by Ruth Ware
It had come, quite definitely this time, from the window closest to my bed and I strode across to it and pulled back the curtain.
I don’t know what I was expecting – but whatever it was, it was not what I saw: a pale face peering through the glass, surrounded by the darkness. For a minute, I just gaped, and then I remembered what I had seen from the minibus as it made its way up the drive: the black wiry tendrils of the fire escapes, twining up the sides of the building and round the towers, and I looked closer. It was Kate.
She grinned, and made a twisting motion with her wrist, and I realised that she wanted me to open the window.
The clasp was rusty and stiff, and I struggled for a moment, before it gave with a screech.
‘Well,’ Kate said. She waved a hand at a rickety black metal structure below her, silhouetted against the paler background of the sea. ‘What are you waiting for?’
I looked back at Fatima, who shrugged and nodded, and then, pulling the blanket off the foot of my bed, I clambered up onto the windowsill and out into the cool autumn darkness.
Outside, the night air was still and calm, and as Fatima and I followed Kate quietly up the shivering metal steps of the fire escape, I could hear the far-off crash of the waves against the shingle shore, and the screech of the gulls wheeling and calling out to sea.
Thea was waiting at the top of the fire escape as we rounded the last curve of the tower. She had on a T-shirt, and it barely skimmed her long, slim thighs.
‘Spread out that blanket,’ she said to me, and I flung it out across the wire mesh and sat down beside her.
‘So now you know,’ Kate said, with a conspiratorial smile. ‘You have our secret in your hands.’
‘And all we can offer in return for your silence,’ Thea drawled, ‘is this –’ she held up a bottle of Jack Daniel’s – ‘and these.’ And she held up a packet of Silk Cut. ‘Do you smoke?’ She tapped the packet and held it out towards us, a single cigarette poking from the top.
Fatima shook her head.
‘No. But I’ll have some of that.’ She nodded at the bourbon, and Kate passed her the bottle. Fatima took a long swig, shuddered, and then wiped her mouth with a grin.
‘Isa?’ Thea said, still holding out the cigarette.
I didn’t smoke. I had tried it once or twice at my school in London, and hadn’t enjoyed it. And more than that, I knew that my parents would hate me smoking, particularly my father, who had smoked himself as a younger man and had periodic relapses into self-hatred and cigars.
But here … here I was someone else … someone new.
Here I was not the conscientious schoolgirl who always got her homework in on time, and did the vacuuming before she went out with her friends.
Here I could be anyone I wanted. Here I could be someone completely different.
‘Thanks,’ I said. I took the cigarette from Thea’s outstretched packet and when Kate flicked her Bic lighter, I leaned in towards the flame-filled cup made by her hands, my hair falling across her honey-brown arm like a caress, and I took a cautious puff, blinking against the sting in my eyes, and hoping I wouldn’t choke.
‘Thanks for earlier,’ Thea said. ‘The smoking I mean. You … you really saved my bacon. I don’t know what would happen if I got expelled again. I seriously think Dad might get me locked up.’
‘It was nothing.’ I breathed out, watching the thread of smoke float up, past the rooftops of the school, towards a glorious white moon, just a shade off full. ‘But listen, what did you mean, that thing you said at dinner? About the points?’
‘It’s how we keep track,’ Kate said. ‘Ten points for suckering someone completely. Five for an inspired story or for making another player corpse. Fifteen points for taking down someone really snooty. But the points don’t count for anything important, it’s just … I don’t know. To make it more fun.’
‘It’s a version of a game they used to play at one of my old schools,’ Thea said. She took a languid puff of her cigarette. ‘They did it to new girls. The idea was to get them to do something stupid – you know, tell them that it was tradition for all students to take their bath towel to evening prep to make it faster for evening showers, or persuade them first years could only walk clockwise round the quad. Pathetic stuff. Anyway, when I came here I was the new girl all over again, and I thought, fuck them. I’ll be the one who lies this time. And this time I’ll make it count. I won’t pick on the new girls, the ones who can’t defend themselves. I’ll do it to the ones in charge – the teachers, the popular girls. The ones who think they’re above it all.’ She blew out a plume of smoke. ‘Only, the first time I lied to Kate, she didn’t hit the roof and threaten to have me ostracised, she just laughed. And that’s when I knew. She wasn’t one of them.’
