Free Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach

am on pills, then I lack my fire, and I don’t feel things deeply, I’m just shuffling through life like everyone else, using up resources, eating food and shitting it out. They make me not think properly about things – I have the same opinions as the newspapers, take the line of least resistance. The other day in the pub my friends were having an argument about whether you should tip in restaurants even if the service is crap, and I couldn’t be bothered to take a position. I used to be a waitress, it’s a subject I should feel strongly about, but I just don’t have the will and energy to engage any more. I’m living a mundane life, just for the sake of it. And what’s the point of that?
    And when I look at the future, I can only see more of this same old shit, but with me older. When I look at my face in the mirror now, I can see the beginnings of major lines – you know, the ones old women have, like mum would have if she hadn’t had so much surgery – and the future is just there, laid out in front of me. I’ve probably got a few years left in me before my face starts to fall, and I become middle-aged. Men’s eyes have already started to slide over me. I imagine my face as the subject of a time-lapse film, those lines rapidly getting deeper, mouth turning down into a frown, gums receding, white hairs sprouting. And then finally crumbling into dust. No, how could I forget – before that, senility. All that life and experience and memories turned to mush, and ending up pulling down my trousers in the newsagent, like dad. I’m going to be buried alive by my body and I don’t want it.
    You asked me the other day about children. I’m not going to have them, I wouldn’t trust myself with them. I can’t look after myself, how could I have children?
    And you know what, I’ve had my fun. For all the shittiness, for all the people I’ve hurt and time I’ve wasted, all the nights in stinking Soho clubs, the mistakes I’ve made, at least I’ve lived, which is more than you can say for lots of people. But now, I know what it’s like and I don’t want to do it any more. I don’t see it as a sad thing, particularly. I just don’t see the point in repeating the same things over and over again, becoming more and more invisible, going to sleep and waking up, always doubting my own instincts, feeling either half alive or out of control. I just don’t want to do it any more.
    It finished there. After a moment, I opened a new document on my computer. I had noticed an inconsistency in her account. In the CV she had called the band she managed Grievous Mary, whilst in the biography it was Godless Mary. I made a note to ascertain from her which name was correct. Then I emailed back to acknowledge receipt of the documents, and tell her we could proceed.

Friday, 19th August 2011
    Two things happened this afternoon. A couple who seem relatively sane said they might remember Tess, and I got online.
    My day got off to a better start. To avoid repetition of the unpleasant awakening the morning before, I had gone to sleep with the tent flaps open, lying on my back with my head positioned half outside and my eye mask around my neck. When the brightness of the sun woke me I slithered out of the tent and repositioned my mattress under the shade of the tree whereupon I put on my eye mask and immediately went back to sleep. It was a minimal disruption, and I awoke again at 2 p.m. feeling quite rested.
    After three biscuits and a quick wash with my Wet Wipes I took Tess’s photo and did a round of the site. Some new arrivals were setting up camp near the main clearing. It wasn’t immediately clear which of the couple was the male and which the female; both had long, limp dark hair and were skinny, the girl with not much in the bust department. The man had big black plugs in his earlobes, the size of a one-euro coin.
    I asked them whether they had been here the previous summer. They said yes, so I showed them the photo. They