Chapter One
Literally and figuratively.
So long 2025!
For me this year has been tumultuous, it started with high hopes, veered into a mental breakdown then slowly but surely I’ve been repairing, healing but the anxiety has remained. What if I’m falling behind? What if I’ve wasted time? Will it ever happen for me?
Through a lot of introspection and a tarot card reading done with friends during our New Year’s trip at a cottage in the Derbyshire Dales it’s come to me that I need to get out of my own, it’s the inaction that fuels these fears and it’s time to jump into action. Do the things, ask for help, and in the words of my dear friend, Zara, “stop being a pussy”.
And now, here it comes, 2026 and I’m not sure what it will have in store but it’s time to take the leap, many leaps… and I want to start with sharing the first chapter of my book. Not for any other reason but I can.
If you’ve got time and would like to read scroll on. If not, have a wonderful New Year, here’s to 2026!
Cry For The Living
Chapter One
WINTER
January
Had I known lying to the police would be this easy, I wouldn’t have spent so much time going over the answers Annie and I concocted for this very kind of enquiry. Yesterday, on the phone, a sympathetic young woman called about an informal chat to ensure my original statement was taken correctly. The moment they arrived, the intention of a more serious affair became apparent, found in the tense, firm grip of Officer Clare Downey’s handshake and in the diligence and precision in which she laid out her notes across the kitchen table. Then came her colleague, a clammy male officer whose name I missed due to his bungled timing of our handshake. He shook my wrist with a limp hand and an embarrassed smile lining his mouth. No reason for raised hackles here, only mild disgust, and the way through and out the other side of this informal chat.
Click. The fridge judders in the corner, more nervous than I, nervous on my behalf. It needn’t be.
Drip. Drip. Two drips every thirty seconds. I wrestle the urge to get up and twist the tap.
‘It was a normal day,’ I say. How many times have I repeated myself? ‘A normal day.’ A normal day for a terminally ill woman.
Annie woke me up, we ate porridge, I helped her into the shower, helped her get changed, and I got myself ready. The only variation that day was her determination to watch Christmas movies all afternoon.
Above us, one of the spotlight bulbs has taken to an incessant flicker, the flash of light hits the buttery yellow wall behind the officers. Under the table I flex my fingers and stretch them until the joints click. The light was fine this morning.
‘That’s quite the set up.’ Male Officer nods toward the coffee shrine made up of beans in glass containers, an Aeropress next to a V60 dripper, a moka pot and gooseneck kettle, all blurring into glass, greys and stainless steel. I smile, now thin and measly since the muscles in my mouth have forgotten how to extend any further. On his second coffee, Male Officer cups the mug, his lips protrude with each sip like he is about to slurp soup from a bowl. I don’t understand, the coffee beans were left to brew too long, it’s sure to be bitter. I wouldn’t let that happen at the shop no matter the pressure. Nuts, dark fruit and chocolate mingle with the air rousing my stomach to a gurgle. Yesterday’s attempt to eat the lasagne Mom made two nights ago deduced I could have eaten cardboard and my tastebuds wouldn’t have known the difference. I’ll eat later. I promise.
‘I got my missus one of these for Christmas, hasn’t got used to it yet,’ oh he’s still talking, ‘you know, bit o’ an assault on the taste buds. Haven’t worked out what she’s-’
Duff, duff. Officer Claire Downey taps the table.
‘Let’s get back to this,’ she adjures.
A murky film floats across the surface of her coffee, bound to be forgotten since she moved it to her left the moment I set it down, the oily shape shivers and spreads into two islands connected by a strait. Customers at the shop do this, often too immersed in their work or a date. Why ask for a drink you won’t consume? What a waste. I want to ask if she will drink it but I refuse to look antsy. I’m not antsy. I want to stir the coffee, break the strait then she may remember it and find it appealing once more.
‘How did Annie seem on the day?’ Downey asks.
‘She was fine.’ I say. ‘We had put the Christmas decorations up, she was excited about watching Christmas movies.’
Drip. Drip.
‘Nothing she said or did that would cause concern?’
I shake my head and pull my cardigan over my torso.
‘Did Annie ever talk about taking her own life?’
Only all the time.
‘She might have made a joke once,’ I say.
The key thing, Annie told me, is to mix truth in with the lie.
‘A joke?’ Downey cocks an eyebrow.
About dying on the sofa, smoking the last cig she’ll ever smoke and drinking the last pinot grig she will ever get to drink.
‘About going to Switzerland.’
‘Like Dignitas?’ Male Officer asks while wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Revulsion stiffens Downey’s top lip beneath a cold blue glare sent in her colleague’s direction. Male Officer pales, shrinks into his seat.
