{"id":5252,"date":"2016-01-11T18:30:23","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T17:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=5252"},"modified":"2016-01-12T12:38:54","modified_gmt":"2016-01-12T11:38:54","slug":"things-i-couldnt-tell-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=5252","title":{"rendered":"Things I Couldn’t Tell Her"},"content":{"rendered":"

I told this story to my best friend Kelly, that crack-of-dawn morning in her flat, when really there were other things I should have been saying \u2013 I just couldn\u2019t work out what any of them were. It wasn\u2019t my fault, I was tired, I\u2019d been up all night. At the hospital, sitting with Kelly while she watched her boyfriend Stuart die at last. Not to mention my own husband had been doing my head in all day, like he\u2019d been doing nonstop for weeks. So then after Stuart\u2019d finally, selfishly died, I\u2019d driven Kelly home from the hospital, we\u2019d just got into her empty flat, and suddenly she was all like: Christ, his parents! Oh my God, his mum and dad!<\/em> She\u2019d forgot all about them. She had to break it to them, that their only son had died and she\u2019d not even called to tell them he was on the way out. Not like it was some earth-shattering surprise, they knew about the tumour eating Stuart\u2019s brains, course they did, but it\u2019d been the last chance to say goodbye and Kelly\u2019d taken it all for herself. That sad all-nighter at the hospital, watching him die. Even I\u2019d<\/em> been there for most of it, but we\u2019d forgotten Stuart\u2019s parents altogether. Kelly\u2019d held his hand as he\u2019d died, but he\u2019d had two hands so his mum and dad could\u2019ve clutched at the other. How could she ring them this morning now after forgetting them all last night? She just kept going: Fuck, fuck, fuck<\/em>. And started crying again.
\n          Too late now<\/em>, I told her. Leave it a while. They\u2019ll still be in bed. Let them dream.<\/em> And she was like: Rachel, I don\u2019t know what to do. What am I supposed to do now?<\/em> And I said: Dunno, want to know what I\u2019d do?<\/em> And she was like: God, no.<\/em> And told me I didn\u2019t have to stay. But I said: Course I\u2019m staying<\/em>. State she was in, I was worried she\u2019d slit her wrists or something.
\n          Anyway, it was all getting a bit much, so I nipped to the bathroom and did a couple of lines, just to keep me going, you needed to, the state of Kelly and that night, you needed something. It takes it out of you, watching everything coming out of someone else as they die, painfully like Stuart\u2019d gone. So I needed something. When I came back Kelly was sat slumped on the sofa, head in hands, like going into a coma herself, and I was nervous, I guess, I told her a stupid story about my husband Aaron and his mate he met. Did I tell you? He\u2019s a right idiot, Aaron is. There\u2019s times I think, well, me, I\u2019m bad enough, but I married him<\/em>? Last week, you know what he did? Tuesday morning at the job centre he bumped into this old friend of his, not seen him for years. So they went to the pub, went on a bender, all-day-all-night job. And he drags himself home early next morning as I\u2019m getting ready for work and he peels back the shower curtain and he\u2019s like: Guess who I saw<\/em>? And I\u2019m like: Who<\/em>? And he says: Only old Eddie off the old estate<\/em>. And I say: Oh yeah? The Eddie who OD\u2019d two years ago? Whose funeral you made such a twat of yourself at? That Eddie?<\/em> And Aaron slaps his forehead and says: Shit, that\u2019s right. Must\u2019ve mistook someone else.<\/em>
\n          And I told this Kelly and she didn\u2019t even smile. And I was like: I mean, how can two blokes spend all day all night drinking together and not realise they don\u2019t know each other from sin? That they\u2019re not long-lost old mates? How the fuck can that happen?<\/em>
\n          And then Aaron, what\u2019s he like, he says to me: I did wonder how come he was practically a midget now, he hadn\u2019t been when I knew him before \u2013 but didn\u2019t like to ask, you know?<\/em> And Eddie\u2019d been like this six-foot-six body-builder rugby-player brick-shithouse type, like thirty stone at least till he got on the skag and it peeled it all off of him from the inside, and Aaron\u2019d mistook this little, like, four-foot dwarf for him. What\u2019s he like? He\u2019d only thought Eddie must\u2019ve been using something cut with God-only-knows-what\u2026
\n          And then as I\u2019m saying all this suddenly Kelly was up out of her slump and shouting at me, like: What the fuck are you on about?<\/em> And I\u2019m like: Just, you know, trying to cheer you up.<\/em> And Kelly\u2019s all: Cheer me up? You fucking idiot, what world are you in? Stuart\u2019s died.<\/em> She was like: My boyfriend, Stuart, who I\u2019ve loved and been with since I was thirteen, he\u2019s dead, the love of my life, from a brain tumour bigger than your whole head,<\/em> Kelly told me, never mind your tiny fucked-up mind<\/em>, is what she said, and you\u2019re trying to cheer me up?!<\/em>
\n          And I said: Yeah, is it working?<\/em> But she just went all quiet again, and muttered something like: You\u2019re my best friend and I love you.<\/em> Like reminding herself. And I went: Oh I love you, too!<\/em> And: Hang on, hang on, it\u2019ll be okay, I\u2019ll think of something better. The dwarf story\u2019s stupid. Need something else. Cheer you up, make you feel better, see it\u2019s not all gloom and shit.<\/em> And then I remembered, a funny story to make her feel better, and I clapped my hands and went: Oh! I know! I totally forgot! This is it, a good one, this\u2019ll make you laugh.<\/em>
\n          Kelly didn\u2019t say anything.
