‘What are you doing here?’ said Lara in dismay as she opened the door.
‘Why should you have all the fun?’ laughed Gabrielle as she kissed her on the cheek. ‘I want you to introduce me to some good-looking guys – and they’ve got to be rich and eligible too.’
Just when I thought I had got away from her, thought Lara. Here she comes again, barging her way into my life…
*
When Lara had gone down for breakfast on the Friday morning of Freshers’ Week, she had found an invitation sticking out of her pigeonhole.
The rowers of the Oriel College Men’s First Eight cordially invite you to Champagne and Dancing at the Oriel College Freshers ’97 Welcome Bop this Saturday 18 October from 8 ‘til early. Venue: MacGregor Room, Third Quad, Oriel College. Dress: Sexy but smart. No plus ones.
Gabrielle spotted the invitation on Lara’s desk the minute she barged through the doorway just before dinner on the Friday evening.
‘Wow! This looks just the thing,’ she said.
Lara groaned.
‘There’s no way I’m going to that. No one else seems to have been invited from my college and I don’t know anyone at Oriel.’
‘Oh, don’t be such a bore,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Live dangerously for once in your life!’
‘Anyway, I’m partied out,’ said Lara ‘I’ve been out ’til the early hours every night this week. I’m shattered.’
Gabrielle took the invitation and put it in the back pocket of her jeans.
‘Well, if you’re not going, I will. It sounds intriguing. I’m going to enjoy myself. There are bound to be some fit and lusty hunks among the rowers.’
She put on Lara’s new lipstick and tried out a few poses in the mirror above Lara’s desk.
‘And, if you don’t know anyone there, then no-one’s even going to notice if I turn up instead. I’ll just introduce myself as you.’
Gabrielle went through Lara’s clothes.
‘You must have something I can wear? Surely you didn’t just bring T-shirts and jeans.’
Lara watched her, seething silently.
‘I’ve worn most of my dresses already this week. We’ve had so many freshers’ events. They’re in the wash.’
‘How about this one?’ said Gabrielle, pulling a hanger out of the wardrobe and ripping the plastic cover away from a red silk evening gown. This would do. I’m sure it would suit me. What do you think?’
Lara yanked the dress away from her.
‘I’ve never even worn that yet,’ she said. ‘You know very well it was my going away present. I’m saving it for the college Christmas Ball.’
But Gabrielle wasn’t even listening. She was pulling off her jeans.
‘Zip me up, please,’ she said looking at herself in the mirror. She seemed very pleased with what she saw. She turned and looked over her shoulder to admire the back view.
‘Yes, this is perfect. Thank you so much, darling.’ She clapped her hands. ‘I’m so excited. I can’t wait!’
*
‘You missed an amazing party,’ said Gabrielle as the girls sat down for brunch in Queen’s Lane Coffee House on the Sunday morning. The champagne had flowed, the setting was magical and what the Oriel men lacked in conversational skills, they made up for in stamina. Lara winced as Gabrielle boasted loudly of her conquests. She had defied the odds, and by the end of the night, in her own words, ‘I got off with the three most attractive guys in the Eight – the number three, the number seven and the stroke.’
‘I know you’re an incurable flirt and a sex maniac,’ said Lara ‘but did you have to do it in my name?’
Lara was hacked off. She’d woken that morning to find Gabrielle sprawled naked on her sofa. Her red silk dress was in a heap on the floor covered in grass stains and ripped at the back where Gabrielle had put a stiletto heel through the hem.
‘Don’t be such a prude,’ said Gabrielle. ‘I was just beating them at their own game.’
Gabrielle spread butter thickly on the toast and took a large bite.