‘And neither are you,’ Kate said conspiratorially. ‘Right?’
‘Right,’ Fatima said. She took another swig from the bottle and grinned.
I only nodded. I brought the cigarette up to my lips and puffed again, inhaling deeply this time, feeling the smoke going down into my lungs, and filtering through my blood. My head swam, and the hand holding the cigarette shook as I put it down to rest on the meshed wire of the fire-escape platform, but I said nothing, hoping only that the others hadn’t noticed the sudden head rush.
I felt Thea watching me, and I had the strangest conviction that in spite of my composure, she was not deceived and knew exactly what was passing through my mind, and the struggle I was having to pretend that I was used to this, but she didn’t tease me about it, she just held out the bottle.
‘Drink up,’ she said, her vowels sharp as glass, and then, as if recognising her own imperiousness she grinned, softening the haughtiness of the command. ‘You need something to take the edge off the first day.’
I thought of my mother, asleep under a sheet in hospital, poison trickling into her veins, my brother alone in his new room at Charterhouse, my father driving back through the night to our empty house in London … my nerves sang, tight as violin strings, and I nodded, and reached out with my free hand.
When the whiskey hit my mouth it burned like fire, and I had to fight the urge to choke and cough, but I swallowed it down, feeling it scald my gullet all the way to my stomach, feeling the tight fibres of my core relax, just a little. Then held the bottle out towards Kate.
Kate took it and put it to her lips, and when she drank, it wasn’t a cautious swig like the ones Fatima and I had taken, but two, three full-on gulps, without pausing, or even flinching; she might have been drinking milk.
When she had finished, she wiped her mouth, her eyes glinting in the darkness.
‘Here’s to us,’ she said, holding the bottle high, the moonlight striking off the glass. ‘May we never grow old.’
THEA, OUT OF all of them, is the person I have not seen for longest, and so the image in my mind’s eye as I descend the stairs, is the girl of seventeen years ago, with her beautiful face, and her hair like a storm front coming across a sunlit sky.
As I round the corner of the rickety stairs, it’s not Thea I see first, but the watercolour that Ambrose did, in the corner of the staircase, Thea, swimming in the Reach. Ambrose has caught the sunlight on her skin and the prismed light filtering through the water, and her head is flung back, her long hair slicked to her skull making her even more arresting.
It is with that picture in my head that I turn the final curve, wondering what to expect – and Thea is waiting.
She is more beautiful than ever – I would not have thought that were possible, but it’s true. Her face is thinner, her features more defined, and her dark hair is cropped close to her skull. It’s as if her beauty has been pared back to its bones, shorn of the two-tone waterfall of silky hair, of make-up and jewellery.
She is older, more striking, even thinner – too thin. And yet she is exactly the same.
I think of Kate’s toast, that night long ago when we barely knew each other. May we never grow old …
‘Thee,�
�� I breathe.
And then I am holding her, and feeling her bones, and Fatima is hugging her and laughing, and Thee is saying, ‘For Christ’s sake, you two, you’re crushing me! And watch out for my boots, the fucker chucked me out of the cab halfway up the Reach. I practically had to wade here.’
She smells of cigarettes … and alcohol, its sweetness like overripe fruit heavy on her breath as she laughs into my hair, before letting us both go and walking to the table in the window.
‘I can’t believe you two are mums.’ Her smile is just as it always was, curved, a little wry, concealing secrets. She pulls out the chair that was always hers when we sat and smoked and drank into the small hours, and sits down, putting a Sobranie cigarette, black with a gold tip, between her lips. ‘How did they let reprobates like you reproduce?’
‘I know, right?’ Fatima pulls out her own chair and sits opposite, her back to the stove. ‘That’s pretty much what I said to Ali when they gave me Nadia to take home from the hospital. What the hell do I do now?’
Kate picks up a plate and holds it out to Thea, one eyebrow raised.
