Die for You

Chapter 24

"What about Amanda?" she asked, the slightest hint of contempt creeping into her voice. "Didn't you ever find a home with her?"

"You heard what I said to her the other day, I wasn't lying."

"Didn't you ever love her?"

That was a curious question to ask, I thought, and not an easy one to answer. I sifted through my thoughts in order to answer honestly.

"I cared for her, but I think I was more in love with the idea of her. I guess we were both guilty of that. She liked the tough squaddie she could parade around and I liked the idea of the supermodel girlfriend. You know, tall, dark and gorgeous."

"Anyway," I said quickly, "it never felt like home. It was always 'her place', it was never ours. I never moved in, I just visited. It's how I liked it you know, never tied down?"

"What about..."

"I don't want to talk about her, Becky, this is hard enough without bringing her into it. She wasn't like home, end of story."

We fell silent for a while. I'm feeling a little guilty at snapping at her like that. She's just fallen into a closed-off silence. The only sound in the room is the hiss of the heating as the hot water pumped through the pipes, the chirping of the birds outside and the ragged sound of my breathing.

"So, what is the nightmare?" She asked suddenly, "can you tell me about it? Perhaps, if we start there, we can find a way to break it down."

"You sound awfully knowledgeable about all this," I said, trying to avoid going there.

"Yeah, well, I got interested in psychology as well when I was a teenager and got my qualifications and everything, ended up as a student counselor while I studied. I really enjoyed helping people. But don't think you're distracting me, Freen, to stop me asking about you."

She twisted to face me and placed her hand onto my forearm squeezing gently.

"It was a nice try though, I'll give you that." She said, smiling for the first time that morning, properly smiling. Her face lit up as she let her amusement shine through.

"So go on, Freenky, you were telling me about the nightmares. You say they're not regular, do they crop up when you're reminded of things? like last week? like last night?"

"I don't know, Bec," I told her truthfully, "they just seem to crop up on me. I don't know when or why. I've never really considered them. This is the first time I've ever thought about them, really. I've always tried to ignore them and hope they'll go away."

"But they don't, do they? That's why it's important to talk, Freenky. It's important to let your feelings out like this."

I shrugged again. I'm doing nothing of the kind. I'm just talking about the nightmares and what they do. Detached, unemotionally, clinically. It's the only way I can survive.

"So what happens? If you can, tell me exactly what happens."

I lay back into my pillows and sighed, I really don't want to do this but I think I know I need to, need to be brave, need to get through this to see what happens.

"It starts out in fire. It's always the same, I'm always surrounded by fire..."

---

"So there you go," I told her, after spilling my guts all over the floor and watching them slip and slide around as I described each and every nuance of the story. To my relief, she didn't say a word as I spoke, simply making noises at appropriate sections of my description, as if to tell me that she was still listening. Occasionally, she would touch me, or put her hand into mine and squeeze, usually at the times when I was describing the real horrors that I saw when the boys came back to accuse me.