\n          And I said: I killed a child last night.<\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

That day\u2019d been a bad day at work. In the morning I\u2019d found my husband had been at my personal stash again, while I was asleep, he\u2019d found its hiding place, tried to pinch just a bit as if I\u2019d not notice, but he\u2019d been greedy, taken too much, and then gone out with the dog for a walk so he wouldn\u2019t be there for me to kill him when I woke up. Not left me enough for the day, don\u2019t know how I survived work, plus it was pretty dodgy stuff, and I\u2019d had to work knackeringly late, some big deadlines coming up all at once, so I wasn\u2019t at my best, my lucid and chipper best, by the time I finished at the office that evening. And then Kelly\u2019d rung me (me<\/em>, of all people!) with her voice in such a snotty mess of tears that I nearly told her to hang up and put it in a text. But I worked out what she was saying after a minute, that Stuart after all his lingering was finally on the way out. So of course I had to say I\u2019d be straight round to be with her. I was her best friend. All she\u2019d got. Plus, Stuart dying? This I had to see.
\n          Kelly is normally dead down on me with disapproving of Aaron and the drugs, she told me that on my wedding day, a frowning little lecture I was so glad<\/em> to get from my best bridesmaid \u2013 but what with everything she wasn\u2019t feeling up to doing much disapproving that morning after the long night in the hospital, so I felt less bad talking about it all to her. So anyway there I am, like I told her, barrelling along down these dark back streets, speedy as can be, straight from the office to the hospital. And then my phone rang, didn\u2019t it have to, and it was my husband, Aaron. He\u2019d kept ringing me at work all day, till I really shouted him down \u2013 heads bobbing up from other cubicles to see what I was yelling about, till I glared them down too. Then he\u2019d been texting me, doing this thing he does where he texts me a long sentence one word at a time so my phone keeps on beeping and it takes for ever<\/em>. He thought I was hiding another stash from him at work and not sharing, after he\u2019d ripped our flat apart searching, doing stuff like trying to suck the stains out of the sofa. He was getting in a bad way, even I had to admit that. Now he tried ringing my mobile again and this time, not thinking, I answered it, and so I\u2019m driving along and listening to him squeaking in my ear but not letting him into my head properly, when all of a sudden there\u2019s a movement, a flash of something in the road, there\u2019s this thump and a noise like crunching and the nearside wheels bounce over something, something that\u2019s, like, soft and hard at the same time, and the car swerves and I drop my phone. My husband\u2019s voice goes little and far away, but still floats up from the floor. Well it\u2019s a straight road, totally empty, I don\u2019t need to stop. I duck quickly down, grope for the mobile under my feet, grab it. Come back up, I\u2019ve bumped half onto the pavement and there\u2019s a bus shelter rushing at me but I swing the wheel and that\u2019s okay. It makes me laugh, my heart\u2019s going and I\u2019m laughing.
