The Betrayals: The Richard & Judy Book Club pick 2017

by Fiona Neill

  The facts were these: instead of going straight to the party Daisy and her friends took a detour via the park to meet other students from their year – four boys and three girls or five girls and two boys depending on whose account you believed.

  They goaded one another into the darkest recesses of the park to mine the Halloween mood, drinking bottles of Baileys, vodka and sambuca pilfered from unwitting parents or bought by obliging older siblings, including Rex. The evidence for this was found the following day when Lisa went to search for Ava’s lost mobile phone.

  Lal decided it would be really funny to hide in the small copse of trees and jump out to spook unsuspecting strangers who were unlucky enough to be passing by on a late-night jog or dog walk. But no one appeared. Molly later recounted how they hung around the park for a further half an hour until Ava gave the signal and one by one they all crept away in silence until only Daisy was left.

  Ava later insisted they hadn’t intended to abandon Daisy and had simply forgotten to warn her they were leaving. ‘Everything was spontaneous,’ she kept insisting. She even tried to convince Mr McPherson, the headmaster, that Daisy was the one who had come up with the idea to go to the park in the first place. Her version of events was contradicted by one of the Draculas, who let slip that they had all regrouped outside Nando’s as part of a plan formulated on their Facebook group earlier in the week.

  I could see the temptations of such a trick and understood how their stupid teenage brains might find it irresistibly hilarious. But the way Daisy was selected as the victim showed a degree of premeditated psychology that made me certain that Ava had singled her out. I couldn’t believe how she could be so cruel and never fully understood her motivation.

  It still makes me weep to imagine how Daisy felt at the exact moment when she realized she had been abandoned, although at least she didn’t know the extent of their betrayal until later that night when Molly told her it was a set-up. The alcohol might have diluted her fear on finding herself completely alone but it also undermined her sense of direction and she wandered around the park for about an hour until she eventually found her way back to the main path.

  Sadness, fear, desperation and rage are the basic ingredients of courage and I like to think it was the melding of these emotions that shaped her decision to go to the party at school rather than return home. Although of course other people, including her head teacher, suspected her motivation was revenge. I can understand why people came to that conclusion, especially given what followed.

  It wasn’t late when Lisa called. Nick was watching Top Gear with Max and I was upstairs cleaning up teenage mess in the bathroom, scrubbing green make-up from the tiles around the basin, collecting bits of tissue smeared with eyeliner and shoving rejected Halloween costumes back into the cupboard. I assumed Lisa was phoning about Barney. A couple of weeks earlier, Nick had to go round to their house in the pouring rain to help carry him upstairs to his room. And once, after he had tried to stop drinking for two days, I had taken him to A&E because he was having hallucinations.

  ‘Ava’s gone missing,’ said Lisa before I had even spoken.

  ‘They’re at the party,’ I said. ‘They went hours ago.’

  ‘She’s disappeared. The head of year called me. She’s been lost for a couple of hours but her friends didn’t want to say anything until they were sure they couldn’t find her.’ Her voice was all staccato.

  ‘Have you spoken to Daisy?’

  ‘Her phone goes straight to voicemail. Will you come with me? Please. I can’t bring Barney. He’s a total mess.’

  By the time we got to school, the teachers had called an early halt to the party and switched on the playground lights, spotlighting the cheap decorations: the fake cobwebs, the plastic rats and spiders, and the hastily carved pumpkins with candles already burnt to the wick. Students and teachers dressed in Halloween outfits milled around, the light from their mobile phones flickering in the semi-dark like fireflies.

  They searched for Ava haphazardly, focusing on the tight alleyways between buildings one minute and scrabbling beneath shrubs in the flower beds that lined the school perimeter the next. Lisa added her voice to those calling her name in the playground. During the car journey she had smouldered with rage over Ava’s selfishness and irresponsibility, expecting her to turn up in a drunken stupor before we even arrived. But now she sounded scared.

  ‘Have you tried her phone again?’ I asked, as we walked across the yard.

  ‘It goes straight to voicemail.’

