by Sue Wallman
I wondered if anyone had hacked into my hospital files, or been in contact with my parents. How much had Clemmie told Paige? The thought of the photo of Amber Park Hospital on Veronica’s artwork kept coming back to me.
The following day, I wrote two essays, filled in a maths worksheet, and mixed jars of paint for the different skin tones of Elsie Gran’s hands, which I’d take back to school for my paper-clay version.
I matched them against her hands as she was doing the crossword in an old newspaper of Maria’s.
After I was satisfied with my range of colours, she said, “Come with me to the allotment. We need some carrots.”
“Isn’t it raining?” I said.
She pushed her glasses up on to her head and said, “It’s only drizzle.”
We had barely spoken about the reason for my suspension. Elsie Gran only knew what she’d heard me tell Joanna, the police officer. I thought she was waiting for me to start the conversation, and I wasn’t keen to have it. But as we walked along together under a big umbrella she said, “You had the party because you wanted it, did you, Katelyn? You weren’t pressurized because you’re head Pankhurst person?”
“House Prefect,” I corrected. “Yes, I wanted to have the party.” It was ninety-nine per cent true. There was no point telling her about the tradition of the House Prefect organizing a party and the rules around it. She’d have said that was ridiculous. It was OK for her. She enjoyed doing things differently to everyone else.
She nodded.
I didn’t say anything. Sometimes her views on life could tip into rants, and I wasn’t up for that at the moment.
At the allotment, we pulled carrots out of the soft ground, and we gathered big windfall apples, turning them over to check they weren’t rotten before placing them in a shopping bag. When the rain came down more heavily we retreated to the wooden shed, and sat on deckchairs with the door open. I told her it was like being in a beach hut and she laughed, and got up to see if there were any biscuits in the tin she kept on the top shelf. There were her usual plain ones, soft and almost tasteless from being in the tin so long, but we ate two each and Elsie Gran said she wished she’d had the sense to bring a thermos of tea. That made me think of Monro, and I hadn’t been thinking about him for at least thirty minutes.
The rain stopped and so did our conversation. It was only as Elsie Gran was turning the combination on the padlock for the shed door that she said, “Unspeakable things happened at my school. Maybe they did for your father too. He didn’t tell me much.”
I nodded, to show I’d heard. I felt a rush of wanting to tell her about Bernard. His cheery face, vaguely comical name, and his sexual innuendo. The ease with which he pushed himself on me, and his gropey-fingered, slug-tongued entitlement. My stomach turned inside out at the memory of the humiliation, and the shame I felt for not biting or scratching him. For not finding the strength to break away and shout. For having to be rescued by Bel. For only being rescued by luck.
The shame was bigger than the sudden desire to tell her.
“There are other schools you can go to,” said Elsie Gran. She tugged at the padlock to check it was locked.
“That’s what Mama said.” I shook the umbrella so the raindrops flew off.
“Really?” Elsie Gran was surprised. “I meant schools round here. She probably didn’t.”
“I like Mount Norton though,” I said. “I couldn’t leave my friends.” The thought of starting at a new school, after all I had achieved, made me ill. It was Friday already. After the weekend, I’d be back there.
Elsie Gran made a huh noise, which could have meant anything.
Back home, I was kept busy peeling carrots and apples, and Elsie Gran looked up a recipe for apple brandy.
I went to bed early in my yellow room, and waited for updates from Bel and Lo.
They FaceTimed to say a memorial concert was being planned for Clemmie. They hadn’t seen much of Calding. She’d either been in her office having meetings with hysterical parents, in meetings at the main school with Miss Sneller, or absent entirely.
Lo said I should look up Clemmie’s death online. The two of them waited while I logged on to my laptop. It had made a couple of newspapers, and several online articles. Miss Sneller was quoted as saying there’d been a recent change of housemistress at Pankhurst, and accusations that the housemistress Ms Scarlet Calding was too inexperienced were untrue, but the school would be reviewing her position and the procedures of Mount Norton boarding houses.
“She’ll probably sack Calding to please the parents,” said Meribel. “Which would obviously be a good thing. Can’t happen soon enough.”
“Depending who we get next,” said Lo, and she played me a new track she’d discovered by an upcoming K-pop band.
After we’d said goodnight, we still kept messaging back and forth.
Lo said the Ghost and the Furball had taken on extra hours to provide so-called support, but that support mostly meant setting up movies and making sure no one left Pankhurst unless they were supposed to. There was talk of a counsellor being brought in.
People were starting to recast Clemmie as a universally adored student. A donation site had been set up. Some students were lobbying for a stained-glass window in the assembly hall to commemorate her life. Paige wanted a prize in Clemmie’s name at Founders Day for the student who had demonstrated the most school spirit throughout the year.
Bel said Bernard had thrown a book at someone in the Davison common room for saying they’d heard he was chucked out of the party for trying it on with me.
The book. Monro had folded over a page with a map.
Was that a book on hidden treasures? I messaged. Did he find it under a chair?
