Frozen by Richard Burke Read Free Book Online

She had been more intense than I had seen her for years. She was vibrant. She had attacked every element of her life with a kind of happy rage. If she had wanted to kill herself, I would have known. It made no sense, no sense at all.
    Adam shook his head, slowly and sadly. “Of course it doesn't make sense. It's not a rational thing to do.”
    The bar was getting more and more packed. He had had to shout above the din. It was reassuring; it made me feel as though we were having a normal conversation, just one of hundreds happening all around us. As though we were discussing football-team selection or a scientific discovery, not the reduction of a person's life to machines and stark white sheets. Adam must have seen the frustration in my face, because he gestured resignation. “I hate to say it, Harry. I know you're not ready yet, but eventually you're just going to have to accept it. And you'll probably never know the reason, because people don't work that way. It just happened.”
    It was around half past nine, and still light outside. I swilled my remaining beer around in its glass, held it up to the window and squinted through it. The streets, distorted by the glass and the thin foam drying round its rim, were grey and luminous and quiet. People drifted along the pavement, strangers, all ignoring each other, but simultaneously reading each other's movements and imperceptibly adjusting their step, brushing past each other gracefully without a word exchanged.
    Adam pressed, “And besides, from what you've said, she was pretty unpredictable at the best of times.”
    “Oh, come on, Adam!” I snapped. “There's a difference between being a bit unpredictable and jumping off a bloody cliff.”
    What did Adam know about anything, anyway? It was the beer that was making me brood, of course—that and the fact that I had just lost Verity forever. He had not even seen Verity for fifteen years or more. They only had me in common. Over the years, I had suggested several times that the three of us should get together, but it had never happened. I had realised that there was nothing to be gained by pressing the issue; they were such different people. Had they met, I was pretty sure that they would have hated each other. What right did Adam have to judge Verity now?
    “Get real, Adam,” I muttered. “You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.” I buried myself in my drink.
    He gazed at me mildly. “True, Harry. I don't. I just meant that suicide—attempted suicide, whatever—is never going to make sense. But I shouldn't have said it. It's the last thing you want to hear. Sorry.”
    “You should be,” I grumbled—well, slurred.
    Adam let that sit between us for a minute before he answered, his tone cautious. “I'd like to help, Harry. Seriously. We'll find out what happened, why she did it.”
    “That's not what you said a moment ago.”
    “But—”
    “You said there wasn't anything to find out.”
    “I did. But—”
    “So you can't help, then, can you? What are you going to do? Are you going to keep telling me to face it, she's gone and that's that? Is that your idea of help?” I was being nasty, and I knew it. I can only plead drunkenness and distress. I wasn't really angry with Adam—I wasn't even angry. I was... it didn't have a name. But whatever it was, I needed to get it out, and Adam was the closest target. I glowered at him, waiting for more apologies, more fuel for this gathering rage.
    He looked small and fragile and alone. He held himself very still. He spread his arms. “Harry, you've just lost Verity. I don't want to lose you.”
    The fury went, and left me on the edge of tears.
    “Finish your pint,” Adam urged quietly. “Time we were gone.”
    As we walked unsteadily towards the main road, in search of taxis home, he said, “I meant it, Harry. About helping.”
    “I know.”
    “Still friends?”
    I sniffed back some tears. “Yeah. ‘Course.”
    “Whoa—taxi, hang on!” Adam leapt