\n          In the phone my husband\u2019s saying my name over and over, and I\u2019m like: Calm down, A. Relax, Aaron. All\u2019s it was is I only nearly killed myself, that\u2019s all.<\/em> And I\u2019m like: God, my heart<\/em>. I couldn\u2019t help laughing. It\u2019s like a rush. Your body\u2019s own natural drugs, what do you call them? You want to get high, you should try it, Aaron,<\/em> I told him. Jump out a window, Aaron. Go on. Dare double-dare you.<\/em>
\n          But he was like: Rachel, this is a ground-floor flat<\/em>\u2026 His mind\u2019s always dead slow, no matter what he\u2019s on, not like mine, but then all at once he was like: That\u2019s it, I\u2019m coming the hospital.<\/em> That was when I put my foot down, like even harder on the accelerator, if that were possible. And I told him: No you\u2019re fucking not, Aaron. Listen to me: I\u2019ll kill you. You\u2019ll be in the next fucking bed to Stuart only they\u2019ll not even be able to make you comfortable which is all they say they can do for him. It\u2019s Kelly\u2019s night, yeah? It\u2019s her boyfriend dying not yours, so you\u2019ve to leave it and just fucking stay away, all right?<\/em> And he starts to say something back but I\u2019m not having it and I just hang up on him, fuck him, I keep driving, driving, roaring through the night.
\n          Then what happens next happens really slowly. Five minutes, ten \u2013 can\u2019t have been that long really, but it felt like ages (no sense of time or timing, me). So for a bit I\u2019m still driving along like the world\u2019s okay, but then it\u2019s like my brain finally gets what I saw when there was that bump and lurch. And I stop the car. Skid it to a halt right there in middle of that dark dead road. Because my stomach twists in on itself and my heart thumps cold in my head. Because it was a kid, out this late God knows why, a little girl like six years old or whatever, who\u2019d run into the road and been both bounced and crunched at the same time into my car\u2019s nose and then sort of dropped and been dragged, I guess, down and under the wheels, out of sight and straight out of my mind. The next morning there was a crack in one headlight, a little child-sized dent in the metal. That I\u2019ll never get fixed, that I\u2019ll see every day for the rest of my life. Or until I get a new car. But even then I\u2019ll still always see that little child\u2019s shape in the metal.
\n          And of course while I was telling Kelly all this, that morning after Stuart\u2019s dying, this is the point at which she finally took her face out of her hands, looked up from the floor. Though course I\u2019d never expected her undivided<\/em> what with the morning she\u2019d had and everything, what with her fianc\u00e9 Stuart left behind and going cold in a metal drawer. But she was looking at me now. Her face all streaked with ruined makeup and tears drying. So I told her what I did was, after I stopped shaking, I sat there in the car, turning myself ghostly calm and wishing I had something to fill my head with but I\u2019d nothing \u2019cause my husband had thieved it all. And then I didn\u2019t just drive on like nothing\u2019d happened, like I was tempted to, no, I hauled on the wheel and did a three-, seven-, thirteen-point turn and went back, course I did. And after a while I found the body.<\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

I stopped at a distance and got out of the car. A little dark shape lay half in the gutter, a wetness around it. Her pale dead face standing out in the night, distorted, her skull half crushed. Her own mummy wouldn\u2019t know her, I thought \u2013 but yes she would<\/em>, she\u2019d know her anywhere<\/em>. The dead child\u2019s legs were crumpled up in the road and her body bent over the kerb, spine twisted into an angle scary to look at. A thin arm stretched out onto the pavement as if reaching for help from someone who wasn\u2019t there. She was perfectly still, only her dark clothes rustling a bit in the breeze. No little last death twitches. The only sound was my heels as I stepped closer.
\n          Fuck<\/em>, I thought. And I admit it was a totally selfish thought. It was only days later when I woke up in bed at four in the morning that I thought: Shit, she was just a little girl. How\u2019d she get so lost?<\/em> And then I cried, honestly I did at last, those days later. Just not at the time.
\n          There was no one else around, the night all empty. I mean somebody must have been out looking for her, surely, so late at night, some purposeful daddy or panicked mummy or whatever, but they weren\u2019t there yet. And I already knew, no thought needed, that I was just going to drive off and leave her. No one\u2019d ever know. It wasn\u2019t like I could make her better. Way too late. But I went for a closer look. Never seen a dead body before. Never mind a little kid, never mind someone I\u2019d killed myself. Like, dazed curiosity. Morbid fascination. Just a quick peek at what I\u2019d done.
