Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 103281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 516(@200wpm)___ 413(@250wpm)___ 344(@300wpm)
And the pills, or lack of them.
“Drew!” I don’t know why I yelled. He stood no chance of hearing me over the music. I did it again anyway, couldn’t seem to stop as I hightailed it back downstairs. “Drew! Drew!”
It was Drew’s husband, Stefano, who answered my pleas, blocking my path at the bottom of the stairs. “Whoa, darling, what on the earth?” He placed steady hands on my shoulders, which I shrugged away from.
“Where’s Drew? I need to find Drew.”
“Okay, okay. He’s, uh, in kitchen, I think. I take you.”
I pushed past him, didn’t have time to wait for company. I found Drew sitting on a stool at the island in the centre of the room, staring into an empty glass. “Drew!”
He barely turned his head.
“Drew, it’s Hugo. I think he’s done something stupid.”
Immediately, he slipped off the stool, gave me his full attention. “What do you mean. Where is he?”
“I-I don’t know.” My hands started flapping in front of my face. I couldn’t think properly. “There are all these empty tablet packets in the bedroom. I’ve searched everywhere.”
“I will call 999,” said Stefano from somewhere behind me.
“He can’t be far,” added Drew. “Come on. Keep looking. Check the yard, I’ll go out front.”
I nodded, tears stinging, prepared to search the garden a second time. However, on my way to the dining room, I saw a shard of glass sticking out under the door that led to the ground floor. “Wait!” I called back to Drew as I pulled open the door. On the other side, lay the remnants of a bottle of vodka, smashed into a hundred pieces. “I didn’t go down here.”
I didn’t wait to see if Drew had heard me before stepping carefully over the fragments and then heading down the stairs. “Hugo!” I ran into the gym, heart in my mouth. “Fuck!” I tried to shout, but the word rolled out as a strangled sob. He wasn’t there. I turned for the pool room, charged the door. “Oh my…Hugo!”
The most precious person in my life was floating, face down, in the water, his yellow sleeves ballooning. I would’ve thought in a situation like this that my heart would’ve stopped, or I’d have broken down, freaked out. Collapsed. Thrown up. But none of that happened. Somehow, my body disconnected from my mind and started moving instinctively. My feet kicked off the shoes that covered them. My legs propelled my body forward, sprung me into the pool.
I grabbed hold of his arm and pulled. “Come on,” I pleaded as I tried to lift him over my shoulder. He was so heavy, too heavy, weighed down with wet clothes and lifelessness. “Please. Please, Hugo.” I tried to turn him, but I couldn’t. I pulled and swam and it felt like fighting against an impossible current. The muscles in my arms burned, my lungs went up in flames. Suddenly, the burden lifted.
“I got him.” I watched Drew take him the rest of the way while I bobbed on the surface, learned how to breathe again.
“Be careful!” I couldn’t help shout when I watched Stefano, who had knelt on the poolside, wedge his arms under Hugo’s armpits to help slide him out of the water. It looked so brutal on Hugo’s back.
I swam over to the closest steps, hauled myself out. A small crowd had gathered by now. I couldn’t tell who was there, bodies that didn’t belong to Hugo blending into a blur.
“I…I dunno,” Drew said when I reached them. I soon realised he was talking into the phone that Stefano held out in his palm.
“Hold your cheek in front of his mouth. Can you feel his breath?” said a calm voice on the other end of the line.
Drew followed her instruction. “No. No I don’t think so. Can somebody turn that fucking music off?”
Oh God. Hugo’s eyes were half open, staring at nothing. Hugo wasn’t in there. I couldn’t see him in those eyes. I took his hand, cold and wet. What have you done? You stupid, stupid boy. All I could see was the little scared boy with the brown hair that had captured my heart all those years ago. “I’m so sorry,” I cried, kissing his hand while Drew fingered his neck. “I didn’t notice. I didn’t…”
Only I had. I’d recognised the signs as young as four years old, helped him release the valve before the pain and troubles stewing and bubbling inside him like a pressure cooker caused him to do something impulsive and reckless. Four. A child! But, now, when he needed me more than he’d ever needed me, when the only way out was…I couldn’t even think it.
“Come on,” I begged. “Don’t you do this. Don’t you fucking dare do this.”
The music stopped. Everything stopped. Voices. Motion. Time. I felt frozen, trapped in an image of hell.