by Matthew Crow
‘Yeah,’ Donna said, taking out one of her earbuds. ‘And you’re drinking extra strength lager in a bus stop at half ten on a weekday morning. We’re fine for life-hacks, dickhead.’ The man shook his head and drained his can.
‘Bitch,’ he spat as he made his way past us.
‘Everyone’s the worst,’ Donna said, sitting down next to me.
‘Right now you’re still very much in that category as far I’m concerned.’
‘I love you,’ she said, in a dumb sing-song voice. She wasn’t fooled by my temporary bad mood.
‘Give me that,’ I said, taking the bud that hung down her shoulder and plugging it into my ear. ‘You are dead to me.’
‘The colder you are the hotter I get, baby,’ she said, bumping her weight against me gently. I bumped her back, harder, so that she flopped to one side, laughing as the headphone yanked from my ear.
‘Careful,’ I said, pulling her back up and returning the song to my ear. ‘If you must come, then you may as well make it worth my while with a soundtrack.’
‘So I’m good for something?’
‘One thing. If it wasn’t for the iPod I would have killed you in rage,’ I said, as she turned the volume up and pretended to scratch at invisible turntables.
The bus into town took a long route over a short distance. We dipped past the new-builds behind the old tennis greens and I leant my head to the window in an attempt to connote sadness and despondency. But the road was uneven and the glass vibrated with such powerful intensity that my brain felt like it was in a blender. I could feel my eyes moving in odd, panicked directions, like an old doll being dropped down some stairs. I sat up and cracked my neck, trying to ignore Donna as she glared at a toddler a couple of rows down, trying to make him cry.
‘Give it up,’ I said, as Donna turned slowly to me.
‘Are we friends again?’ she said, scrunching her bus ticket and tucking it into the neck of my top.
‘No.’
‘Good,’ she said.
‘What do you know about Dan?’ I asked abruptly.
‘Which Dan?’
‘Vesper. Daniel Vesper. Wasn’t he in Adam’s year at school?’
‘Why do you care all of a sudden?’
I shrugged and remained mute, forcing Donna to fill in the silence as she was prone to do.
‘I don’t know. I know what everybody else knows about him. That he’s best avoided.’
‘I want to know where Sarah is, and I think he has something to do with her,’ I said quietly, taking the headphone from Donna’s right ear so that she was forced to listen to me. She clicked her iPod to off and turned to me, looking concerned.
‘Everybody wants to know what happened to Sarah. Hence the police investigation and the never-ending camera crews.’
‘But what if they’re not looking in the right places?’ I asked ‘What if she was doing things that people didn’t know about?’
Donna shook her head and looked at me with a sense of imminent disappointment.
‘OK,’ she said, in the type of voice teachers use when they think you’re being unreasonable. The type of voice that warrants a swift fist to the jugular. ‘So let’s just take one step back here. You think Sarah was into secret stuff, yeah?’
‘Yes.’
‘Everybody knows that, Claudette,’ Donna said.
‘Yeah, but nobody knows exactly what. What if we could find out? What if we could save her?’
‘Then we’d be national heroes or something. But let’s be realistic, chances are that if you, a sixteen-year-old girl —’
‘Seventeen,’ I corrected her.
‘— seventeen-year-old girl,’ Donna said, rolling her eyes, ‘who spoke probably no more than a dozen words to Sarah in the entire time she knew her, has an inkling about Sarah’s misdeeds then chances are the trained detectives are one step ahead.’
I went to correct her but thought better of it. Sarah always seemed like she wanted to be kept a secret and so I’d adhered to her wishes. Since we’d become friends I had told Donna about almost every aspect of my life. She was the first person I ever confided in about my depression, and she knew that I’d lost my virginity before I’d even stepped off the bus home that afternoon. Yet Sarah was the one part that I had kept to myself. I liked to think that on those nights together Sarah had allowed herself to be more vulnerable with me than she’d ever been with anybody else. Not that I did anything particularly significant. But I was there. I’d listened. And I’d asked for nothing in return. To tell Donna, or anybody else, would have been to put a chink in Sarah’s armour – and I understood, right from the start, that Sarah’s armour was necessary to her safety.