‘Yes? No? Have you eaten? There’s plenty of couscous left.’
Thea shakes her head, and lights her cigarette before she answers, blowing out a stream of smoke.
‘I’m fine. I just want a drink. And to find out why the hell we’re all here.’
‘We have wine … and wine …’ Kate says. She looks through the lopsided dresser. ‘And … wine. That’s it.’
‘Christ, you’ve gone soft on me. No spirits? Go on then, I guess I’ll have wine.’
Kate pours into one of the cracked green-blue glasses on the side, a huge glass, a third of a bottle at least, and hands it to Thea, who holds it up, watching the candle in the centre of the table through the ruby depths.
‘To us,’ she says at last. ‘May we never grow old.’
But I don’t want to drink to that now. I do want to grow old. I want to grow old, see Freya grow up, feel the wrinkles on my face.
I am saved from commenting when Thea pauses, her glass halfway to her lips, and points with one finger at Fatima’s glass of lemonade.
‘Hang on, hang on, what’s this shit? Lemonade? You can’t drink a toast with lemonade. You’re not knocked up again, are you?’
Fatima shakes her head with a smile, and then points to the scarf lying loose around her shoulders.
‘Times have changed, Thea. This isn’t just a fashion accessory.’
‘Oh, darling, come on, wearing a hijab doesn’t mean you have to be a nun! We get Muslims in the casino all the time, one of them told me for a fact that if you drink gin and tonic it doesn’t count as alcohol, it’s classified as medicine because of the quinine.’
‘A, that advice is what’s technically termed in theological circles as “bullshit”,’ Fatima says. She’s still smiling, but there’s a little hint of steel under her light voice. ‘And B, you have to wonder about the dissociative powers of anyone wearing a hijab in a casino, considering the Koranic teachings on gambling.’
There is silence in the room. I exchange a glance with Kate, and draw a breath to speak, but I can’t think what to say, other than to tell Thea to shut the fuck up.
‘You weren’t always such a prude,’ Thea says at last, sipping her wine, and beside me I feel Kate stiffen with anxiety, but Thea is smiling, the corner of her mouth just quirked with that wry little tilt. ‘In fact, I might be wrong, but I distinctly remember a certain game of strip poker …? Or am I thinking of a different Ms Qureshy?’
‘You weren’t always such a dick,’ Fatima replies, but there’s no rancour in her voice, and she is smiling too. She reaches across the table and punches Thea lightly on the arm, and Thea laughs, and her real, true smile – the one which is wide and generous and full of self-mockery – flashes out in spite of herself.
‘Liar,’ she says, still grinning, and the tension leaches out of the air, like static electricity discharging into the ground with a harmless crackle.
I don’t know what time it is when I get up from the table to go to the bathroom. It must be long past midnight. I look in at Freya on my way back, and she is sleeping peacefully, her arms and legs sprawled in complete relaxation.
As I make my way down the curving stairs to where my old friends sit, I am overwhelmed by a sharp pang of déjà vu. Fatima, Thea, Kate, they are seated in their old accustomed places, and for a moment, their heads bent around the flickering light of the candle, they could be fifteen again. I have the strangest impression of a gramophone record that has skipped, retracing over the echoes of our former selves, and I feel the ghosts of the past crowd in, Ambrose … Luc … My heart clutches in my chest, an almost physical pain, and for a moment – a brief, stabbing moment – a picture flashes before my eyes, a scene I have tried so hard to forget.
I shut my eyes, put my hands to my face, trying to scrub the image away – and when I open them again it’s just Thea, Fatima and Kate there. But the memory remains – a body, stretched out on the rug, four shocked white faces, stained with tears …
There is a chilly touch on my hand, and I swing round, my heart thumping as I survey the stairs, winding up into darkness.
I’m not sure who I was expecting – there is no one here but us, after all – but whoever it was, they are not there – just the shadows of the room, and the faces of our former selves looking out from the walls.
Then I hear Kate’s low laugh, and I realise. It’s not a ghost, but a shadow – Kate’s dog, Shadow, his cold nose against my hand, looking plaintive and confused.
