All These Perfect Strangers (16 page)

As Rogan came nearer, pulling the thing behind him, I stepped in. Sharp stones cut at my feet, so kicking my legs behind me, I swam out to him, clothes weighing me down, my breath snap-frozen in my lungs. Even as I got to Rogan, a matter of metres, I was shivering, but it wasn't the temperature. The shape had become a body. An arm stretched out towards me in the water.

‘We need to flip it over,' Rogan said. He counted, as if we were going to lift an awkward piece of furniture. I stood in the chest-high water, my heart sinking down into the slimy silt, not wanting to touch the skin. Both of us grappled with the wet clothes around the torso, and like a monstrous puppet, it staggered upward, turned and fell.

Rogan recoiled and I could hear shock catching in his throat. But I already knew who it was, the scars glistening on her wrists, the golden anklet and the handbag, twined around her like a hangman's rope.

We dragged her over the rocks, until she lay on the riverbank. Panting, I knelt on the ground next to her, Rogan on the other side. I stared at her face, expecting her eyes to pop open, to hear her laugh and say ‘got you'. But Rachel's skin was blue in the moonlight, naked without her makeup, and she didn't move at all. The bangles she always wore were missing.

‘Fuck,' said Rogan, his breath shallow. He felt her wrist for a pulse. All I could hear was my own heart beating in my chest. He moved to her face, covered her mouth with his, and began pumping in air, feeling her ribs, positioning his hands, hesitantly at first and then becoming firmer, pushing down on her chest. But it was like handling a slab of meat.

‘Go get help,' he said. ‘I'll keep trying.'

·  ·  ·

Much later that night, I was taken back to the river. People talked in hushed tones, huddled behind official tape. I looked for Rogan and saw him in the distance, wrapped in a blanket as I was, talking to a policeman. Uniforms were moving around a plastic cocoon, strapped to a gurney. A tall man slid it gently into the ambulance as if he might wake her up. They drove away.

No sirens. No flashing lights.

People talked to me but it felt as if I was the person underwater. I could see heads nodding and mouths moving but I caught few words. When I tried to listen, the ambulance officer talked of stitches and a tetanus shot. The problem was their questions only had one answer. All of this was my fault. I just kept shaking my head until they gave up.

The Sub-Dean took me to his car to drive me back to college. He winced as I sat down on the passenger seat which he had already covered with a towel. Looking down at myself, I saw my dress was ripped and wet, covered with mud. He kept talking at me but I looked out of the window and watched the campus floating past, a different place at night, hiding its secrets as I had tried to hide mine. When he turned into the car park, I told him I was going to take a shower. He said something about finding Toby to take care of me but at the front door, I told him I just wanted to be alone and limped up the stairs straight to the bathroom.

The hot water burnt needles into my flesh. As my body began to thaw, pain returned. Turning the tap to maximum strength, I crouched, huddled in the cubicle. The bandage on my right foot where the rocks had cut deepest began to peel off, so I unwound it. The heat burnt the raw flesh. My leaking foot turned the water pink. I watched it splash on the white tiles. Blood, dirt, river, shower, this night, everything disappeared down the drain. I wanted to be washed away.

I turned off the shower and wrapped myself in the blanket again. Unlocking the door, for one moment I thought I saw someone standing in the bathroom, but it was only my reflection in the mirror. Rachel would often be in there, brushing her teeth, putting on make-up or plucking her eyebrows, saying how the light in the bathroom was better than in her room, when really what she wanted was an audience. My last picture of her was the face in the toilets, looking at me in triumph, as if she had held all the cards. That was when I felt the hard pebble inside of me. A tiny piece of flint that said at least my secret was safe.

As I left the bathroom, I walked past the chair where Rachel had been eating noodles, the cup and spoon still lying on the floor. I passed Joad's door, Kesh's door, until I got to Rachel's. All was quieter than I ever remembered it being. Everyone must be asleep or still out. I looked back down the corridor. Only one door had a light shining under it, Michael's, but there was no noise coming from inside.

