“Were the teachers there much stricter there then?”
“Yeah I guess.” I said. I made myself look at her eyes, but that was unnerving, looking into those beautiful eyes, I refocused just on her nose, though that was pretty cute too. “I went to school in the city, so you got like, troubled kids there. The teachers had to be really on it.”
“That sounds terrible.”
I shrugged. “It was OK.”
“Where was it you came from? In Australia I mean?” she asked.
“Up on the Gold Coast. Queensland.”
“I’d love to go there. I’d love to travel the world,” she said and gave this little sigh which made her nose wrinkle. I’d never been this close to her before, and I’d never had a conversation. It had never crossed my mind that as well as being crazy beautiful she was also a real person who had hopes and dreams. And for some reason that washed away my embarrassment.
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. I mean I like it here but,” she wrinkled her nose some more so I went back to staring at those eyes. You could lose yourself for ever in those eyes.
“I’d love to see the world as well.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said. I’d have agreed with anything. She could have said: “I’d love to be buried alive in a coffin with the lid screwed down” and I’d have gone along with it.
“You’ve got science now haven’t you? With me. Do you want to walk together. You could tell me about Australia.”
I don’t know what you remember about being fourteen, but at that school this sort of thing was considered fucking embarrassing. Whatever it was that was going on I mean, and it wasn’t exactly clear what that was. I couldn’t tell if she just wanted to be friends, or if we were going to start being boyfriend and girlfriend any minute. But whatever it was she was doing, she was pretty expert at it. For a few weeks after that all we did was say hi to each other sometimes when we passed in the corridors. Occasionally she’d make it so we ended up sat next to each other in class, or sharing the same table for lunch, but never just the two of us. It was like she was gradually allowing me in. If she ever heard anyone joke that she might fancy me she backed right off, but not for too long. And by gradually making it normal to include me within the people she talked to, the other kids got to the point where they accepted we were kind of friends. I guess she was pretty used to being watched and talked about. It made her sensitive to these things.
Her house was up in the village, a little way on from Darren’s, and one time after school his mum had promised me dinner and it just ended up the three of us walking together, Cara and me chatting easily. It was weird really, most of the boys couldn’t talk to her at all, but because of the way she spoke to me, I could. Even though I was as tongue tied as everyone else with most of the other pretty girls. It helped that Darren was just as embarrassed as I should have been. He just walked along a bit behind us, not saying anything. But even he couldn’t keep his eyes off this beautiful creature I was with.
“What you doing tonight?” she asked, as we stopped outside Darren’s house.
“Nothing much,” I said. And I wish I’d been a bit quicker to see where this was going.
“Me neither,” she said. And did that thing with her nose again. “My parents are out until later too.” She gave me a smile so powerful it nearly knocked me over and when I recovered the only thing I could think to say was.
“Actually I’ve got to do some homework for Mr Johnston. You know what he’s like.” And I laughed like we were sharing some secret joke that Darren wouldn’t understand. At the time I thought that was pretty clever, but she just glanced at Darren like she was frustrated he was still there. She waited a while, but in the end she shrugged her shoulders.
“OK, well, I’ll maybe see you tomorrow.” She gave me her smile again but she’d turned the power right down this time.
“Bye Jesse. Bye Darren.” And then she walked off up the hill. We both watched her until she was out of sight before stepping inside Darren’s gate and going inside his house. I didn’t enjoy Darren’s mum’s dinner that night. I was already regretting not going with Cara. I think I had a sense then I might regret not going for years to come. I still think about what a dumb fucking move it was today. It’s nice sometimes these days to worry about normal shit alongside all the other stuff.
Anyway, for the next week I kept hoping Darren’s mum would invite me round to his again after school, so I could have an excuse to walk Cara home again. Only this time I’d walk Cara all the way home first. My teenage mind played out all sorts of fantasises about what would happen next. And that’s when Darren put me straight.
We were having lunch, sitting in the school field with our backs to the fence and sandwich boxes open on our knees. I was talking about Cara. What I mean is, I was talking about her again. I think that time I was telling him how she was actually a really nice girl and all, despite being so pretty, and I guess Darren just got sick of me talking about her.
“You know she’s seeing some older guy don’t you?”
The euphoric little world I’d been constructing in my mind cracked with a jolt.
“Who Cara?” I checked. I felt like my life was on a cliff edge.
“Of course Cara. She just wants to be your friend. She doesn’t fancy you. You do know that don’t you?”
“Who says I fancy her? I just want to be her friend too.” I said, my cheeks flushing even though it was only Darren.
“Yeah right Jesse. Everyone fancies her. Just look at her.”
I’ve already said how everyone was in love with Cara, but I don’t think I’d ever connected that with me being friends with her. It hadn’t occurred to me that everyone must know that I fancied her too. But Darren had this really simple, plain-speaking way of seeing the world and you couldn’t argue with it.
