by Jean Ure
“But I only told Ellie!” wailed Chloe, when we met up at break.
“You shouldn’t have told anyone,” I said.
“You didn’t say not to!”
“I shouldn’t have had to say not to. You should have known! How do you think Dee feels, everyone going round talking about her?”
“They’re not talking about her, they’re talking about her brother!”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake.” I think I actually stamped my foot. I was just so angry with her!
“Look, I’m sorry,” said Chloe. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I can’t say more than that, can I?”
“I don’t know why you ever said anything to begin with!”
“I didn’t mean to, it just kind of … slipped out. I was talking to Ellie.”
“So?”
“So – I don’t know! It just happened. So what? It’s no big deal. It’ll be in all the newspapers soon, anyway.”
“Only if they actually arrest him, which they haven’t done yet. Not as far as I know. Why did you have to go and say they’d arrested him?”
“’cos I thought they had.” Chloe said it sullenly. “I thought it was the same thing.”
“Well, it’s not! They’re just talking to him. He’s helping them. He could be innocent!”
“You said—”
“I said I’d got into his car and he’d driven me the wrong way.”
“Well, there you are! Even if he didn’t take Gayle, he tried to take you, so he’s not innocent. What I don’t understand,” said Chloe, suddenly jumping on some grievance of her own, “is why you couldn’t tell? When he offered you a lift … you’re supposed to be psychic! Why couldn’t you tell?”
I snapped, “It doesn’t work that way!”
“Seems to me it doesn’t work any way,” muttered Chloe. “First you say you’ve seen him in a car with Gayle, then you say you’re not sure, then—”
“Oh, shut up,” I said, “and don’t be stupid!”
Not very clever, I admit; but there were times when Chloe just got me so livid.
We didn’t see Dee all during break, and she kept well away from us – and from everyone else – at lunch time, too. It wasn’t till school let out at 3.30 that we came face to face. We arrived at the gates at the same moment, and couldn’t really avoid each other. Before I could say anything, Dee had put her face up close to mine and hissed, “I’ll never forgive you, Joanne Daley! Never, never, never, as long as I live!”
When I got home, I burst into tears. I hardly ever cry, I am just not a crying sort of person; but Dee was my best friend! My very best friend.
“She hates me!” I wept. “She’s never going to forgive me!”
“Oh, Jo, I’m sure she will, in time,” said Mum. “Don’t forget, this must have come as a terrible shock to her.”
“It’s Chloe’s fault,” I said. “Going and telling everyone!”
“That certainly can’t have helped,” agreed Mum.
“But I was the one who went to the police! I’m the one she hates! I don’t know how she found out it was me,” I wailed. “Why did they have to tell her?”
Mum said they might have asked her questions, trying to see if I had ever mentioned anything to her.
“I wish I’d never mentioned it to anyone,” I sobbed. “I wish I’d never gone to the police in the first place!”
“Jo, you had to,” said Mum. “You know you had to. You did the right thing.”
I may have done the right thing – but I had lost my best friend. I also had this feeling that Chloe and I wouldn’t ever get back to being close again. We’d sort of made up after our breaktime spat, but without Dee to complete the threesome, things just weren’t the same. We needed Dee to give us substance. Without her, our relationship was so flimsy I felt that sooner or later we were just going to float apart.
Chloe rang me that evening. Aggressively she said, “Look, I’m sorry. OK?”
“No,” I shouted, “it’s not OK! Think how Dee must be feeling.”
“Pity you didn’t think of that before you went to the police,” said Chloe.
We rang off in a huff, but then I thought about it, and I thought perhaps I’d been ungracious, because after all Chloe had said she was sorry, so after a bit I rang her back and said that I was sorry.
“I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
“It’s all right, it doesn’t matter now,” said Chloe. “They’ve found her! Gayle. She’s alive! It’s on the news, go and see.”
