Too Good for this World (3 page)

Dear Nick and Dan, I
want you to know that my husband was one of the people who killed
himself after getting obsessed with your game. I know it apparently
wasn’t your game, but I don’t care. If it hadn’t existed my husband
would still be here. He was the love of my life. Now that he’s gone
I wish I was dead too. I hope that you can live with that.
Imogen.

After she’d
sent it she felt worse. She thought it would vent some of her
bitterness, but it deepened it. It was like her mum said about
karma. Putting badness and sadness and blame into the world only
made it come back and bite you. When she saw that there was a reply
from DAWN Industries later that day, she almost didn’t want to see
what it said.

Dear Imogen. We
understand how angry you must feel. Reading your email has saddened
us more than we can say. I don’t know what we could possibly tell
you that would make things any better, but if you want to ask us
anything about the game or what happened we will do our very best
to answer you. If it would be easier for you to speak to us in
person or for one of us to call you, don’t hesitate to ask. We know
how inadequate it sounds to say that we are sorry, but we truly
are. This should never have happened. Nick & Dan.

Long into the
night she toyed with the idea of meeting one or both of them, or
asking them to call her. By the morning she decided it made no
difference. The game wasn’t theirs anyway, and no matter what she
did, Jonny would still be dead.

One night when
he was playing Affrayed, Imogen was surprised when Jonny stopped
uncharacteristically early in the evening and came over and grabbed
her. ‘I love you,’ he said, ‘I love you, I love you.’ He pressed
his forehead against hers. He looked as though he might start to
cry.

‘What’s
happened?’ she asked, ‘did something happen in Affrayed?’

‘No,’ he said,
‘and yes. It… my mind…’

Imogen put her
arms around him. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, ‘you can tell me.’

‘I wish that
you could see it too.’

‘See
what?’

He wandered
off without answering. Imogen sat down on the sofa, perplexed and
saddened. He’d always been able to tell her everything before. What
could be happening to him in that game that was so unusual he
couldn’t even find the words to talk to her about it?

Imogen woke
the next morning feeling unusually optimistic. She opened the
application form for the teaching job, and took her laptop
downstairs to make a start on it in the kitchen before work. When
her mum saw what she was doing, she practically cooed with
delight.

‘I’m so proud
of you,’ her mum said, ‘I knew something had changed. I did a
reading last night, and everything is looking better for us,
Gennie, everything!’

Imogen smiled.
Her mum’s tarot reading was neither here nor there as far as she
was concerned, although she couldn’t help but feel a little bit of
extra warmth, and hope. The world was on her side. She kept
thinking that as she filled in the form. The world was on her side.
Jonny
was on her side.

It didn’t
last. She thought her mum understood her feelings, but no doubt
encouraged by her damn cards, later that day she told Imogen she
had found her a “date”.

‘You…’ Imogen
said, ‘you what?’

‘My friend
Zara’s son. He’s just got back from doing some voluntary work
in-’

‘No,’ Imogen
said, strongly and firmly.

Her mum
wouldn’t back down. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, ‘Zara and River both
know your circumstances-’

‘River?’
Imogen said, ‘his name is River?’

‘Yes, I think
he could be just your-’

‘No!’ Imogen
said.

Jonny had
often talked about transcendence.

‘That’s why
Affrayed is so good,’ he said, ‘because you’re out of yourself,
above yourself.’

‘What do you
mean?’

‘People…
people hate focusing on themselves. When are we most happy? When
we’re absorbed in something. And when are we even happier than
that? When we’re part of something bigger. When you’re looking at
the most beautiful, awe-inspiring sight, or you’re with people who
really, really understand you- when you’re so
together,
so
united, so much larger than yourself. Affrayed makes me feel that
way so often.’

‘Do I make you
feel that way?’

Jonny kissed
her. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but we’re only two people. I’m talking about
the whole world!’

Imogen
laughed. ‘You and the “whole world” Jonny,’ she said. ‘Honestly.
You’re only one man.’

