25. The Suicide
When Mira found out Liam had killed himself, she’d been crossing a Cambodian road to get to a temple. It felt like she’d been laughing at something when she read the message. She remembered smiling, thinking the message was a joke.
It was not a joke.
When she realised, her ears started ringing and hadn’t stopped. If Liam had been alive he would have tested her hearing by plucking his guitar, and together they would have found the note to be an extremely high-pitched G sharp.
Before leaving for Cambodia, she’d had a fight with Liam that lasted until 6 a.m.
Then she’d had a fight with her boyfriend for arriving home at dawn, with half an hour to spare before catching the bus to the airport. In her exhaustion, she almost said she didn’t want to go to Cambodia, but that would have meant breaking up with him. That was his threat for her not going.
Leaving Liam was easy. She’d see him when she got back.
She’d been sure of it.
Her boyfriend’s dad had not only paid for their flights, but accommodation in a luxury resort. He’d invested in a start-up at the right time and retired. They’d planned to meet him at the temple.
So far, all Mira had done with her life was lose a baby, attend parties, and teach kids how to swim. She didn’t think any of that would impress her boyfriend’s dad. She hadn’t met this type of parent before. The energy of ‘a dad’ had been absent for so long it made her feel like she was going to meet an alien.
“He won’t bite,” said her boyfriend, not understanding why this had made her laugh.
Liam was a drunk. Or had been one. They were all drunks. They were drunk on their own lives, and if there had been a centre of their group, it would have been Liam. A natural charmer, he was well-spoken and cleaned up neatly in a suit, even with his moppish hair. He’d strewn compliments everywhere, like overfeeding chickens with seed. When he played with his band, his stage presence was hard to ignore.
He enjoyed posing for her photos and drawings, and watching while she worked on the images. He liked having her around. And he liked being around her. Liam was like a cat, she thought. She was a cat person, and he’d known it.
She was weeping at the Cambodian temple, distraught about Liam never being a cat again. Other tourists stared curiously as her boyfriend tried to comfort her. She would have preferred to run off alone, into the jungle. This trip was for her boyfriend, to show him that she was agreeing to be a serious couple. Agreeing to meet his dad, booking the tickets, and travelling to the Cambodian temple was important proof of this (and besides, someone else was paying for everything).
But now her boyfriend’s dad had disappeared. She couldn’t remember being introduced, but she knew his first impression had been of her crying about how her friend had killed himself, possibly because of her. It could not have been more dramatic. Liam would have loved it.
It was late afternoon and the sun was heavy. She had a headache. “Drink something,” said her boyfriend. The whole two litres went into her body. He offered her some food. “Go on,” he said. “Please.” But she was not hungry. She felt like she’d never be hungry again.
The food felt strange in her mouth as she chewed. She couldn’t swallow. She thought of Liam hanging himself, a twisted sheet around his neck, and her body spat the food out on the ground in front of the temple.
“Sorry,” she said to the people looking at her, and picked up the spat-out food. Then she walked around with it until she found a bush to throw it into.
Liam had said, “I’ll get you an Uber. Don’t crash here.”
Mira knew that other girls crashed there. She needed to be one of those girls.
“I’m so tired,” she’d said, and closed her eyes, feigning exhaustion, trying to be cute on the couch.
He’d said, “Whatever,” and left the room.
She’d listened to him pissing, brushing his teeth, his bed creaking. And then she’d stayed awake for a long time, just listening to what it was like to be in his squat. In the morning, when she woke on the couch, he’d left some toast for her, Vegemite with too much butter, the plate balanced on the coffee table. It was the best meal she’d ever had. One of Liam’s housemates came out, rumpled and dishevelled.
“Oh,” he’d said, surprised. “You’re still here? Close the door when you go, eh?”
As soon as Mira was able to speak without vomiting, she rang Liam’s housemate. He was heavily self-medicated and slurred as he asked, “Are you alright?” and said, “He talked about you a lot,” before she could reply.
The housemate, who was the drummer in Liam’s band and the person who’d found him, wanted to know when she was coming back and if she’d booked her flight.
“Not yet,” she said. “But I will.”
But really, she was already thinking – it means leaving here alone, being on the plane alone, navigating arrivals without anyone with me, waiting to be picked up. She wasn’t good at being alone. That was why she was with her boyfriend. Also, he was a lovely drunkard from France who quoted poetry and sang obscure songs in his charming accent. She honestly liked him. They were almost good for each other. If she left now, it would be the end. She hated that thought.
The group tried to solve the mystery of the suicide.
Mira revealed what she knew.
The night before her flight to Cambodia, he’d been drinking with one of the hangers-on, a girl who’d been fawning on him. They went back to his squat and fell asleep. A bottle of something was next to the bed. The girl woke up with Liam on top of her, sexually prodding her, his eyes closed. She screamed. This was her worst fear: being raped. So often it was someone you knew, an acquaintance usually. She screamed about him raping her while she scurried to get her clothes. She left the house. Then Liam called Mira and she had gone to him.
The chat went silent for a few seconds and then exploded.
Mira turned her phone off.
Liam was short for Liamander, which was short for something else. He’d told her but she’d forgotten. She was already losing who he was.
