by Rebecca Reid
Nancy turned the tap off and looked into the mirror. She smoothed her hair down and took a long, deep breath. ‘We can’t let her leave tonight. OK? Whatever happens, don’t let Roo take her home. We can’t risk her saying something to him, not while she’s all fired up.’
Georgia nodded. ‘She sleeps over all the time.’
‘Fine. Good. That’s something.’ Nancy reassured herself. She ran her fingers under her eyes and smiled, then she turned the gold key in the lock and opened the door. Georgia didn’t know what else to do, so she gave herself a glance in the mirror, putting her fingers through her hair and pushing at the roots, trying to recapture some volume. The bun Lila had put it in earlier had given her a headache, so she had let it down. Charlie had watched her doing it, a look in his eye that she couldn’t remember seeing for months.
Nancy was right. They needed a plan. But as she watched Nancy extend her hand to open the bathroom door, words slipped from her lips.
‘What if she’s right?’ Her voice sounded thin and stupid. But even so, she needed to ask.
‘What?’
‘About the babies.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘What if it’s why I can’t get pregnant. What if it’s why she had the miscarriage? You don’t exactly have dozens of tiny tots running around.’
Nancy gave her an incredulous look. Georgia knew how it sounded. They were adults. Sensible, educated adults. They didn’t believe in curses and magic spells. Yet Lila’s words had made her skin tingle and she didn’t know how to shake them off.
‘Lila has a baby, Georgia. Did you forget that part?’
She didn’t meet her eye.
‘How can we be “cursed” if she’s got a kid?’
Georgia stared at the floor. She couldn’t meet Nancy’s eyes, but she knew what she needed to ask. A question that didn’t belong at a dinner party.
‘Have you ever been pregnant?’
THEN
Georgia
It was hard to say how long the four girls stood on the path on the side of the mountain, waiting, not sure what they were waiting for. Sirens, Georgia supposed. It was an emergency, and when emergencies happened, there were sirens. That was how it worked. But of course, none came.
She had smashed a glass during the summer holidays. It had slipped between her fingers while she was washing up, her brothers splayed out in the telly room, watching football. It had tumbled to the floor and shattered into fragments. Georgia had stood, watching the sea of glass around her bare feet and waiting for an adult to come, someone who would know what to do. This was just like that.
It was Nancy who spoke first. Shouted, really, her voice weak against the wind.
‘We need to get down to the bottom.’
Georgia felt grateful that Nancy had decided to be in charge. Carefully she moved her foot across the path, testing it. It was slippery.
‘We should keep going. The rain is only going to get worse.’
‘Are you joking?’ came Heidi’s voice. ‘We need to call an ambulance.’
Nancy shook her head, throwing her hands up to gesture at the rain, as if it was possible Heidi hadn’t noticed. ‘We need to get back down to the bottom, then we can talk about this.’
Heidi’s face was twisted. Her complexion was always red, marred by acne, but it was even ruddier as she drew closer to Nancy, her eyes little slices in her face. Her hair was sodden, dark with the rain and matted against her forehead. ‘You know this is an emergency. Call an ambulance.’
‘I don’t have any signal,’ Georgia yelled, taken aback by Heidi’s distress. She pulled her phone out. It had been her brother’s, but she’d managed to convince him to lend it to her while he was away, so she’d finally have the same as everyone else. She wrenched it open and held it up to Heidi’s face. ‘See? Nothing! We can’t call anyone.’
‘We should go and find her then,’ called Heidi.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Nancy retorted. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ The rain was sideways now, slapping her skin, her ears. She cupped her hands over her eyes, trying to shield them from the onslaught.
‘What is wrong with you?’ Heidi shouted. ‘What the hell is wrong with you all? Lila? You’re not going to go along with this, are you?’
Georgia turned to look at Lila. Of course she was. She knew what was good for her. ‘Go along with what?’
‘We need to go down there and find her. You know we do.’
‘We can’t,’ said Lila.
Heidi was almost screaming now. ‘She fell off the side of a fucking mountain, you stupid bitches. She could be injured down there.’
