The Nightmare Place Read Online Free Page B

didn’t have to give her real name, but she decided to. ‘My name’s Jane. What would you like to talk about?’
    ‘I don’t know really.’ He sniffed. ‘I’m not sure why I even bothered calling. I just took the number with me.’
    ‘You took our number with you?’
    ‘Uh-huh.’ The sound changed slightly, and it took her a moment to realise that he’d started crying. Or an approximation of it, at least. ‘I didn’t really bring anything else. I’m not going to need it. I’m in a hotel.’
    I’m not going to need it . That was the moment when Jane recognised the nature of the call she was receiving. Her stomach dipped, and she looked around the small booth dividing her off from the rest of the room, fighting down the panic that was beginning to rise. Right now, she’d have given anything for a sex call. Instead, she was about to be faced with what the Mayday trainers called a ‘SIP’. A suicide in progress.
    Keep calm , she told herself.
    You can do this.
    ‘Please take your time, Gary. We can talk about anything you want. There’s no hurry.’
    ‘I want to talk about Amanda.’ He sniffed. ‘Sorry – that’s no use, is it? You don’t know Amanda. Or maybe you do, for all I know. No idea who you are, have I?’
    ‘Just take your time, Gary.’
    ‘I know her, though. Better than anyone. She just doesn’t realise it.’
    ‘That’s fine. We can talk about Amanda.’
    ‘I’ve known her for years. We worked together, and then we – you know. Hooked up. Christ, this time last year we were living with each other .’
    That brought a fresh round of tears, and Jane felt a ghost of the man’s emotion mirrored inside her. It was just enough to bring on the familiar sliding sensation of empathy, that movement towards understanding another person. Jane had always been good at that – too good, perhaps – and she took hold of the connection now. This time last year . She had plenty of her own examples to draw on. Her father’s death. Peter.
    You can do this.
    ‘It can feel strange, can’t it, looking back?’ she said. ‘You remember how different things were only a short time ago. It’s sometimes hard to believe.’
    ‘Yes. Exactly that.’
    ‘You just take your time, Gary.’
    As the story came out, in stops and starts, whatever Gary had taken – alcohol or drugs, or some combination of the two – began to cause him to slur his words. After a few minutes, Jane’s palm grew sweaty, and she had to swap the receiver between hands. Throughout, she did her best to stay calm: to put herself in his place and imagine what he was going through; to help him, as much as she could.
    For most of the call, that seemed to involve remaining silent. The longer Gary spoke for, the more obviously superfluous her presence was. He just wanted to know that there was someone on the other end of the line, listening to him.
    Amanda and Gary had been in a relationship for several months, and for a time, it had been wonderful – or so he claimed. But then things had cooled. Amanda had started going out by herself more, and Gary hadn’t trusted her. He’d check her text messages and emails, and find things: nothing directly incriminating at first, but enough to pass the baton from one suspicion to the next and send it running on towards another.
    ‘She was texting her ex. They’d always been in contact. I fucking hated it. Sorry. But she said I had to accept it, and I wanted to trust her. I tried to.’
    Jane imagined this wasn’t the whole truth, but did her best to suppress the thought. It was important to resist the urge to judge, or even to interpret the story he was telling her. Instead, as Gary recounted the details of the break-up, and the way Amanda wouldn’t return his calls and texts, she concentrated on empathising with him: pulling similar feelings from her own experiences, emotional playing cards that she could match with Gary’s own. It wasn’t difficult. Breaking up with Peter had been an