by Sara Barnard
Anyway, that was it with Connor today. I didn’t even tell him about Bonnie. I must have left his house sometime after two, come home, mooched for a bit and then decided to have the proper long shower that Carolyn ended up interrupting.
And now here I am, in my room with the police downstairs waiting for me, stepping into my jeans and deciding that, yes, I’ll carry on telling the small lie, as promised. I can’t see what difference Bonnie’s message from earlier would really make to anything, anyway, and I don’t want Carolyn getting mad at me for lying to her this morning.
Carolyn’s head appears around my bedroom door and I jump, almost tripping over my own feet.
‘Are you nearly ready?’ she asks.
‘Let me just do my hair,’ I say.
‘Eden,’ Carolyn says warningly.
The tone in her voice, together with the situation, makes me feel suddenly panicky. ‘Why do the police want to talk to me?’ I demand. ‘I don’t know where Bonnie is. I really don’t!’
‘They’re not expecting you to know,’ Carolyn replies. ‘They just want to talk to you. And anyway, if you ask me, Bonnie’s mother is the one you should be more concerned about. The woman’s practically hysterical.’
‘Why do they think I’ll know anything, though?’
‘Because you’re her best friend. God knows, if you disappeared, Bonnie is the first person I’d want to speak to.’
‘No, I mean, why are they freaking out like this? Why are the police even involved? She’s probably just off with her boyfriend somewhere.’
Carolyn lets out a little noise I can’t interpret, and I frown at her, trying to get a reading. What is going on? None of this feels right.
‘I know Bonnie’s usually Miss Responsible, or whatever,’ I add. ‘So yeah, maybe it’s a bit unusual. But not police-unusual.’
Carolyn doesn’t answer this, just glances behind her at the empty corridor and then back at me, raising her eyebrows in a silent ‘hurry up’. ‘The police are going to ask you why Bonnie has run away with Jack,’ she says.
‘Why would I know—’
‘There’s no point in wasting your breath telling me,’ Carolyn breaks in. ‘You’re just going to have to repeat yourself. So let’s go downstairs and speak to the police, OK? I’ll be right there, and you don’t need to be nervous.’
‘I’m not nervous,’ I say, surprised.
Carolyn mutters something, which I think for a second might be ‘I am’, but she’s already turning away and heading down the hall, so I follow.
There are two police officers waiting for me when we get downstairs. One is a man, grey and gruff, who does all of the talking. The other is a woman, younger than Carolyn, who takes notes in almost total silence.
‘There’s no need to be nervous,’ the man says, after we’re done with the introductions and preamble. His name is DC Delmonte, and it’s making me think of peaches. ‘All we need from you is the truth.’
‘I don’t know anything,’ I say. Actually, I’ve already said this four times. No one seems to be listening.
Matilda, Bonnie’s mother – who’s never liked me, by the way – let’s out a loud ‘hmm’.
‘I don’t!’ I insist.
‘Just tell us what you do know,’ DC Delmonte says. ‘Even the things that may seem . . . insignificant. When did Bonnie meet Jack?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say.
‘Well, how long have they been in a relationship?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say.
‘Did Bonnie ask for your assistance in keeping their relationship a secret?’
‘What? No. Why would she?’
‘Have you spoken to her today?’
‘No.’ WhatsApp messages don’t count as speaking, do they?
‘Did you speak to her yesterday?’
‘Yes. But just to talk about revision.’
‘Did you talk about Jack?’
‘No.’ Why are they so obsessed with Jack? Is this all because I mentioned his name to Carolyn this morning?
They’re all looking at me like they’re waiting for me to say something very specific, but I have no idea what it is. It’s like having an in-joke described to me by the group of people it involves in painstaking detail, and everyone’s waiting for my reaction to the punchline.
‘What the hell is going on?’ I ask finally.
‘Eden,’ Carolyn says, her voice straining with the clear effort of staying calm. ‘Do you know who Jack is?’
There’s a tense, potent silence. I can hear Bonnie’s mother’s laboured breathing, her eyes brimming and rage-filled. The policewoman has her head tilted slightly, concentration in the lines of her face, and I get the unnerving sense that she’s profiling me, or something.
‘No,’ I say, and I hear how small my voice is in the room, shrunken by adult voices, strident and loud. And, suddenly, I’m scared.
‘It’s Jack Cohn,’ Carolyn says.
‘Who?’ I ask. My brain is too frazzled, too anxious, to process the information. I don’t know anyone called Jack Cohn.
‘For God’s sake!’ Bonnie’s mother shrieks in a sudden burst of frustration, so unexpectedly that I actually jump. She takes a step towards me and I shrink back. Why is she so angry at me? I’m not the one who’s disappeared. ‘Just tell us where they are, Eden!’
And that’s the moment that Carolyn says it, and everything I thought I knew shatters. ‘Mr Cohn, Eden,’ she says. ‘Jack is Mr Cohn.’
An image pops into my head, then. Waiting in the music block for Bonnie to finish her flute lesson. Leaning against the whitewashed wall, my head resting underneath a nameplate. Mr J. Cohn: Head of Music.
