‘Well, it’s early days. We’re probably just overreacting.’
‘We’re not.’
‘God, Finn, don’t say that.’
‘It’s true.’
I take a tighter grip on the steering wheel.
‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ he says. I don’t want to agree with him.
It’s well and truly twilight when we pull up to the stables. I’ve had two more texts – no one’s seen Marie. I’m pretty much freaking out, and your childhood nemesis is really not the person you want to have around in that situation, because you can’t freak out in front of them, or they’ll laugh at you for the rest of your life.
‘Do you have any idea what we’re looking for?’ Finn asks me.
‘Something. Anything. I don’t know,’ I reply. The sun is nearly totally behind the mountain now and the bush surrounding the stables looks black and inky. I shiver, and it’s not because I’m cold.
We walk through the abandoned buildings. Apart from a few broken bottles, you’d never have any idea that anyone was partying here. It’s empty. I don’t know why I expected –
‘Pearl,’ Finn says. He points at a flash of colour in the grass about three metres away.
The icy grip on my heart tightens.
Cautiously, tentatively, we walk over to it. My stomach is in knots. I want Disey and Shad and I want to go home and this isn’t happening this isn’t happening this isn’t happening.
It’s a shoe. One single, red satin, high-heeled shoe.
Marie’s shoe.
The next few hours are awful.
We go to the police. They don’t want to talk to us at first, because, I mean, what kind of evidence is a shoe? But when I call Ms Rao and she comes down and tells them about how Marie hasn’t been in school all week they start taking us way more seriously. They send officers up to the stables and to her house and they keep me and Finn there in case they need to talk to us again even though I have no idea what we could possibly tell them. We’re sitting in plastic chairs, staring at the wall. I’m trying to control my breathing. In and out and in and out and in and out. They’ve called Disey and Shad and Finn’s parents, but they’re not here yet. It’s just me and Finn. And the cold, horrible truth.
Marie is missing. Marie has been missing for a week. And no one noticed.
‘Can I get you anything?’ a young policeman says, coming round the corner. ‘Glass of water, cup of tea . . .?’
I shake my head.
‘Can we leave?’ Finn asks.
‘Not yet. I need you to be a little patient.’
‘A girl’s dead and you’re asking me to be patient?’ Finn demands, rising. ‘Screw you, man. Screw this. Screw –’
‘She’s not dead!’
Silence.
‘She can’t be dead,’ I whisper.
I won’t cry. It’ll make it real if I cry.
The policeman goes, probably scared away by my emotional outburst. Finn and I sit there for another moment in silence. I’m trying not to cry but the tears are rolling down my face of their own accord, so I’m just trying not to sob now. Finn is sitting with his head almost between his knees, his feet twitching, breathing heavily through his nose, before he suddenly swears, stands and kicks his chair over.
He takes a few deep breaths. ‘Sorry,’ he says.
I don’t reply. I can’t.
‘Hey, are you all right?’ he asks, putting his hand on my shoulder.
I flinch away.
‘Sorry,’ he says again.
There’s another moment of silence before he starts pacing the length of the room. He’s swearing solidly under his breath and his hands are clenched into fists. I wonder if clenching my hands into fists and pacing would help but I don’t want to move. I’m a porcelain doll on the edge of a high shelf. A breath of wind and I am going to fall over and smash into a million little pieces.
She has to be fine, I chant in my head. She has to be fine she has to be fine she has to be fine.
I’ve been in school with Marie since kindergarten – and obviously we’ve been thrown together in all those Valentine baby things our town is weirdly obsessed with – but I didn’t know her that well until a couple of years ago. We never disliked each other or anything but we sort of ran with different crowds, so while we used to say hi in the corridors and stuff we didn’t really become friends until Cam and Annabel started dating in Year Nine and our social circles started overlapping. Then we started taking Society and Culture together this year – it’s a small class – and we bonded.