‘Yes,’ Drip. Drip. ‘But she said it would be too expensive.’ I slide the cafetière towards Male Officer, the colour returns to his cheeks and he gladly takes the handle. A small slurry of loose coffee grinds stick to the glass wall as he pours the last of the coffee and he pokes his tongue out between his teeth watching the mug fill up. Downey clears her throat.
‘And you’re sure it was a joke, not a request or something else?’ She asks.
‘Annie had a twisted sense of humour. It was a joke.’ At first.
Downey writes, her red pen making chain links across the page.
‘Ok, let’s go back to the day in question. Can you confirm again for me, Hannah, what time you left for the supermarket?’
‘Around six pm.’
On the printout she’s spread across the table, she traces the words with her index finger until her french manicured nail comes to a stop. She grips the lid of her red Bic between her teeth and pulls the pen out, then scrawls something across the page. I lean forward but cannot make out her scribbles from my seat. My heart thumps against my breastbone. Calm down, you know it was six. The CCTV would confirm it, the whole point of the trip was to build a timestamped alibi.
‘Did Annie usually take her medication around then?’ Downey looks up from the printout.
‘No, she usually took them after dinner.’
‘And what time would that be?’
‘Between eight and eight-thirty.’
‘Would you leave them out for her or did you watch her take them?’
‘She was able to take them herself, I usually left them on the table and assumed she took them when they were gone.’
‘Could she have not taken her medication and stored them for later use?’
‘Maybe… I guess so?’
Downey tells me she won’t take up much more of my time and slips the lid back on the Bic. Just a little longer. I can do this.
‘I know this may be difficult but could you tell me about what happened when you returned from the shop?’ Downey asks, a consoling softness slackens the muscles in her face.
Drip. Drip.
The cabinets warp and draw in, the cluttered counters with its small appliances, crockery and cookery books close in on us. The kitchen table shrinks. The mound in my throat. The salt in my tears. I’ve tried not to relive it. It was done. She is gone. I did the right thing. I did what she asked me to do. She was going to do it whether I helped her or not. That’s what she told me, that’s what she would have done. What else was I supposed to do? What would anyone else have done? Let the person they love most in the world die alone? The weight of Downey’s hand on mine.
‘Take a moment,’ she says. A smile reaches the corners of her mouth.
The cabinets solidify and I am no longer Alice sitting at a Lilliputian table. Get yourself together Hannah Solomon.
Gulp. Gulp.
Downey’s head snaps toward Male Officer, he shrivels this time and sweat peppers his brow like the pallid slime on a salted snail.
‘When I came back from the shop, I found Annie unresponsive in her room. I thought she was asleep so I made dinner, she didn’t come down but that is normal for her. I went up to wake her and that’s when I realised something was wrong.’
And when you went to rouse me, I didn’t wake.
‘Did you administer CPR?’ Downey asks.
Remember they can check if you tried to do CPR, say no if they ask.
I shake my head.
‘Why not?’
Say you were scared, you froze.
‘But you checked for a pulse?’
‘I put my head to her chest and I couldn’t hear anything.’
Yes, I placed my ear flat to another’s chest and there was nothing, no beats reverberating off bone. One paramedic called it the absence of a heartbeat, I’d say it was an extinction.
That’s when you called for an ambulance.
Downey asks me about the note Annie left on her bedside table. I didn’t read it. I was in shock.
Downey nods, stacks her notes while thanking me for my time. She doesn’t enjoy digging through people’s grief and trauma but they have to cross the t’s and dot the i’s in cases like these she tells me. They will leave now and then I can go back to staring at walls and things. It’s amazing the degree of change I’ve discovered around Mom’s house since I’ve moved back in. I didn’t know she had the living room walls skimmed and re-painted the same colour until I realised most of all the dents and marks I made on the walls and ceilings during my childhood were smoothed over, including the hairline crack caused by a golf ball I threw at the wall to see- ‘How are you sleeping?’ Downey asks.
‘Sorry?’
‘I lost my sister to cancer last year, couldn’t sleep for weeks.’
‘I haven’t slept yet.’ And I know it shows. In the mirror this morning reflected a creature risen from somewhere dark and deep, with fissures in its eyes, plum bruises and dull skin. The way a bronze heirloom loses its sheen to oxidisation, the copper layer revealed beneath. If I stay this way, might I become patina? At least I don’t have to worry about my hair becoming a matted mess, its growth has barely exceeded more than a peach fuzz.
‘-soon.’ Downey offers a wry smile. What did she say?