  The assembly hall glowed orange in the distance. All the lights had been switched on and inside it was as bright as an operating theatre. I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the glare. A few students drifted around in wilted costumes. There were a couple of skeletons, a pumpkin and too many Grim Reapers to count. They were all unrecognizable. I spotted one of the Draculas, the one who had waited for Daisy, identifiable by his flat, wide nose and flared nostrils. The fake blood was now smeared across his upper lip like a moustache.

  ‘Lal?’ I said, waving my hand in recognition, but he swiftly looked away.

  ‘Have you seen Ava?’ Lisa asked him as we drew closer.

  ‘The last time I saw her she was with Daisy. But that was a while ago. I told Mr McPherson.’ He sounded defensive rather than worried.

  ‘Where’s Daisy?’ I asked.

  He shrugged and gave a quick, tight smile. ‘Sorry. Don’t know. I haven’t spoken to her since the park.’

  That was the first mention of the park. I nudged Lisa but she had spotted Molly talking to Mr McPherson, who looked genuinely sinister in his Joker costume. Molly’s wings appeared to be vibrating gently, as if she was preparing to fly, but as we got closer I realized that she was trembling. Another teacher who I didn’t recognize wrapped a rug around her shoulders and gave her a bottle of water, which she swallowed in deep gulps.

  ‘Everything got out of hand,’ she said drowsily.

  Lal shot her a warning glance and pulled his fangs out of his mouth. He ducked down beside her and gently held her cheeks between his palms as if comforting a small child.

  She leant in towards him.

  ‘It’s all cool, Molly, it’s all cool. Everyone is cool.’

  ‘There are no insignificant psychedelic experiences, Lal,’ sighed Molly.

  ‘Shut the fuck up, Molly,’ Lal said quietly.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said the teacher. She looked almost as young as her students. ‘Everyone was having such a good time. They were all dancing and hugging each other.’

  Mr McPherson removed the fake axe from her head and instructed the teacher to go back outside into the yard to tell students to look under the prefab Modern Languages buildings in case Ava had crawled underneath.

  ‘Lal, you go with Miss Matthews,’ he instructed.

  Lal reluctantly left with the teacher. As he reached the door he turned to Molly and pressed his fingers to his lips.

  Still holding the axe, Mr McPherson turned back to Molly. ‘You need to tell us everything,’ he said fiercely, squatting down beside her. ‘And you need to tell us fast. If anything happens to Ava you’ll have to live with that for the rest of your life. Do I make myself clear? This is one of those times when you need to make the right choice.’

  ‘Please, Molly,’ Lisa begged. ‘No one will be angry with you. We just need to find her.’

  ‘My head hurts so much,’ Molly said slowly. ‘It feels like it’s going to burst.’

  I noticed the muscle above her right eye was twitching and a pulse throbbing in her temple. When she spoke it sounded as though her tongue was too big for her mouth.

  ‘Look at me, Molly,’ I instructed.

  Her pupils were fully dilated.

  ‘Have you taken something?’

  ‘I don’t know anything.’

  It was at this moment that I spotted Daisy coming down the steps into the hall. Her costume was badly ripped around the hem and both her knees were grazed and bleeding. But as she
walked towards us in her bare feet I could tell that she was completely sober. I felt proud of her for staying out of trouble. I stood up.

  ‘What are you doing here, Mum?’ she asked. She sounded exhausted. ‘Can we go home, please?’

  ‘No one’s going anywhere until we’ve found Ava,’ said Mr McPherson firmly. ‘Can you remember when you last saw her, Daisy?’

  When Molly spotted Daisy, she pulled herself on to her feet and staggered unsteadily towards her. Daisy shrank back against me. Molly put out her arms to hug her but missed and concertinaed into a heap on the floor.

  ‘I’m sorry, Daisy,’ she said.

  Daisy didn’t say anything.

  ‘It wasn’t my idea.’

  ‘Was it Ava’s?’ asked Daisy.

  Molly looked up at her and nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘Do you think she fell off?’ Molly asked Daisy.

  ‘Fell off what?’ asked Lisa, putting her hands on Molly’s shoulders and shaking her like a rag doll.