Opening my own door, I felt a breeze from the window and noticed a piece of folded paper had fallen to the floor. A newspaper article. The one Rachel claimed was missing. The date was from three years ago. A stark two-word headline:
ARRESTS MADE
. She had scribbled my name at the top of the page. Had she slipped it under my door, giving it back to me as she had promised? That thought was almost too much to cope with. Feeling lightheaded, I stared down at the article. An enormous picture of a solitary wreath stuck to a wire fence.
Two fifteen-year-old girls were taken into custody late last night and charges are expected to be laid this morning
, it began. No names mentioned in the article of course. We were minors after all. But what was there was enough. The whole town knew it was Tracey and me.

I ripped it up viciously until all that was left were wisps of paper that meant nothing.

*

Frank is being quiet today. There are often long silences in our sessions. Anxious silences, bored silences, angry silences and sometimes we are both playing chicken, attempting to force the other to speak.

But this is an odd silence because I can't quite grasp the nature of it. I don't know what he is thinking and I need to.

All good liars tell the truth most of the time. Today, I am lying the easiest way of all. I am telling the truth selectively. I make my excisions razor-sharp. I only tell him how we found Rachel in the river, just like Frank had asked me to. Nothing about what happened at the bar beforehand. Nothing about college afterwards. This is one of the advantages in telling the story, you choose where it starts and finishes.

Frank looks out the window while I speak. I have asked him why he does this and he says that some patients get self-conscious and more guarded if he looks at them directly. They find it confronting. He says he will look at me if that's what I prefer, but I tell him no because it's easier to skip pages if he isn't watching.

Sometimes he takes notes as I read but the rule is he isn't allowed to interrupt. He has to wait until I have finished the part for today before he can ask questions. That was my prerequisite before agreeing to do this.

Once I finish speaking, I carefully close my diary so he can't see I have written lots more than I am reading out. Ivy has been keeping to a strict fortnightly schedule, so there has been plenty of time for writing. But Frank doesn't notice. He is too busy looking out the window, leaning back on his chair, hands clasped. Thinking.

The man who owns the gift shop is out the front today, sweeping the verandah and brushing away the dust from between the railings. They are a glistening black, topped with arrowhead tips. You could pick them up and hurl them like spears. He shines them every day but only so he doesn't have to stay inside to talk to his mother. Even though she's retired, she's often there with a vinegar look etched into her face.

If I didn't hate him, I'd almost feel sorry for him. I hate his mother more though.

‘I've sent the report to Bob,' says Frank.

I stop looking outside. ‘So, that's it then. The end of our sessions?'

His voice is measured. ‘That's up to you, of course. But the purpose of these sessions was for me to write a report for your legal case. I've done that.'

I sit there, almost bewildered, not quite knowing what to do. Shake his hand? Head for the door?

‘Can I read it?' I ask.

‘Of course,' he says. ‘I can print a copy for you now, but I imagine Bob will send you one, in any case.'

I imagine he would as well. That way he can charge for it.

‘I'll get it from him, then.'

We sit there for a bit longer.

‘You seem surprised,' says Frank.

‘I hadn't realised it would be finished so quickly. You said it would take a while.'

‘One of my main recommendations is that you should continue in therapy,' Frank says. ‘Particularly, after what you read out today. The death of a friend is a traumatic thing to have to deal with, as you know. I've already spoken to Bob and he's certain that the university will pay for more counselling. But it's up to you, Pen.'

I pretend to be weighing up my options. I thought I would be running out of here the moment I could, but now it has come to it I'm reluctant to go. There is something seductive about the attention, about being the centre of the universe if only for fifty minutes at a time.

Frank senses my hesitation and continues. ‘If you do consider staying on, I want to broaden out the diary idea.'

‘What do you mean?' I ask, instantly suspicious.

‘Revisiting traumatic events like Rachel dying could open up wounds that you consider closed. Events we never got a chance to discuss properly last time.'

I can tell he is trying to avoid saying Tracey's name.

‘You should allow yourself to explore that territory in your diary as a starting point,' he says.