Mr Cohn, Music teacher. Mr Cohn, form tutor of my little sister. Mr Cohn, full-grown adult man.
Mr Cohn, my best friend’s secret boyfriend.
Holy. Shit.
2
Just under a year ago, the summer before Year 11, Bonnie told me very seriously that she wanted to learn about alcohol, but sensibly. ‘In a safe environment,’ she said. Which turned out to mean my bedroom. She supplied the alcohol, turning up with a bag full of bottles. She’d brought vodka, gin, white wine, red wine and, bizarrely, Frangelico.
‘That’ll do,’ I said, laughing. And when I saw her face, so earnest and confused, trying to interpret my words, I laughed so hard there were tears in my eyes.
‘I wanted a cross-section of an average off-licence,’ she said. ‘Is that wrong?’
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘Not if you’re a forty-year-old woman.’ And then I laughed some more, and finally she stopped looking all saintly and confused and started laughing too.
When we got to my room, she sank to her knees on my carpet and started arranging the bottles in a little semi-circle, studying the labels as she went. ‘Did I miss some?’
‘Bon,’ I said, trying not to crack up again. ‘There’s no beer. Or cider. Or anything anyone our age would actually drink.’
‘Oh,’ Bonnie said, realization dawning on her face. ‘Oh, beer.’ She turned to look again at her arrangement of bottles. ‘Whoops.’ She actually said ‘whoops’.
And then we both laughed some more, and I went downstairs to ask Bob, my adoptive dad, if he had any beer we could borrow for an experiment, and it turned out he only had bottles of real ale, and we decided it would do. And my adoptive older sister, Valerie, home from uni for the holidays, overheard and supplied a bottle of amaretto to sample.
Bonnie, being Bonnie, had brought her notebook with her. It was a proper Moleskine one with a black leather cover, an annual Christmas present from her parents since she was old enough to write sentences. She showed me the system she’d prepared, so proud of herself, ready for her sampling. Honestly, anyone would have thought she was a professional alcohol tester, or something.
The thing was, Bonnie’s mother had a habit of picking up Bonnie’s notebook and leafing through it at will, so Bonnie was paranoid about leaving the evidence of her debauchery for her to find. Her solution, natu
rally, was me, which is why I still have the notes Bonnie made as the two of us made our way through the selection.
Ale
Note 1:
Sampled first so it doesn’t lose its fizz.
Note 2:
Eden says beer/ale doesn’t have ‘fizz’. Will look up later what it is if it’s not fizz. Bubbles? (Like Champagne?)
Volume:
4.9%
Taste:
Bitter, horrible aftertaste.
Comments:
Couldn’t drink a glass of this, eugh.
Eden says:
Get used to it.
Vodka
Volume:
37.5%
Taste:
Like nail-varnish remover.
Comments:
OMG! EUGH! WHY WOULD ANYONE DRINK THIS FOR FUN?
Eden says:
I can put Coke in it and it won’t taste so bad. Noted!
Gin
Volume:
40%
Taste:
Not as bad as the vodka.
Comments:
Kind of like sparkling water, in an alcohol-y way. Maybe this is the one for me?
Eden says:
Gin is what old women drink. ☹
White wine
Volume:
11.5%
Taste:
Kind of sour. Sour juice.
Comments:
Drinkable! (Sort of.)
Eden says:
You should have found the cheaper stuff.
Amaretto
Volume:
28%
Taste:
Strong. Almondy.
Comments:
I don’t like almonds ☹
Eden says:
We don’t want to drink what Valerie drinks, anyway.
Frangelico
Volume:
20%
Taste:
LIKE CAKE!!!!
Comments:
(1) The bottle is AMAZING. (2) IT TASTES LIKE CAKE. (3) Eden HADN’T EVEN HEARD OF IT! (4) This is it. Liqueur is the way to go.
Eden says:
Teenagers don’t drink liqueur.
I say:
They would if they’d tried Frangelico.
‘I want to be ready,’ she said, when I asked her why she felt the whole thing was necessary.
‘Ready for what?’
‘Year Eleven. Parties and stuff. I don’t want to be the girl who goes out and gets alcohol poisoning, you know?’
But I didn’t know. It wasn’t like I was planning to go and get alcohol poisoning either, but I hadn’t given much thought to my solution to that problem beyond just . . . not drinking too much. Besides, I wasn’t sure exactly how Bonnie thought her experiment would help later on, except for knowing that she hated vodka. And who needs a controlled experiment to learn that?
It was August, the height of summer, weeks before the start of the school year, and it all felt so distant to me. School seemed like a million miles away. But it was never distant for Bonnie. It was like she was one hundred per cent in it, all the time, while I had always just been waiting for it to be over.
This is what you have to get: this is Bonnie. Over-prepared to the point of ridicule, so desperate to be ready for things, to do things properly, to get it right. She’s careful. She experiments. She discusses things with me. I’m her best friend, her confidante.
Which is why none of this makes the slightest bit of sense. Bonnie’s secret boyfriend can’t really be Mr Cohn. It just can’t be. How would that even have happened? Why wouldn’t she have told me? There’s no way she could have kept something that big from me. Is there?
