Atkinson wheeled himself out to hand Poe another coffee. Instead of going back inside to Bradshaw he took up the position beside him, the light snow sticking to his mask and shoulders like dandruff.
After a few moments Bradshaw joined them.
‘Why did you try and kill yourself, Edward?’
Poe noted Bradshaw’s use of his first name. She’d been calling him Mr Atkinson up until then. He wondered what had changed.
‘Have you ever suffered from depression, Tilly?’
‘I haven’t.’
‘I have,’ he said. ‘Had it bad and couldn’t see a way out. I didn’t have the mask at that point and I was in too much pain to sleep naturally. I could either take the pills that turned me into a zombie or stay exhausted. I wanted to be alone but I couldn’t stand the silence.’
‘It sounds like you had post-traumatic stress disorder, Edward,’ she said.
Poe thought the same. It wasn’t just returning veterans who suffered from PTSD. People had developed it after being involved in something as simple as a traffic accident. An acid attack certainly passed the threshold.
‘I saw a shrink,’ Atkinson said. ‘He suggested PTSD but his solution was more medication. I started drinking heavily. By the time I was ready to end it all I was drinking two bottles of Jack Daniel’s a day.’
Bradshaw, who’d never had an alcoholic drink in her life and therefore couldn’t comprehend how quickly it could become a crutch, said, ‘There’s one unit in every ten millilitres of alcohol and Tennessee sour mash has an alcohol content of forty per cent. If we assume a standard bottle holds one litre’ – she looked up and did some mental arithmetic – ‘that’s four hundred millilitres of alcohol, which means forty units a bottle. You were drinking eighty units of alcohol a day, Edward.’
‘That many? I didn’t reali—’
‘And the recommended weekly alcohol allowance is fourteen units.’
Atkinson said nothing. Neither did Poe – he was trying to work out his own weekly intake. Although he was nowhere near where Atkinson had been, the uncertainty surrounding his future at Herdwick Croft had seen him drink more than usual. Probably best not to tell Bradshaw.
Atkinson shrugged it off. ‘I knew it was too much but all I saw was a future devoid of meaningful moments. Drinking myself to death didn’t seem like such a bad thing.’
Bradshaw didn’t have an answer to that. Her unique view of the world meant she sometimes struggled with empathy but she seemed to understand that now wasn’t the time to continue a lecture on safe drinking levels.
‘Anyway,’ Atkinson continued, ‘it was taking too long and after a particularly difficult night I decided I didn’t want to go on. I strung two bedsheets together and tied them to the top of the banister. Tied the other end round my neck and stepped off.’
‘What happened, Edward?’ Bradshaw said. ‘If you’d ended up with lesions on the neck area of your spinal cord you’d have been a tetraplegic not a paraplegic – paralysed in four limbs rather than the two.’
Poe grimaced at the lack of tact. Atkinson smiled.
‘Shitty builders happened, Tilly. The banister fell apart and I fell fifteen feet. The base of my spine hit the bottom of the stairs. Ended up paralysed from the waist down. Instead of ending my suffering I trebled it.’
‘You were sectioned?’ Poe said, knowing he had been.
Atkinson nodded. ‘All in all it was a bit of a shit year.’
‘It must have worked, though.’
‘Not even a little bit. All they had was second-rate therapy and first-rate liquid coshes.’
‘So …?’
‘Some of the compensation money came through and a doctor came up from London with a mask. The pain stopped about the same time I could afford to remove myself from everyone and everything. A land agent bought this place for me. I spent a lot of money making it accessible and getting the terrace right and, while I’m not exactly happy, I can at least see a path to old age.’
Poe nodded. Finding peace wasn’t an attainable goal for most. That Atkinson had stared into the abyss, no, stepped into the abyss, and survived was a remarkable testament to human endurance. He redoubled his commitment to keeping the man safe.
‘Do you want some more coffee, Mr Poe?’ Atkinson said.
‘No more for him, thank you, Edward,’ Bradshaw said before Poe could say yes. ‘He has virtually no fibre in his diet. If he’s not careful he’ll end up with an impacted—’
Poe didn’t want to know what was going to get impacted and fortunately for him the tide agreed.