‘But the police have to go by the book,’ I said. ‘They need search warrants. They have to do things properly. Slowly. Someone could get away.’
‘And you’re, what?’ Donna asked, as the bus pulled in to stop and opened its doors, making a plume of sweet vape smoke curl out from the driver’s cubbyhole. ‘You’re going to go rogue? Just focus on yourself for God’s sake. Let the world work itself out. When they have the answers they’ll tell us.’
‘It’s harder for me,’ I tried. ‘I feel like I have to know, I can’t explain it and I can’t let it go. It’s like I get an itch that I need to scratch.’
‘Yeah and look what happens when you scratch an itch that isn’t really there?’ Donna said angrily, taking my arm and rolling my sleeve, exposing that the scars latticing all the way up to my elbows.
‘Jesus, Donna,’ I said, pulling my sleeve back down. ‘That’s not cool.’
‘No it’s not,’ she said, sliding to the other end of the back seat. She looked furious for a moment. ‘Look, I’m not shaming you. I’m saying it because people care. No matter what you think. No matter how many dumb jokes we make about hating one another or whatever. People care and people love you and it hurts us to see you hurt yourself. Part of that is accepting that sometimes you don’t know it all. That sometimes a third party really is the best perspective on your bullshit. And another part is accepting that as much as the world affects you, you also affect it. Everything you do impacts on everybody you know. So dumb shit like this is never anything other than exhausting and avoidable. You’re setting yourself up for a fall on purpose. Just stop.’
I slid my fingers up inside of my sleeves and traced the cemented furrows and ridges that tattooed my lower arms, feeling the all-too familiar pang that came with the sensation, somewhere between regret and nostalgia.
The scars, interestingly enough, were perhaps the catalyst that led to me receiving the one and only tangible gift Sarah ever gave me.
It happened a few days after the swimming lesson, when Sasha had voiced her opinions on my scars in the changing rooms and I’d handed Sarah a stolen coat on the midnight beach. I was walking along the hallway at school one afternoon when Sarah had passed me coming the other way.
‘Watch where you’re going, tit bags,’ she said with a sneer, pushing me against a wall. I felt her slip her hand down into my satchel and deposit something inside, before strutting off to evade another lesson.
I waited until I was alone in the toilets before investigating what it was she’d left for me.
Towards the bottom of my bag, beneath the leaking pens and the crinkled pill packets, was a scrap of square-lined maths book paper, annotated in pencil and wrapped around a small, hard object.
Cheers 4 the coat, said the note. Here is something in return. Sasha is a twat. Maybe now she’ll be a bit more careful with her hot air haha
The note was scrunched around Sasha’s emergency inhaler.
I pressed the mini canister down, felt the cold spray against my fingers and smiled to myself.
‘There you go,’ I said to myself, dropping it into the toilet water, careful not to flush. ‘You want it, you fish for it.’ I scrunched the note into a ball and placed it in the torn lining of my schoolbag.
My fingers worked along the ridges and welts in the soft
of my elbow. Donna’s words stung. I hated how much truth they contained; and I hated how hard it was for me to allow that truth to stand. For all I felt I couldn’t help it, I had to push back.
‘Sorry I’m such a burden,’ I said and Donna heaved yet another sigh in my direction.
‘Oh my God you’re such a victim,’ Donna said. ‘Seriously. That shit won’t fly with me. Nobody’s criticising you for being unwell. When things get bad nobody ever thinks less of you for it. But this sort of thing? No. You do it time and time again. You latch on to some dumb idea like a rabid dog until nothing else exists. You make your whole life about one thing that deep down you know you can never control and when it doesn’t work out perfectly you just drown. It’s selfish and it’s stupid and it happens slowly enough for you to realise and stop it. So give it up, Claudette. There are people out there hunting for Sarah. You are never going to find her. And even if you did, it wouldn’t fix you.’ She pressed the bell and stood up.
