But Fatima interrupts.
‘No. That’s not what I’m saying – for fuck’s sake, Kate, when did gratitude ever come between any of us?’ She spits out the word like a swear word. ‘Gratitude? Don’t insult me. We’re beyond that, aren’t we? We certainly used to be. All I meant was, you think you’re alone, you think you’re the only one who cares, you’re not. And you should take this – all of us –’ she waves a hand round at our little group, our long black shadows streaming across the marsh in the evening sun – ‘as proof of that. We love you, Kate. Look at us – Isa trekking down with her baby, Thea throwing in work at a moment’s notice, me dropping Ali, Nadia, Sam, all of them, for you. That’s how much you mean to me, to us. That’s how much we will never let you down. Do you understand?’
Kate shuts her eyes, and for a minute I think she may be about to cry, or rail at us, but she doesn’t, she reaches out, blind, for our hands, and pulls us towards her, her strong, paint-covered fingers hard against my wrist, as if we’re keeping her afloat.
‘You –’ she says, and her voice cracks, and then our arms are around each other, all four of us, huddled together like four trees twisted in the coast winds into a single living thing, arms tangled, foreheads pressed, warmth against warmth, and I can feel them, the others, their pasts so woven with mine that there’s no way to separate us, any of us.
‘I love you,’ Kate croaks, and I am saying it back, or I think I am, the chorus of choked voices must include mine, but I can’t tell, I can’t tell where I end and the others begin.
‘We go in together,’ Fatima says firmly. ‘Understand? They broke us once, but they won’t do it again.’
Kate nods, and straightens, wiping her eyes beneath the mascara.
‘Right.’
‘So, we’re agreed? United front?’
‘United front,’ Thea says, a little grimly, and I nod.
‘United we stand,’ I say, and then I wish I hadn’t, because the unspoken final half of the saying hangs in the air, like a silent echo.
DO YOU REMEMBER …
That’s the refrain running through our conversation as we trudge the last mile of the walk across the marshes.
Do you remember the time Thea got caught with vodka in her sports bottle at the away hockey match with Roedean?
Do you remember when Fatima told Miss Rourke that fukkit was Urdu for pen?
Do you remember when we broke out to go night swimming, and Kate got caught in the rip tide and nearly drowned?
Do you remember – do you remember – do you remember …
I thought I remembered everything, but now, as the memories sweep over me like floodwater, I realise that I didn’t, not fully. Not like this – not so vividly that I can smell the seawater, see again Kate’s shaking limbs, white in the moonlight, as we staggered up the beach with her. I remembered, but I didn’t remember the detail, the colours, the feel of the playing-field grass beneath my feet and the sea wind against my face.
But it’s as we cross the last field and climb the last fence that Salten House comes into view and it really hits home. We are back. We are really and truly back. The realisation is unsettling, and I feel my stomach tighten as the others fall silent, knowing that they must be remembering as I am, some of the other memories, the ones we have tried to forget. I remember Mark Wren’s face when a group of fifth years met him on the coast road one day, the tide of red climbing up the back of his neck as the sniggers and whispers started, the way he hung his head and shot a look at Thea that was pure misery. I remember the look of alarm on a first year’s face as she turned away from Fatima and me in the corridor, and I realised that she must have heard rumours about us – about our sharp tongues, and capacity for deceit. And I remember the expression on Miss Weatherby’s face that final day …
I am suddenly glad that Salten House has changed, far more than Salten itself which gives the air of being set in stone and salt. Unlike the Tide Mill which has only grown more battered with the years, there is a perceptible air of smartness to the place now, which is absent from my memories. Whatever impression it tried to give, Salten House was never a top-tier school in my day. It was, as Kate had said, a ‘last-chance saloon’ in many ways – the kind of place that would have space for a pupil enrolled in a hurry due to trouble at home, and would not ask questions about a girl kicked out of three other schools in a row. I remember noticing, when I arrived that first day so long ago, that the paintwork was peeling and salt-stained, the lawns were yellowing after a hot summer. There were weeds growing up through the gravel of the drive, and in among the Bentleys and Daimlers, many parents drove Fiats and Citro?ns and battered Volvos.
Now, though, there is an air of … money. There’s no other way of putting it.
The silhouette of the tall building casting its long shadows across the croquet lawns and tennis pitches is the same, but the stark, cheap white paint has been changed to a deep expensive cream, subtly softening the edges, an effect enhanced by the flowers that have been placed in window boxes, and the creepers that have been planted at the corners of the building and are beginning to twine across the facade.
The lawns are lusher and greener, and as we make our way across them there is an almost inaudible ‘click’ and small spigots rise from the grass and begin spraying a fine mist of water, a luxury unimaginable when we were there. Outbuildings and covered walkways have sprung up, so that girls no longer need to scurry from lesson to lesson in the driving rain. And as we pass the all-weather tennis courts, I see they have been updated from their unforgiving knee-skinning tarmac to a kind of rubbery green sponge.
What hasn’t changed are the four towers still standing sentinel, one at each corner of the main block, the black skein of the fire escapes still twining up them like post-industrial ivy.
I wonder if the tower windows still open wide enough to admit a slim fifteen-year-old, and whether the girls break out now like they did then … Somehow I doubt it.
It is half-term of course, and the place is strangely silent … or almost silent. As we walk across the playing fields, cars sweep up the drive, and I hear faint voices coming from the front of the building.
For a minute my ears prick, and I think parents! with much the same sense of danger as a rabbit might think hawks! But then I realise – these aren’t parents, they’re girls. Old girls. Us.