My Second Life (5 page)

 

thursday

7

W
HEN
I
GOT UP
the next day I was completely starving. I'd slept in my uniform. I should have put on a clean shirt, clean tights, but I didn't care about changing now. I was just so hungry. I got straight out of bed and went downstairs and had a pile of toast and some juice and then grabbed some biscuits, a banana, and my water bottle and stuffed it all in my bag. Rachel had left early for work, and I was glad that I could just take what I wanted without her asking too many questions. I raided the back of the cupboard for chocolate and found some. Brilliant. I was going to need it. Because when I'd woken up it had come to me
—
what I had to do. I'd skip school, just one more time, just this morning
—
school wouldn't expect to see me after yesterday anyway. I'd sort out a sick note later. I had to go to the library
—
see if I could find something about Catherine's death. Something in an old newspaper report. Something that might tell me more. Because the thought of talking to Frances again was just too hard. Talking to her had frightened me. She was old and ill and I didn't want to make her worse. I couldn't bear the thought that I might do that
—
upset her. Not again.

I picked my bag up off the table and slung it onto my back, ready to leave.

My phone rang in my pocket. Rachel's work number.

“Hi,” she said. “Did you get my note?”

“What note?”

“The one on the kitchen table, Ana.”

“No…” I looked around for it, but I could see nothing.

“Nevermind,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” I said.

“Good. Did you eat this morning?”

“Yes. Just toast.”

“Have you left the house yet?”

“I…” I didn't know what to say. Why was she asking me? Did she know I wasn't going to go in? That I had ditched yesterday? If she did, why wasn't she saying anything about it?

“Ana? Are you there?”

“Yes.”

“So, have you left the house yet or not?”

“No, not yet,” I said. “I'm
—
I'm just packing my bag now…”

“It's just I seem to have lost my phone. I thought I'd left it at work, but it isn't here. Can you see it anywhere?”

“Where would it be?” I said.

“I don't know
—
try the hall.”

I walked into the hall and moved the mail around, searching.

“Why don't you ring it?”

I bent down to look under the side table.

“Got it
—
I've got it,” I said, picking up the phone.

“Brilliant. Look, I'm expecting a call this afternoon. I'll come to school at lunchtime. How about I take you for a crepe. You can give it to me then. Okay?”

I turned Rachel's phone over in my hand.

There was a missed call from school.

Yesterday, 3 p.m.

And an icon indicating there was a new voice mail.

“Ana? Did you hear me?”

“Yup. That's fine,” I said.

“I'll meet you at the school gates. We'll walk to the crêperie together. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and she hung up.

I deleted the voice mail and turned her phone off, dropping it in my bag as I closed the front door behind me.

*   *   *

The local library was not like the school library. It smelled damp. It was muffled in every way
—
muffled noise, muffled people in muffled coats. It personified hush. The school library was bright and light, and full of computers.

I had no idea where to start. I went up to the desk and asked the librarian if she could help me. She sighed, set down her pen and said, “Come with me.”

I followed her as she padded across the spongy carpet into a back room with three computers. They looked like ancient relics.

“All our archived periodicals are stored here. You've got your library number?”

I gave her Rachel's card. I'd taken it out of the kitchen drawer before I left. She plugged in the number across the card with her right hand and pushed her glasses up over her nose with her left simultaneously.

“It's pretty simple. You put in some key words … here … Use this scroll button here … to search through what comes up … Click into the record or report you wish to view. You can't take copies but you can make a note of the document number that comes up … here … And then you can always come back and go straight to it if you need to refer to it again.” Every time she said the word “here” she pointed with a slightly arthritic finger, paused heavily, and looked at me seriously through her smeary glasses.

When she left, I was relieved. I took my coat off and started.

42 The Avenue.

Nothing. Of course. I wasn't sure why I'd plugged that in first.

I started again.

Drowning.

Hundreds of references came up in twenty-eight separate publications. I started to look through the first few. Nothing relevant. Anywhere the word “drowning” or “drown” occurred in any local newspaper or publication from the time records began seemed to be logged here.

The council offices are drowning in applications for …

Dog drowns after swimming in high river tides …

“Drowned Rats” was the caption under a photograph from 1967 of a group of pensioners who were all soaked by a new sprinkler system set up in a care home in Richmond.

I realized I could literally spend the next five days of my life in this room if I was going to get anywhere. I needed to narrow the search.

Catherine Wells, Drowning.

Typing it out, seeing her name like that in black and white, made it feel so real again. I could see her face opposite mine, the crowns of our heads gently touching as I bent down to help her put on her shoes in the hall. Frances was laughing in the other room, and then she came out and she told us to hurry up so we could go out to play before it got dark. And we went. But I didn't want to go at all.

The computer churned through the records, and five publications came up from my search. The third report from the local newspaper
—
the
Teddington Times
dated Monday, September 28, 1981
—
told me all I needed to know:

Catherine Wells, aged six years, daughter of Frances and Alfred Wells (deceased), was found dead in the River Thames close to Teddington on Saturday, September 26. A citizen reportedly discovered the child's body in the water around 8:15 Saturday evening and immediately called the emergency services. Catherine Wells was pronounced dead at the riverside at 8:52 p.m.

Catherine was playing on the common land known locally as the Green in front of her home on The Avenue earlier that evening with another child, who is believed to be a family friend. The child, who cannot be named for legal reasons, will continue to be questioned by police today. Her family, who was attending a party in the street at the time, was not available for comment.