Liam and his shaggy hair, his incandescent smile.
She kept thinking of the last day they spent together, before the fight, and how he looked at her, shyly almost. Flickers of… she didn’t know what.
None of it is easy, she thought. Especially saying the right thing.
She imagined him hanging from that metal beam, slowly swinging as his life diminished bit-by-bit, becoming very still.
He’d have had bare feet and been dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, she thought. So it was a surprise when she learned he’d worn heavy boots and a thick jacket filled with weights. In her mind, she had clearly seen his dirty soles.
Mira felt unmoored as she concentrated on something deeply internalised, and her boyfriend, reading this, reading this space between them, organised their days right down to purchasing amusing snacks, gently reminding her that a shower might help, and sitting quietly beside her with tissues. He understood. He was playing the part of ‘caring boyfriend’. But she was so intricately involved with Liam and everything that happened that she could be excused for not taking this in.
The hanger-on had been a recent addition to their group, and although no one ever said it out loud, it was agreed she didn’t know the rules.
Everyone knew what Liam was like. Had been like.
Mira knew this too.
You must come home!! the chat pleaded.
She had workshopped the possibility with her boyfriend, briefly, knowing it was a sore subject – her boyfriend had seen Liam as a threat, and she’d done nothing to dispel this notion. It had taken them so much just to get to Cambodia to see his father, only for her to consider returning. And he knew that if she went back home there was a strong chance she would stay there.
She left the chat without a reply.
She rejoined the chat. The group had crowdfunded her flight.
She thought about never going back to the group and quitting who she was to them. She could be with her boyfriend somewhere, living happily, sponging off his dad, organically deciding where to go and what to do. This idea of freedom seemed so concrete that she stopped sniffling and could see a way forward.
She would transform herself into a wife and have children, delightful children, who would never experience the pain of their best friend committing suicide, but instead have sensible careers and careful sex, resulting in 1.7 grandchildren. Perfect.
She thought about her boyfriend alone in Cambodia. He would be pensive, writing in a journal, a loner among the throng of tourists. He would be loving her and missing her. He would take photos and send them to her with captions. Then his attention would wander. He would begin watching people, noticing them. A girl with a big smile and loose, perfectly parted hair would stop to comment on his pensiveness. She’d be clumsy and trip and he’d catch her elbow. He would have her. And then Mira would be free.
She could be in Australia, mourning Liam, letting her grief run parallel to that of the group, forevermore in peace from the expectation of being a wife and mother.
I can come home for two days, she told the chat.
When she saw the tickets arrive in her inbox, she left the chat again.
On the plane she was tight and controlled. She was going to be strong for Liam’s group.
Actually, she felt like she was about to lose her shit, so she began drinking. She told the story to the man beside her, and he benevolently ordered more drinks on her behalf. Then he put his hand on her thigh, and when she didn’t object, ran a finger under her skirt. Her vagina throbbed. She could smell his breath. He was a smoker. He went to the toilet for a long time and she laughed to herself, thinking, what a fuckwit. Huffing on the glass, she drew Liam as a cat and watched him go invisible as her breath dried. She gazed out at the clouds.
The man ignored her until they landed, then scurried off the plane. She sat there until it was only her and the flight crew, and only then did she go and claim her baggage.
Liam had a wide jaw and large hands. His hands were always warm. He liked to stroke things – her hair, piano keys, a woman’s coat, the grass. They’d never been lovers and hadn’t been in love, but they’d loved each other very much. She had adored him. Even after what he’d done.
The wake was held on a rainy afternoon, in the living room of the family house. Everyone wept quietly.
“You were a dear, dear friend to him,” said his parents, who couldn’t bear to say his name, and who hugged her and thanked her for coming.
Liam was laid on a long table in his favourite suit. After decorating him with flowers picked from front yards and nature strips, the group stood around, awkwardly introducing themselves to distant relatives and then privately rolling their eyes at each other to indicate that only they understood him.
Had that actually happened? She’d been messy from drinking, she couldn’t remember properly. But later, she had a distinct impression of it being evening, the sun setting, the group sitting at the closest pub.
They were dressed in second-hand dresses and borrowed jackets. For most of them, Liam was the first person their age who’d died. At first it was a chance to talk about the good stuff, like the time he’d grown a beard, or the way he’d danced with such abandon. Then dark whispering began, until, bit-by-bit, it turned into yelling. “Fucking arsehole!” someone yelled, finally, and they all started drinking for real.
Mira looked at the group, a week after she’d last seen them, and they were broken. She realised they had always been this way but were simply very good at romanticising it.
Mira woke in a park, alone under a tree, dress rumpled, mosquito-ravaged, pitying herself, embarrassed. Her pillow was her handbag. Someone had helped her and tiptoed away. She could feel the memory of this having happened. She felt sweaty and woozy from jetlag. Liam was gone. He wasn’t coming back.
She caught an Uber to the airport.
Katy Knighton is an emerging writer. You can find her stories in Folly Journal, Overland, and the anthologies Strangely Enough and ACEIV. She has been awarded the Sorrento Creative Writing Award and the 2025 Folly Short Story Prize (Joint Winner).