by Alison Bruce
And what about Matt?
No, when she looked at him she recognized what other people saw when they looked at her. It was a hollowness that scared her.
She read Zoe’s ‘Okay’ and nodded to herself. This was something she had to do.
I’m not sure where to start, she told Zoe.
‘Begin with Rosie.’
Libby took a deep breath. Rosie, Rosie.
Rosie was in your year, Nathan was one year below, and then there was me, two years below him. I’m 18 now, just to save you working it out, and I’m at sixth form college. The course is a bunch of ‘A’ levels and the college propectus calls them a ‘Foundation in Accountancy’. I’d always wanted to work with small children, but I assumed I’d just leave school and get a job in an office or something.
Instead I chose this course. I gave them all the spiel but, in truth, the only reason I’m doing it is because they were the same ‘A’ levels that Rosie took. She was going to get a degree. She wanted to be a primary school teacher one day, and I bet she would have managed it.
I’m explaining it this way because it shows what Rosie and I were like; how we were similar but different. On a parallel track except I was always a little bit behind, and a little bit in her shadow.
‘But she was three years older?’
Yes, and I’m almost the same age now, but I still haven’t caught up with her in so many ways. And you’re misunderstanding me if you think I feel that’s a bad thing. I was happy in her shadow: it was always a safe and comfortable place to be.
For my entire childhood I could look up and see Rosie and Nathan. Rosie teased Nathan, and Nathan teased me; that was our pecking order. And if Nathan ever upset me, Rosie stepped in, or the other way round.
I can’t remember one single time when I didn’t have one or other of them to look after me.
Anyhow, now I feel like I need to follow in her footsteps, at least for a little while. I’m not ready to let go of her yet, so I sit in the same lectures and try my hardest to get grades as good as hers. That’s what got me through school. It’s like she’s been there before me and I can feel her looking over my shoulder. She says ‘Go on, Bibs, you can do it.’ No one calls me Bibs any more, and I wouldn’t want them to.
Then after a gap of almost twenty minutes, Libby added, Can I message you tomorrow?
‘Of course.’
TWO
What do you know about Rosie’s death?
‘Just bits and pieces – you know how fragments of information fly about.’
Can I tell you?
‘Only if you want to.’
The short version is that she went to the cinema and never came back. The short version is important to remember, because to me that’s how it happened. I was in my bedroom – my hair was three or four inches longer then, and I was straightening it. Rosie heard me swearing, came into the room and finished the section that I couldn’t reach properly.
I told her she looked nice, but I was too wrapped up in my own night out to pay her much attention; later that night, Mum and Dad asked me what she’d been wearing and I just couldn’t remember. I knew that, when she put the hair straighteners on my dressing-table, I noticed that she’d had her nails repainted a slightly metallic shade of purple.
And that’s really all I could remember. I can’t remember which cinema, which film or if she said who she was going with. I can’t remember a single word she said, just the touch of her fingers as she separated the strands of my hair, and the colour of her nails as she finished.
I tell myself that I can’t remember all those things because I never knew them, that she’d never shared the details with me. I don’t believe though that she would have ever gone to watch a film on her own. And I find it equally hard to believe that I wouldn’t have said, ‘Who are you going with?’
I went to the beauty salon a couple of weeks later and bought a bottle of that same nail polish. I’ve still got it in my drawer.
I returned home just before 1 a.m. I came back in a taxi and, as it pulled up, I noticed the lights on in our front room, with the curtains open. I could make out Mum and Dad standing apart from one another. It was only a brief glimpse but I felt uneasy and hurried inside.
Nathan was there too. You can see our kitchen as soon as you walk through the front door and he was standing by the kettle, pouring boiling water into three mugs.
‘What’s happened?’ I mouthed at him.
‘They tried to ring you because they can’t get hold of Rosie. But your phone was off.’
In that case, I reasoned, they wouldn’t get hold of me either, would they? Why were they so worried about her when they weren’t worried about me?
I can’t really remember how I felt at that moment. I think I wondered why there was this amount of fuss. Or maybe I realized something was up. Mum’s always been a bit paranoid, and Rosie had only passed her driving test a few months before.
Dad called through from the front room and asked me what Rosie had said to me about her plans for the evening. Mum snapped at him, told him to get to the point. He snapped back.
Then he turned to me and started, ‘It’s probably nothing, but . . .’
Even now those words always fill me with dread.
Rosie had told Mum that she’d be back by eleven. No biggie on its own, but Nathan had been playing an away match for the Carlton Arms pool team, and she’d promised him a lift home. Her phone kept going straight to voicemail, so he waited for her till 11.30, then rang our parents as he walked home.
Like I said, it never took much to make Mum start worrying, and this was plenty. Nathan said she’d made Dad phone the police at half-past midnight. I suppose there wasn’t much the police could say at that point, except to let us know that they’d had no incidents involving anyone called Rose, Rosie or Rosalyn, or with the surname Brett.