Her mum simply
didn’t seem able to understand what she’d done wrong by arranging
the date with River. Imogen shut herself away in her room, and
hoped she would get the teaching job just so that she could afford
to move out and get away from her mum’s meddling. She knew that no
one understood how to help her, and that was fair enough. She also
knew that it would make other people’s lives easier if she started
seeing someone else. She saw the looks her friends gave her, these
awful, pitying looks that were filled with fear. She knew they were
all hoping like hell that what had happened to Imogen would never
happen to them. Her grief and loss was offensive to them. They’d
never say it, but she knew it. She reminded them of their worst
nightmares, and they resented her for it.

Imogen took
out the suicide note and thought about how her life should have
been. She’d never even slept with anyone else except Jonny. She’d
thought he would be her first and her last, that he would be the
only man to ever know her and she the only woman to know him. Aside
from her ongoing love for Jonny holding her back, the thought of
the intimacy that would be expected of her if she started dating
was terrifying. In her head none of her new prospective suitors
were like Jonny. She imagined herself being pressured, being
laughed at for only having slept with one man. In her darkest
moments, she wondered if she was actually any good at sex. She only
knew what she and Jonny liked, and neither she nor he had anything
to compare that to. They’d always had a lot of fun together, but
for all she knew, other men might want things completely different.
She might not have a clue what she was doing and end up feeling
ridiculous. In a rush of anger she screwed the note up in her hand.
‘Why did you do this to me Jonny?’ she said, ‘why did you leave me
on my own, you… you
selfish fucking bastard
.’

She dropped
the screwed up picture and clapped her hand over her mouth, but
quickly released it again to say, ‘I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean
it, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry Jonny, I’m sorry.’ She picked up
the picture and tried to straighten it out, but she was distracted
when her laptop, which had been asleep or on standby or something,
suddenly lit up. She frowned at it, confused, and then the screen
went black again. But it wasn’t empty. There was a message, written
in white.

I’m sorry

Imogen almost
cried out. The words hadn’t disappeared again, like the ones about
her being a great teacher. They were still there, plain as day,
white on black and with the cursor flashing just underneath.

Jonny?
She typed.

‘Something
spoke to me,’ Jonny said shakily.

‘What do you
mean?’

‘A voice, in
my head.’

Imogen nearly
crashed the car. She told him to wait for a second before he said
anything further, and she parked at the side of the road, taking a
moment to try to calm down.

‘A voice?’ she
asked eventually, trying to keep the tremor from her own words.

‘It told me
not to be afraid,’ he said, ‘that I didn’t need to be afraid about
the future, because there would be a new future.’

Imogen’s heart
was racing. Something was wrong here. Seriously wrong. That much
was obvious now. Jonny had always been intense, but now he was ill.
He had to be ill.

‘When you say
you
heard
a voice,’ she asked carefully, ‘what do you mean?
You don’t mean your own thoughts?’

‘No,’ he said,
‘it was a voice. A voice I hadn’t heard before. It was a weird
voice. It sounded a bit like something from a film, like, computer
engineered.’ He looked at her. ‘Gennie, I know what this sounds
like. But you love me and you have to believe me. The voice was to
do with Affrayed.’

‘No!’ Imogen
shouted, slamming her hand against the steering wheel.

Instead of
receiving an answer, Imogen watched helplessly as her laptop went
back to its dormant state, and the message was gone. Her heart was
racing. It had been Jonny. It had to have been.

Every night
for the next week, Imogen made sure her laptop was on, and then sat
next to it talking to Jonny’s suicide note. She managed to get out
of the date with River, much to her mum’s disappointment, and spent
all of her free time alone in her room, though no further
mysterious messages appeared.

‘Jonny,’ she
pleaded with the picture, ‘talk to me again, Jonny, please.’

She hadn’t
realised that her door was ajar, and her mum must have been walking
past and heard her talking. Before Imogen could try to hide what
she was doing her mum had come into her room and was standing by
her side. Imogen tried to think of an explanation. She knew her mum
must have overheard what she had been saying.