She told me about how her parents were always away – they’re big jetsetters. She loved cooking and used to cook up big gourmet feasts when they were gone. I went to a few of them – Holly-Anne and I nearly had a physical throwdown at one of them and Marie had to intercede. She had shiny hair which used to swing when she walked. She dated Julian all through Year Nine and Ten until he dumped her, so she went out with Finn on the rebound and then decided she didn’t have time for a boyfriend if she wanted to do well at school. She was pretty and clever and nice.
We have the same birthday. She has lived exactly the same amount of time that I have.
And now – and now –
Maybe she just dropped her shoe. It could happen. And she was too drunk to find it again. Maybe she’s locked up at home – asleep, because she’s sick. It’s not like I investigated her house or anything. Mountain, molehill. That has to be it. It has to be.
‘Your families are here,’ the policeman says, coming back into the room. ‘You can go –’
‘Oh, Finn!’ Finn’s mother exclaims, running to her son and throwing her arms around him. ‘Are you all right? You had me so worried –’
‘Pearlie?’ Shad says.
His voice breaks me. I run to him, wrap my arms around him, bury my face into his warm, familiar body and sob and sob and sob.
Disey gets called into work – missing girls, it turns out, are big news – so I call Phil the second I get home, because there’s no way I can be alone right now and, while Shad would gladly sit with me, I know he has a big deadline hanging over him. Besides, you can’t talk about stuff to your brother like you can to your best friend.
Phil comes over right away, because she is the best. She brings dolmades and baklava and I stuff my face as I relate the whole horrible story to her. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t pressure me to keep talking when I have to stop, nor does she ask uncomfortable questions like the police did. She doesn’t remind me of how culpable I am. She just listens.
‘Has anyone tried to contact her parents?’ she asks, when I’m done.
‘I think so, but they’re overseas somewhere.’
‘The police’ll track them down.’
‘I hope so.’
‘It’s a bit strange that her parents didn’t pick up that she wasn’t home – I mean, that they didn’t try to call her.’
‘Maybe they just did what the rest of us did – assumed there was some reasonable explanation for it.’
A silence.
‘But we’re the ones that were here with her.’ The words explode out of my mouth almost of their own volition. ‘We’re the ones that go to school with her and see her every day. We’re the ones – we’re the ones that didn’t even realise –’
‘Pearl, this is not your fault,’ Phil says firmly.
‘She’s been gone for a week and I didn’t even notice!’
‘And you’re the one person in Haylesford that was supposed to be on Marie-watch?’
‘Who else was going to notice?’
‘Why should it have been you?’
‘Why shouldn’t it have been me? I sit next to her in Society and Culture nearly every single day! And I knew she got vice-captain and I didn’t even try to tell her, and –’
‘So no one else knows Marie?’
‘Of course not, it’s just –’
‘You’re not the only one that didn’t notice, Pearl. I didn’t notice.’
‘But you�
�re not that tight with her.’
‘I still go to school with her, don’t I? None of her friends noticed. It’s not just you.’
I don’t say anything.
‘And if you try to take all the blame, I’ll take you down, understand me?’ Phil says.
That draws a smile from me, albeit a slight one. ‘I understand.’
‘I mean that,’ Phil says. ‘You can’t pull the wool over my eyes, Pearl Linford. I see straight through you. And let me tell you one thing: I promise you are not the centre of the universe, on whom all blame is to be bestowed.’
She stays until really, really late. She wants to stay the night to make sure I’m okay, but I don’t let her. I think I’m going to have to spend some solid time with my keyboard smashing out my feelings, and I’m not going to put her through that. She leaves the baklava with me – well, what remains of it, anyway – and I take it to the kitchen and eat it slowly, sipping a cup of tea and staring out the window.
It’s a quiet night. If I listen closely I can hear the water of Miller’s Creek running and gushing over the stones. The green trees are black silhouettes in the moonlight, bending and dancing in the wind. It’s an evening no different to any other July evening I’ve looked out at before. But everything is different.
