Martha smiled though, and said, ‘If he was so wracked with guilt I don’t think it would have made much difference what you’d told him.’ She paused before adding, ‘You see, you were wrong, what you said about him, because I know it would have been enough for Matt to kill himself. He was drink-driving and he killed a girl, and he didn’t even own up, take the blame. In a way, that would have been the worst of it for Matt, that he’d never owned up. I’m less amazed now that he killed himself, than that he managed to live with a secret like that for three years.’
Alex was thrown by the starkness of hearing the truth spoken like that. It hadn’t been a few drinks, Matt had been drink-driving, and they’d killed somebody and hadn’t admitted responsibility, not even to themselves. He thought back to his own part in persuading Matt not to go to the police, the memory too painful though.
‘We should have gone to the police,’ he said. ‘Matt wanted to, but we talked him out of it. We thought it was all about friendship, and yet of course, that was the first thing to go.’
She looked at him with a sudden realization and said, ‘Is this why you all lost contact with each other?’
He nodded.
‘Partly. I’m sure people lose touch after college anyway but...’
‘But you were such close friends.’ He nodded again and she smiled and said, ‘Come with me. There’s something I want to show you.’ She got up, putting her drink down on the table. He did the same and followed her out of the room and up the stairs. ‘Mom and Dad kept his room the way it was. We gave his clothes to the Goodwill but they couldn’t bear to change his room.’
‘It’s understandable I suppose.’ She turned briefly and looked at him, as if reading his expression or maybe just to let him know that there was no need for platitudes.
‘Of course it’s understandable.’
She led him along the landing and opened the door to the bedroom, turning on the light as they walked in. At first glance it was hard to see it as the shrine he’d imagined. It was just a large room with a double bed, a large desk over by the window, a small sofa. It didn’t look like a particularly personal space.
He began to notice the details then. There were bookshelves on the wall behind the door, the books thumbed and used, loved. On the desk too there were personal items. It was from the desk that Martha picked up a small picture in a pale wooden frame. She held it out to Alex and said, ‘This is what I wanted to show you.’
He stared down at it and smiled, an instant responsive happiness, quickly overwhelmed. It was the five of them, Natalie in the middle between Alex and Will, Rob and Matt on either flank. They were all smiling at the camera, wearing summer clothes, their arms linked over each other’s shoulders. He couldn’t remember who’d taken the picture for them but he remembered it being taken.
‘This was the summer of our first year. We’d just finished our exams. I can’t believe how young we look.’ He couldn’t believe how close they looked either, how happy. He looked at Matt, slouching down slightly to be more on a level with the rest of them, the smile of someone who was completely content.
He’d never thought before, how brave it had been for Matt to go to another country to study, and what a relief it must have been to have made friends like that, to have found a place where he’d felt at home. And it tore at his heart now to think that Matt had kept this picture framed on his desk for three years, the final three years, a reminder of the past that could only have added to his sickness.
He couldn’t help but think of him, sitting there suffering the kind of decline that would eventually make suicide an attractive option, the photograph reminding him of happier times. Perhaps he’d looked at that picture and waited, for the phone to ring, for a letter to arrive. Even the thought of Matt being alone was too much.
Martha held out a tissue, the sight of it distracting him, drawing his gaze from the photograph and back to her, his expression puzzled.
‘You’re crying.’
He shook his head, still confused and lifted his hand to his cheek, becoming conscious of the tears only as he touched them. He was surprised then, that it had moved him so much. He was upset and he couldn’t even reduce it to a specific, to sorrow for Matt or the others or himself.
All he knew was that it was difficult to look at that picture - five happy kids captured in their first summer as friends. That’s all they had been, kids, beneath all their youthful arrogance, innocents with no idea what lay ahead of them or how ill-equipped they were to deal with it.
‘It’s amazing to think that three of these people are already dead.’ He kept looking at it, taking in his own words and the fact of it, that he and Natalie were standing there with people who, unknown to them, beyond their summer smiles, were already dead. He looked up and took a second to register the look of shock on Martha’s face. ‘I’m sorry, I should have said. That was kind of the other reason I came here, to tell Matt.’
He could feel the lie in his own face but Martha was too stunned to notice.
‘What do you mean? Who? Who else died?’