‘I found out the big mystery. The cox cracked after his fourth glass of champagne - he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Just listen to this, it’s brilliant…’
And so Gabrielle recounted the explanation for the mysterious invitation that had appeared in Lara’s pigeonhole. The cox had boasted that it was traditional for the rowers in the Men’s First Eight at Oriel College (one of the last remaining all-male bastions in Oxford) to mark their rite of passage to the heady status of Second Years (after their triumphs in Eights’ Week and the rigours of sexual abstinence in the long vac), by ‘welcoming’ the new intake of female freshers to the university. This year’s heroic campaign had been devised by the current president of the Boat Club (whose rowing position was number three – the powerhouse in the boat) and ‘the adorable Stroke’, over eight pints and six games of darts in the Oriel beer cellar. Their plan required each of the rowers in the Men’s First Eight (plus the cox), to divide up the thirty-eight or so Oxford colleges between themselves, cycle round to the Porters’ Lodge of each, pick out the most attractive female fresher from the undergraduate headshots posted on its college noticeboard, and leave an invitation to their party in her pigeonhole.
‘Inspired, isn’t it?’ concluded Gabrielle ‘You should feel honoured. You’ve been marked out as the prettiest new girl in your college.’
‘Sexist pigs!’ said Lara, who couldn’t help feeling a twinge of jealousy for having missed out on such a lavish event. ‘I can’t believe they could be so elitist.’
‘Well, I had a fabulous time with them all,’ said Gabrielle. ‘But I must admit Stroke was something special.’
Gabrielle leant back in her chair languidly as she described in vivid detail her last conquest of the night, making love in the moonlight on the soft, wet grass of Third Quad, to the strains of Elton John drifting from an open window…
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind…
‘What’s he called?’ said Lara, cutting her reverie short.
‘God, I forgot to ask his real name!’
Gabrielle took out a cigarette and leant over to the girl sitting at the next table for a light.
‘I just called him Stroke all evening.’ She laughed.
‘Since when have you been a smoker?’ said Lara.
Gabrielle shrugged.
‘He left me the packet.’ She breathed in deeply, a dreamy smile on her face. ‘Takes me back.’
Later that day Gabrielle drove back to Chelsea.
‘Thanks for a wonderful weekend, darling,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I’ll come and see you soon.’
*
On Monday morning Lara checked her pigeonhole for post on the way to her nine o’clock lecture at the English faculty on ‘Sexual Innuendo and the Early Twentieth Century Novel, with reference to the works of D.H. Lawrence’. A single red rose was sticking out wrapped in a sheet of lined paper ripped from a notepad. She unrolled the scribbled note.
Can’t stop thinking about you. Meet me at seven o’clock tonight at the PPP. I’ll be sitting in the back row. I’m taking you to the movies! James (Stroke) x
Lara smiled as she fingered the rose.
Why not? She wrecked my dress, she used me, she trashed my reputation, she stole my identity… If this guy’s all she’s cracked him up to be, I think I might just enjoy a night at the movies with James.
*
The film had already started when Lara sat down in the dark on the back row of the Penultimate Picture Palace. The cinema was generally packed with students at weekends but on this Monday evening it was almost empty. The place smelt of stale cigarettes and she gagged as her fingers brushed against dried-up chewing gum stuck in the dark red fabric of the armrest. She’d arrived ten minutes late for their date but still he wasn’t there. She sat looking at the screen in silence for a few seconds. Regretting her boldness, she was too distracted to read the subtitles and could make no sense of the bla
ck-and-white sequences flashing up in front of her eyes. But just as she was about to get up and flee, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
‘You told me you love French cinema.’ He sat down beside her. Even in the shadows, when James smiled she understood immediately why Gabrielle had been so smitten.
She looked down. He’d placed a white rose on her lap.
‘I’m sorry I was such a brute the other night,’ he whispered. ‘My behaviour was unforgiveable. I was so completely out of it. But I promise I’ll behave like a perfect gentleman if you give me another chance.’
Less than half an hour later they abandoned the film and retreated to the bar for a drink. She followed him to a corner table.
‘You’re even more beautiful than I remember, whispered James as he handed her a gin and tonic.
‘Did I really tell you I was passionate about French cinema?’ said Lara, changing the subject. ‘That’s so pretentious. And it’s such a lie. I must have been trying to impress you.’