  ‘The roof,’ said Molly dreamily. ‘We were all on the roof.’

  ‘What in God’s name were you doing up there?’ asked Mr McPherson angrily. All the wrinkles on his forehead converged into a single expression of anxiety.

  ‘Chilling,’ whispered Molly.

  I saw her stomach lurch. She leant forward slightly and projectile vomited on to the floor. Eyes watering, she stared at the pool of sick in wonder. Mr McPherson started running, pulling off his green Joker wig and throwing it to the floor. Lisa and I struggled to keep up with him as he headed into the main school building and leapt up the old stone stairs two at a time.

  By the time we reached the fourth floor I felt as though my heart was going to burst through my chest. Daisy was right. I really was unfit. We followed him into a classroom with long benches and metal taps where Bunsen burners could be attached. In the far corner by the window I spotted a metal ladder that led up to an open trapdoor on to the roof. Mr McPherson went up first while Lisa held the ladder steady. I followed behind. It was pitch dark on the flat lead roof.

  We could smell Ava before we could see her. The gut-wrenching smell of vomit and shit and urine made us all clasp our hands to our mouths simultaneously. Mr McPherson got out his phone and lit a tentative path towards the stench.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Lisa repeatedly.

  We found her on the far edge of the roof, on the side that faced the playground. She was motionless and face down in a pool of sick, her wings flapping in the breeze. It was a long time since I had done shifts in A&E but all the old instincts kicked in.

  ‘We need to turn her over to clear her airways,’ I instructed Lisa and Mr McPherson. I saw him hesitate for a second and nodded to give him encouragement like I did with my junior doctors, when they were unsure how to react.

  He shifted closer and retched.

  ‘Breathe through your mouth,’ I said.

  We gently rolled Ava on to her side. Lisa whispered her name, over and over again, like a prayer.

  I tilted her chin back and spoke to her. ‘Ava, Ava, can you hear me?’ I pulled up her eyelids but couldn’t assess her pupils because they had rolled to the back of her head. She was completely unconscious. I put my hand on her chest. Her breathing was very shallow and when I measured her pulse it was dangerously low. Severe respiratory depression. Her body started shaking and white foam dribbled out of the side of her mouth.

  ‘She’s fitting,’ I shouted. ‘We need an ambulance right away.’

  I heard Lisa scream. It was so piercing that everyone in the playground turned to face the roof in frozen silence.

  I was in the middle of my afternoon outpatients’ clinic on Monday afternoon when Mr McPherson called. It had been a particularly gruelling session. I had seen a pregnant 27-year-old woman with an aggressive invasive ductal angiosarcoma in her left breast. We needed to discuss whether to go ahead with an immediate partial mastectomy, given the risks of general anaesthesia to the six-month-old foetus. I had to explain that while chemotherapy was the best course of treatment, it increased the risks of growth problems and premature birth. The more I spoke, the closer her husband moved his chair towards her until his body almost eclipsed hers, as if by shielding his wife from the words coming out of my mouth he could save her from the illness itself. My job can be stressful, but it is nothing compared to what my patients go through.

  I called Lisa to get an update in between patients. Ava had regained consciousness. She had amnesia and couldn’t remember anything from when they all climbed out on to the roof. Her last memory was Daisy sharing a bottle of water with her.

  ‘Thanks so much, Rosie. And I’m sorry. For everything.’

  My next patient, a glamorous grandmother who always lied to me about her age, had failed to turn up for her first round of chemotherapy a couple of weeks earlier. She confessed to me that she had kept her diagnosis secret from her entire family, including her husband, and had no plans to follow our advice.

  I allowed my junior doctor to intervene to explain the benefits of treatment but the more he tried to convince her, the more stubborn she became. She didn’t want to lose her hair and eyebrows. He told her there were ways of avoiding this. But she insisted she wanted her family to remember her the way she was now.

  Then came the phone call from school. I glanced at my list and happily handed over Mrs K. to my team. She was a notoriously difficult woman who we took it in turns to see, because she regularly accused us of conspiring to give her second-rate care when in reality she was fortunate enough to be on an incredibly expensive and ground-breaking treatment.