Bonnie had never had a boyfriend at all before last October, when she got together with Lewis Cooper. He was on the school football team and wasn’t so much the school heart-throb as the school he’ll-do. He’d had several girlfriends by the time he got to Bonnie, but she – usually so sensible – was sure this meant that he’d been ‘getting ready’ for her. She threw herself into their relationship in the same way she always threw herself into her homework and her flute practice – enthusiastically and almost obsessively. She arranged double dates with Connor and me (awkward), gave him a present for their one-month anniversary (far-too-expensive aftershave), took endless couply pictures for her Instagram (nauseating), and generally drove me crackers. (Connor and I had been together for about six months by this point, and our relationship was basically the total opposite. Like Connor, it was sweet, quiet and drama-free.)
It ended, of course. Lewis got bored and dumped Bonnie by text on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. He didn’t even give her a reason, just that ‘he wasn’t into it’, and got right on to the next girl (Sasha Chymes, Year 10). It lasted six weeks in all, but by the way Bonnie reacted you would’ve thought they’d been engaged or something. She was devastated.
‘I just wanted him to love me,’ she said, in one of her many – many – sobbing sessions in my bedroom. ‘Is that so much? Really?’
‘You’ll find someone better to love you,’ I said.
‘Who?’
‘Anyone,’ I said bluntly. As far as I was concerned, Lewis Cooper was a total waste of space, and I’d thought it even when she was besotted with him. The guy wore a visor to school, for God’s sake.
‘What if no one ever does?’
‘Of course they will, Bon.’
Maybe I should have paid more attention, I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of what she was trying to say. I just thought she was overreacting, that she was just being a bit dramatic. Uncharacteristically, sure, but hardly the first girl I knew to have freaked out over a break-up.
But maybe I should have listened more. Maybe I should have asked why she was so worried about being unwanted or unloved.
But even if I had, how could I have guessed that something like this could happen? That someone like Mr Cohn could happen?
Bonnie first mentioned ‘Jack’ about two months or so ago, if I remember right. She’d drawn one of those silly hearts on her Maths book and written Bonnie + Jack 4ever – yes, it really was that cheesy – and I’d asked who Jack was. She’d been so annoyingly vague, I’d decided not to give her the satisfaction of carrying on asking. Needless to say, I never met him, and she’d never tell me anything concrete about where they went or what they did together.
There are some things that should have been red flags. I see that now. The fact that she didn’t want to give me any actual details about Jack is the obvious one; why didn’t I think it was weird that I never saw any pictures of him? Did I really believe that ‘he didn’t have Facebook’? (Well, no. But I thought that meant he didn’t really exist, not that he was actually our teacher.) She’d been increasingly distant from me over the last few weeks leading up to our exams, but I’d put that down to stress. I’d really thought she was revising.
And as for Mr Cohn himself, well, the first thing you should know about him is that he was the cool kind of teacher. The one who called us all ‘dudes’ (as in, ‘Can you turn the volume down a notch, dudes?’) and wore hipster glasses and one of those man cardigans that you can only pull off if you’re ironic and know how to wax your hair.
I knew Mr Cohn because he was my Music teacher in Year 7 and 8. I went through a phase of having a crush on him, like all the girls at school did, because he was funny and charming and good looking, not to mention younger than most of our other teachers seemed to be. He was especially fun to crush on because he liked to tease us, acting like he was one of us, a friend, an ally, rather than just another Sir.
The truth is I’d never thought he’d given off a dodgy vibe. He was just Mr Cohn. And I had absolutely no clue – not even the tiniest inkling – that he had a thing going on with Bonnie. I could lie and say I suspected something, or that it all makes sense now, but I didn’t, and it doesn’t.
It just doesn’t make any sense at all.
3
I get a grilling from the police, Bonnie’s mother and C
arolyn for another twenty minutes after the Mr Cohn revelation, even though I’m too dumbstruck to make much sense.
‘You must know,’ Mrs Wiston-Stanley keeps saying, over and over. ‘You must know where they’ve gone.’
Carolyn is the one who finally gets them all to leave. ‘Maybe we should try this again tomorrow,’ she says. ‘When Eden’s had some time to get over the shock.’
The policewoman, who’s been saying nothing but has been taking diligent notes for the entire time we’ve all been speaking, looks at me and quirks her eyebrow a little before she leaves. I don’t know if it’s meant to reassure or unsettle me, so I’m just left confused instead. Has she seen through me? Maybe she knows. But how can she know? All they have on me is that I’m Bonnie’s best friend.
And anyway, I don’t know where they are, do I? One little text that told me she was leaving doesn’t mean anything, does it? It wouldn’t help them find her. I’m as much in the dark as they are.
‘Are you OK?’ Carolyn asks, putting an arm around my shoulder and pulling me in for a gentle squeeze.
Surprised. Confused. A little weirded out. ‘OK’ isn’t the word. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Why did they come all the way here? Just for that?’
‘I think they thought you’d know more,’ she says after a pause. ‘You were the one who mentioned a “Jack”, and even if you didn’t know exactly who that was, it was enough to send them down the right road.’ Ah. Whoops. ‘But they don’t have much to go on in terms of timing.’