He laughed. ‘I don’t think you’d want me to repeat all the other things you told me you were passionate about,’ said James pointedly. ‘Though to be honest, the whole night is a bit of a blur. I dread to think of some of the crazy things I must have said to you!’ He looked genuinely embarrassed.
She ran her finger round the rim of the glass and then sipped her drink.
‘Tell me about you,’ she said, to fill the silence. ‘What are you passionate about?’
‘Well, apart from you, of course,’ he said, looking straight at her, ‘I enjoy lots of things –rowing, cricket, classic British cars. But there’s only one thing I’m really passionate about – my studies.’
He lit a cigarette.
‘I probably never got around to telling you, but I’m reading Medicine. Once I qualify, I want to go into medical research.’
His eyes were earnest and intense, pupils dilated. She couldn’t tell if this was all part of his chat-up routine – but it was working.
‘I know it’s a cliché but I want to make a difference, to discover something new that will help us to live longer and better.’
He took a long draw on his cigarette and gazed up at the wisps of smoke.
‘That’s really cool,’ said Lara. ‘It must be great to be so certain, to have such a clear vocation.’ She hated how cringey she sounded. ‘I haven’t got a clue what I’m going to do after I get my English degree.’ She picked up the white rose and began absently to pull off the petals.
‘My big brother died of a rare form of bone cancer just before his seventeenth birthday,’ said James. ‘I idolised him.’
His tone was matter of fact.
She put down the rose and touched his arm.
‘It left me feeling so angry and helpless. I don’t ever want to feel that way again…’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lara. She could think of nothing else to say.
‘No, no I’m sorry,’ said James. ‘Stupid of me to speak of it on our first real date. I didn’t mean to put a downer on things and make you feel awkward.’
He exhaled slowly.
‘But… how can you?’ said Lara, screwing up her face as she leant away from the smoke.
‘I know… it makes no sense.’ James smiled. ‘It’s my only vice. I promise.’
He stubbed out the cigarette and leant over the table to kiss her.
‘Now it’s your turn. I want to know all about you…’
5
Scarlett
Damien drives fast, like a lunatic. He hurtles along the hairpin bends towards the marina, flooring the accelerator and pushing the chassis and suspension of the Jeep to its limits. I grip the handle to stop myself lurching from one side to the other. The music blares, turned up to full volume. Even in profile, the expression on his face looks slightly manic, and I wonder whether he could still be high on some illegal substance – probably the same thing he spiked my cocktail with yesterday! I’m sure he’s no stranger to substance abuse. After all, he’s a regular at clubs in New York where it’s easy enough to get hold of recreational drugs such as ecstasy and cocaine. And I know he’s something of a Jekyll and Hyde: absolutely charming when he wants to be but with a more sinister side to his character – egotistic and brutish – especially when he’s been on a bender. But I’ve never seen him in such a state as this.
‘Slow down. You’re going to kill us both,’ I shout. I haven’t dared to confront him about Katie’s disappearance yet. ‘I need to talk to you.’
He puts his foot down harder on the accelerator.
‘Hey. I said I’d meet Christina at twelve o’clock. I need to get back,’ I shout.
I’ve got to have it out with him. But I’m scared. He might lash out at me if I tell him what has happened. If he’s innocent, he’ll blame me. And if he’s guilty, God knows how he might react if I make my suspicions known.
‘Cool it, Scarlett! Let’s have some fun,’ he yells back. ‘It’s not often we get any time to ourselves. Christina can wait. I’ll take you for lunch at the Coco Shack down at the harbour. I left my phone there last night. I’m on my way to pick it up. They do a wicked jerk chicken.’
Before I can reply, he eases the accelerator a fraction, and keeping his right hand on the wheel, leans over and throws the other round my shoulders. Then he yanks me in close and kisses me clumsily. I taste blood as his teeth clash against my lower lip. The car swerves wildly across the road, bumping in and out of the shallow drainage ditches at each side.
‘I’ve been wanting to do that for a while,’ he says. ‘Ever since I first saw you leaning over the dishwasher in Christina’s kitchen, in fact.’ He laughs when he sees the look of disgust on my face and tilts back his head. ‘You really need to learn to let your hair down sometimes, you know, Scarlett. You’re a good-looking girl. And you’ve tits to die for! But you’re such a tight-ass!’