In the end
there was no need to justify herself. Her mum seemed to understand
without any explanation, and said, ‘you’re still so hurt, aren’t
you Gennie?’

Imogen
nodded.

‘I do
understand,’ her mum said. ‘I know you think I don’t, but I do. I
know you think you’ve lost the love of your life, and that you
don’t believe you could ever feel for anyone else what you felt for
him. And I know why you’d think that. Jonny was one in a million.
One in a million million.’

Her mum and
Jonny had always got on like a house on fire. They agreed on many
things, and enjoyed heated debates when they didn’t. The two of
them were both so fiery, and so sure of their views, that their
exchange of opinions could practically make sparks fly. Two days
before Imogen and Jonny got married he came round and sat with her
and her mum at the kitchen table, helping to sort out some last
minute wedding things.

They were
working on the wedding favours, which were packets of wild flower
seeds tied up with ribbon and with each guest’s name hand-written
on a little label. This sort of formality wasn’t particularly in
Jonny’s nature, but Imogen wanted all the little pretty details and
he seemed quite happy to help make them.

‘So,’ Jonny
said to her mum, ‘tell me again. I’m going to get some money, but I
need to be wary…’

Her mum
slapped Jonny good-naturedly on the wrist with a packet of seeds.
Jonny had let her read him his horoscope earlier on and he wasn’t
letting her hear the end of it.

‘It would be
good if I knew where this money was going to come from,’ he said,
‘to make sure I get it.’

‘If you’re
supposed to get it, you will get it,’ she said.

Jonny nodded
slowly, his chin in his hand, his mouth twitching as he tried not
to laugh. ‘Mm,’ he said.

Imogen went to
the fridge, where there was some white wine. ‘Enough, you two,’ she
said. She held up the bottle. ‘Less talking, and more working… and
drinking.’

Later on,
Imogen went to find some more ribbons from her room. When she came
back downstairs, she could hear the low murmur of conversation.
Jonny was unbelievably upfront about things, which her mum loved.
He’d even been so daring as to talk with her mum about sex on more
than one occasion, which she’d been shocked by. But then she’d
realised, it wasn’t actually daring that had made him do it. To him
sex was just another part of life, and as open for discussion as
any other element of being in the world. When she’d questioned him
about it he’d said, ‘your mum is a person, isn’t she? I wasn’t
being dirty about it, I was just talking.’

When she drew
close to the kitchen, she heard Jonny say the most extraordinary
thing, and without so much as a hint of embarrassment in his voice.
‘Marie,’ he said, which was her mum’s name, ‘I just want you to
know that I love Imogen more than life itself, and you can rest
assured that I am going to devote the rest of my days to making her
happy in
every
possible way.’

Imogen
flattened herself against the wall in delighted embarrassment,
while she heard her mum give a surprised laugh. A few seconds later
she went back inside, still thinking about Jonny’s extraordinary
words. Once she’d sat back down at the table, her mum put her hand
on Jonny’s shoulder and said, ‘I wish there were more like this
one.’ Then she cackled away and Jonny looked at Imogen and gave her
a wink.

‘Mum,’ Imogen
said, ‘you once told me that Jonny was too good for this world.
What did you mean?’

Her mum sat
down on the desk by Imogen’s side. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘there
are people who shine so bright. They are good right to their core.
But the world isn’t good to the core. If you ask me, I think it got
to the point where Jonny couldn’t handle that.’

Imogen nodded.
‘He wanted everyone to be honest, and to be nice to each other. But
people aren’t always like that.’

Her mum
smiled. ‘I remember when you first brought Jonny home to meet me,’
she said. ‘He was so cocky and cheeky. I was surprised you’d gone
for somebody like that. But when I got to know him, I realised how
great he was for you. The two of you just… fitted together. I was
so happy for you.’

They fell into
silence, both lost in their own thoughts for a while, and Imogen
remembered the messages she’d received. ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘I think
Jonny wants me to get the teaching job.’