‘No,' I say, because there is nothing I want to talk to him about regarding that. Nothing at all. I bite the inside of my mouth to stop myself from saying any more.

‘Pen,' he says, with almost a pitying look on his face. ‘People think there are set stages to grief and that as long as you tick the boxes, a magical closure will occur, but life is a lot messier than that. Facing that grief is important. I understand you are reluctant but you will carry the burden of it until you do. The grief you feel – maybe it's even guilt about what happened – is distorting the way you view the world.'

That he says ‘guilt' is a shock and I bite harder. The iron taste of blood is in my mouth but I force myself to smile and say, ‘That isn't necessary.'

‘OK, OK.' He holds up his hands as if he is surrendering. ‘I'm happy to wait until you want to discuss it in our sessions.'

‘All right,' I say and keep the forced smile on my face, until I realise that he has neatly manoeuvered me into continuing with the counselling.

I slowly wound the spare bandage around my foot, pulling it tight. The red gash was covered by layers and layers of white until it disappeared completely. No one knows how big the hole is if they can't see it. Gives you time to knit it back together.

There was a knock on the door and I thought it might be Toby sent by the Sub-Dean to check on me, but it was Rogan, looking exhausted. He'd showered and changed into a clean pair of jeans and a top. We stood there staring at each other.

There was nothing I could think to say. If I began to speak, everything might have slipped out, that Rachel's death was all my fault, that I had spiked her drink with my sleeping tablets. Already, the reason why that had seemed necessary was slipping through my fingers, crumbling like sand.

He had no words either. Instead, he kissed me roughly and I could taste toothpaste on his icy lips. The smells of the night, the sweat, beer and cigarettes, had been washed away.

The warmth from my lips began transferring to his, as if I was the one resuscitating, and slowly he pulsed into life. His stubble bristled against my face. An arm shifted, pushing past my dressing gown until his fingers made contact with my bare skin. Cupping his hand around my breast, he pinched my nipple, feeling it swell and harden. The sensation of his cold hand sparked a rush of warmth. There was the sound of a door opening along the corridor and he pushed me back into the room.

Turning off the light left us criss-crossed with moonlight and shadows. He peeled away my clothes so that I was completely naked. Pressing close, I felt the coarseness of his jeans, the fabric of his t-shirt and the cold metal of the belt buckle digging into my flesh. He kissed me, roughly exploring my mouth with his tongue, before pushing me away and pulling the t-shirt over his head. Tight curls began at his collarbone, lightly covering his chest before tapering down to his waist. I traced my fingers down their path until I found the buckle, pulling the leather belt free. Unbuttoned his jeans. As I slipped onto the bed, I watched him finish getting undressed. He was so beautiful that momentarily everything outside was pushed away and any thoughts of what this had cost disappeared. When he lay on my bed, I wanted to hold his face in my hands and gaze at him forever, but too soon he produced a condom and was inside me. The bed moved underneath us, until that moment of stillness, and then he groaned and collapsed beside me. I lay there, burrowed down between his body and the wall.

‘Rachel was just an accident, a terrible stupid accident,' was the first thing he said. His voice was fierce. ‘That's what we tell the police tomorrow.'

‘Police?'

‘I spoke to them tonight, but they'll want to interview both of us. A formality.'

I lay there, feeling every cut and bruise. I wanted to say that talking to the police is never a formality and ask him for every detail of what he had said and what he had been told.

‘Come here.' He turned on his side and put his arm out. I lifted my head and he snaked it underneath me, holding me close. I nestled against his chest.

‘It's just because we found her. I mean, we barely saw Rachel last night and it was all an accident, nothing to do with us.'

I only heard his words through one ear. In the other was his heartbeat, and yet I could tell that he did not believe that, any more than I did.

·  ·  ·

It was still dark when I woke. A noise outside. Rogan stirred as I went to get some water from the sink.

The noise again. A motorbike starting up.

Looking out the window, I saw the ruby-red of its tail light as it accelerated away, but then I was distracted by a movement outside my window. A shadow was walking towards our building. It stood under the street light for only an instant but I recognised who it was. Marcus headed towards the back door and out of sight.