‘Not as far as I know. If the police weren’t looking for them, they would just seem like innocuous messages from a friend. As far as they’re concerned, Maria’s just another of Sophie’s many Facebook friends. There was no reason for them to be suspicious, unless somebody told them about Maria.’
And now somebody has, and the police will be joining the dots, forming a chain that leads them back to a summer’s night in 1989.
‘I don’t understand why you didn’t tell the police about the friend request and the messages from Maria though?’ Esther says.
‘I didn’t want them to connect me and Sophie to what happened to Maria in 1989,’ I repeat.
‘But why on earth not?’ Esther looks utterly bemused.
It doesn’t matter now. The police are going to find Maria, or whoever is sending those messages, and they’re going to find out what I did. It’s all going to come out. There’s no point pretending any more. There’s even a kind of relief in it. Even so, I bury my face in my hands so I don’t have to see her face when I tell her.
‘What happened to Maria, whatever it was, it was my fault.’ The words are muffled, but they are out there.
‘Louise, it wasn’t. I know you treated her badly at school, but we all do things we regret when we’re younger. Things that maybe even horrify us when we look back as adults.’ I can hear in her voice what it is costing her to say this, can hear the years of pain and isolation she suffered at school and the scars they have left.
‘You don’t understand. There’s something you don’t know.’ I take my hands away and force myself to meet her eye. ‘Do you remember at the leavers’ party, you couldn’t find Maria, and you came to ask me if I’d seen her? You said she’d said she wasn’t feeling well?’
‘Yes.’
‘I know why she felt unwell. Me and Sophie had… we did something…’ I clench my fists, take a shaky breath. Esther waits, says nothing. ‘We spiked her drink with Ecstasy.’
Esther inhales sharply. I watch her face closely. She doesn’t speak straight away, but puts a hand to her mouth and turns to look out of the French windows into the courtyard. She is miles and years away, turning events over in her mind, reconfiguring them to fit this horrifying new information.
‘But what happened to her then?’ she asks, turning back to me.
‘I don’t know. I never saw her again, I swear.’
Esther is silent again, and I hold my breath, awaiting my fate. I realise that, aside from the implications for me and Henry of the police finding out about what I did, I am dreading losing Esther when I was beginning to feel that I had found her again.
‘So the Facebook thing… is that what it’s about, do you think?’ she says eventually. ‘Does whoever’s doing it know?’
‘I don’t know. They’ve never mentioned it.’ Part of what is so frightening about the messages is that whoever it is never says anything specific. They offer only veiled threats, standing in the shadows.
‘The Facebook page…’ she stops. ‘It couldn’t be her, could it? Where would she have been all this time? Even on my birthday, when I get the presents, I’ve never really believed they could be from her. But the necklace…’
‘I’ve considered every possibility, believe me. But Esther… what we did… can you…’ Can you forgive me, is what I want to ask her, but I can’t say it, I’m too frightened of the answer, and too ashamed of how selfish I am to need her forgiveness so desperately.
She looks down at her mug, picking at a small chip in the handle with her fingernail. ‘You must have gone through hell when she disappeared. I can’t imagine what that’s done to you.’
‘Honestly, Esther, when I look back I am utterly appalled at what I did, at who I was. Yes, I was insecure, yes, I was worried about losing my precarious place in the social pecking order, but everyone had to exist in that hierarchy, didn’t they? But not everyone did what I did. Not everyone was so… weak. I look at my son, and if anyone ever treated him the way I treated Maria, I would want to rip them apart with my bare hands. I am a different person now. I really hope… well, I just hope you can see that.’ I sit back down opposite her at the table, hardly daring to breathe.
‘I think…’ She stops and looks out of the window again. ‘I think you’ve probably paid for what you did.’ She looks back at me. ‘I can see you’re different now, Louise. I do see that.’
The tension that holds me in its thrall subsides a little and tears prick my eyes. I’ve told three people now, and two of them have considered me worthy at least of understanding, if not forgiveness.
‘That’s what —’ I stop. That’s what Pete said, I was going to say, but for reasons I can’t articulate, I don’t want her to know I’ve seen him. Something like shame fills me when I think about what I said to him, so I’m trying to keep it shut away. Then a strange thing happens, as if the thought of him has conjured Pete into the room.
‘Oh, by the way, guess who I saw on the way here, at Victoria station?’
‘Who?’
‘That man Sophie brought to the reunion. Pete, is it? And here’s the weird bit. He was with a woman, and not only that, they had a child with them, a baby. He was pushing the buggy. I wonder if Sophie knew he was married? I wouldn’t be surprised.’ Esther may have forgiven me, but Sophie still gets her scorn even in death.
‘Oh my God. He told me was divorced at the reunion.’ Has Pete been lying to me? If so, what else has he been lying about?
‘I know! Do you think I ought to tell the police? Although presumably they’re already interviewing him so they must know he’s married. I wonder how he’s got that past his wife, being interviewed by the police and stuff.’
My mouth goes into autopilot and I express surprise and other appropriate responses to this news, keeping it light and gossipy. Inside I am reeling. Is Pete really married? He didn’t seem like the cheating type. But then, what do I know?
At the door, I lean in to give Esther a goodbye hug, but something in her bearing – a barely noticeable hesitation, a momentary stiffening – makes me pull back. She wants to understand, but I don’t know if she will ever get past this, if we can ever be friends.
When she has gone, I sweep through the house like a tornado, finding a place for everything that’s lying around: dusting, hoovering, mopping the floors, changing the beds. When I’ve finished I get in the shower and stand under the jets for a long time, letting them rain down on me, warming me and washing away the grime that has accumulated since I left Pete in the park. I had thought we were getting closer but it strikes me now how little I really know about him. He could be anybody. Something he said to me at the reunion has been nagging at the edges of my mind, and now I remember what it is. He said he would never go to a reunion, described himself as a loner at school. I think about Maria in her childhood bedroom in London, peering out from behind a crack in the curtains. Nathan Drinkwater leans against a lamp post, staring up at her window, expressionless, just watching. I’ve imagined this scene before, but this time Nathan’s face looks different. This time it looks familiar.