WHEN AT LAST I pull myself together enough to face the thronged hallway, I force my way into the crowd, looking, desperately, for Fatima, Kate and Thea.
I scan the hallway, the queue for the cloakroom, the toilets – but they aren’t there. Surely they haven’t left already?
My heart is thumping, and my cheeks are flushed from the encounter with Jess. Where are they?
I’m shoving my way to the exit, elbowing aside laughing little knots of old girls and their husbands and partners, when I feel a hand on my arm and turn, relief written all over my face, only to find Miss Weatherby standing there.
My stomach tightens, thinking of our last meeting, the furious disappointment on her face.
‘Isa,’ she says. ‘Always rushing everywhere, I remember that so well. I always said you should have played hockey, put all that nervous energy to good use!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, trying to not gasp, trying not to pull away too obviously. ‘I – I have to get back, the babysitter …’
‘Oh, you have a baby?’ she asks. I know she is only trying to be polite, but I just want to get away. ‘How old?’
‘Nearly six months. A little girl. Listen, I must …’
Miss Weatherby nods and releases my arm.
‘Well, it’s lovely to see you here after so many years. And congratulations on your daughter. You must put her name down for the school!’
She says the words almost light-heartedly, but I feel my features go stiff, even as I smile and nod, and I know from the change in Miss Weatherby’s expression that my feelings must be evident, that my smile must be as false as a painted marionette’s, for her face crumples.
‘Isa, I can’t tell you how much I regret all that business surrounding your leaving. There aren’t many points of my career that I feel ashamed of, but I can honestly say, that business is one of them. The school handled it – well, there’s no point in pretending, we handled it very badly, and I must take my share of responsibility for that. It is not mere lip service to say that things have improved very much in that respect – matters would be treated … well, I think everything would be handled very differently these days.’
‘I –’ I swallow, try to speak. ‘Miss Weatherby, please, don’t. It – it’s water under the bridge, honestly.’
It is not. But I can’t bear to talk about this now. Not here, where it all feels so raw still. Where are the others?
Miss Weatherby only nods, once, her face tight as if she is holding back her own memories.
‘Well, goodbye,’ I say awkwardly and she forces a smile, her stern face seeming almost to crack.
‘Come again, Isa,’ she says as I turn to leave. ‘I – I did wonder if perhaps you felt you wouldn’t be welcome and, quite honestly, nothing would be further from the truth. I hope you won’t be a stranger in future – can I count on your presence at next year’s dinner?’
‘Of course,’ I say. My face feels stiff with effort, but I manage a smile as I tuck my hair behind my ear. ‘Of course, I’ll come.’
She lets me go, and as I finally make my escape towards the exit, looking for Kate and the others, I reflect: it’s amazing how quickly it comes back, the facility to lie.
It’s Fatima I find first, standing at the big double doors looking anxiously up and down the drive. She sees me at almost exactly the same time as I see her, and pounces, her fingers like a vice on my arm.
‘Where have you been? Thea’s thoroughly pissed, we need to get her home. Kate’s got your shoes, if that’s what was holding you up.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I hobble across the gravel, my heels turning and grating on the stones. ‘It wasn’t that, I got cornered by Jess Hamilton, and then by Miss Weatherby. I couldn’t get away.’
‘Miss Weatherby?’ Fatima’s face is alarmed. ‘What did she want to talk to you about?’
‘Nothing much,’ I say. It’s half true after all. ‘I think she feels … well, bad.’
‘She deserves to,’ Fatima says stonily, turning away and beginning to walk.
I crunch breathless in her wake as we leave the lighted front of the school. She forges down one of the gravel paths towards the hockey pitches. In our day it would have been completely dark – now there are dim little solar lights at intervals, but they serve only to drown out the moonlight, making the pools of blackness in between more inky.
When we were fifteen, the marshes felt like home, near enough. I don’t recall being frightened on any of the long night-time treks to Kate’s house.
Now, as I pant to catch up with Fatima, I find myself thinking of rabbit holes in the darkness, of my ankle turning and snapping. A picture comes of myself, sinking into one of the bottomless pits of the marsh, water filling my mouth so I can’t cry out, the others walking on ahead oblivious, leaving me alone. Except … perhaps not alone. There is someone out here after all. Someone who wrote that note, and who dragged a dead and bloodied sheep to Kate’s door …
Fatima has drawn ahead of me in her eagerness to catch up with the others, her figure just a dim, fluttering silhouette that blends into the dark shapes of the marsh.
‘Fatima,’ I call out, ‘will you please slow down?’
‘Sorry.’
She pauses at the stile and waits for me to catch up, and this time she walks more slowly, matching her strides to my more cautious pace as we begin to cross the marsh itself, my narrow heels sinking into the soft ground. We walk in silence, just the sound of our breathing, my occasional stumble as my high heels turn on a stone. Where are the others?
