Pulse(12)

For that matter, what was I doing up?

After a few minutes the phone started ringing again. I went on ignoring it and after six rings it stopped once more. It rang again – six more rings, then it would go to voicemail. It stopped.

Beep-beep.

A text arrived. It was from Grant.

‘My darling, PLEASE, PLEASE answer your phone.’

I was sitting in my Mini. I had been all night.

I couldn’t remember driving out of the hospital car park. In fact, I couldn’t really remember driving at all but I must have. How else could I have come to be where I was?

And where was I?

I looked out through the windscreen, past the raindrops on the glass to the view beyond.

Some rightly say that Clifton Suspension Bridge is the most beautiful creation of Isambard Kingdom Brunel although, in truth, it wasn’t completed until five years after his death to the final design of two different civil engineers, and only based on Brunel’s original.

But it certainly looked magnificent to me now, dimly lit only by occasional streetlights at this time of the morning. The bridge spans 702 feet across the Avon Gorge, crossing some 245 feet above the river surface. It said so on a notice near one end.

What was I doing here?

I had asked myself that question at least a hundred times.

Did I really intend to throw myself off?

That had been my plan, and that was why I’d driven more than an hour from Cheltenham to get here. I had even walked across the bridge, searching for the best place to go over the side, the place from where death would be most certain, most instant.

Was 245 feet high enough?

Surely it was, especially if I landed on the rocks rather than in the water.

But I had been back in the car now for the last six hours, just sitting here churning things over and over in my head, trying desperately to make sense of my life – or my death.

It wasn’t that I was frightened of dying. I was much more frightened of living, of having to face up to what was happening to me.

The phone rang again.

This time, almost automatically, I picked it up and answered. ‘Hello.’

‘Oh, thank God! Thank God!’ Grant wailed from the other end. He was crying. ‘Where are you?’

‘Bristol.’

‘Bristol! What are you doing in Bristol?’

‘Looking at Clifton Suspension Bridge.’

The significance wasn’t lost on him.

‘Oh my God, Chris!’ he screamed. ‘Don’t do anything. Just stay calm. Please, my darling, don’t do anything! Think of the boys. I’m on my way.’

He disconnected.

Strange, I thought. He didn’t ask me why.

I got out of my Mini and leaned against it, stretching away the kinks in my spine. I could do with a cigarette but I’d smoked my last one at least an hour ago.

The phone rang once more. It was Grant again.

‘I’m in the car on my way to you,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Please, my love . . . don’t . . .’ It was a desperate plea.

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Don’t kill yourself on the roads trying to get here too fast.’

I laughed inwardly at the irony of what I’d just said.

But, if I were going to jump, I’d have probably done it by now.

‘I’m fine,’ I said again, feeling dreadfully weak at the knees. ‘Please just come and get me.’

A police car came hurtling round the corner with its blue lights flashing. Someone else was also having a bad day, I thought, but the car pulled up next to me and two young policemen climbed out.

‘Are you Christine Rankin?’ one of them asked.

I nodded, unable to speak from emotion and with tears streaming down my face.

I was saved – I was safe.

At least for the time being.





5


I spent the next four hours confined in a police cell at Bristol police station.

‘But I’ve done nothing wrong,’ I complained.

‘It’s for your own protection,’ they said. ‘It won’t be for long. We’ve sent for a doctor.’

I sat on the solid concrete bed and stared at the stark grey walls.

How perfectly they summed up my life.

For the last year, I may have been walking around and seemingly living a normal existence but, inside, I was locked into a grey prison cell – closed in by four great walls created by my own consciousness. I was trapped and, like in the nightmare, the four walls were getting ever closer. I felt I could easily reach out and touch them all at once. One day soon they would undoubtedly squeeze the very breath from my body.

Grant arrived before the doctor but, even so, not until nine-thirty.

‘I’m sorry I’ve been so long,’ he said. ‘I had to get the boys ready for school and also arrange a day off from work.’

I was not much placated. ‘You said you were on your way here over four hours ago.’

‘I know I did. I’m sorry.’ He was embarrassed. ‘I did set out to come but I also called the police and begged them to go and find you. I was still in Cheltenham when they called me back to tell me they had found you and you were all right.’ He was almost in tears. ‘So I went back home to see to the boys.’

I sighed.

‘What did you tell them?’