When You Know

The bedroom Murphy slept in wasn't the one she grew up in. It didn't hold memories from her teenage years, it didn't have the smell that everyone associated with their home. The one you don't smell when you're there, but the one you pick up on all your clothes after long enough. That smell was from the detergent Megan used in their clothes, the smell that had been steamed into every t-shirt from when Murphy would put a podcast on and iron the entire contents of both their wardrobes. As she thought about home, she filled her lungs with air, holding her breath at its apex and only letting go once her chest burned with pain. It was weird; thinking about how that home wasn't home anymore. This place wasn't either, it was only supposed to be a temporary stop over that lasted a few months, but it was slowly evolving into a palace of permanency.

In her left hand, Murphy played with a blister pack. She'd taken her tablet an hour ago, but squeezing the plastic ridges where tiny white pills once rested was just as soothing as the silence from outside her window. If she stayed another month, she told herself, she'd paint the walls a light blue. Now, they were a clinical white, contrasting hard against the wooden drawers her Dad had bought in a hurry. At the time, she told him it was pointless, that she'd be gone before she even had the chance to pack. But now her clothes had gone through several washes; one of which was in a dry-cleaners somewhere between South America and Northern Ireland.

As she waited for the trails of sunlight to pass her bedroom floor and into her eyes, Murphy wondered what Megan would think if she knew where she was. Deep at the back of her mind, she knew that Megan would be out here in a second, banging on the door until she was let climb the stairs. She'd tell her to get up, that they had to continue onwards and upwards, which was precisely the reason Murphy insisted on nobody knowing. The fewer people that knew, the better chance she had to get better. And she was getting better.

She no longer reached for her phone, having spent a good few weeks panicking when she found it missing. All she had now was an old Nokia that she had to put credit on if she dared send a text, and it spent most of its life on her bedside table. Most importantly, it didn't have internet access, and that was problem two she'd had to overcome.

At first, she'd been desperate to find out what people were saying about her. She'd wondered if her Instagram was filling with comments about her sudden disappearance from the public light, accusing her of everything under the sun. It had gotten so bad one night, Murphy had snuck out to a library out in Belfast, paying for a membership that evening and logging onto a computer like she was addicted. To her surprise, there'd been barely anything. A few messages from randoms, one from Vinny that she refused to open, and a distinct lack of her name in any recent search terms. In her half-an-hour of internet access, she'd also managed to watch ten minutes of a video. But the video made her tear up, so it went off soon after. She still held the library card, and it accounted for the three books that sat next to her Nokia.

At this point, she was used to the silence again. Her Dad's house was out in "the middle of nowhere", as he described. He'd felt no need to stay in Newcastle after Murphy had left, so he'd made the decision to move closer to his own friends from College. Neil, he'd not seen since they were eighteen, and Rich had dropped in and out of his life the past thirty years. Murphy was glad he'd done so, and the three of them had all looked out for her whilst she was home, like they'd all raised her. Her Dad had had a fourth friend, Brian, and he was the only one she remembered from her childhood. Brian had come to visit not long after her Mum left for what looked to be the last time, and he'd taken Murphy to watch a cricket team play whilst her Dad processed whatever had happened. When Murphy arrived back with her Dad, Brian was the second person she most looked forward to seeing. He was kind, like a second Dad almost, and she remembered how he probably just wanted to watch his match but spent the entire game explaining every last rule and answering every stupid question she'd had. He'd said something along the lines of "You're going to do better than your ma and da put together, you know?", and a selfish part of her wondered if he'd be proud in a way her parents could never be, now that she'd done it all.