‘So nothing about Dan then?’ I asked, stepping past her towards the bus exit.
‘Sometimes I wish we really were lesbians so I could break up with you,’ Donna said, leaning against me as we got off and walked towards the office block where my therapist did her umming and aaaahing.
‘You wish we were lesbians because I’m so goddamn fine.’
‘This is true,’ Donna said, wrapping her arm around my waist.
‘Don’t hate me,’ I said, leaning my head awkwardly against her shoulders as we walked towards the main entrance.
‘Don’t give me reason to then,’ Donna said, holding the door and beckoning me through with an elaborate hand gesture. ‘Dumb-dumb.’
Paula was stroking my hair as I lay on the couch that afternoon. Paula’s big thing was playing with people’s hair. She said that it was mutually therapeutic. Usually I’d have run a mile from such a harrowing interaction, but I was in a post-therapy slump and couldn’t be bothered to create my usual stink. It was just me and the sofa. That was all I could manage. I was powerless to resist Paula’s paws.
I groaned and turned round to face her, hoping that this would indicate I was very much done being used as a human doll. Far from being put off, Paula kept twirling a strand of my hair and pulled me towards her. My nose pressed against the belly of one of her wolf-patterned fleeces.
There was to be no escape. I groaned again and tried to sit up but my body felt like lead.
I was exhausted. I found almost everything tiring, but therapy took it to a whole new level. Talking about myself nonstop for an hour was draining in ways I could never quite articulate to anybody. Donna said she found talking about herself invigorating. And Paula said she’d quite like to pay someone to listen to her moan for an hour twice a week. What they really meant was that I was an ungrateful child for not relishing this blessed opportunity I’d been gifted.
‘Dead leg,’ Paula said, lifting my head and placing it on a raised cushion as she slid to the far side of the couch, rubbing her thigh back to life. ‘I’m just pleased you’re home and well. I take it now you’re up and about you’ll be joining me for the Wednesday afternoon Jazzercise class on the beach?’
‘I’d rather die,’ I mumbled, rolling over and facing the room.
‘That’s my girl,’ Paula said. ‘Nice to have the old you back. Even if your energies are all saved for plotting my destruction.’
I sat up and took a sip of water, along with one of my tablets. It caught on my tongue before sliding down to my throat in salty, scratchy slow motion and I felt my eyes rim with tears.
‘Come on,’ Paula said, catching my mood as I drew the cuff of my hoodie across my cheek. ‘Let’s say we nip out for an hour. Quick walk and a drink at the pub. My treat.’
‘I don’t want to,’ I said, sulking back into the couch.
‘Give it a go, sweetheart.’ Dad sat down next to me and put his arm around my shoulder. ‘We can come straight back if you think it’s best. May as well make the most of the offer. You know I was only ever after her money in the first place.’ He grinned as Paula gave a tut and a what is he like roll of her eyes.
‘I promise nobody will say anything while I’m there,’ Paula said, giving my hand a squeeze and standing to zip up her fleece. ‘I’ve done three karate lessons so one wrong look and they’ll be for it.’ She chopped the air with requisite sound effects.
‘Fine,’ I said, sitting up and wiping my eyes. ‘But I’m not talking and I don’t want you to talk to me either.’
‘I hope that’s a promise,’ Paula quipped, handing me my shoes from behind the door. ‘We don’t want you cramping our style.’
There was a pink limousine parked outside of the pub when we arrived.
Inside it was too full for teatime on a weekday evening and the whole room smelled of spilled beer. There was a low, constant hum of chatter that was interrupted only by the buzzing of mobile phones vibrating on the wooden table-tops.
A misshapen line of regulars sat across the length of the bar, with their backs to the room and their pants tugging low on their bodies. Lined up, their arses formed a pasty row of sad, fleshy bunting that it hurt to look at.