I’m outraged but I’m no fool. His mood is dangerous. This is not the time to fight back or to accuse him otherwise things will get out of control. I reckon I can outwit him but I’m going to have to play it smart and pretend I suspect him of nothing. First I need to make him stop before he crashes the Jeep and kills us both. As he accelerates, I shout again above the blast of reggae from the speakers.
‘Damien, for God’s sake, slow down, you’re going to crash.’ I try to hide the panic in my voice. I know that if I lose my head there’s a risk I won’t come out of this alive.
There are viewpoints all along the scenic coastal drive with space for two or three cars, picnic tables, tourist maps and spectacular views over the bay. Just after the Jeep screeches round the next bend, I spy a police car partially concealed behind some bushes, parked up facing the road. It must be one of the extra police patrols involved in the search for Katie. My spirits rise – surely Damien’s reckless driving will attract their attention and they will give chase?
A little further along the road forks. One fork is a dead end leading down to the isolated sandy cove known for its beautiful shells and gently shelving crystal clear waters where Christina and I came with Katie earlier in the week while Damien went off ‘to play golf,’ or so he claimed. The other fork continues on around the coast. I recognise this stretch of road because Christina and I returned this way by taxi with Katie after our ‘girls outing’ collecting shells. I remember that there’s a viewpoint overlooking the bay located a few metres along the fork to the dead end. The beginnings of a plan start to form in my head. If I can stall Damien, even just for a minute or two, this might be enough to allow the police to track us down.
As we approach the junction, I stick my arm out. ‘Take the left fork. Pull in at the viewpoint.’ I flash him a smile. ‘I’ll let you kiss me properly if you stop the car.’ It’s the best I can think of on the spur of the moment.
Damien yanks the wheel and turns in sharply, skidding on the loose gravel. I feel a sharp crack of pain as my forehead thumps against the steel windshield frame.
‘An offer I can’t refuse,’ he says, wit
h a sideways glance. ‘My lucky day.’ He cuts the engine and pockets the keys. He’s grinning but his tone is menacing. He takes a small package out of the glove compartment. ‘Don’t move’ he says, stumbling out of the Jeep.
I’m sufficiently streetwise to work out that he’s trying to stave off a comedown by going off to take another line of cocaine. My fingers on the handle, I hesitate. If I try to make a run for it, he’s sure to catch me. He’s got the car keys and there’s no place to hide. I know I can’t outrun him but this is my only chance to get away. I fling open the door and sprint as fast as my legs will carry me up the dirt track leading from the viewpoint back to the tarmac road. Suddenly, I hear sirens. Thank God my plan has worked. The police must have seen the Jeep careering down the road. They’re giving chase. I keep running towards the roadway screaming as loud as I can and waving my hands above my head. But the police car doesn’t slow and, gasping for breath, I watch in despair as it accelerates away in a cloud of dust in the direction of the beach.
A second later Damien is at my side.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he says. ‘Are you trying to get me arrested for drink driving? Can’t you see I’m over the limit?’
‘That’s the least of your problems,’ I say.
He takes my arm and drags me back to the Jeep. ‘Come on Scarlett.’ He opens the car door for me. ‘No more tricks, hey?’ He slams it shut, locks the car and walks away jangling the keys.
While he ambles off to relieve himself behind a boulder (or more likely, take a line and dispose of his stash), my mind goes into overdrive as I work out my next move. I wonder if my imagination is playing tricks on me? Could he really be responsible for Katie’s disappearance or am I being paranoid?
I lean over and stare into the rear-view mirror. I can’t think straight any more – he’s totally obnoxious when he’s in this state but is he really capable of something as appalling and perverted as abducting a child from a beach? Am I simply looking for someone else to blame apart from my own stupid, negligent self? Imagining the most unspeakable crimes simply to blot out the horrible reality that I’m the one responsible for Katie’s death?
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