Georgia watched Nancy step forward. She was so long, so elegant in her composure, it was as if the force of the wind and the water wasn’t touching her like it was touching the rest of them. It was like watching a ballet. ‘No one has signal, Heidi. Now calm down. You’re putting all of us in danger.’
The other girls stared at her dumbly.
‘There’s nothing we can do right now, Heidi,’ Nancy went on, taking another step forward. ‘What were you trying to do, bringing her up here? To be honest, it seems like, on some level, you wanted this to happen.’
Heidi’s mouth opened and closed, as if she couldn’t find words. ‘We have to go and find her,’ she repeated.
‘Sure,’ said Nancy. ‘If you want to take that risk because you feel guilty, that’s fine. But it’s dangerous, and if you fall you’ll probably smash your head open, and that won’t be any use to anyone, will it?’
‘Please don’t, Heidi,’ Lila whimpered. Very good, thought Georgia. A perfect touch.
‘We need to get down to the bottom of the mountain to be safe, we have to look after ourselves here. We’ll see if we can get signal at the campsite, and if not,’ Nancy said, ‘tomorrow morning, when it’s light, we’ll go and find Miss Brandon. She’s probably going to be fine. She might even walk round and meet us at the campsite. But we can’t put our own safety at risk,’ Nancy concluded decisively.
‘This is a load of shit. If we leave her there, she’ll die. We need to go down and get her, or we need to walk to a road and find help.’
‘What’s this, Heidi? A guilty conscience?’ asked Georgia.
Heidi’s face filled with pain. Real, animal, wounded pain. She was definitely crying now. Looking at her swollen face made Georgia feel sick. It was like driving past a truck full of piglets and knowing they were on their way to be slaughtered. Part of her wanted to step forward and wrap Heidi in her arms and tell her that it was going to be OK. The other part wanted to give her a shove and watch her fall, too. Something about her was just completely revolting. Perhaps it was the weakness of her shuddering sobs.
‘Stop crying,’ said Nancy, her voice flat. Heidi ignored her, and kept sobbing.
‘Stop crying,’ Nancy repeated. ‘We don’t have time for this. If we don’t get our shit together and get down the mountain before the path gets flooded, we’ll be stuck here all night, and I don’t know about you lot but I really don’t feel like trying to pitch a tent up here.’ Nancy was practically screaming to get her voice heard over the wind.
Heidi took a deep shuddering breath.
‘Heidi, we can talk about it later,’ Georgia said. ‘But we need to get down.’ She stooped to pick up her backpack. ‘Come on. Let’s go.’
Heidi’s feet stayed static. Georgia watched Lila cross back to her, hold out her arm and say something, something Georgia couldn’t make out. Heidi’s face softened slightly. She took Lila’s hand and, finally, began to walk.
The journey down to the bottom had been fraught. They moved slowly, clutching at each other, torches held between fingers which were solid with cold. But they had made it, and it was warmer now among the trees. Looking straight ahead, Nancy could see that the other girls had found a clearing at the base of the mountain and pitched their tents. A little part of Nancy had been frightened of what they might find when they got there. As the path had twisted she had lost her bearings
. Would they find the ground splattered with Miss Brandon’s blood? Nancy tried to wipe away the image in her mind, the picture of Miss Brandon with her limbs splayed at odd angles, whimpering for help. They had seen nothing, and Nancy was grateful for it.
‘What are you going to tell them?’ Georgia hissed. Nancy kept walking in a straight line.
‘That she fell.’
Nancy slowed slightly, allowing Georgia to catch up with her. ‘Where’s Heidi?’
‘Behind us, clinging to Lila.’
‘I don’t trust her.’
‘Of course not,’ replied Georgia. ‘We need to do something about the phones.’
‘What?’
‘The phones. Everyone will have smuggled a phone in – apart from Heidi, because she loves rules. If she gets her hands on a phone, calls someone, an ambulance, they’ll go out and find her. She might still be—’
Nancy nodded.
‘What if she is?’ Georgia said.
