Day 23: Body Issues

Dedicated to: Katherine Green

I wake up to Socks, pawing at my face, meowing to be fed. Every gentle prod sends shockwaves through my skull. My mouth tastes of arses and ash. I definitely smoked last night. Opening my eyes is painful, not only because of the light, but because my eyelids are fused shut by mascara. I don’t know how Socks can bear to put her nose so close to me, because I stink. I went to sleep with all the windows closed and there are now streams of sweat in crevices I wasn’t aware I had until now. My body does not feel like my own. Yesterday it was a machine, now it’s something rotten where my mind lives. 

I turn my head, painfully, to the right. At least there’s nobody there. Socks is now on the floor, mewing at me to feed her. I inherited her when my brother moved overseas. I would never have got a cat. I wouldn’t have trusted myself. Yet I’ve somehow kept her alive for over a year now. She walks to the door and turns back to me, calling me to the kitchen. I admit, she does quite literally give me a reason to get out of bed every morning, even on mornings like this.

After I’ve fed Socks, I pour myself a giant pint of water and knock it back in one. Then I get in the shower and fully assess the damage. It’s actually not too bad, on the outside at least. Yes, I’m dirty and disgusting, but once the makeup is washed off, my hair is clean and my skin smells like watermelon, the only physical marks of a big night are the two bags under my eyes. The whole time I’m washing, I concentrate fully on each part of my body, the feel of the water and its sound. Mindfulness. It’s certainly better than just thinking the words don’t think about last night over and over again, which only ever has the opposite effect.

The mindfulness keeps working as I comb my hair and brush my teeth. It’s only as I return to my room, to put on a fresh pair of pyjamas for the day that it finally fails me. It always does in the end. No sooner has my brain faltered with a ‘shit this is boring’, when a tirade of other thoughts flood in. I sit on my bed, still wrapped in my towel, when the urge to check the contents of my bag overwhelms me. I don’t even try not to give in. Hangovers make me depressed and being depressed makes me defeatist, so here I go.

I find my bag in the hall. My keys are in there. Well done Dana for not leaving them in the door. There’s around 12 receipts, which I set aside to read later. There’s a lighter. Fuck. That wasn’t there before. My purse is heavy with change, from where I must have kept handing over notes. Lipstick and eyeliner bear no marks off ill-use, and there’s nothing obviously sinister about the two crisp packets or the tampon still in its wrapping. I inspect a screwed-up napkin for strange marks. There is only what looks like lipstick, but I put it with the receipts to re-examine later if needs be. And there, thank goodness, is my phone.

There first thing I check is the photos, but it appears I only took one of, inexplicably, a bowl of nuts. I can’t have used my phone much at all because it’s been unplugged all night and is still on 54%. The group chat flashes in the corner as I’m doing my checks. I’m itching to open it, but there’s a process to follow and next is my call register. There’s nothing unexpected there. The last call was from Leanne at 6.30pm – I remember that. After that, nobody called me and vice versa. The texts are fine. Nobody ever really texts me except my mum – everyone else uses WatsApp or Facebook.

Now, for the group chat. It blinks at me ominously: 172 unread messages. I feel sick. Please let there be nothing in there, please please please. I get up from the hall floor and, still in my towel, go and sit on my bed to give it my undivided attention.

I scroll back to the last message I read, which is from before I even got there. There’s some photos taken by Kate and Leila, and sent by the looks of it, when we were all still together. It was a really fun night. Looking at the photos is bringing it back. I’m not in as many photos as the others. My rational mind thinks it’s probably because I avoided them as was there, just ducking out the way. But… the other part of me wonders where I’d gone and what I was doing… I exit the group chat and make a note in my memo app – always be in the photos. It leaves less blank spaces.

I return to the group chat. It pings to tell me another message has just been received below. It’s mostly Buzzfeed articles from Kate and selfies from Leila on the bus home. Plus lots of ‘GREAT NIGHT!’ I didn’t send anything. Where was I? How did I get home? I get to the bit where Kate and Leila tell us all they’re home. Leanne is absent from the chat too and doesn’t say she’s home. Were we together? I start to panic. There’s nothing else in the chat, until just now,

Kate: Dana + Leanne where r u?

Fuck. Fuck.

There’s nothing for it, she will see I’ve read them now. I drop my phone like it’s on fire and shrink back from it.

Where is Leanne? Fuck.

We had to have travelled back most of the way together, we always do. Did she come here? I haven’t seen any traces of her. I shut my eyes. I feel like I remember us laughing on the tube and talking about podcasts. But the more I think about it, the more I start to think that I’m remembering another time. No, because weren’t we talking about this week’s Guilty Feminist? Perhaps that’s wishful thinking. I can’t trust my mind at all.

Cautiously, I pick up my phone again, as if it might detonate any minute. I open up Facebook and go to Leanne’s profile. There’s a selfie of her and me on the train together, posted at 12.41. Shit, so we were together. I click on the messenger symbol on per profile. ‘Last seen 11 hours ago.’

What have I done?

OK, calm down, I probably haven’t done anything. I dial her number and it rings through to voicemail. Then I try it again from every room in the flat, trying to hear if I have her phone. But I can’t ear even a vibration. It doesn’t mean it’s not here but on silent. I try again and again, looking around for something to light up.

Just because I don’t have her phone doesn’t mean I didn’t kill her. The group messages have started again, but I can’t open them. I need to try and remember what happened.

I know I drank too much. I’d had an awful day, unable to stop thinking about hurting people. And as soon as I had that first vodka tonic, I hadn’t wanted to stop.