The others found the question hilarious and asked why I wanted to know. I told them it was Monro’s and before he ran away he was looking for it and I said I’d keep an eye out for it, so could they retrieve it for me. I still hadn’t told the two of them about my kiss with Monro. I didn’t want it analysed and to open a big enquiry about why he hadn’t told me anything about running away with Veronica. Or why I had such a bad track record with guys.
Monro didn’t have Instagram, but Veronica did. I didn’t think for one second she’d post where she and Monro were, but I thought there might be other leads. The last thing she’d posted was the Polaroid-style photo of her and Monro on top of the café, the image on her original artwork. It was different in style from her other photos, which seemed to be close-up shots of paint and beads and anything art-related. I read her bio. Sixth-former. Feminist. Campaigner. Art startler. New art project coming soon. There was a website address which I clicked on, but it took me to a this-website-is-still-a-work-in-progress message.
I placed my phone on the floor, and turned on to my side to go to sleep. I couldn’t imagine going to a local school like Josie, Maria’s granddaughter. She said her nan thought my parents were stuck-up idiots, but according to her nan I wasn’t a lost cause yet. A few times Josie had invited me out with her and her friends but I’d made excuses. I liked her, but she knew me before my plastic surgery, and it made me anxious to think what she might have told her friends about me.
My phone pinged. I fished for it on the floor, and read the screen. There was a message from Lo.
It said, I’ve found Sasha.
CHAPTER 22
The blood in my veins faltered. I waited to see if Lo would add anything else. I couldn’t bring myself to ask, but I needed more information.
Another message beeped. She’s in intensive care. In a medically induced coma. There was an accident five weeks ago.
This was so far from what I was expecting, I said “What?” out loud. My fingers were desperate to message now. I typed, How do you know?
Lo started to type, sending a sentence at a time:
Internet search.
I’ve done it before but her name came up this time.
A road traffic accident.
Someone wrote about it on a
community website.
Some people are trying to get a pedestrian crossing put in because she was the second person to be hit by a car at the same place.
She was waiting for me to chip in with something.
That’s terrible, I finally messaged. I’d thought Sasha’s life would be OK after Mount Norton. She was so clever, so full of everything that should have propelled her forward. I felt irrationally angry with her about the accident.
Lo replied: If it’s medically induced I think there’s more likelihood of her being OK?
I trembled as I replied. Honestly? I don’t know.
Lo kept going.
I found out the name of the hospital.
Called them up already.
They said she can’t have visitors apart from family.
But I’m going anyway.
I’m going to take a card for when she wakes up.
Bel says I shouldn’t do it.
I tap out, Maybe Bel’s right. I think about deleting the maybe, but send it. There’s a long pause during which Lo’s hurt transports itself telepathically, before she resumes.
I’ve looked up trains.
It takes forty-five minutes from your gran’s.
I don’t want to go on my own.
Will you come with me?
Tomorrow.
Bel won’t come.
Please?
Tomorrow was Saturday, and it would be easy for Lo to leave school for the day if she could fake parental permission. Elsie Gran would be fine with me going; she never stopped me going anywhere, but she had rules about what time I needed to be home. Lo knew how relaxed she was.
OK, I message back. Let’s make a plan in the morning. I’d go with her, out of guilt. I owed both of them.
Lo replied immediately. THANK YOU. LY
I felt sick.
I remembered everything before I even opened my eyes in the morning. Today I was going with Lo to deliver a card to a girl in a coma I should have saved from expulsion.
I picked up my phone – Lo had sent through an itinerary, complete with a meeting place at Thornbury station. I had a shower, taking so long that Elsie Gran banged on the door and told me to consider the planet, and dressed in my most ordinary clothes. I didn’t want to stand out today.
I told Elsie Gran I was off to meet Lo for the day. She was listening to one of her thrillers on audiobook in the kitchen, so she nodded, checked I had my phone and waved me away. She didn’t know my Mount Norton friends, other than to say hello to them when she dropped me off or picked me up.
The train was slow, stopping at every single station along the track to Thornbury. At each one, I felt the urge to get out and run away from what was ahead. It made me think of Monro and Veronica. Monro was so frequently in my thoughts these days, I’d almost become used to the ache of not knowing why he’d left, and of missing him. If he were here now, next to me, I’d shift across the seat so our bodies would touch. I’d reach for his hand, and he’d clasp it tight, and he would keep holding it as I would explain why I lied and told everyone that Clemmie was in my bedroom doing our geography project when she hadn’t been.
There was a small part of me too which couldn’t help wondering if he’d been caught up in Clemmie’s death somehow. I’d kept secrets from him, and I wasn’t stupid enough to think he hadn’t kept any from me.
Lo met me on the platform. Her face was serious, scanning the passengers’ faces, but when she saw me it widened into happiness. I waved and grinned back, and then I was on the platform, and we hugged. She told me she was grateful I’d come, and my gut felt so twisted it hurt.
“I’ve scoped it out,” said Lo. “We’ll get the bus. It’s too far to walk.” She placed her hands on her temples. “Oh, God. This is so awful. But it explains why Sasha wasn’t in touch about the party, doesn’t it?”
I nodded, aware my mouth was lacking its usual amount of saliva. We’d walked out of the station, Lo leading the way to the bus stop.
