I stand up, pace to the window, still holding my baby, as if the strength of my grip could stop the police forcing their way in and snatching her from my arms.
‘Isa, calm down,’ Fatima says. She rises from the sofa to come over to where I’m standing, but her face doesn’t comfort me, there is fear in her eyes as she says, ‘We were minors. That has to make a difference, right? You’re the lawyer.’
‘I don’t know.’ I feel my fingers tightening on Freya. ‘The age of criminal responsibility is ten. We were well over that.’
‘What about the statute of limitations, then?’
‘It’s mainly for civil matters. I don’t think it would apply.’
‘You think? But you don’t know?’
‘No, I don’t know,’ I say again, desperately. ‘I work in the Civil Service, Fatima. There’s not much call for this kind of thing.’ Freya gives a sleepy little wail, and I realise I am hurting her and force myself to loosen my grip.
‘Does it matter?’ Thea says from across the room. She has been picking at the dead skin around her nails, and they are raw and bleeding, and I watch as she puts one finger in her mouth, sucking the blood. ‘I mean, if it comes out, we’re fucked, right? It doesn’t matter about charges. It’s the rumours and the publicity that’ll screw us. The tabloids would fucking love something like this.’
‘Shit.’ Fatima puts her hands over her face. Then she looks up, at the clock, and her face changes. ‘It’s 2 a.m.? How can it be two? I have to go up.’
‘Are you going in the morning?’ Kate asks. Fatima nods.
‘I have to. I have to get back for work.’
Work. It seems impossible, and I find myself giving a bubbling, hysterical laugh. And Owen. I can’t even picture his face, somehow. He has no connection to this world, to what we’ve done. How can I go back and face him? I can’t even bring myself to text him right now.
‘Of course you should go,’ Kate says. She smiles, or tries to. ‘It’s been lovely having you here, but anyway, regardless of anything else, the dinner’s over. It will look more … more natural. And yes, we should all get some sleep.’
She stands, and as Fatima makes her way up the creaking stairs, Kate begins to blow out the candles, put out the lamps.
I stand in between the windows, watching her gather up glasses, holding Freya.
I can’t imagine sleeping, but I will have to, to cope with Freya and the journey back tomorrow.
‘Goodnight,’ Thea says. She stands too, and I see her tuck a bottle beneath her arm, quite casually, as if taking a demijohn of wine to bed were the normal thing to do.
‘Goodnight,’ Kate says. She blows out the last candle, and we are in darkness.
I put Freya, still heavy with sleep, in the middle of the big double bed – Luc’s bed – and then I make my way to the empty bathroom and brush my teeth, wearily, feeling the bitter fur of too much wine coating my tongue.
As I wipe off the mascara and the eyeliner in the mirror, I see the way the fine skin around my eyes stretches beneath the cotton-wool pad, its elasticity slowly giving way. Whatever I thought, whatever I felt tonight, walking through the doors of my old school, I am not the girl I once was, and nor are Kate, Fatima and Thea. We are almost two decades older, all of us, and we have carried the weight of what we did for too long.
When my face is clean and bare, I make my way down the corridor to my room, treading quietly, so as not to wake Freya and the others, who are probably asleep by now. But there is a light showing through the crack in Fatima’s bedroom door, and when I pause, I can hear an almost imperceptible murmur of words.
For a moment I think she’s talking to Ali on the phone, and I feel a twinge of guilt about Owen, but then I see her rise, roll up a mat on the floor, and with a rush of comprehension, I realise – she was praying.
My gaze suddenly feels like an intrusion, and I begin to walk again, but the movement, or perhaps the sound, catches Fatima’s attention and she calls out softly, ‘Isa, is that you?’
‘Yes.’ I stop, push the door to her room a few inches. ‘I was just going to bed. I didn’t mean … I wasn’t watching.’
‘It’s fine,’ Fatima says. She puts the prayer mat carefully on her bed, and there’s a kind of peace in her face that was not there before, downstairs. ‘It’s not like I’m doing something I’m ashamed of.’
‘Do you pray every day?’
‘Yes, five times a day in fact. Well, five times when I’m at home. It’s different when you’re travelling.’
‘Five times?’ I am suddenly aware of how ignorant I am about her faith, and I feel a wash of shame. ‘I – I guess I did know that. I mean, I know Muslims at work …’ But I stop, feeling hot prickles at the clumsiness of my words. Fatima is my friend, one of my best and oldest friends, and I am only now realising how little I know about this central pillar of her life, how much about her I have to relearn.
‘I’m late though,’ she says regretfully. ‘I should have prayed the Isha around eleven. I just didn’t notice the time.’
‘Does that matter?’ I ask awkwardly. She shrugs.
‘It’s not ideal, but we’re told that if it’s a sincere mistake, Allah forgives.’
‘Fatima,’ I say, and then stop. ‘Never mind.’
‘No, what?’
I take a breath. I’m not sure if what I’m about to say is very crass, I can’t tell any more. I press my hands to my eyes.
‘Nothing,’ I say. And then, in a rush, ‘Fatima, do you think – do you think that he forgives us? You, I mean?’
‘For what we did, you mean?’ Fatima asks, and I nod. She sits on the bed, begins to plait her hair, the rhythm of her fingers comforting in its regularity. ‘I hope so. The Koran teaches that Allah forgives all sins, if the sinner truly repents. And God knows, I have plenty to repent, but I’ve tried to atone for my part in what we did.’
‘What did we do, Fatima?’ I ask, and I’m not meaning to be quizzical or rhetorical, I suddenly, honestly, don’t even know. If you had asked me seventeen years ago, I would have said we did what was necessary to keep a friend safe. If you had asked me ten years ago I would have said we did something unforgivably stupid, that kept me awake at night in fear that a body would surface and I would be asked questions I could not bear to answer.
But now that body has surfaced, and the questions … the questions are waiting for us, little ambushes we can’t yet see. And I’m no longer sure.
We committed a crime, I’m sure of that. But did we do something worse, to Luc? Something that twisted him from the boy I remember into this angry man I barely recognise?
Perhaps our real crime was not against Ambrose, but against his children.