Nancy shrugged, the shoulders of her waterproof jacket wrinkling. Her hair, which she had tied into a bun that morning, had come loose from its tie and was sticking in wet tendrils to her neck. She walked fast, she knew she should slow down, to give Georgia, who was five inches shorter, an easier time keeping up, but it felt important to get as far away from the base of the mountain as possible. Every metre was a tiny relief.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What would happen to us?’ Georgia asked, her eyes firmly on the grey-green ground underneath her feet.
Nancy snorted. ‘I’m not exactly an expert on this,’ she replied. Why did Georgia seem to think she would have an encyclopaedic knowledge about everything – even this?
‘OK, but what do you think would happen?’ asked Georgia. Her voice was getting higher and higher with panic.
Nancy stopped and turned, looking at the figures of Lila and Heidi catching up with them. She nudged the ground with the toe of her boot. ‘I think,’ she replied, ‘that we’d be kissing goodbye to going to Oxford. Or anywhere else. Probably to A levels too. Maybe the rest of our lives.’
Georgia ran her hands through the sodden tangle of her hair. ‘You think?’
Nancy tried to smile, tried to turn her words into a joke, tried to find a tiny ounce of humour to make Georgia less afraid. ‘I’m sure we could do Open University courses from prison.’
It didn’t work.
They both knew the deal. Brandon was almost certainly dead, but if she wasn’t, a night in the elements would do it. The noise of her scream was still locked in the hollows of Nancy’s ears but it would be gone soon enough. And even if it wasn’t, no good could come from their getting into trouble for this, ruining their lives over it. And anyway, it was true. They had no phone signal. Searching for her would be dangerous. What else could they do?
They were almost at the campsite, where they would find the rest of the green team and have to guard every word they said.
‘That’s the plan?’ asked Georgia. She sounded like a lost child. Nancy’s shoulders were tight and there was a pricking in the back of her eyes. Why was it always her who had to be in charge? It wasn’t fair. But that was a stupid thing to think. It wasn’t fair, but it was reality. If she didn’t protect herself, and Georgia and Lila, no one would.
She gave Georgia a curt nod. ‘That’s the plan. Make sure Lila knows too.’
NOW
Nancy
‘Have you ever been pregnant?’
Georgia’s head was still bowed, she was pretending to fiddle with a loose thread on her dress but it was doing absolutely nothing to hide how embarrassed she was.
Telling the truth would make everything worse. Nancy knew that. It had nothing to do with any of this, of course. She’d been born like this. Nothing she could have done at any point would have made her able to have children. But Georgia was stumbling, she was going the way of Lila. Nancy wouldn’t let her fall fully. She couldn’t. There wasn’t space for both of them to fall apart.
‘Yes. Twice. I had an abortion both times.’
Something akin to relief seemed to wash over Georgia’s face. Nancy shut the door on the vision of herself lying on a cold leather chair, legs in stirrups. The consultant’s horrified face. The stupidly soft voice she had used in the consultation room afterwards.
‘You didn’t tell me,’ said Georgia. ‘I could have gone with you. When was this?’
‘Once at Oxford and once in Boston. I went on my own, it was easier that way. I don’t want to talk about it, if you don’t mind.’
She would have to note that down somewhere to make sure that she didn’t forget. It wouldn’t do for Georgia to realize later that it had been a lie and go back to her ridiculous notion that it meant something. Georgia still didn’t look happy.
‘Look, there’s nothing wrong with you. Not everyone gets pregnant straight away. A lot of my friends in Boston had to have IVF, and then they got pregnant naturally the second time. The worst thing for you is stress. If you obsess over this, it will be self-fulfilling. You’ll ruin your own chances. OK?’
Georgia nodded. ‘You’re right. They keep saying that stress is the worst. But it’s hard not to be stressed when I’m thinking about it all the time, and Charlie’s convinced that it’s his fault, even though he’s had all the tests and they’re saying it’s fine, which means it’s my fault, but they can’t find anything wrong with me either. There’s a chance that we’re just incompatible, and that would be so awful, and I know there are options like sperm donation but—’
The words coming out of Georgia were laced with pain and panic. It was unbearable. ‘George?’ Nancy said.