There was hardly a pause in her conversation. She told me how claustrophobic Pankhurst had become, with the favourite topics of conversation being why and how Clemmie had fallen, Veronica and Monro’s disappearance, and my suspension. Most people thought Kipper had pushed Clemmie and got away with it because of the lack of evidence. Anyone who’d been identified as having been at my illegal party wasn’t allowed out of their boarding houses past seven p.m. until the end of term as a punishment. Journalists had been stopping to talk to anyone in Mount Norton uniform but Miss Sneller had banned anyone from speaking to them. All the time she was speaking, Lo bent her fingers back nervously.
“I don’t want to bump into Sasha’s family,” she said, as we stepped down from the bus when it stopped in front of the sprawling hospital. “It would be too weird.”
I was finding it hard to walk, my leg muscles felt weak.
There was an information desk in the hospital’s main entrance, but we were intercepted by a grey-haired lady with a sash that read I’m Here To Help as we made our way towards it. She told us where to find the intensive care unit, and said, “All the best, darling,” when Lo thanked her.
My dread ascended in the lift with us. It was crowded, but nobody spoke apart from a couple at the back who were murmuring. Lo and I were the only ones to get off at the fourth floor, emerging into a white world of corridors. It smelled of cleaning products, underpinned by smells too worrying to contemplate. The signage to the intensive care unit was large and unmistakeable. Lo unbuckled her bag and pulled out an envelope. She’d drawn an anime character in one corner, and Sasha’s name in super-fine pen.
We went through a set of double doors, but needed to press a buzzer to get through the next set. Lo looked at me for reassurance and I nodded faintly. She pressed it firmly but nobody came. We gave it a couple more minutes, then Lo pressed again.
The double doors behind us squeaked as they opened and a nurse came towards us. “Can I help?” he asked briskly, as if he was in a hurry. “You have a family member in here?”
“No,” I said quickly, before Lo was tempted to lie. “We’re friends.”
Lo shot me an angry look and said, “We, er … we’re friends of Sasha Mires. I have a card for her.” She held it up.
The nurse scrunched one side of his face trying to recall her. “Sasha, Sasha… Ah, yes, I can take that for you. No problem.” He took it and was gone.
“You ruined it, Kate,” said Lo. She leaned against the closed door. “We might have at least got the other side of this door if you hadn’t said that. I’d have done anything just to have seen her.”
“I didn’t think,” I said. “I’m sorry.” It scared me to think we might bump into Sasha’s family at any moment. “The nurse would have checked us out. We’d have been made to wait and then it would have been embarrassing when they said they knew we were lying. Come on. Let’s get out of here. I don’t like hospitals.”
Lo sighed and pushed against the door as she stood straight. “I can’t believe Sasha’s the other side of here,” she said.
I set off down the corridor, and let her catch me up. “Let’s get something to eat in that shop near the information desk and go outside,” I said.
The small shop was massively overpriced, but we bought juice and a couple of brittle-looking cookies, individually wrapped. There were benches at the front of the hospital, overlooking the main road and car park, designed perhaps to keep people from lingering too long. There was only one free one and we ran to get it before anyone else did, which meant Lo was laughing as she sat down. She took a long sip from her juice carton. The straw was in her mouth for the longest time, but when I glanced at her, I saw she wasn’t drinking; she was staring at a couple who were making their way to the hospital entrance. There was no mistaking it was Sasha’s parents, but her father was stooped and her mother was moving slowly. They’d become old.
Lo pulled the straw from her mouth. “It’s them, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” We watched them disappear from sig
ht, and Lo sighed, as if she’d been thinking of running over to them but decided not to. I broke my cookie into pieces while it was still in its cellophane wrapping, and then into dusty crumbs. “I’ve got something to tell you,” I said.
Lo looked at my cookie. “What’s the matter?”
It felt like stepping off a cliff. “I know it wasn’t Sasha’s fault. Her being expelled.”
“How?” asked Lo in a quiet voice.
“Clemmie never came to our room,” I said. I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second. I was in free fall, Lo’s revulsion rushing up to meet me. “She made me say she had.”
“Why would you cover for her?” asked Lo, a groove of a frown deep in her forehead. She was trying to understand this.
I looked at her and winced. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Clemmie told me if I didn’t cover for her she’d post a photo of me online.”
“What photo?” asked Lo.
I told her about the plastic surgery, how I hated how I’d looked before, and the horror I’d felt when I realized Clemmie had somehow found out about it. I explained how panicked I was to think she had a photo of me. There had been photos taken at some of the other schools I’d been to when I hadn’t been quick enough to dodge them, but I hadn’t thought they would resurface.
“I didn’t want anyone to know,” I said. How could I tell her at Mount Norton I was finally somebody special, and I was desperate not to lose that?
“You lied for Clemmie because you were worried we’d see what you looked like before you had plastic surgery?” Lo’s voice was tight. She stood up. “Sasha was expelled for something she didn’t do and you let it happen because you had plastic surgery?” I could tell she was imagining how I looked before the operations. There were tears in her eyes. “You let me believe my girlfriend was a cheat and a liar.”