I rushed off immediately to put the television on. I was just in time to hear that “The missing teenager, Gayle Gardiner, has been found by a man out walking his dog in Tanfield Woods, only a few miles away from where she was last seen before she disappeared, over a week ago.”
At first when I heard it, my blood ran cold and I thought Chloe had got it wrong, because almost always when they say “found by someone walking their dog” they mean that a body has been found. Also, it has to be said, Chloe is not the most reliable informant. She once told me that I had got “eighty-six per cent” for a maths exam. Un-be-lieve-able! But she swore that she had seen it.
“With my own eyes! It was there … Joanne Daley, eighty-six per cent.”
Well, it turned out to be twenty-six, and ever since then I have always taken whatever she says with a large pinch of salt. So when I heard the words “a man walking his dog” my heart just went thunk, and for the first time in my life I thought I might actually be going to faint. I had to sink into a chair to stop myself from falling. I almost missed the bit that came next. Mum wasn’t there (she was in her room, doing a consultation), so I snatched up the phone and rang Chloe back and shrieked, “What did they say, what did they say? Did they say she’s all right?”
“Yes, she’s in hospital. They think she was being held prisoner and managed to escape.”
“Did anything, like – uh! You know. Happen to her?”
“Dunno,” said Chloe. “They didn’t say. They just said she’d been found.”
“So they didn’t say who’d taken her?”
“No, but if it’s him,” said Chloe, “she’ll be able to tell them.”
One part of me almost wanted it to be Paul, because then I could stop feeling guilty. If he’d really been holding Gayle against her will, not even Dee could blame me for going to the police. But there was another part of me which desperately didn’t want it to be him, because I thought that it would break Dee’s heart, and she was still my best friend even if she had stopped talking to me.
Next morning, I watched the news with Mum. By this time they had a few more details, which I think Mum would rather I hadn’t heard, and perhaps I would rather not have heard, too, but you can’t hide your head in the sand. These things happen, and it is no use going through life thinking that everything is wonderful, because lots of things just aren’t. Lots of things are horrible and frightening and make you feel sick.
“I just thank heaven she managed to get away,” said Mum. “Goodness only knows what the poor girl went through, but at any rate they’ll be able to do DNA testing, and that will put paid to all the uncertainty.”
She meant about Paul, of course. There was still this big question mark hanging over him.
“Don’t worry,” said Mum. “I’m sure it will be resolved very quickly.”
In spite of not being at all convinced that I really wanted to know, I couldn’t stop myself buying a newspaper on the way in to school and reading about what had happened to Gayle.
How she had got into a car in the car park with someone she just knew vaguely, by sight. She had “seen him around” a few times, at clubs and discos; he was “sort of” familiar. Most probably (this was what I thought when I read it) she had been in a state after her big row with Ruby, because having a row with your best friend does get you into a state, and she just hadn’t been thinking clearly.
There were some people who might say she had been stupid and old enough to know better, but I knew how easy it wa
s, even when you have been warned over and over by your mum, by your teachers, by just about everybody.
All the time that I was reading about Gayle, I kept thinking how it could have been me. It could have been me who was abducted. It could have been me who was kept prisoner. It could have been me who was assaulted. I had been lucky: Gayle hadn’t. Chloe seemed to think that she had. She pointed out that she had got away; but I remembered all the nightmares I had had after just nearly being abducted – or thinking that I was being abducted, because by now, after all this while, I felt that I could no longer be sure. Had Paul really been going to take me to the gravel pits? Or had I just imagined it? Chloe, when I told her my doubts, scoffed at the idea.
“Why did he take you down that road if he wasn’t going to the gravel pits?”
“He might just have been going the long way round,” I said.
“But why?” said Chloe. “What would be the point?”
I didn’t have any answer to that. I just knew that the panic had stayed with me for weeks, and I couldn’t help wondering how Gayle was going to cope.
