As I picked it up, I suddenly became aware of two calculator apps – the standard operating-system version and another. Who needed two calculators? I clicked on the unfamiliar one and four numbers had already been inputted – 1301. I recognised them immediately: it was the date Charlotte died; a date she had been working towards.
I pressed the equals key but nothing happened. I followed it with the plus, the minus and divide keys, but it wasn’t until I pressed the percentage symbol that an entirely new screen popped up. It was a home screen that burst into a hive of activity as various folders of photographs, documents and notes sprang to life and covered the screen. She’d downloaded an app that allowed her to hide what I was never meant to find.
I took the tablet to my bedroom and propped myself up on the bed. The first documents folder contained dozens of screengrabs she’d taken from a variety of websites, and pages of links to other sites. All of them related to suicide.
Images included illustrations of where best to sever an arm to effectively bleed to death, and documents featured the best combination of tablets needed for a successful overdose. There were hyperlinks as to where they could be purchased online and from which country.
Charlotte had also favourited a link to a message board called The Final Push, which suggested ‘suicide hotspots’ around the country. There were multistorey car parks without safety railings or netting, accessible bridges, railway lines with broken fencing, and stretches of water with powerful undertows that would drag you under in seconds. There were photos, street maps, written instructions of how to find them, postcodes for satnavs, and Ordnance Survey map coordinates. Everything had been thought about in minute detail, and Charlotte hadn’t only read them, she’d bookmarked them, too.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screen, saddened by the desperation of people who were at their wits’ end and sickened at the enthusiasm of others encouraging them to die. As far as I could see, nobody had inserted a link or a telephone number to End of the Line or the Samaritans. Nobody had suggested maybe death wasn’t the right way to go about things or urged them to talk to someone.
There were threads from teens who’d had enough of living their too-few years and victims of terminal illnesses and mental health problems. Some came from elderly people so scared of a long, drawn-out death that they wanted to go on their own terms. Loneliness, abuse, depression, war, bullying, sexuality, eating disorders . . . the list of reasons to die was endless.
I scoured the pages for names that might indicate Charlotte was a member of these boards but I couldn’t find any proof she’d posted. Maybe she’d just lurked there like she had on Facebook.
A thread on another message board caught my eye, made just days ago. The subject heading was ‘Need someone 2 Talk 2 As I Die’. The poster had almost three hundred messages numbered under her avatar. She’d chosen a photo of a young Angelina Jolie and the screen-name GrlInterrupted.
So guys, I’ve decided where and when to do it (pills arrived on Wednesday from Trinidad and I’ve booked into a hotel in Birmingham). Also decided that even though I came in alone, I don’t want to go alone. Anyone here want to be on the other end of the phone as it happens? I need company.
Among the many congratulatory replies, nobody in her online support network had the guts to blur the lines between fantasy and reality and take her up on her request. But they were quick to recommend other screen-names who might help.
Whereabouts are you hon? asked someone by the name of R.I.P.
Leicester, UK, she replied.
U know Chloe4 who used to post here? She was a Brit. She used to talk about a woman over there who’d helped friends of hers once and who was now helping her. It must’ve worked as we never heard from Chloe4 again, and we were pretty tight.’
What do you mean by ‘help’?
She tells people what to do, what not to do, she knows the risks, suggests what to say in notes, etc. Chloe4 called the woman the ‘Helpline Heroine’.
Does the Helpline Heroine post here?
No, she’s pro. She keeps it on the downlow cos she works for a suicide helpline called End of the Line or something like that. Lol. Someone recommended her to Chloe4.
I let out a deep breath I didn’t know I’d been holding, prised my eyes away from the screen and glanced outside. The darkness was making way for a rising sun. An occasional car headlight illuminated the road as commuters began their new day.
I’d spent months searching for something – anything – to explain why Charlotte had ended her life and why it was with a complete stranger. Now something told me that if the ‘Helpline Heroine’ actually existed, she would have an answer for me.
CHAPTER TEN
FOUR MONTHS, ONE WEEK AFTER CHARLOTTE
It was like banging my head against a brick wall.
It had taken effort, skill and organisation and where was I? Nowhere. Try as I might, I was no closer to finding out whether the Helpline Heroine was a real person or the figment of a morally bankrupt website’s imagination. However, the one thing searching for her had given me was purpose.
The day after first reading the post about her, I did a keyword search on the same message board and four others. Her nickname was buried within hundreds of other posts but she’d definitely been mentioned a couple of dozen times, although not as often in recent years. Like every decent urban myth, nobody could actually verify her existence. I guessed if she was that good at what she did, the proof of her successes were lying six feet under, not boasting about her online.
I still struggled to comprehend that someone who worked for a helpline might have an ulterior motive. I don’t know why though – until a day earlier, I hadn’t realised message forums existed to encourage suicidal people to die. If she was real, I’d hunt her down and lure her out from beneath the rock where she was hiding.
I set up camp on the dining room table and created a profile for my own message board account. When R.I.P. ignored my direct message, I turned to GrlInterrupted instead.
Hi, sorry to bother you, I typed, I just wondered if you had any luck trying to find the woman from End of the Line that R.I.P told you about? The Helpline Heroine?
I paced the flat as I waited for an alert to say she’d replied. Within the hour, she had.
No, sorry, bro. R.I.P didn’t know anything more about her. Even called the branches myself but kept getting different folk. Like finding a needle in a haystack, eh? Not sure what I’d have said anyway – ‘hi, which one of you bitches wants to listen to me die?’ Lolz.
I replied with a ‘lolz’ of my own but nothing about this amused me.
I needed air and caffeine so I swapped the flat for a nearby parade of shops. I used to be a regular at the café most Sunday mornings, and I’d return home with a bag of muffins, cinnamon swirls and hot drinks for Charlotte and me. It was the first time I’d gone back since she’d died and it felt peculiar ordering for one.
I asked for a double cappuccino and, as the coffee machine spluttered to life, a wave of guilt washed over me in a sliding door moment. I wondered how different my life might be if only I’d been a better, more attentive husband. A man who wasn’t so insistent that his way was the right way. That Ryan would have realised earlier just how serious Charlotte’s depression was, and listened to her instead of trying to cure her. Now Charlotte would be standing with him in the queue, one hand clutching her purse and the other clasping the handle of Daniel’s pram. I shook my head and the alternate universe melted away like a snowflake.