‘I know. He never mentions her, but you can tell he’s fucked up about it.’
We walked in silence for a few minutes, drinking in the stillness. Every house was in darkness and the cool air smelled crisp and clean, untainted by car fumes or cooking smells. With my arm tucked in hers, it felt like we were the only two people in the world.
As we turned back into Matt’s road, Sophie’s attention was caught by something on the front doorstep of the huge house on the corner.
‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ she said, grinning.
‘What?’ I looked at her in confusion. She grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the step. We were nearly at the door when the security light clicked on, bathing us in a harsh yellow light. Sophie snatched the bottle of milk from beside the step and we turned and raced madly towards Matt’s house, breathless and giggling. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so happy in my whole life.
Then the following Monday at school, Sophie invited me to go for a fag with her at morning break. We managed to dodge the teachers and half-ran down the path to the woods. It was totally out of bounds, and I felt really nervous but I didn’t want to look stupid in front of Sophie so I tried not to look behind me. We came right through the little wood behind school and out the other side to the cliffs, which is even more out of bounds. Sophie went right to the edge and sat down on the chalky grass next to a sign saying ‘Keep Back’, dangling her feet over the precipice. I hung back, but she turned and beckoned me over, laughing.
‘Don’t be such a scaredy cat.’
I sat down next to her, the grass scratching the back of my legs, my feet hanging into thin air. I didn’t smoke normally but I took the proffered cigarette she had lit for me. There was a faint print from her lipstick on the filter, and as I drew the smoke down I relished the bitter tang across my tongue and down my throat.
‘We’ve had this idea,’ Sophie said, her eyes on the horizon. ‘Sort of a prank. To play on Maria.’
‘A prank?’ I pulled a tuft of grass loose and scattered the blades over the edge of the cliff. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She’s a bit up herself, don’t you think?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Well, Claire thinks so, and then there’s all these rumours going around about what a slag she was at her old school, and what she got up to. Have you heard about it?’
‘No.’ I remembered what Sam had told me at Matt’s kitchen table, but that was just gossip surely, blown out of all proportion.
‘It’s some properly gross weird stuff, Louise. Apparently she was sleeping with this boy and she sent him a used tampon in the post. One that had actually been inside her – which was the idea supposedly, like it was meant to turn him on. So Claire had this idea that we could put a used tampon in her bag, for a joke. Not with real blood obviously – we’re going to go up to the art room at lunch and soak one in red paint. I thought you could do it – put it in her bag I mean,’ Sophie went on. ‘You sit behind her in form, don’t you, so it would be easier for you than for anyone else.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ I shifted back a little from the edge, drawing my knees up, suddenly feeling the precariousness of my position. ‘You sit next to me, can’t you do it?’
‘I’d have to lean right over though. She’s directly in front of you, it’ll be less noticeable.’
‘I guess so, but – I mean, we don’t know for sure that she did do that, with the tampon, do we?’ I stubbed out my half-smoked cigarette, grinding it into the chalk beside me.
‘Matt Lewis’s cousin knows someone who goes to her old school. I swear to God she did it.’
‘But even if she did, it just seems like…’ What I wanted to say was that it seemed like a pretty horrible thing to do regardless. Maria hadn’t spoken to me since the night of the party, nor I to her, but I had been hoping we could let our nascent friendship simply slide away, unnoticed. Now Sophie was asking me to raze it to the ground.
She took a deep drag of her cigarette and breathed out a plume of smoke into the salty air.
‘Well, if you don’t want to then of course it’s your choice. I’m just worried about you – if you don’t join in with it you might end up feeling a bit left out. People might wonder if you really are one of the group, you know? I’m not saying I would, but that’s what the others might think.’
We sat there in silence for a couple of minutes. Sophie lit another cigarette from the stub of her first without offering me one.
‘Right, we’d better get back to school then,’ she said eventually, standing up and tugging her skirt down where it had ridden up slightly. She was slipping away from me, I knew it, and I couldn’t help imagining the conversation where she told Claire and maybe even Sam that I had chickened out. I followed her along the path, and as we passed from the open cliff into the shadow of the woodland, I made my decision.
‘OK, I’ll do it.’
She grasped my hand.
‘Yay! I knew you would. It’s going to be so funny, honestly.’
I was overcome by breathless, shaky laughter and we walked back to school arm in arm, giggling all the way.
As soon as the bell went for lunch we went up to the art room. I kept guard while Sophie went into the room, coming out a few minutes later, smirking.
‘That was quick. Where is it?’
‘In my bag, of course. In a plastic bag as well. I’m not going to walk around dripping blood in the school corridors, am I?’
‘What d’you mean, blood? I thought it was paint.’ A horrible thought flitted across my mind.
‘Yes, that’s what I mean – paint.’
‘Why haven’t you got paint on your fingers?’
‘I’m not totally stupid, Louise. If Maria tells, the first thing they’ll look for is someone covered in red paint. I took some gloves from Mum’s work the other day.’ Sophie’s mum is a dental nurse.
‘The other day? When did you decide to play this joke then?’ The blood in my veins dropped a few degrees. It all felt too premeditated, less of a prank than an attack.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Louise, does it matter?’ She pulled me into a nearby toilet block. Inside a cubicle, she handed over a small see-through plastic bag, the kind you’d put your sandwiches in. I didn’t look too closely.