In the far corner, a group of slurring women wearing heels and dresses shrieked as the bride-to-be – wearing a sash and a veil – opened her hen-night presents. Slightly removed from the group, a pair of girls in golden veils and sashes that read Maid of Honour One and Maid of Honour Two were huddled around a mobile phone, as tears dragged mascara down their faces.
The bride seemed nonplussed and continued poking sex toys up towards the wide-screen television so that the Housewives’ Favourite teatime presenter was taken from every angle known to man and then some.
Dad spotted a free table, while Paula went to get the drinks. The sound of static rang from upstairs as the boys from tonight’s band tuned their amps for rehearsal, and across the other side of the bar a boy flicked peanuts into his sleeping brother’s mouth while his dad circled hopefuls in the Racing Post.
‘A pint, a Pinot and a Coke for the little lady,’ said Paula, placing the drinks down on the table and throwing a bag of salt and vinegar in my direction.
Dad took three deep gulps of lager before releasing a rewarding ‘aaaaaah’ sound as he placed his glass down onto the soggy beer mat. He and Paula made relaxed small talk as I flicked through screens on my phone, more keen to appear occupied than anything else.
The group of hens began humming along to the theme tune of the show that was ending and before long the drunker barflies began joining in too.
‘God help town tonight,’ Dad said, with a wink at Paula, who shook her head and took a prim, sensible sip of her Pinot.
The music ground to a halt and was replaced by a moment’s murmur before a loud cheer sounded out from the front of the room. The town was on TV again. The lady presenting the news that night wore a dark-purple suit that made her look like the aubergine emoji that was never really an aubergine. Behind her an old picture of the beach taken on May Day looked golden and enticing.
From behind the bar Maxine increased the volume as the cameras cut to a panning shot of the beach in real time. It was overcast and shadowy and across the bottom of the page the words Breaking News were stamped in bold letters, the way they always were on election day or when a royal baby was due.
‘Shut up,’ yelled someone from the back of the room, as even the increased volume of the television was drowned out by the excited murmurs of the afternoon drinkers.
‘There’s Dean!’ said one woman with glee as the crowd gradually subdued. People began standing up, one by one, as the cameras cut to a male reporter standing outside of the school where trails of police vans were driving through the gates with their lights flashing.
His words still couldn’t be heard exactly and more and more people were growing impatient. Dad stood up to try and get a better look. I stood between him and Paula, leaning against his shoulder as I tried to see over the thick forest of bodies towards the screen.
> It was then that the text at the bottom of the screen began moving. Suddenly the pub plunged into near silence. Body found in search for missing schoolgirl Sarah Banks. Police launch murder investigation. The camera cut back to the newsreader in the studio.
Nobody knew how to react. Dad’s hand curled around my waist and he pulled me tightly to him. He put his nose to the top of my head and breathed in deeply, as if to remind himself that at least I was still here.
Even Paula rubbed her hand gently across my back as she wiped a tear that had run down the side of her face.
Everybody glanced awkwardly at one another. Nobody wanted to be the first one to speak. Nobody wanted to establish the tone of behaviour in the face of a tragedy.
It was the sound of the bell for last orders – usually rung at quarter to eleven on the dot each night – that cut through the sharp silence of the room.
Maxine stood behind the bar as she always did. The sound of the bell dimmed to pulse as the attention of the room turned to face her.
‘Go home to your families,’ she said quietly, but in a voice that commanded respect; a voice that had stopped more fights and ejected more miscreants than most of us could comprehend. ‘We’re closing early tonight. There’ll be a collection behind the bar for flowers tomorrow.’
The back doors were opened, and we began to trickle out into the evening light.
PART THREE
To The Lighthouse
13
Somewhere They Can’t Find Me
I spent the best part of a week in bed after learning of Sarah’s death.
A small part of me had been jealous of Sarah when she was gone.
Depression made me want everything and nothing all at once, so that no matter what happened I would never be content. I’d crave company and solitude; light and dark; cold and warmth; love and hate.
Everything and nothing, always and for ever.