‘Go on, Clon, your turn.’
She does as she’s told, pulls the rope to the left, spins Georgie around. Every time the rope turns I can see her eyes, wet. Tears. Frightened. Body slips a little, more than last time. Tired. Help her. Can’t. Can. Don’t want to.
Nobody helped me.
The rope begins to slow, Clondine steps away, calls to Georgie.
‘That’ll be a tenner for the ride, please.’
The other girls lose interest, they presume only a good outcome, that the rope will no longer be swung, that Georgie will slide down to the ground in a minute or so, complaining to Phoebe and Clondine about how scared she was. The circle of spectators begins to disintegrate into twos and threes, wander away. The rope, almost stationary now. A cartwheel competition begins on the mats, gossiping resumes. Most of the girls, but not Phoebe. Whatever it is, it lurks in her too, she can’t resist one last pull on the rope. A fire inside her burning just that little too brightly.
Georgie, too tired to hang on.
I look away before she hits the ground. The noise, distinctive. Bones do that. Pop. Crack. The laughter I joined in with minutes ago peters off to silence. Silence becomes fuck.
‘You fucking idiot, Phoebe,’ Clondine says.
I turn round. Georgie. More slumped than sitting, face white, the same colour as the bone jutting out from under her chin. A knife of calcium, a collarbone. A flurry of leotards, no longer cartwheeling, move, flock around her. I move too, but round the back, sit down next to her. Breath, hers, coming in short gasps, the rope swinging accusingly over our heads. We all had a part to play. The noise in the gym different now, pitches higher than before, a panicky edge. The girls cling to each other, trauma.
‘Fuck. It wasn’t just me, it was you as well, Clondine.’
‘No, I’d walked away at that point and so should’ve you.’
‘Oh my god, I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘Shut up, Clara, think about poor Georgie.’
‘We’ll get you to Jonesy, okay, Georgie? You’re going to be okay,’ says Annabel. Decisive. Captain-like.
Phoebe squats down, she has a small window of opportunity to make this right and she knows it. She’s straight in there.
‘I’m so sorry, I thought you were on your way down. I would never have done it if I thought you were going to fall.’
‘It’s a little bit late for that, don’t you think?’ Annabel responds.
‘Would you shut the fuck up for once, go and get Jonesy and bring her here and don’t you dare say anything. Anyway, everybody will back me up, right? We were all laughing, we’re all to blame, it was an accident.’
She’s good. So very good. The girls nod in solemn agreement. Clara turns away and gags into her hand, shoulders heaving. Georgie begins to moan. An eerie sound that grows into a wail when she looks down, sees the bone piercing her skin. Annabel sprints to the door, shouting behind her, I’m getting Jonesy.
‘Don’t look,’ I tell Georgie.
Phoebe hears Georgie’s wailing the loudest, wants it to stop.
‘Fuck,’ she says. ‘Calm down, please, Jonesy will be here soon. Just remember to say it was an accident, okay?’
‘Shall I get her some water?’ asks Marie.
‘No,’ somebody replies. ‘You shouldn’t give her anything to drink, I saw it on the telly, just keep her warm until help gets here.’
‘What about the hoodie over there, should we put it over her legs? Are you cold, Georgie?’
I feel her body begin to shake. Shock. I lean her back into my shoulder.
‘Why don’t we try and get her up, sit her on the bench?’ suggests Phoebe. ‘Can you do that, Georgie, can you manage?’
She shakes her head, begins to cry.
‘You have to try, come on, let’s help her up.’
I know what Phoebe’s trying to do, to ‘clean up’ the scene, make it look less savage. The broken body of a girl looks better on a bench than it does slumped under the rope she fell from, was spun from.
‘No, don’t,’ I hear myself say.
A sea of purple and blue velour stares at me.
‘Mind your own business,’ Phoebe replies.
‘She’s in too much pain, you can’t move her.’
‘And what makes you such an expert on broken bones?’
A movement on my scalp, a slow creeping heat. I support Georgie’s weight, tell her to hold her elbow, cradle her arm into her stomach.
‘Yes, like that, it’ll help with the pain.’
It helped with mine.
Jonesy, the school nurse, arrives, takes one look at Georgie and tells Annabel to go to the office and call an ambulance. She pushes a vault in behind us, thanks me for helping and tells Georgie to lean back gently. Mrs Havel must have heard the news too, arrives looking furious.
‘What happened?’ she asks. ‘I told you to be careful.’
‘We were,’ replies Phoebe. ‘We were just having a bit of fun and then Georgie fell from the rope.’
‘Were none of you listening? I said mat work only. Go and get changed, all of you, hurry up.’
Phoebe’s waiting for me outside my cubicle, comes up to my face, so close I see tiny brown flecks bedded into the blue of her eyes.
‘Next time, don’t get involved in things that don’t concern you, okay?’
I ignore her, walk away. She follows, shoves me backwards as she passes. I land hard on the wooden changing benches.
Bruised, but alive.
So very alive, Phoebe.
13
A few days after the gym incident, Phoebe passes round a card at the end of biology.
‘Everybody sign it,’ she orders. ‘I’ll get Mrs McD to send it home to Georgie.’
When the card gets to me, I read Phoebe’s pink swirls – Sorry about your accident, get better soon, love P xxx.
‘Your accident’, an interesting choice of words. Reads nice, to a teacher or parent. No reason to suspect foul play, and Georgie knows better than to squeal. Everybody does, but me, I squealed on you, didn’t I, Mummy? I told the story again and again, a blinking red light from the video camera.