Stupid Dana. You stupid stupid stupid fucking bitch Dana.

An image pops into my head, of Leanne and me at the bar. She is buying a round of shots and I am smashing her head onto the bar.

I feel sick. That can’t possibly be right. No, if I’d smashed her head into the bar in front of witnesses, she’d be in hospital and I’d have been arrested… and surely we wouldn’t have got the train back together. No, I must have just thought about smashing her head into the bar, which isn’t great either. It would explain why I agreed to doing shots though. It’s easier not to be upset by my thoughts when I’m drunk.

Could I have smashed her head later, on the train? Don’t they have CCTV footage now? I spend ten minutes Googling news items and CCTV from London last night. There was one attack in East Dulwich, a fight outside a nightclub. We weren’t anywhere near East Dulwich but I still watch the cell phone footage five times to be sure.

This really isn’t helping. All it means is that if I did kill Leanne there’s no footage of it. I phone her again. I really only intend to do it once, but I end up walking all over the flat again. I daren’t open the group chat, because what would I say to the other two? Home safe and sound but I think Leanne is dead?

The next thing I do is check all my clothes from last night. No signs of blood, but then my dress is black, would it show? I smell it. Does it smell of blood? It smells of everything else. Do I bag it now in case it’s needed for evidence? Should I call the Police? What do I tell them? Maybe I should go and check her flat. Perhaps she’s just asleep and I didn’t kill or hurt her. This hasn’t occurred to me since she first didn’t answer her phone and the possibility sends a wave of relief through my entire body.

Feeling a bit more optimistic, I put some clothes and trainers on, my heart is pounding. I will walk through the park, it’s quickest… and it’s also where I might have left her.

As I walk through the park, I look around for clues. I won’t spend too long on this journey, because I have to get to her flat and I can look properly on the way back. I make notes on my phone of where to check. There’s no point really checking the open plan part, because somebody would already have found her. Ditto the playground. I’ll go over the wooded area carefully though, and the disused tennis courts and the old parkkeeper’s house. My phone starts beeping a warning that I’m now down to 10% battery. I try Leanne one more time. There’s still no answer.

In 20 minutes, I’m at her block of flats. I press the buzzer three, four, five, six times. Neither she nor her flatmate Andy answers. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it. This is getting worse. I ring her again, there’s no answer and my battery lets out a distress signal. I’m going to have to go home and charge it, so I can take pictures of the park as I’m looking. My body cries out for food, but eating would be callous at this stage. Who has breakfast when they might have killed someone? I feel like my body is betraying me.

I sit down on the concrete step outside the block of flats and remind myself that I haven’t found a body yet. I replay everything I can remember from last night. I really need to stop drinking so much. There’s a nagging little logical voice at the back of my head, telling me I would definitely remember killing my best friend though. It keeps being shouted down by the louder, hungover voice. I should have brought some water with me. I think I might collapse.

Even though my phone is now on 2%, I still walk back through the woods. I manage to take three photos of the ground before the battery finally dies. I see a dog walker. The dogs sniffs my crotch.

‘Sorry about him!’

‘Oh, it’s no problem.’

That’s reassuring, dogs are good at finding bodies aren’t they? The dog walker definitely doesn’t give the impression they’ve just found one. What path were they coming down? I’ll take the other one.

Without my phone clock, I don’t know how long I’m in the woods for, but I overturn every log and walk round and round, looking for recently upturned soil. By the time I decide to go back home for a glass of water and to charge up again, I’m exhausted and thirsty and I hate myself more than ever.

By the time I turn the corner onto my road, I’m sobbing. I don’t know what to do next. Keep looking? Keep calling? Tell Kate and Leila? The Police? And what do I tell them? That she’s missing, that I don’t know if I killed her?

I think, selfishly, about life in prison before I think about Leanne’s family. I won’t say I’m sorry in court. Even though I am, because I don’t want lenience. Tears stream down my face and I start to choke on my own snot. I reach my block of flats, fumbling in my jacket pocket for my door key.

And there she is. Leanne. Not in a heap on the floor, but sat on the step, looking down at her phone. I stare at her. Am I hallucinating?

She looks up.

‘Dana!’ Then she sees the state of me. ‘What happened?’

‘I was worried,’ I reply, because I can hardly say I thought I might have killed you.

‘That explains the 33 missed calls.’ She stands up and puts her arms around me. I want to pull away – I don’t deserve such affection from someone whose body I’ve spent all day looking for.

‘Why were you worried? You saw me get out of the taxi last night.’

‘I…. didn’t…. remember,’ I choke.

‘Oh Dana.’

‘You didn’t answer your phone.’

‘I was having lunch at my dad’s. It was on silent in my bag. When I saw all the calls, I called back but there was no answer. You weren’t saying anything on the group chat, so I made Dad bring me over.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘About 10 minutes. I was about to call the others. I thought maybe the Uber driver had hurt you.’

‘I’m so sorry. I’m such a twat. I’m an awful friend. I’m sorry. So sorry.’

‘Shhh.’

Eventually we go inside and Leanne puts the kettle on.

‘You should really get some help, Dana.’

‘I know.’

‘You can’t keep doing this.’

‘I know.’

‘How about we look at that support group again? I could go with you.’

‘You don’t need to. I’m OK.’

‘You just spent hours looking for my body in the woods… again.’

‘I have body issues.’

‘You do.’

We both giggle in spite of ourselves and Leanne covers me with a blanket.

‘You don’t have to stay’ I tell her.

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

She picks up her phone and starts ordering a pizza.

Words: 2542