Straight after I got home, Mum told him to call the police again. He was kept on hold for a while, and said they were being very polite and understanding, but I could tell that they’d left him with the feeling that he was totally overreacting.
I don’t know if you remember much about my dad, but he’s a stubborn bloke, and when he makes his mind up about something, it’s really hard to get him to shift. ‘That’s enough now,’ he decided, and demanded that we all go and get some sleep.
So of course Mum started to argue with him, and he refused to budge. I looked at Nathan, and he just raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t like we hadn’t seen it all countless times before.
We left them there to wrangle, although I don’t remember hearing another sound from them.
I lay down on my bed fully dressed, and let the rest of the house think I’d gone to sleep. I heard Nathan’s door close, and imagined him in the next room, doing exactly the same. I don’t think I slept at all. Maybe it wasn’t like that, but that’s how I remember it.
If I did stay awake, it wasn’t because I was scared for Rosie. I didn’t believe for one second that I’d never see her again. It was more that I kind of felt out of kilter.
Funny phrase that: out of kilter. I don’t even know what a kilter is. And that’s the point. I knew something was up, but I didn’t have enough experience to guess . . .
Libby’s intended words had trailed off to nothing. The minutes ticked by as she tried to finish the paragraph, but didn’t think she could. For a moment she was tempted to delete the whole page, but that would amount to avoiding talking about Rosie. She could promise herself to type it again, but she knew that it wouldn’t happen.
She pressed ‘send’.
Zoe’s reply was typically short: ‘Can you tell me what happened?’
Libby gave a little smile. In Zoe’s photo she had cropped dark hair and the type of face that looked serious even in the middle of a grin. Zoe didn’t need her messages surrounded by frilly words. This was exactly the reason she had picked Zoe to talk to; with her it was okay to be blunt, which in turn took away the excuse to give up. Libby typed quickly.
Can I just say ‘multiple injuries’ and tell you the rest some other time? The press referred to it as suicide.
The police were more cautious and listed other factors: bad weather, poor visibility, heavy traffic and so on. The A14 is notorious for its high accident rate. They never found out what had really happened. At least that’s what they told us, but I have a feeling that they did know. They just couldn’t prove it, and in the end, the verdict was left open.
I couldn’t grasp it at first. It didn’t seem possible. Even at Rosie’s funeral it didn’t seem real, then finally, when I understood that she really was dead, the questions started to form in my head. Little things at first. Had she ever made it to the cinema? Which film had she seen? Who had she gone with?
I asked myself: what was it that had prompted her to drive out anywhere near the A14?
I also wondered how long it’d taken for her to die. I didn’t go to the inquest, Mum and Dad were there, but I could hardly ask them. It’s questions like that which make me worry that I have become overly morbid.
My list of questions grows, and I can’t stop it. And when I don’t have proper explanations, I start to invent the answers. It’s a bad habit and I feel like my life is only half lit now, and instead of looking to the light, I’m turning towards the darkest corners. I’ve got it into my head that there is some evil lurking just out of sight. And I’m straining to see it.
You see, I thought things couldn’t get worse, and that losing Rosie was enough.
In fact, it was enough. But what has happened since is too much.
THREE
Charlotte Stone knew the history of the Regal Cinema. She knew that it had opened in 1937 and managed to survive for sixty years, through the Second World War, a name change, and even a fire in the mid-1980s. Competition from new movie houses had come and gone, with their rise, demise and conversion into bingo halls. In the end it was the opening of the multiplex in the Grafton Complex that led it to closing its doors in 1997. However, the Regal was a survivor, and re-emerged two years later with its lower floors turned into the Regal pub, and the upper floors converted into the three-screen Arts Picture House.
Charlotte Stone loved the old building’s interior – the curved staircases and the grand Art Deco light-fittings – but most of all she loved it because it was situated slap bang in the middle of St Andrews Street, not too far from her bakery counter job at the town centre branch of Sainsbury’s, but also near the shops she liked to browse, the busiest bars and her favourite pizzeria.
She and Holly left the auditorium and returned to the bar for a post-movie drink, picking a small table halfway along the lounge, with a black-and-white poster of Vivien Leigh looking down on them. Vivien’s eyes were dark and clear, defined by perfectly separated long lashes. Charlotte looked at her friend and, despite the subdued lighting, she could clearly see dark smudges round her eyes.
‘Forgot your waterproof mascara?’ she asked.
‘It’s a good film.’
‘The Notebook’s a classic, made even better because we’re here, right?’
‘Okay, okay, I can see that watching it here has more atmosphere than seeing it on DVD. But I’d still have cried at home. I like films wherever I watch them – even on a plane I still enjoy them.’ Holly smiled. ‘I already know what you’re going to say next.’
‘What?’
‘What your dad always says.’ Holly slouched back in her chair, with her arms lying along the armrests and her fists planted squarely one on each side, “‘It’s like drinking a good beer from a plastic cup”.’
Charlotte giggled at the accuracy of the vocal impression.
