Free Free-Falling by Nicola Moriarty

becoming glassy, and she shook her head. She ran faster and faster and finally allowed herself to think about the real reason she was so angry with him. She began to remember the day Andy died.
    It was early evening and she was running late to pick him up from work. Everything up to the moment she parked near his office block was crisp and clear in her memory. After that, it got very, very blurry. First, there was his mate Michael Coombes running out of the front doors and calling to her, ‘Something’s happened, down the road at a convenience store – Andy’s there.’ Then she was running as fast as she could, following Coombes to the end of the block. There was a crowd of people out the front. Police cars, an ambulance – flashing lights and a whining siren. No one seemed to know exactly what was going on inside.
    Suddenly Andy’s mum was striding toward her. Tall and capable in her crisp business suit, heels clickety-clacking across the bitumen. She had slid her sunglasses up on top of her head where they sat perched in her short, red hair. Belinda still didn’t know where she had come from, how she had known to be there. But she had squeezed Belinda’s arm and assured her, ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll find out what’s going on. It’s going to be fine .’ The first – and last – nice thing she’d ever said to her. Then Evelyn marched straight past the protesting police officers and into the shop. Belinda had stood waiting, watching Coombes’s anxious face. She’d felt nervous but not really that worried. This wasn’treal. It was like she was watching an episode of NCIS or something. This had nothing to do with her. Nothing to do with their lives. Nothing could have happened to Andy.
    Could it?
    And then there were whispers through the crowd. Someone is dead in there.
    Well, okay – but not Andy, right?
    At some point amongst all the chaos she’d felt her mobile phone vibrate with a message. She pulled it out of her pocket and held it in her hand. She would look at it in a minute, when she knew that everything really was all right. Of course it would be – she just needed confirmation, that’s all.
    But then there was Evelyn emerging from the store. She’d never be able to forget her face. And she knew. She heard Coombes suck his breath in next to her, felt his hand grasp her arm tightly. That’s when, for some reason, she looked at the phone and she saw the message. It was from Andy. Her heart skipped a beat. She had pressed the buttons to open the message with trembling hands.
    There it was. The last thing he would ever say to her. It was just two words, and remembering those words was like having her chest torn apart.

    Because she was late to pick him up from work that day. Meaning he blamed her, because if she had been on time, everything would have been different. Meaning it was her fault that he was dead.
    And he was right.
    She hadn’t even realised that she’d slipped until she saw the front of the treadmill rushing away from her, and then the ceiling and the floor all seeming to tumble around her. Moments latershe was lying flat on her back on the prickly carpet of the gym floor with a very sore tailbone. She closed her eyes, mortified, praying for this to be one of those terrible dreams. It wasn’t. She must have briefly passed out because the next thing she knew she was waking up on a couch in the staffroom of the gym, with an icepack on her head and a girl peering into her face while enthusiastically chewing gum.
    Belinda sat up slowly. She slid awkwardly along the couch and out from under the young woman’s eager gaze.
    â€˜How’s the head feelin’ there, love?’ She had a strong ocker accent, accentuated by the noisy gum chewing.
    â€˜Just fine, thanks. Umm, can I go?’
    â€˜Sure, no wuckers, just give me your autograph on this incident report form and