Where the Memories Lie
By: Sibel Hodge
Where the Memories Lie Anna had taken when she was little. A poster from a Christmas panto we’d seen in Weymouth. Anna’s baby teeth in a clear box, a lock of her hair, her hospital bracelet from when she was born.
A lifetime of memories.
I searched through the photos inside, wanting to find a picture of Katie as she really was, not as the grotesque images that had been haunting my sleep and piercing my wakefulness. And then there she was. Standing next to me on my fourteenth birthday as both of us blew out my candles. I knew her parents never made a fuss for her on her special day so I had always let her share mine.
We were caught on camera mid-blow, goofy-looking expressions on our faces. The next one was from about a year later. Katie and I had been in our favourite park in Dorchester in the school sum-mer holidays, hanging out, sunbathing, eyeing up the boys, making stupid plans for the future and sharing our dreams. We posed on the grass in skimpy tops and short skirts. She was pouting for the camera, her long hair falling down on one shoulder, her eyes half-closed in a sultry look.
There were more. Katie and I on holiday when my family took her with us to a caravan park in Devon one year, standing against the railing in front of the sea, arms wrapped around each other, my head resting on her shoulder. Katie at our school disco on our very last day at secondary school. Katie on the village green outside the pub with a cigarette in her hand.
I put the photos back, a heavy sinking feeling in my heart. For a long time we’d been so close, but when she vanished from my life I’d abandoned her when she needed me most and slowly erased her just like everybody else had, as if she was inconsequential. As if she was nothing.
I had to try to apologise to Rose again.
229
Sibel Hodge
I knocked on Rose’s door a few times but the place looked the same as every other time I’d been there, neglected with the curtains closed. I was about to turn away and walk back up the road when the door opened and she stood there, pale and skeletal, her short hair flattened and stuck to her head.
‘You’ve got a bloody nerve coming round here,’ she rasped.
‘I just wanted to come and tell you how sorry I was. I . . .
I know you probably don’t want anything to do with our family, but we didn’t have a clue. We didn’t know anything. I mean, we still don’t really know anything.’
‘ I know!’ She swayed a little before leaning on the door frame for support. I could smell the alcohol permeating the air between us, thick and heavy. ‘Tom Tate killed her and that’s that. He’s a murderer. A monster!’
‘I’m so sorry. I . . . I don’t really know what to say. I feel terrible.
She was my friend and I let her down.’
‘Don’t come here again. I don’t want to talk to you. Any of you.
You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you, with your big house and your fancy cars? But your family’s a damn sight worse,’
she spat. ‘Don’t come round here again!’ As she closed the door, I stuck my foot in it and put my arm out, hand pushing against it.
She glanced up, surprised.
‘Rose, what did Katie mean in her letter? When she said you know what you’ve done and that she hoped you’d rot in hell? What did she mean by that?’
‘What? You trying to put the blame on me now?’ She let out a deranged cackle. ‘Oh, that’s rich. That’s fucking rich.’ But there was something in her eyes that I recognised. Fear.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe I should’ve just left things rather than stirring up trouble. Rose was grieving, too, after all. But I couldn’t let it lie. I still needed to know the truth.
Needed to know why it happened.
230
Where the Memories Lie ‘Was Jack abusing her? Did you know about it and not do anything? Is that what she meant? Or did Katie tell you and you didn’t believe her?’
‘Don’t you dare go round spouting accusations against us!
Sullying Jack’s memory. Making up lies!’ She glared at me. ‘You don’t have a clue. You don’t have a bloody clue.’