  I had complacently assumed that Mr McPherson would be phoning to say thank you for my quick thinking on Saturday night. But instead he asked Nick and me to come to school that same afternoon for an urgent meeting. I explained that Nick was at a conference out of town and wouldn’t be able to make it.

  ‘Could we come tomorrow instead?’

  ‘This needs to be dealt with immediately,’ he said.

  His tone was stern, a mark of how seriously he took the evidence of Ava bullying Daisy, I concluded, relieved that the school was going to deal with the issue without our prompting, although I felt bad for heaping another problem on to Lisa’s plate. Even when Daisy was waiting for us in his office when I got there, I had no inkling of what was to come. Her face was pale and expressionless. She managed a quick, nervous smile and then looked down at the floor again.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Daisy’s teachers, Mrs Rankin, and they tell me that she’s been failing to finish class assignments and falling behind with homework,’ said Mr McPherson. ‘They also said no one wants to sit next to her because she fidgets all the time. Is that right, Daisy?’ He glanced up from his notes to look at her.

  ‘If they say so,’ Daisy shrugged.

  ‘But she’s up in her room working all the time,’ I said, puzzled over the contradiction although I recognized the description. ‘It makes no sense.’

  ‘Then perhaps this will,’ he said, handing me a piece of paper. ‘We’ve had Ava’s toxicology report from the hospital. A group of our students took a drug called GHB. Liquid Ecstasy. It’s a legal high. People take it before they go clubbing.’

  He said the words unnaturally, as if he was speaking a language he didn’t understand, and I guessed he wanted me to translate. Pharmacology had always been one of my favourite subjects. I glanced over it. Gamma Hydroxybutyric Acid.

  ‘It’s the active ingredient in a drug that’s sometimes prescribed for people with narcolepsy,’ I explained. ‘It’s an illness where people fall asleep all the time.’

  He looked puzzled. I continued, secure in my ability to explain complex issues in easily digestible nuggets.

  ‘But if you combine it with alcohol and take a high enough dose it can be fatal. The whole body shuts down. It causes loss of muscle control. Hence the evacuation from every orifice.’ I paused to allow him to catch up. ‘She’s lucky to be alive.’

  He rested his arms on his desk and leant
towards me. ‘Mrs Rankin, Daisy was the one who brought the drug to school but she refuses to tell us where she got it and whether she’s taken it before. I know you’re a medic and I wanted to make sure that there’s no way she’s stealing it from your workplace. Perhaps this is why her school work is suffering?’

  He kept speaking because I could see his mouth open and shut but I couldn’t hear his words. Everyone in the room fragmented as if I was looking through a kaleidoscope. On the right was Daisy, sitting stiffly, jaw set, eyes closed, tapping her foot on the ground and muttering. On my left, where Nick should have been sitting, was a shiny filing cabinet with papers piled on top and a photo in a silver frame of the headmaster with his wife and two daughters. In the centre was Mr McPherson, sitting behind his desk, shirtsleeves rolled up, making accusations that could end my career and leave my daughter with a criminal record. But I couldn’t get these scenes to coalesce before me.

  ‘Mum had nothing to do with this,’ said Daisy, breaking the heavy silence.

  I turned to her in confusion. ‘You had nothing to do with this,’ I said firmly, convinced that she was trying to cover up for Ava. I turned to Mr McPherson. ‘Where Ava leads, Daisy follows. That’s the way it’s always been.’

  ‘It was sent to our house and I brought it to the park,’ said Daisy. ‘I didn’t even take it.’

  ‘Why did they send it to you?’ Mr McPherson asked, but I already knew the answer to that question.

  She did it to ingratiate herself with Ava and her friends.

  ‘Lal organized it all. He’d done it before. I wanted to help him.’

  ‘Where did Lal get it?’ Mr McPherson asked.

  Daisy looked down at her foot as it beat out patterns on the floor. I noticed how she tapped three times on the ball of her foot and then three times on the heel.

  ‘Somewhere on the Internet,’ said Daisy quietly. ‘He paid. But I agreed it could be sent to us because his parents were suspicious about all the parcels that kept arriving for him.’