\n          As I got closer I realised I still had my phone in my hand, its screen blank now Aaron\u2019d given up at last, and I lifted it automatically to take a picture. I told Kelly I\u2019d show her, when I was telling her all this, if she wanted, reaching to get my phone from my bag, but she shook her head and dropped her eyes. Though then her head slowly lifted again, as I went on talking. And I told her I\u2019d kept my mobile up as I as I walked closer, and watched the body through its screen instead of with my real eyes. I reckoned I\u2019d get just one photo, a close-up of the girl\u2019s dead face, which I\u2019d take home and print out and stick on the fridge at home, just to remind me or something \u2013 it\u2019s not like I was going to put it on Facebook or anything. But then as I stepped closer and closer the one last thing happened: halfway between one pace and the next the little girl\u2019s dead body just vanished. Was gone. All the bits of the image on the phone and in my eyes stayed the same but suddenly they made up something else. A black bin bag someone\u2019d dumped in the road, burst in the side, crap leaking out: food wrappers, cans, old clothes, newspaper, just rubbish. The wet not blood, just a puddle of rainwater shinily black in the night. As if there\u2019d have been that much blood in a real girl, anyway. A twisted-up plastic bag made a thrown-out arm; the pale crushed moon of the girl\u2019s face turned into a deflated football, not what I\u2019d seen at all.
\n          Wait, what?<\/em> said Kelly \u2013 actually listening to me, even though her boyfriend had finally died of his brain tumour only that morning, I kept forgetting, just hours ago, not cold yet, not totally cold yet.
\n          It wasn\u2019t a dead kid, is the point. Optical illusion, or I\u2019m going mental, whatever. But so I\u2019m almost sure I didn\u2019t kill anyone at all, it was only rubbish all along that went flying. I was photoing garbage. Isn\u2019t that funny? A girl of junk. And I\u2019d thought I was a murderer. A murderess<\/em>. Manslaughter or child-slaughter at least. And so there I was, stood there staring at trash like an idiot. My arm dropped. I glanced around to see there was no one watching me being mad \u2013 course not, that time of night. The world empty. I poked around a bit more but couldn\u2019t find any other dead kids lying about, just the one that\u2019d gone now. There was no one. I looked back at my car, left in the centre of the road \u2013 all lit up inside, its open-door warning noise beeping. I hurried back to it, my heels clattering, got in and drove off, slowly at first and then quicker. I went to the hospital. I laughed a bit on the way. I was laughing but Stuart was still dying. That\u2019s where I went, to the hospital, to be with my best friend Kelly as she watched her fianc\u00e9 die. I was going to\u2019ve been a bridesmaid at the wedding, just as Kelly\u2019d been one at mine. I\u2019d been dead looking forwards to it, could just see myself in the ugly-sexy bridesmaid\u2019s dress looking lovely and even sober and Aaron not invited.<\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

And so that was it, that was the end of my hit-and-run story, as I told it Kelly, when I shouldn\u2019t have really. That was it. There\u2019s not a moral, or even, like, a point<\/em>. I didn\u2019t have anything more, and so we went back to the love of Kelly\u2019s life being dead, and that fact filling Kelly\u2019s flat, taking all the air out of it, that morning afterwards.
\n          We sat there in silence, the clock on the wall ticking out the seconds that Kelly\u2019d been alone. Any moment now, I knew, she was going to say to me: Rachel, it\u2019s fine, you don\u2019t have to hang about like this, you can go, just leave me alone, it\u2019s all right.<\/em> And I didn\u2019t want her to, I\u2019d have failed as a friend if she could just send me away. So I had to do<\/em> something, say<\/em> something. The story about me killing children had worked while it lasted, better than the story about Aaron\u2019s idiocies, but now it was done. I couldn\u2019t think of anything else to say. Or, I mean, I could think of loads<\/em> of things to say, they kept bubbling up to the surface of my head and I had to keep remembering to, like, bite my tongue \u2019cause none of them were things I could tell Kelly. Like for instance how after I\u2019d killed the girl and sped off from the crime scene I\u2019d got to the hospital, walked into the dying-people\u2019s ward, seen Stuart there, unconscious, all scarily pale and thin where he\u2019d been tubby before the tumour got into his head, tubby and pink-facedly freckly, and now he\u2019d gone totally chemotherapy-bald, though he had<\/em> been thinning a bit on top even before. Kelly was sat there silently holding his hand, in the dim light like something from an old painting. And what I couldn\u2019t tell Kelly is, I took one look at the scene and thought: Fuck this.<\/em> Didn\u2019t care any more that I was her best friend, I thought: Fuck it, I can\u2019t do this. I\u2019m not.<\/em> And so I walked straight out of there, never spoke to Kelly ever again. Or I would\u2019ve done, except that I took a backwards step to escape and walked into something big instead, and its voice whispered boo<\/em> in my ear. It was Aaron, my husband, lurking in the shadows. He\u2019d been waiting for me.
