After we hung up, I sat on the landing for several minutes, my hand still on the phone. I thought about defying Sophie, and what that might mean for me socially; about the parties and sleepovers that I felt I was on the verge of being invited to, and of how much I wanted that. I wondered whether I was ready to throw all that away for someone I liked very much but hardly knew, who could potentially end up being my only friend.
The next day at school I didn’t have any lessons with Maria in the morning. At break I went straight from Biology to the library and sat there for twenty minutes pretending to read a book about Anglo-Saxon England. I was going to skip lunch, but Sophie stopped me on my way back to the library and hauled me off to the canteen with her. My jacket potato was dry and starting to crack inside, and, as I added a small pot of congealed baked beans (no butter), I could see Maria out of the corner of my eye, a few places behind me in the queue. I paid and Sophie shepherded me firmly with her over to the far left corner table, settling down next to me with a protective hand on my arm. I could feel rather than see Maria coming up behind me. She put her hand on the chair next to me, but Sophie was ready for her.
‘Sorry, that seat’s taken,’ she said, smiling brightly.
‘It doesn’t look taken,’ said Maria. ‘It looks totally empty to me. Unless one of your really skinny friends is sitting there and has managed to slim down so much that nobody can see her.’ She looked at me, hoping for a smile or at least an acknowledgement but I stared studiously at my tray, running my fingers over the brown moulded plastic bumps as though they were braille, and I blind.
‘I’m saving it,’ said Sophie. ‘For a friend.’ The emphasis on friend couldn’t have been more pointed.
Maria risked one more glance at me, but my eyes were glued to the tray.
‘Right. OK. I get the picture,’ she said, and took her tray over to the furthest possible table.
As I left the canteen I looked over at her. I think of her now as she was then: sitting on her own, her lunch barely touched in front of her, hunched over, pale-faced and staring unseeingly at her maths textbook. I saw Esther Harcourt watching her too from another table where she also sat alone, unread book in hand.
Chapter 7
She stands on the bridge, staring down at the water, brown and uninviting on this sunless winter day. Her knuckles stand out, harsh white against the dark wood of the railings. A solitary drink can bobs under the bridge and out of view, the only bright spot in the murky ribbon that snakes its way through the city. She could dash across the road in a kamikaze version of the childhood game of Poohsticks, to see if it makes it to the other side; to see if she does.
It’s an impulse she’s familiar with, having lived with it all these years. She first felt it that night, all those years ago, and it has returned at intervals ever since. What would life have been like if she’d made a different choice then, not just for her, but for everyone around her? It’s been hardest for her family. Things have never been the same for them. They’ve done their best to support her, to be there, but they didn’t really understand. How could they?
She looks down at the water again as it flows beneath her, away from her, her thoughts returning as they always do to that other time and place; that other choice, its implications still reverberating through her life.
What she wishes more than anything is that she could make things right; rebalance the scales. The world was knocked out of kilter that night. If only she could find a way to set it back on its proper axis. Maybe then she would be able to get on with the rest of her life. To live it fully, engage with the world, instead of existing in this shadowy half-life, where no one knows who she really is.
She releases her grip on the railings and slowly walks away, leaving the swirling water behind her. Not this time, she thinks. Not this time.
Chapter 8
2016
It happens again on Monday morning, three days after my visit to Sophie’s flat and exactly one week since the original friend request. Outside it’s one of those sunny autumn days where you feel summer might not be over after all. Light streams through the French windows, warming the surface of the kitchen table where I am struggling to concentrate on work. I’m already late in delivering two proposals for potential new clients, and I’m falling behind on a project for Rosemary as well. I check Facebook constantly, dreading the moment. I’ve been praying that it was a one-off, an ill-judged joke by someone going to the reunion. With every day that passes, the tiny seed of hope that I’ll never hear from her again has been sprouting.
When I get the notification that there is a Facebook message from Maria Weston, I can hardly get my hands to work fast enough, my fingers scrabbling desperately over the keys in my haste to get to the message.
Run as fast as you like, Louise. You’ll never escape from me. Every wound leaves a scar. Just ask Esther Harcourt.
I sit for a moment or two, heart racing, reading the message over and over as if that will yield some further clue as to who is doing this, and why. Run as fast as you like. There was someone following me that night. I knew it.
Ask Esther Harcourt. I saw Esther once in town, after it happened. She averted her eyes as if my guilt might somehow rub off on her, as if she could catch my shame like it was a contagious airborne disease. She didn’t even know the whole truth – if she had, she would have done more than look away.
She was the only person that Maria talked to in those last months before the leavers’ party. There are spaces, huge gaps, in what I know about Maria. Esther might be able to fill them in. I’ve spent the weekend poring over every detail of my meeting with Sophie, and the thought of speaking to someone who genuinely cared about Maria is strangely comforting.
I type her name into the search box, but she’s not on Facebook. I quash the terrible teenage part of my brain that immediately concludes that she doesn’t have any friends. Many people are not on Facebook for a variety of excellent reasons. Once I have exhausted that avenue, I try simply googling her, which throws up a number of results. LinkedIn is the top one, and it’s her. She is a solicitor, and still living in Norfolk. Her profile picture reveals that she has aged well; in fact, she looks about a million times better than she ever did at school. The bottle tops have been replaced by a sleek pair of angular designer frames and what on the teenage Esther was an unruly mass of bushy mousy hair is now a thick, glossy, chestnut mane.