Dee wasn’t in school that morning, and neither was Ellie. Even if Dee had been, I probably wouldn’t have found the courage to go and talk to her, however much I felt the need to unburden myself. To explain why I had done what I had done: to try and make her understand. In lots of ways, I am the most terrible coward. It would have shrivelled me completely if Dee had refused to listen; or worse yet, had told me that she hated me.
That evening, we heard that a twenty-three-year-old man was in police custody, charged with “the kidnapping of schoolgirl Gayle Gardiner”.
It wasn’t Paul.
“Thank goodness for that!” said Mum, when she heard the news. “Those poor parents! What they must have been through. Not to mention Gayle.”
She said that she was immensely relieved that Dee’s brother had been cleared – “but it does leave questions unanswered. We still don’t know, for instance, why he took you all the way down Gravelpit Hill.”
Of course this was true, but I almost didn’t care any more; it seemed so long ago. So much had happened since then. Now I just wanted to make things right again with Dee.
She was back in school next day, and so was Ellie. Ellie was subdued, and we were all shy of asking her how Gayle was, but we smiled at her and she managed to smile back, even if it was a bit tremulous. Dee walked round looking stiff and defiant, with her head held high. She still wasn’t speaking to us.
“I don’t know what she’s got against me,” said Chloe, sounding indignant. “I wasn’t the one that went to the police!”
I said, “No, but you were the one that blabbed to Ellie.”
“I didn’t blab.”
“You told her about Paul!”
“I didn’t tell her, it just slipped out. And anyway, how was I to know?”
I felt like slapping her. We’d already been through all this! “Know what, for goodness’ sake?”
“Know anything! I’m not a mind reader! If you don’t want people to say things then you have to tell them, not just leave them to work it out and then start snapping at them when they go and do it. Not being mind readers,” said Chloe.
“Now you’re blathering,” I said. “You’re obviously feeling guilty, so you’re blathering.”
“I don’t feel guilty! Why should I feel guilty?”
“For telling people!” I yelled.
“I didn’t tell people. I told Ellie. She was the one that told people!”
“That’s right,” I said, “blame someone else!”
“Well, it’s no use blaming me,” said Chloe. “If you hadn’t gone to the police—”
“Pardon me,” I said. “You were the one that told me to!”
“Only because you said he’d tried to abduct you. Then you went and changed your mind and said it was a mistake.”
“I never said it was a mistake! I said I couldn’t be certain!’
“Well, ho!” said Chloe. “Fancy getting someone arrested when you can’t even be certain! How’d you like to be arrested when someone couldn’t even be certain?”
Through gritted teeth I said, “He was not arrested. I told you this before! He was helping police with their enquiries.”
“Same thing,” muttered Chloe.
How many more times???
“It is not! If you’d just kept your mouth shut for once, none of this would ever have happened.”
“I’ve got as much right to talk as anyone else,” said Chloe. “And even if I hadn’t said anything to Ellie, Dee still wouldn’t be speaking to you ’cos you were the one who shopped her brother!”
This, unfortunately, was quite true. I fell silent, not knowing how to respond. I still had this feeling that I had been right and Chloe had been wrong, but you couldn’t ever discuss things sensibly with her. She was, I decided, very immature; one of those people who couldn’t take criticism. But I didn’t want to quarrel with her! I was still trying to think of some way to put an end to it – without actually saying yet again that I was sorry, since I didn’t see why I should have to – when Chloe did it for me.
“Oh, don’t let’s fight,” she begged. “It’s so horrid! I’m sorry if I told Ellie when you didn’t want me to, but I didn’t realise. I wouldn’t have done it if you’d said not to. Read my lips … I – AM – SOR – REE. Sorreeeee. Look, look!” She suddenly fell to her knees and clutched me round the legs. “I’m grovelling! Hard as I can … grovel, grovel!”
One of the best things about Chloe is that she never bears grudges – and she makes me laugh. So of course I had to say that I was sorry, too.
