Where the Memories Lie

 

I made a chamomile tea, hoping it would help me sleep but it didn’t. As I spooned myself against Ethan’s warm body, Tom’s words echoed in my head .

 

I had to do it. She wasn’t supposed to be there. No one was. It was an accident, you see. But I buried her.

 

It didn’t make sense.

 

I tried to think about what happened when Katie ran away, but the memories were twenty-five years old, lying deep under layers of others that made up my history. She’d left the letter, I remembered that bit, but what had it said? I don’t think I ever actually saw it.

 

I remember . . . what? I turned on to my back and stared at the ceiling, willing my brain to trawl through my mind. A policeman had turned up on my doorstep one morning. It must’ve been a Sunday as I was having a lie-in because there was no college. I think I’d had a late night . . . I’d been to . . . Where had I been the night before? No, I can’t remember. Anyway, the policeman. Yes. He was the village bobby, back in the days when we still had a community policeman who actually lived in the village and knew pretty much 88

 

Where the Memories Lie

 

everyone and everything that went on. PC Cook – that was his name. He always had the reputation of being firm but very fair, although I’d never had anything to do with him until then. So, there PC Cook was on my doorstep on a Sunday morning saying Rose had called him and told him Katie had run away from home and left this letter. He asked if I knew where she’d gone, but she hadn’t said anything to me at all. I had no clue. No warning sign she was about to do that.

 

No, that’s not strictly true. Looking at it with hindsight and the benefit of years of wisdom, maybe there were clues. I just didn’t recognise them at the time. I suppose after the event, we’re all experts, aren’t we? Shame it’s too late by then.

 

It hit me then where I’d been the Saturday night before Katie left. There was a band playing at the Kings’ Arms, one we’d seen before and really liked. They were called something like the Jazz Iguanas, or Jazz Lizards, or something else peculiar. Anyway, I was going to go with Ethan, Chris, Nadia, Lucas and Tom. By then I hadn’t seen much of Katie for months since her break-up with Chris. Every time I’d asked her to go out, she made excuses. I fin-ished college in Weymouth on that Friday afternoon and walked into town to the shop where Katie was working to ask if she wanted to come with us the following night. I thought it was probably too soon for her to want to see Chris again ? even though it had been about seven months by then ? but at least I would’ve tried to include her. I didn’t want her to feel left out just because she wasn’t part of the ‘Tate’ crowd anymore. She looked different that afternoon. She’d had her long blonde hair cut into a choppy jaw-length bob, and instead of her usual skimpy, figure-hugging, cleavage-enhancing clothes and stilettos, she was wearing leggings and a long baggy jumper and flat shoes. It was like she was trying to reinvent herself into something frumpy or old before her time.

 

89

 

Sibel Hodge

 

Even her makeup wasn’t the usual hard black lines around her eyes and vampire-red lipstick. It was toned down to a clear lip gloss and just a swiping of mascara.

 

What had she said when I asked her to come out with us all?