‘She asked me to send Freya there,’ I say at last, more as a way to break the eerie quiet of the marsh and get Fatima to slow down than because I think she wants to know – and it works, in fact it stops Fatima in her tracks. She turns to face me with a mixture of horror and incredulity in her expression.
‘Miss Weatherby? You are shitting me.’
‘Nope.’ We start walking again, slower this time. ‘I did find it quite hard to respond.’
‘Over my dead body, is what you should have said.’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
There’s another silence and then she says, ‘I’d never let Sami or Nadia board. Would you?’
I think about it. I think about the circumstances at home, what my father went though. And then I think about Freya, about the fact that I can’t manage even an evening away from her without feeling that my heart is being put through an industrial shredder.
‘I don’t know,’ I say at last. ‘I can’t imagine it though.’
We walk on through the darkness, across a makeshift rotting bridge over a ditch, and at last Fatima says, ‘Bloody hell, how did they get so far ahead?’
But almost as the words leave her mouth we hear something, see a moving shape in the darkness up ahead. It’s not the shape of a person though, it’s a hunched and huddled mass, and a wet, bubbling sound comes through the darkness – a sound of distress.
‘What’s that?’ I whisper, and I feel Fatima’s hand close over mine. We both stop, listening. My heart is beating uncomfortably fast.
‘I have no idea,’ she whispers back. ‘Is it … is it an animal?’
The picture in front of my eyes is vivid as a flashback – torn guts, bloodied wool, someone crouched, animal-like, over the ripped corpse …
The sound comes again, a wet splatter followed by what sounds like a sob, and I feel Fatima’s fingers digging into my skin.
‘Is it …’ she says, her voice uncertain. ‘Do you think the others …?’
‘Thea?’ I call out into the black. ‘Kate?’
A voice comes back.
‘Over here!’
We hurry forward into the darkness, and as we get closer the hunched shape resolves itself: Thea on her hands and knees over a drainage ditch, Kate holding back her hair.
‘Oh bollocks,’ Fatima says, a mixture of weariness and disgust in her voice. ‘I knew this would happen. No one can drink two bottles on an empty stomach.’
‘Shut up,’ Thea growls over her shoulder, and then retches again. When she stands up, her make-up is smeared.
‘Can you walk?’ Kate asks her, and Thea nods.
‘I’m fine.’
Fatima snorts.
‘The one thing you are not is fine,’ she says. ‘And I say that as a doctor.’
‘Oh shut up,’ Thea says acidly. ‘I said I can walk, what more d’you want?’
‘I want you to eat a proper meal and get to noon without a drink – at least once.’
For a minute I’m not sure if Thea has heard her, or if she’s going to reply. She’s too busy wiping her mouth and spitting in the grass. But then she says, almost under her breath, ‘Christ, I miss when you used to be normal.’
‘Normal?’ I say incredulously. Fatima just stands there, speechless – too shocked to find words, or too angry, I’m not sure which.
‘I really hope that doesn’t mean what I think it means,’ Kate says.
‘I don’t know.’ Thea straightens and begins to walk, more steadily than I would have given her credit for. ‘What do you think it means? If you think it means that she’s using that headscarf as a bandage, then yes, that’s what I mean. It’s great that Allah’s forgiven you,’ she shoots over her shoulder at Fatima, ‘but I doubt the police will take that as a plea bargain.’
‘Will you just fuck off?’ Fatima says. She is almost incoherent, choking with anger. ‘What the hell have my choices got to do with you?’
‘I could say the same thing to you,’ Thea swings round. ‘How dare you judge me? I do what I have to do to sleep at night. So do you, apparently. How about you respect my coping mechanisms and I’ll respect yours?’
‘I care about you!’ Fatima shouts. ‘Don’t you get that? I don’t give a fuck how you cope with your shit. I don’t care if you become a Buddhist nun, or take up transcendental meditation, or go to work for an orphanage in Romania. All of that is entirely your own business. But watching you turn into an alcoholic? No! I will not pretend I’m OK with that just to fit in with some misguided shit about personal choices.’
Thea opens her mouth, and I think she is about to reply, but instead she turns to one side and vomits again into the ditch.
‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ Fatima says resignedly, but the shaking anger has gone from her voice, and when Thea straightens, wiping water from her eyes, she reaches into her bag and pulls out a packet of wet wipes. ‘Look, take these. Clean yourself up.’
‘Thanks,’ Thea mutters. She stands up, shakily, and almost stumbles, and Fatima takes her arm to steady her.
As they make their slow way over the turf, I hear Thea say something to Fatima, too quietly for me and Kate to hear, but I catch Fatima’s reply.
‘It’s OK, Thee, I know you didn’t. I just – I care about you, you know that?’
‘Sounds like they’ve made up,’ I whisper to Kate and she nods, but her face in the moonlight is troubled.
‘This is only the beginning though,’ she says, her voice very low. ‘Isn’t it?’
And I realise she’s right.