“I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
After that, it was easy enough to hug each other and make up; but it didn’t solve the problem of what to do about Dee. Come Monday morning, she still wasn’t talking. Chloe, who in lots of ways is braver than I am (although sometimes she is just foolhardy) actually tried speaking to her. She said, “Dee! Hi. Come and sit with us.” Dee resolutely took no notice; simply sailed straight on across the room like we didn’t even exist.
“Well, all right,” said Chloe, at breaktime, “if she doesn’t want to be friends any more we’ll just be friends with each other. We don’t need her.”
But I knew that we did; and you can’t let friendships just fizzle away to nothing without doing something to try and save them.
“We’ll have to apologise,” I said.
“To Dee?”
“Yes,” I said, “to Dee.”
“What for? What have we done?”
Oh, Chloe, I thought, don’t start that again!
“P’raps I might apologise,” said Chloe, thoughtfully, “but I don’t see why you should.” Well! Chloe is capable, at times, of really taking you by surprise. “You had to go to the police,” she said. “There wasn’t anything else you could have done.”
“No, but I didn’t have to discuss it behind her back. It was my fault,” I said. “If I hadn’t talked to you, you couldn’t have talked to Ellie, and nobody would ever have known.”
“So when shall we do it?” said Chloe. “When shall we go and grovel?”
We decided that we would grab hold of Dee at lunch time and insist that she listened to us.
“We can’t go on like this,” I said.
I said it to Dee, as well, when she tried to break away from us. “We’ve got to have things out!”
“I have nothing to say to you,” hissed Dee. “I don’t ever want to speak to you again. Either of you!”
“Oh, stop being so childish,” said Chloe.
Well! I think that really took the wind out of Dee’s sails. Chloe, of all people … telling her not to be childish! At any rate, she stopped fighting us and let us walk her round the playing field until we came to a secluded spot.
“OK,” said Chloe. “Now we’re going to grovel. I’m going to grovel for talking to Ellie when I shouldn’t have done—”
“And I’m going to grovel for discuss
ing things with Chloe when I ought to have discussed them with you,” I said.
Dee just tossed her head.
“Honestly, we’re sorry,” said Chloe.
“Fat lot of good being sorry is,” muttered Dee.
“We don’t know what else to do,” I said.
“You should have thought of that before. Paul’s had enough unhappiness in his life without you going and adding to it!”
I stammered again that I was sorry, and to my horror Dee then broke down in tears. I’d never seen her cry before; like me, she is not a crying sort of person. Chloe is what Mum calls “volatile”, she can burst into loud sobs or uncontrollable giggles at the least little thing. But Dee is always so contained.
“He was just starting to get better,” she sobbed. “He was just getting his confidence back.”
Chloe and I exchanged nervous glances. I guess we were both remembering what Chloe had said about Paul being in Arlington Park.
“It’s been terrible for him.” Dee fished a paper handkerchief out of her bag and mopped at her eyes. Between fresh bursts of tears she told us how after uni Paul had gone to work in America, and while he was there he had got married and had a little boy.
“Jimmy. He was so s-sweet!” Then two years ago Paul and his wife had come over on a visit, with Jimmy, and this appalling thing had happened. Paul’s wife and the little boy had been mown down by a hit-and-run driver. Dee said that Paul had been so traumatised that he’d had a breakdown.
“He had to go into hospital. He was there for ages. He just came out, a few months ago. He was doing so well! He was really managing to cope. And then this.” She glared at me, suddenly ferocious. “You don’t know what you’ve done to him!”
Chloe and I had been listening in a kind of stricken silence. Chloe now started shuffling her feet. It was one of those moments when you just feel like digging a hole and burying yourself. Everything which had previously seemed so strange, even sinister – Paul’s manner, his hesitancy, the way he kept smiling – as if, perhaps, to reassure himself? – were all now totally explicable. Except just for that one thing. Why had he driven me down Gravelpit Hill?