‘He thinks it’s bedtime,’ Kate says. ‘He’s hoping someone will take him out for a last walk.’
‘A walk?’ Thea says. She takes out another Sobranie, and puts the gold tip between her lips. ‘Screw that. I say a swim.’
‘I didn’t bring my costume,’ I say automatically, before I work out what her raised eyebrow and wickedly provocative expression means, and I start to laugh, half reluctantly. ‘No way, and anyway, Freya’s asleep upstairs. I can’t leave her.’
‘So don’t swim far!’ Thea says. ‘Kate. Towels!’
Kate stands up, takes a gulp from the glass of wine on the table in front of us, and goes to a cupboard near the stove. Inside there are threadbare towels, faded to shades of pastel grey. She throws one at Thea, one at me. Fatima holds up her hands.
‘Thanks, but –’
‘Come on …’ Thea drawls. ‘We’re all women, right?’
‘That’s what they all say, until some drunk comes along on the way back from the pub. I’ll sit it out, cheers.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Thea says. ‘Come on, Isa, Kate, don’t let me down, you losers.’
She stands too, and begins to unbutton her shirt. Underneath I can see already that she is not wearing a bra.
I don’t want to undress. I know Thea would laugh at my selfconsciousness, but I can’t help thinking of my post-pregnancy body, my blue-veined milky breasts, and the stretch marks on my still-soft belly. It would be different if Fatima were swimming too, but she’s not – it will be me and Thea and Kate, both of them as slim and lithe as seventeen years ago. But I know I won’t get out of it, not without a ribbing from Thea. And besides, there’s part of me that wants to. It’s not just the stickiness of the hair against my neck, and the way my dress is clinging to the perspiration on my back. It’s more than that. We are here, all of us. There’s part of me that wants to relive that.
I take a towel and walk outside into the darkness. I never had the courage to go in first, when we were teenagers. I don’t know why not – some strange superstition, a fear of what might be lurking in the waters. If the others were there, I would be safe. It was always Kate or Thea who led the charge, usually running off the jetty with a shriek to dive-bomb into the centre of the Reach, where the current ran fast. Now, I am too cowardly not to go first.
My dress is soft, stretchy cotton and I peel it off in a single movement and drop it to one side, unhook my bra,
and step out of my knickers. Then I draw a breath, and lower myself into the water – quickly, before the others have time to come out and see my soft nakedness.
‘Whoa, Isa’s gone in!’ I hear from inside, as I surface, spluttering with the cold. The night is warm, sweaty even, but the tide is high and the Reach is salt water, straight from the Channel.
Thea strolls out onto the jetty as I tread water, gasping as my skin acclimatises. She is naked, and I see for the first time that her body has changed too, as drastically as mine in some ways. She was always thin, but now she must be close to anorexia, her stomach hollow, her breasts shallow saucers against visible ribs. One thing has not changed though – her complete unselfconsciousness as she saunters to the very edge of the platform, the lamplight casting a tall slim shadow over the waters. Thea has never been ashamed of nakedness.
‘Out of my way, bitches,’ she says, and then she dives, a perfect dive, long and shallow. It’s also suicidally stupid. The Reach is not that deep, and is full of obstructions – pikes in the riverbed, the vestige of old jetties and mooring posts, lobster pots, junk washed downstream by the current, sandbanks that shift and change with the tides and the passing years. She could easily have broken her neck, and on the jetty I see Kate wince with horror, and put her hands to her mouth – but then Thea surfaces, shaking the water off her hair like a dog.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she calls to Kate, who lets out a long slow breath of relief.
‘You idiot,’ she says, something close to anger in her voice. ‘There’s a sandbank in the middle there, you could have killed yourself.’
‘But I didn’t,’ Thea says. She is panting with the cold, her eyes bright. Her arm, as she raises it from the water to beckon to Kate, is rough with goosebumps. ‘Come on, get in the sea, woman.’
Kate hesitates … and for a minute, I think perhaps I know what she is thinking. There is a picture in my mind’s eye … a shallow pit, filling up with water, the sandy sides crumbling away … Then she straightens her spine, an unconscious defiance in every bone.