‘It’s obvious, isn’t it? Maria and I both suffered at the hands of bullies. Whoever wrote this knows that.’
I start to protest, but she interrupts. ‘I know, I know, you never bullied me. You just dumped me the minute we arrived at secondary school and never spoke to me again. But I don’t think there’s any other word for what you and Sophie did to Maria, is there?’
I am hot with shame. I can’t bear to look her in the eye.
‘I shouldn’t have come,’ I say, looking at the floor. ‘I suppose I needed to talk to someone about it, and Sophie was no good, so I thought maybe you might be able to – help me, I guess.’
‘You talked to Sophie Hannigan about this? Are you still in touch with her?’ Esther manages to give the impression that if I answer in the affirmative I will sink even lower in her estimation.
‘God no, not at all, not since school. I tracked her down as well.’
‘On Facebook?’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course. I bet she’s on there all the time, isn’t she? “Look how gorgeous I am, look at my amazing life.” I can’t stand it. That’s why I’m not on there; it’s all so bloody fake, as if it’s actually designed to make you feel crap about your own life.’
I wonder how I am going to get past the barriers that Esther has been erecting since I walked into the room.
‘Look, I know I treated Maria badly.’
Esther snorts.
‘OK, worse than badly. When I think about it now I am so ashamed, it’s like I was a different person. I can’t believe that the me that I am now could ever have behaved as I did. Barely a day goes by that I don’t think of Maria. But I can’t change what I’ve done.’ My God, I wish I could. The worst of it is that Esther doesn’t even know what I have done, not really. ‘I can only control who I am now. What I don’t understand is why this is happening now. Is it something to do with the reunion maybe? Stirring things up in people’s minds?’
‘There’s a reunion?’
Esther’s mask slips and she has spoken before she’s had a chance to arrange her face into the expression she wants me to see. For a second I see on her face the emotions I experienced when I heard about the reunion myself: disappointment, shame, self-loathing. Unlike me she has a live audience, so has to recover quickly.
‘I wouldn’t go to that if you paid me. You’re not going, are you?’
‘I thought I might,’ I mumble. Why does it make me feel so ashamed? Why am I still so engaged with my teenage self, with my place in that long-ago universe?
‘Still tagging along, Louise? God, have you not moved on at all?’
‘Look, forget it,’ I say, eager to be away from her. ‘You obviously can’t help me. Or you don’t want to.’
Her face softens. ‘It’s not a question of not wanting to; I simply don’t know anything about this. I haven’t seen anyone from school since the day I walked out the door. Not deliberately anyway. Look, give me your number – if anything occurs to me, I’ll let you know.’
‘Thank you,’ I say quietly, scribbling it down on a Post-it note.
She looks down at her hands, which are balled into fists, and I get the impression that she is digging her nails into her palms.
‘It must have given you a terrible jolt, getting that request. Seeing her photo.’
‘Yes. Must have been taken not long before – you know.’
There doesn’t seem to be any more to say, so I leave with the firm intention of heading straight back home. However, without thinking, I find myself turning right at a crossroads and negotiating a hairpin bend, and before I know it the outskirts of Sharne Bay begin to roll out around me. Things haven’t changed much, although there’s a row of houses that I don’t remember, and the corner shop where we used to go for sweets has become a Tesco Metro. We’re closer to the sea on this side of town, and I roll my window down to let in a waft of salty air.
As I drive through a mixture of the painfully recognisable and the disorientatingly new, my mind replays the encounter with Esther. Something is nagging at me and as I automatically bear right to loop round and join the road where my old school is, I realise what it is: that brief second where fear crossed her face. Why should Esther be afraid? If someone is playing a sick joke on me as some kind of retribution, then Esther surely has nothing to worry about. She was the one person who was never anything but kind to Maria. And she can’t have anything to fear from Maria herself. Maria drowned more than twenty-five years ago.
Didn’t she?
Chapter 9
1989
The next time I spoke to Maria wasn’t at school. In fact she must have been avoiding me there because I had hardly seen her at all for over a week except in the lessons we shared, where she carefully sat where she wouldn’t have to meet my eye.
I’d never been invited to one of Matt Lewis’s parties before, but Sophie said Matt definitely said I could go. He barely knew who I was, but I think he would have agreed to anything Sophie asked. His mum and dad were away for the weekend. I saw his mum at parents’ evening once. She’d started chatting to my mum while we were waiting to see Mr Jenkins and the contrast was hilarious: Matt’s mum with her expensive highlights and flawless make-up, sporting a vivid electric-blue trouser suit, radiating sophistication and charm; Mum in her A-line skirt and beige car coat, funny little handbag on her lap, desperately trying to keep up her end of the conversation.
I got ready for the party at Sophie’s, Blind Date blaring from the telly in her room (Mum never lets me watch it at home) while she crimped my hair. I took practically my entire wardrobe over to hers and tried everything on in front of the full-length mirror in Sophie’s walk-in wardrobe. Sophie was rifling through the rack, handing me things to try on.
‘What about this?’ she said, thrusting a black, fitted, velvet mini-dress at me.
‘I’ll never get into that,’ I protested.
‘Yes, of course you will,’ she said, holding it out for me to step into and pulling it up over my hips. She took me by the shoulders and turned me round.
‘Ah. I don’t think it’s going to do up,’ she said. ‘I’d try, but I don’t want to rip it…’
I struggled out of the dress, my face hot.
‘Ooh, this maybe?’ she suggested, holding a red tube skirt. ‘It’s nice and stretchy. Maybe with that long navy T-shirt, although that might be a bit tight as well.’
‘Don’t worry, I’d rather wear something of mine.’
‘Awww, really? OK.’ She slithered into the tube skirt, smoothing it over her hips, turning sideways to look critically at her perfectly flat stomach in the mirror.
‘What do you think? Bit tight?’