\n          I shoved him out of there, before Kelly saw us. She hated Aaron, wouldn\u2019t want him anywhere near her pain.
\n          What took you so long?<\/em> Aaron wanted to know. You were in the car when I called you, so how comes I got here first?<\/em> Then he said: Look like you\u2019re a ghost, you do.<\/em> He meant seen<\/em> a ghost, \u2019cause I guess I was still a bit freaked out about having killed a child and everything.
\n          But you hadn\u2019t done really<\/em>, said Kelly, in her flat the next morning, when I was telling her all this too \u2013 because the things I couldn\u2019t tell her? Well it turned out I was<\/em> telling her them.
\n          Whatever<\/em>, I said. Anyway: Just done a bad thing<\/em>, I told Aaron. About to do another. Told you I\u2019d murder you if you come here, didn\u2019t I say?<\/em>
\n          You always know the best way to make me die, babe,<\/em> said Aaron. And he opened his hand and showed me what he\u2019d brought. I found your secret stash, didn\u2019t I? he said. And I said: I don\u2019t have a secret stash, that must be one of yours that you\u2019d forgot about, like you keep doing. You\u2019re the one hiding stuff<\/em>, I said. Whatever<\/em>, said Aaron. But I was already dragging him by the hand across the corridor and into the disabled people\u2019s toilet, and we locked ourselves in, and I wanted one thing while he wanted another (or was it the other way round?) but we both got both. Aaron just talked a load of bollocks, like always once you get him started (only you don\u2019t have<\/em> to get him started, he does it himself), while I chop-chopped us a few lines on top of the toilet cistern, and after we\u2019d snorted them I didn\u2019t want to really but Aaron fucked me there in the disabled toilet, my bum perched on the little sink and my legs wrapped around him, his face in my breasts and my hands all over his body\u2019s muscles (don\u2019t know where he gets them from, but they\u2019re not gone yet), the back of my head hitting the toilet\u2019s mirror and I told Aaron careful<\/em> but he wasn\u2019t.
\n          I bet the nurses out there could hear us and I didn\u2019t care about that but I hoped Kelly didn\u2019t hear, it\u2019d have distracted her from Stuart dying. But even if she didn\u2019t<\/em> hear it didn\u2019t matter because the next morning I was telling her all about it, I don\u2019t know why, and she was saying like dead sarcastically: Well I\u2019m glad someone had a good time last night.<\/em>
\n          And I was like: No, but don\u2019t be like that, I\u2019m just being honest, and it\u2019s not like it\u2019s anything bad. It\u2019s like, people dying \u2013 that child I knocked down, Stuart\u2019s brain going bad<\/em> (one or both of those things had happened) \u2013 it makes you want to do stuff gratuitous, doesn\u2019t it? You know?<\/em>
\n          But then of course Kelly could go: Do I know? Me? I don\u2019t go get all drugged-up and joyride about at night killing little children, or thinking I\u2019ve done, or whatever you did\u2014<\/em>
\n          You haven\u2019t even got a car,<\/em> I said. And anyway, I wasn\u2019t drugged-up, if that\u2019s what you want to call it, not when I was driving but only when I got to the hospital and there was Aaron waiting for me. And anyway, if I\u2019d not done something then I wouldn\u2019t even have gone in to be with you and Stuart, I\u2019d not have been brave enough. I\u2019d have legged it like when my first thought was fuck this.<\/em>
\n          But I\u2019d been stronger than before, once I was flush with drugs and a fuck. Aaron\u2019d slunk off, twitching and sniffing and all childishly pleased with himself like he so easily gets, off into the night he\u2019d vanished, and I\u2019d tidied myself up, fresh lipstick for a deathbed vigil, smoothed my skirt and fixed my hair, and then I\u2019d at last gone and joined Kelly in that slow-death room, to help her watch Stuart finally piss off from the world once and for all \u2013 though I didn\u2019t mean that in a nasty<\/em> way, I told Kelly. I\u2019d been there for her, hadn\u2019t I? Though it took ages<\/em> \u2013 it was like as if Stuart didn\u2019t realise he\u2019d be better off dead, like anyone knows you are. He\u2019d been given his own little cell to die in, just off the main ward, and I sat patiently in there with Kelly (my best friend, I had to keep reminding myself) and her dying boyfriend, like I guess you\u2019re meant to. People aren\u2019t supposed to want to die on their own (like that girl had). But it was boring, really, watching Stuart go. I guess it held Kelly\u2019s interest (she loved him, after all, weird though that was) but my mind kept wandering off on one. I thought about work, a bit, how I\u2019d have to phone the office to say I\u2019d not be in, and what files I\u2019d have to point them at so they