a needle in a haystack. My dad was no Good Samaritan.

So how would Violet convince him?

Did she prove beyond a doubt that she had no good reason to go on living?

I mean why did she want to do it? She must have told him that.

Maybe she was suffering from something that was going to kill her anyway, like cancer or heart disease or Parkinson’s or boredom.

Maybe she’d had enough of living on her own, with her imaginary son and her records and her failing hands.

Maybe she promised him a hefty inheritance. This theory works because it funds his vanishing act and if he was really planning on going, a cash prize is the best carrot she could have offered.

Another thing I know.

Less than a year after they made that tape, Violet died. I’m not sure how – I’m hoping peacefully in her sleep. And my dad jumped ship pretty soon after.

That can’t be a coincidence, can it?

So maybe he did do it.

Perhaps it was my dad who helped Violet die.

And if he did do it, I’m wondering how.

You’d have to be pretty careful because clearly it can’t look like murder, and it can’t look like assisted suicide even, unless you live in Holland and maybe parts of Scandinavia.

It was probably an overdose, sleeping pills and booze or painkillers.

But then why would Violet need my dad when she could do that herself?

Probably she just wanted him to hold her hand while she went, or make sure she was properly dead before he called anyone so she didn’t get wrenched back from the tunnel with the light at the end.

I bet she was scared and she wanted somebody to talk to, or someone there just in case she changed her mind at the last minute. Because that would be pretty bad, if you changed your mind halfway through killing yourself and there was nothing you could do about it.

I don’t even want to think about that.

Maybe she took the pills and then he smothered her to speed things up a bit. Once you’ve gone through with it, the waiting must be pretty bad.

I’m dying to know if he actually did any killing.

But he probably said no and left her to it.