As Holly’s mobile started to vibrate, she picked up her shoulder bag and reached for her phone. She glanced at the caller display. ‘Your brother.’
Charlotte stopped mid-laugh, and quickly reached forward to take the phone. ‘Matt? What’s wrong?’
Matt’s voice sounded tight. ‘I couldn’t get hold of you. Where have you been?’
‘The Picture House with Holly. I turned my phone off.’
‘You could have left it on silent, then you’d have noticed that I’d rung. You know how I start to think . . . Anyway, Holly didn’t turn hers off.’
Charlotte bit her lip and silently counted to three, hoping to calm him. ‘I expect she forgot,’ she said quietly. ‘We can’t answer phone calls in the cinema, Matt. Or text, either,’ she added, pre-empting his next reproach. ‘Have you been drinking?’
‘No.’
‘What, then?’
‘You think I can’t feel anything unless I’ve got some alcohol in me?’
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘You just more or less said it: if I’m upset, it means I must be drunk. No, I’m sober – which usually means I will do anything possible not to think about it, but it’s always there. How couldn’t it be? It takes alcohol to numb it just a little bit, and why is it so terrible if sometimes that’s what I need so that I can start to understand things.’
‘Matt, please . . .’
He was audibly crying now. ‘That’s all I want to do, just to understand a little bit, so I can move on. How am I supposed to study or plan things for the future, when there’s nothing there.’
‘Matt, listen to me—’
‘Why? Why, Charlie? You don’t know any more than me. There’s nothing you can tell me, or promise me that means . . .’ Her brother’s voice disintegrated into sobs, then silence as he disconnected the call.
Charlotte dropped Holly’s phone on to the table. ‘I need to go.’
She threw on her jacket and snatched up her bag, glancing just once in Holly’s direction. She saw her friend’s disappointed but accepting expression, and then left without another word.
Charlotte ran down the stairs and out on to the wet pavement. She’d done this before, too many times to count now, but perversely such a response felt increasingly urgent. She didn’t buy her father’s Cry wolf theory. Did that mean that, one day, there could come a point when she was the only one still listening to her brother?
She switched her mobile phone on even as she ran, then stuffed it straight back in her pocket. By the time it was ready to use, she’d be almost there.
She turned right down Emmanuel Street, raced through the bus station – and on to the open green space of Christ’s Pieces. At the far end lay some tennis courts surrounded by a high mesh fence.
Despite the coolness of the evening, she knew that’s where she’d find her brother.
He was crouching on his heels, holding on to the fence for balance. His head was bowed, and he was silent. She was aware that she’d seen her little brother almost every day since his arrival in the world a month after her own fourth birthday. She knew him better than anyone. Certainly better than their parents did, and maybe better than his best friend Nathan ever had.
He already knew she was there, but he didn’t look up.
She ran to the fence and kicked at it, about a foot above the ground. ‘Bastard.’ She kicked the fence again, causing a ripple that rattled loudly behind him. ‘Why don’t you ever think about how I’m feeling?’
Matt mumbled something but still didn’t look up.
‘Every time you do this, it scares me. Matt – listen to me. You need to get some help – more than just me, as I’m not an expert. There’ll be a student welfare officer or someone, a proper counsellor . . .’
He lifted his head. ‘Like I said, you understand. What’s the point of me speaking to some complete stranger? They can have all the qualifications, but they never met Mum, they never met Nathan.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re not listening to me, Matt. I do understand, I understand so well that, when you phone me and you sound distre
ssed, I get scared. Really scared. And when you phone and can’t get hold of me, you get scared too. We are both the same, but we’re getting out of control. We have to find a way to help each other, not make things worse.’
‘I don’t know where to begin. Do you?’
‘No, but we need to start to get over it.’
‘Like Dad, you mean?’ She heard the tightness in his voice.
Charlotte’s anger had been subsiding, but she couldn’t help reacting, and her temper surged again.
‘Because he enjoys a drink with a friend, or a night out, you think he’s happy?’
‘Happier than when she was alive.’ Matt scrambled to his feet, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a badly folded bundle of A4 printouts. ‘We need somewhere with more light.’
He led them down the narrow alleyway between the Champion of the Thames pub and kebab shop, and stopped in front of the glowing kebab-shop window. He opened out the sheets of paper and thrust them towards her.
Stress and cancer link confirmed by scientists.
She only had to look at this first heading to know that every page would offer evidence of the same theory. ‘You have to stop this, Matt. It’s no one’s fault she died. You can’t blame Dad.’
‘He gave her a hard time.’
‘No – you just thought he did.’
‘How many times did you come home from school to see she’d been crying? Or looking sick with worry? There’s nothing else that could make her that unhappy – only Dad. And if it wasn’t him, why didn’t he fix it?’
Charlotte opened her mouth to argue but Matt got in first, grabbing back the sheets of paper and waving them in her face.
‘I’ve bookmarked loads of it. It’s all over the Internet, and it wouldn’t be if it wasn’t true, would it?’
‘The Internet’s full of crap.’