Somewhere out in those dark trees is Marie. There’s no point pretending that she’s anywhere other than out there now. I stand here in the warmth with tea and pastries and the solid presence of my brother working in the next room, and she’s out there, cold and alone and frightened, or –
‘Pearlie,’ Disey says from behind me.
I turn quickly, almost spilling my tea. ‘I didn’t hear you come in,’ I say. ‘What is it?’
Because there is an it. It’s written all over her face. ‘I have some news,’ she says softly. ‘We had a call into the paper about half an hour ago. They –’ She pauses.
‘Just tell me, Disey.’ My knuckles are white as I clutch my mug.
‘They found Marie’s other shoe,’ she says.
‘Where?’
Disey closes her eyes and take a deep breath. ‘In the creek, Pearlie. They found it in the creek.’
Disey and Shad want me to stay home from both school and work, but I refuse. I’m not sure why but I feel almost compelled to keep to my normal routine. There’s no one that can cover for me at the pool anyway, and if I don’t go to school, what am I going to do? Moping around the house alone has no attraction for me. I don’t want to be by myself.
School is understandably sombre. They hold an assembly first thing explaining the situation, and Mr Day promises to pass along any news to us as it happens. ‘If any of you have seen Marie Jessup over the last week,’ he says, ‘I cannot emphasise enough how important it is that you come forward.’
But no one comes forward.
If any knowledge is imparted in class that day, I don’t take in any of it. I don’t think anyone does. Ms Rao mercifully sets us a reading class in history – no one could possibly do anything like answering a question. Actually, I’m pretty sure no one actually turns a page. I certainly don’t. I don’t think the words would even begin to make sense if I tried to read them. Even Finn is still and silent.
Is this what being in shock is like?
The only time people do actually speak is at recess and lunch – and even then, I’d say more crying is involved than actually talking. Holly-Anne works herself up into some kind of hysterical fit and has to go home. I’m pretty sure she’s putting it on to milk the tragedy for all it’s worth and then feel immediately uncharitable. She and Marie were friends longer than Marie and I.
Past tense creeps through the day like a disease.
It’s raining at lunch so we end up sitting in the library. Cardy is next to me, so close I can feel the heat radiating from his skin and smell the dampness of his shirt and I feel terrible because of the way it makes me feel. ‘I can’t believe this,’ he says. ‘It’s just – surreal.’
‘I keep thinking she’ll just come walking in,’ Tillie says. ‘Like she should push open the door and ask us what we’re all so sad about.’
‘Has anyone talked to Julian?’ Annabel asks. ‘How’s he doing?’
‘Who’s Julian again?’ Jenny asks. I feel a swell of irrational anger that she’s even here. She never even met Marie.
‘Julian – you know, tall, reddish hair, freckles?’ Annabel says. ‘He’s with Phil now, but he dated Marie for two years.’
‘Phil’s with him,’ Tillie says. ‘He’s pretty cut up. She’s looking after him.’
‘It was pretty brave of you and Finn to go out looking for Marie, Pearl,’ Cardy says.
I don’t say anything for a moment. The fluorescent lights are buzzing overhead. One is flickering. The air seems to taste almost metallic. ‘I just wanted to make sure she was all right,’ I say. ‘I didn’t even think of being brave.’
Cardy puts his arm around my shoulders and gives me a squeeze and my whole body feels warm and I feel horrible, horrible, horrible. ‘You did good, Pearlie,’ he says.
‘I just wanted to do something,’ I reply. I press my tongue to the roof of my mouth to force the tears away. ‘I didn’t want to feel like it was all my fault.’
‘Why would it be all your fault?’ Jenny asks, but I don’t get a chance to answer, because Ms Rao has come up to us, and there’s a look in her eyes that reminds me of the look Disey had when she told me about the shoe.
Oh no.
‘Could you all come down to my classroom, please?’ she says.
‘Has something happened?’ Cardy asks.
‘Just come as quickly as you can,’ Ms Rao says.
I can feel everyone exchanging horrified looks around me, but I don’t want to watch or I know I’m going to break down. Slowly, everyone stands and starts to move.