Drip. Drip.
Downey rises and tucks her chair under the table while Male Officer clambers out of his seat dragging his chair across the floor screeching.
‘Sorry,’ he pauses, ‘for your loss.’ Of course he wasn’t about to apologise for his maladroit, not when he has been extremely helpful whether he realises it or not.
Downey walks and Male Officer plods towards the front door and the relief I know I should feel hasn’t arrived yet. If I give it time the hollowness will fill in later I’m sure. After all, everything went to plan. They’re walking away from the house and in sibilant tones Downey’s disparagement of Male Officer propel them toward the black BMW they arrived in. They close the doors behind them with a dis-jointed double thud. The engine stutters then settles into a purr and Downey looks over her shoulder before she pulls away from the curb. In the spring and summer months this rowan tree before me secludes our home from the road but today its bare branches allow me to watch the police car trundle away. The brake lights flash red and my stomach fizzes. Are they coming back? Did I get something wrong? Something is wrong. This isn’t nerves but… Oh excitement. Turn around, something quiet but desperate claws inside me, the words part from my lips but I don’t mean to say them. Turn around and I will tell you everything, it says. What if they are right? What if Downey comes back? I might be able to sleep at night, cease watching the morning leak through the gaps of my curtains and invade my room with a fuzzy shade of pale blue all until it’s light enough to watch tiny dust motes flurry like snow.
‘Please,’ I say. A breath catches in my throat. ‘Please.’
A black SUV cruises down the road and manoeuvres in slow increments around the police car, taking its time to squeeze between the BMW and the parked cars on the road. Once the SUV is free, the brake lights fade, the police car lurches forward and slides away.
The door shuts, the latch clicks and it arrives. The dark heavy cloak placed upon my shoulders, the Gordian knot tied around my neck tightening, my feet buckle under the weight. From the dim hallway I emerge into the kitchen where the light bleaches every surface it touches. I squint to take the room in, everything is stained bright but Downey’s coffee.
Drip. Drip.
Coffee sloshes over the rim of the mug, a cold splash lands on my bare feet. I throw the coffee into the sink. The dark liquid swirls down the plug hole and wide and accusing eyes formed from the droplets now clinging onto the plug hole rim, ogling until they slip and disappear into the dark drain. I turn and slide until my bum lands on the hard tiles and the cold permeates my cotton joggers. My thumb scrolls down my recent calls list, still going, still going, searching for her name already buried under calls from my mother, family members, Damon, the police, Jac, Annie’s friends, Naomi, doctors, the funeral home and florists, a celebrant. No Dan though, I don’t doubt he knows. It’s been a week since she died and the RIP comments have stacked up beneath that Instagram post she sent from the grave. I want to call her, ask her what I should do now, now it’s over. Ah, there she is, nestled between Damon and Mom. My thumb hovers over her name, poor thing still believes calling her is a possibility. I don’t know what comes after this part, she never told me. I cuddle my knees into my chin and squeeze until my phone slips from my grasp and clatters on the ground. We planned every single detail of her death and funeral but never accounted for when she was gone and I am left to go on.
Drip. Drip.
annie_tp By the time you are all reading this, I will be gone. Not gone, dead.
And what a way to see the end of my digital marketing career than to schedule my own death announcement.
It wasn’t too hard. I wanted to go while I was well enough, before the cancer truly took me. Someone once said to me, you can plan for everything but death… Well, it turns out you can plan for that too. I just wish I could have had longer, there was much more I still wanted to do, things I wanted to say, it sucks guys. But I don’t want my last message to be full of complaints, I got to do so many amazing things and had some incredible people to share my life with. Thank you.
The only thing breaking my heart is saying goodbye to my best friend. All the way from year 4 to looking after me in these last nine months, @sol.hannah I could not have survived this without you. Friends like you only come once in a lifetime and I’m glad I got you in this one. Now to end this. The last thing I will ever put out in the world… Everything I type is final, tragic. I suppose it is but getting to say goodbye like this, in my own way, on my own time is special and something I believe everyone should have.
I wasn’t scared or sad and I want everyone to know that. Love you all.
Annie x
clemmietownsend Just heartbroken 💔Goodnight my beautiful friend.
lettierobinson omg what is this?
jack.egerton12 RIP Annie ❤️
homewiththefeltons I can’t believe you’re gone. RIP bbygirl
outsidewithcharlie Is this real???
burrowandnest RIP x
kelseylately A CW would have been nice.
honeypotcarrion @kelseylately no point telling her now, she’s dead
suzheather Fly high hun. Least you’re not in any pain anymore