Police are asking anyone who may have seen the two girls playing out on the Green or by the Thames on Saturday evening between the hours of 5:30 and 8:15 to come forward with information.

Detective Inspector Dyer of the Metropolitan Police, who is leading the investigation, said, “Catherine Wells was not reported missing on the day of her death, and it is therefore crucial to our investigation to ascertain exactly what happened to her between the hours of 5:30 and 8:15 p.m. when her body was discovered.”

I must have read it five times, maybe ten. It was front-page news, staring back at me in black and white. It wasn't some image or memory from inside my head. It was confirmation
—
in print. It was what had happened in my first life. And yet still, it gave me nothing of what I needed to know. It didn't tell me what I had done. I'd been playing on the Green. I remembered Frances telling us to go out and play. But a party? Being questioned by police? You'd have thought I would have remembered some or all of that. But I didn't.

I closed my eyes to try to think.

All I could feel was guilt. I was covered in it, immersed; like I was standing in a pool of wet and sloppy algae, it clung on to me, and I could do nothing but cling on to it. And I saw the bows, the tartan bows, as they kept slipping in Catherine's hair, sliding down from the top of her head until they were swinging around, nipping the back of her ears as she ran.

“We're going to the river, Catherine. We'll play hide-and-seek by the river.”

That's what I'd said to her. Because I wanted her to go and hide so I didn't have to play with her anymore. I wanted my dad. I wanted to play with my dad. I wanted him to come and play like he'd said he would. I didn't want Catherine. I wanted Catherine gone.

I went back into the main part of the library and found a free computer with Internet access and started typing.

The Avenue, Teddington.

There it was. I could see it on the map. A stripe of black for the road, blue for the river, and a strip of green for the Green in between. It was so close. I reckoned I could walk to it easily from the library in under an hour.

I memorized the route.

“Find what you needed?” asked the librarian as I walked past the desk, like she was interested all of a sudden.

“Yes,” I said as I walked through the heavy wooden doors out into the street. “Yes, I did.”

I was going to The Avenue. I was going back to the place where it happened. I was going to see it. The Avenue. And I hoped that when I saw it, I might remember what I had done.

 

8

I
FOUND
T
HE
A
VENUE
within forty minutes of leaving the library. It was about an hour's walk from where I lived now with Rachel. It was absolutely mind-breaking to think that I lived so close to it. To think that out of the infinite number of places in this vast world, I had been born a second time, here again
—
so close to where I'd lived before.

I stood in the road looking at a row of twenty or so large redbrick houses that stood opposite a piece of common land. This was the place I had remembered. The Avenue. I turned to look at the Green. There were trees and long grasses, and as I looked around me I swear I couldn't be completely sure whose life I was living.

I didn't move.

I could sense the water. The river. I looked over toward the willow trees on the other side of the Green. They all seemed to respond to my arrival, moving roughly in a sudden gust of cool wind. I pulled my arms into myself.

I was frightened. Why was I here? Why was this happening to me?

I stepped onto the grass, walked over to an old oak tree, and leaned against it. I recognized the raised and battered roots at my feet. I'd jumped over them time and time again; I'd run around them
—
they were as familiar to me as an old pair of shoes.

I looked at the houses again.

I couldn't see the numbers on the houses.

I started to walk across the Green toward the road so I could see the houses and their numbers. I was looking for Frances's house. For number 42.

And then I saw it. The patterned tile, the red numbers. The swirls and curls. 42. It was just as I'd remembered it. Had nothing changed? Was it all as it had been before, when I had done something so wrong
—
here, in this exact place? There had to be a reason why I was here again. There had to be a reason.

My phone rang.

It made me jump.

It wasn't a number I knew.

I answered anyway.

“Where are you?” Rachel's voice was short and urgent. “I'm at the crêperie. They've let me use their phone. I couldn't find you outside school.”

I looked at my watch. It was 12:40 p.m.

“On my way…,” I said.

“Don't be long.”

“Ten minutes,” I said, and I started to run.

*   *   *

When I got to the crêperie I was completely out of breath. Rachel sat at a table looking at the menu, which was pretty pointless because she always had the same thing
—
ham and cheese. I stood outside for a moment with my hand on the door to try to still my breath a little before I stepped inside.

“Hi!” I sat down.

“Have a look, see what you want to have,” Rachel said, pushing the menu toward me. She didn't smile. I could tell she was cross. I was so late.

“So, what are you going to have?” Rachel asked.

“Not sure. I'm just looking.”

“Have you got the phone?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, leaning down to grab my bag off the floor.

I passed it to her. “Battery was low so I turned it off.” It struck me I should have checked the phone again before handing it over. Too late.

“Okay,” she said. “I'll order. What will you have?”

“Chocolate and caramel.”

“For lunch?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “Well, okay. Just this once.”

She looked down, turned her phone on, and took it with her to the counter.

I looked around. Loads of the kids from school came here. Jamie too. I scanned the room to see if he was here. He wasn't. But when I thought about the fact that he might walk in at any minute I felt nervous. Good nervous. When I looked over at Rachel and saw she was on her phone I felt nervous too, in a totally different way.

“So how was your morning?” Rachel said, coming back to the table with the crepes and two big mugs of tea on a tray. Her voice was flat, her eyes were wide open, searching me.

“Fine.”

“School okay?”

“I…”

“You haven't been in!” she said, holding her phone up. “I've just picked up a message from the school. Apparently they left me a message yesterday too? You walked out of math yesterday morning and you haven't been in school since. You lied to me, Ana,” she said. “I can't believe you did that!”