‘Do you –’ Jenny begins.
‘I’ve got it,’ Cardy says.
She leaves. I’m glad.
‘Are you all right, Pearl?’ Cardy asks me.
I bite my lip. I don’t want to move, to go and face the music. ‘Yes,’ I say.
‘Come on then, we have to go.’
He keeps his arm around me as we stand, and then as we walk down to the history classroom. It’s wrong of me to hope that this will bring us together. I know it is. If it took Marie disappearing to make Cardy realise that he belongs with me then there’ll be something fundamentally wrong with our relationship from the very beginning. But his arm is warm around me and he’s strong and there’s something about him that makes me want to cling to him and how can I even be thinking about this now?
My classmates filter into the history room in dribbles and spurts, in twos and threes and small groups. The sky is grey and ominous. So is the mood in the room. I heard in English once that when the weather matches the mood of a moment it’s called pathetic fallacy. If that’s true, then this is a literary moment.
Finn is one of the last people to come into the room and as one of the only spare seats is next to me, guess where he sits. ‘You look like hell, Linford,’ he says.
‘Finn, settle,’ Cardy says, before I can snap something back.
Finn ignores him. ‘You all right?’
I just shake my head.
Ms Rao closes the door behind the last of us. Her face is grey and drawn. ‘I’m sure you all know why we’ve gathered you here,’ she says.
The last emotion that pulses through my heart is the worst of all.
Hope.
I know exactly what Ms Rao is going to say, but for one second, I’m almost sure that this is some monstrous joke. They’ve induced the sombre mood on purpose. Ms Rao is going to open the door again and Marie is going to walk in and say ‘surprise!’ and it’ll turn out it’s some stunt for TV or something and sure it’s in terribly bad taste and there’ll certainly be a controversy but that’s all right because it’ll give Disey something to write about at work and we’ll all live happily ever after . . .
‘The police
have been searching Miller’s Creek,’ Ms Rao says, ‘and they discovered human body parts.’
Black spots dance in front of my eyes. I taste bile at the back of my throat.
‘Further tests will be needed for them to be completely sure,’ Ms Rao goes on, ‘but it is believed that they belonged to Marie.’
Blood is rushing in my ears, and it’s deafening. It’s a joke. It has to be a joke.
‘What do you mean, human body parts?’ someone asks at the back of the room.
Ms Rao takes a deep breath. ‘The police found a human heart and liver.’
The world starts spinning crazily. I gag, and I only just manage to stick my head out the window before I throw up.
Marie’s funeral is the next Friday and I can’t even explain how awful it is. I stand between Phil and Tillie in the church as some celebrant that didn’t even know Marie drones on and on about her life. The flowers on top of her coffin are bright pink and purple and I think Marie would have liked them, but I can’t stop thinking about what’s inside the coffin. It’s not Marie. It’s just . . . parts.
If they’re even in there. Does the coroner need to keep them for examination or something? I have no idea what a coroner even does, TBH.
Tillie cries silently beside me as Lili Markby (also crying) gives the eulogy. I wrap my arm around her. On my other side, Phil is being stoic as Julian grips her hand so tightly his knuckles are turning white. I take her other hand and she shoots me a grateful look.
Two pews in front of me, Holly-Anne is having a total breakdown on Finn’s shoulder. He’s whispering something in her ear and comforting her and his dark hair and her red hair are mixing together and oh God I wish I could break down right now but I can’t, I can’t.
It’s not that I haven’t tried. I must look like the most heartless bitch right now, stone-faced as everyone around me sobs. But when I stuck my head out that classroom window to throw up I think I threw up whatever the trigger for tears is, as well as everything I’d eaten in the past three days.
I feel . . . I don’t know what I feel. Disbelief, maybe. I can’t reconcile Marie who is so completely alive in all my memories of her to whatever this is. Assorted organs in a box. Marie was so much more than that, therefore this cannot be happening. Or something. I don’t know.
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