‘Yes?’
‘We should get back. If we’re gone for ages it’ll look strange. They’ll notice.’
As if on cue, a roar of laughter came up from the kitchen.
Georgia nodded. ‘Sorry. It’s just been a while since I had anyone to talk to about this.’
A therapist, Nancy thought. That’s who she should be talking to about this. Someone whose time she paid for. Someone who could be trusted to keep their mouth shut.
‘Let’s go. We’ll serve coffee, and then we’ll take Lila upstairs for a chat. OK?’
Georgia got up, ran her hands over her skirt and checked her reflection.
‘Yes. OK. Let’s go.’
‘Why do you always insist on going to the loo together?’ asked Roo, as Nancy bumped straight into him. She laughed. ‘You know what we’re like. We’ve got to make the most of every moment.’
Roo grinned and ran his hands over Nancy’s torso, his fingers lingering on the narrowest part of her waist, drinking it in. Nancy stiffened. Usually she’d have stepped smartly away from him, making it perfectly clear that this kind of flirty banter was unacceptable. But tonight she chose to laugh. How often did Roo do this? Was it just the girl from tennis, or were there others? An intern at the office, the occasional call girl in a hotel room? Lila had confessed once, over a long night of tequila and secrets, back before they had stopped sharing, that Roo liked things she couldn’t bring herself to do. He wanted her to hurt him, to force him to do things. Much as she tried, Lila had told Georgia, she couldn’t. It had, she said, all seemed so utterly silly. Maybe that was why Roo went elsewhere. Perhaps he couldn’t help falling into bed with women who were different from Lila, women who wanted to humiliate themselves to please him. The vision of notes being pressed into a woman’s hand in a plasticky hotel, the idea of Roo tied up under cheap lighting, made Nancy feel slightly sick. She wondered if things were as bad for Georgia, if she dutifully dressed herself in La Perla lingerie, if she made a point around his birthday to ask if there was anything he wanted that she wasn’t doing. Nancy could see Georgia fussing at the silly straps in her walk-in wardrobe, lighting hundreds of candles and practically throwing a parade just to give her husband a blow-job.
Nancy would never be like that. She would never allow sex to become a chore, or for it to be something she did exc
lusively to please her partner.
‘Watch where you put those hands, Mr Brear,’ she said to Roo, keeping the laugh in her voice.
Roo smirked. ‘Move out of the way then, I’m dying for a whazz.’
He would leave drops of piss all over Georgia’s loo seat and floor. There was no question about it. Nancy wrinkled her nose. He really was vile.
‘Let’s get a drink, Gee. See you in a moment, Roo.’ Nancy paused for a moment to adjust the dimmer switch.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Georgia.
‘It looks warmer like this,’ she replied, then, realizing she might have irritated her friend, added, ‘It’s a great colour in here.’
Georgia smiled, mollified. As she did, Nancy heard an enormous uproar from the kitchen, the sound of shattering glass and a loud, pained scream.
THEN
Lila
‘Guys,’ shouted Georgia, ‘can everyone come here please?’ Lila watched the slow surge of movement as girls came out of their tents, damp and muddy, clearly exhausted. ‘What’s going on?’ asked Katie.
‘We’ll explain in a moment,’ said Nancy.
It still felt like a bad dream. People always said that, but it really did. It was like when she had nightmares that her dad was dead, or that she was alone somewhere dark and cold, and then woke up with her neck wet with sweat. Lila couldn’t quite believe that she wasn’t about to find herself in her dorm, flooded with relief that what had happened on that mountain hadn’t been real. It was hard to believe she’d made such a fuss about sleeping there, about being separated from the others. She’d happily spend the rest of her life at Fairbridge Hall, sleeping in that same dorm, with Jenny snoring and Heidi crying, if it meant that all of this would go away.
Nancy was counting the girls, making sure that everyone was there. She was clever like that. She’d know that everyone needed to hear the exact same facts at the exact same time or there would be fifteen different stories going around by morning. Next to her, Georgia looked tired. There were violet smears underneath her eyes.