could just about do without me for the day. You couldn\u2019t really think about Stuart too much, what with him lying right there. Till suddenly in the solemn eerie night-time mournful darkness I started laughing and laughing and just couldn\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t really funny. It was just a thought I\u2019d had: that I\u2019ve fucked a corpse. Because the other thing that I couldn\u2019t ever tell Kelly \u2013 but that I was<\/em> telling Kelly \u2013 was about how I\u2019d slept with Stuart once. It wasn\u2019t long after they\u2019d got engaged. And I couldn\u2019t \u2013 but did<\/em> \u2013 tell her that it was this that\u2019d made me laugh, breaking the hospital\u2019s dying room\u2019s creepy silence, the sudden realisation that\u2019d come to me: I\u2019d had sex with a dead man. I was a necrophile<\/em>. I couldn\u2019t help laughing. Even though yes he wasn\u2019t actually dead yet<\/em>, but he would be soon, and by the morning, once he was properly <\/em>dead, it\u2019d be true that I\u2019d had sex with a dead man. Not that he was dead at the time<\/em>, okay \u2013 though come to think of it he might as well have been. I really shouldn\u2019t have been telling Kelly this, I do know now. It\u2019d been at a conference, what a clich\u00e9, that I\u2019d got sent to by mistake. My firm might\u2019ve been buying from Stuart\u2019s, he\u2019d done a presentation, it\u2019d been awful \u2013 he\u2019d seen me sat in the front row, his girlfriend\u2019s best friend, chewing the inside of my mouth to stop myself laughing aloud at the cack-handedness of his interpersonal skills. I think my legs distracted him. Afterwards, I got high and he got drunk and up in my hotel bedroom we had like all of thirty seconds of a fuck before he dribbled his cum down my thigh, then passed out on top of me, his face in my breasts. I shoved him off and he thudded to the floor, snoring. Who\u2019d have thought he had enough brain to feed a tumour? Kelly\u2019s too good for him, she\u2019s better off without him, better off now that he\u2019s dead, I thought \u2013 and I told her this too. And as he\u2019d laid there passed out on the floor, snottily snoring, I\u2019d wished him gone<\/em> \u2013 and maybe that was the exact moment it broke out in his brain, the tumour, just popped into his head like a bad idea, his very own cerebrum-chomping brain cancer. Maybe I\u2019d given it him, just like I\u2019d killed that child.
\n          I really couldn\u2019t be telling Kelly all this \u2013 but I was<\/em> doing. And she was looking at me, like, dead weirdly<\/em>. I\u2019d never seen her look at me like that before, though she\u2019d given me lots of different looks over the years. And she was like: What are you on about? I mean, how can you be telling me all this? What help do you think it could be, to me or you or anyone? It\u2019s a good job I can\u2019t feel anything right now,<\/em> she said, or I don\u2019t know what I\u2019d be feeling\u2026<\/em>
\n          Things like that she said. Though I wasn\u2019t listening. I\u2019ve never listened, not really. Ever to anyone in my life, I guess. I just kept on talking, I didn\u2019t know about what any more. I couldn\u2019t tell you. And Kelly was staring at me like I was some kind of freak, all baffled at how strange it was that she even knew<\/em> me, let alone that I was her best friend<\/em> \u2013 but I wasn\u2019t bothered any more. Even as I talked I\u2019d got my phone out again without realising it, to stare at the picture I\u2019d not realised I\u2019d actually taken, the photo of the little girl lying there dead and broken in the street. Just a little kid, all alone. How do we get so lost? And I was asking Kelly this but she didn\u2019t have an answer, had no words for me, and I just kept staring at the picture of the dead girl, because I couldn\u2019t work out who <\/em>exactly but her face reminded me of someone or other.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I told this story to my best friend Kelly, that crack-of-dawn morning in her flat, when really there were other things I should have been saying \u2013 I just couldn\u2019t work out what any of them were. It wasn\u2019t my fault, I was tired, I\u2019d been up all night. At the hospital, sitting with Kelly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[329,327],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nThings I Couldn't Tell Her - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=5252\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Things I Couldn't Tell Her - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I told this story to my best friend Kelly, that crack-of-dawn morning in her flat, when really there were other things I should have been saying \u2013 I just couldn\u2019t work out what any of them were. 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