“Who says she’s going out with someone?” I asked, my voice sounding strange to me.
“The whole school.”
There had been rumours about Cara spreading through the school for as long as I’d been attending there. Sometimes is was minor stuff - like a buzz of excitement that she wasn’t wearing a bra, or was going to be outside a certain classroom doing PE. Sometimes it was more major stuff, like theories about a teacher leaving because he couldn’t bear the thought of sleeping with his wife after teaching her maths, or rumours that she’d lost her virginity. So I had no trouble believing Darren that there was a rumour, but that didn’t mean it was true.
“Bollocks.”
“It’s true.”
“Alright. Who is he?”
“I dunno. I don’t know his name, apparently it’s some older guy. Probably got his own car and everything.”
I was silent.
“Lucky bastard though. Getting to shag that. Can you imagine?” Darren went on. This was a pretty funny thing to say since hardly any of us knew what it was like to shag anyone at that stage, and certainly not Darren. But that was the way we talked. Like we were at it every night.
“But how do they know?” I asked again. I could feel the panic. I was creating excuses for her in my mind, reasons why this rumour was just the latest false accusation to be thrown at poor Cara Williams. Cara who was actually secretly in love with me.
“I dunno. She tells her friends probably.”
As he said this there was a break in the greyness above our heads and a shaft of sunlight lit up the school in front of us. Somehow it brought my panic under control and I even smiled a little. I realised what was happening. It was as beautiful as it was obvious. Cara herself had started this rumour. And I knew why. She was doing what she’d done since we first talked. She was doing it because she didn’t want the whole school knowing about her true feelings for me.
That weekend there weren’t any waves, but John and Darren and me hung out together during the day anyway. Darren had given in to John’s pestering and cleaned the caravan, so we were in there again. I don’t remember us doing much, but I suggested to Darren that he come b
ack after he’d been home for his dinner and hang out some more. Darren agreed of course, but when I mentioned it to John, expecting a similar response, he got a bit vague.
“Yeah maybe,” he said at first, then seemed to make up his mind. “No actually I can’t tonight. I’m doing something.”
“What?” I asked.
“Just something.”
“Just what?” It wasn’t like I felt he had to tell me, it was more that we’d never had any reason to keep anything from each other. You either did what you wanted, or what your parents made you do, and there was no reason to keep either of those secret from mates.
“Nothing. I’ve just got a date.” You could tell he was trying really hard to say it nonchalantly, but he didn’t really manage it. Even Darren dropped the magazine he was reading in surprise.
“A date?” I asked. “With a girl?”
“Yeah. Course with a girl.”
“Who is she?”
“Just some girl.”
“From your school?” Darren interrupted and we both looked at him like he was stupid.
“I go to a single sex school Darren.” John said. “There’s only boys there.”
There was an awkward silence for a moment, but I couldn’t let it drop, the thought occurred to me that our relationship might move onto a new level, a situation where both John and me were going out with our girlfriends, where we might double date like they did in American movies, whatever that actually entailed. We’d probably drop Darren, you wouldn’t want someone like him hanging around, getting in the way, saying stupid things like that all the time.
“Where did you meet her then?” I asked.
John looked embarrassed to be talking about it, but seemed to realise we weren’t going to let the subject be dropped in and forgotten as casually as he’d tried.
“She comes to my school some afternoons for music practice,” he said. “She plays the flute or something.”
“No way?” This was totally incredible news because Cara also played the flute. You’d see her carrying the little case around school sometimes. Half the boys took up an instrument in the hope of sharing music lessons with her. But for me this meant that mine and John’s girlfriends had something in common. They could play their flutes together while we went surfing. This was fantastic.
“Actually you might know her,” John went on, less embarrassed now that I’d shown my obvious enthusiasm for the subject. “I think she goes to your school. Cara something.”
The horrible truth struck Darren before me. I just couldn’t make sense of it. Could they even share the same name?
“It’s not Cara Williams is it?” said Darren.
“Yeah, that’s it. Do you know her?” John asked.
“Course I fucking do. Everyone knows her. She’s like the hottest girl in school.” He was staring at John, who shrugged awkwardly.
“Fucking hell John, you’re going on a date with Cara Williams?” Darren was so surprised he’d forgotten how he normally talked to John, he’d left out the respect. “Where are you taking her?”
“I dunno yet,” John said. He said a little miserably. Looking back I guess even he was nervous about it. He might have liked to ask our advice, but he knew it was a subject we knew absolutely fuck all about.
“I guess I’ll see what she wants to do.” John said. Darren shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Do you hear that Jesse? He’s going out with Cara Williams.” He didn’t say it in a nasty way, he wasn’t trying to remind me how I’d repeated to him every word of the every conversation I’d had with her. He’d forgotten all that. John going out with her eclipsed my achievements in that department.
I couldn’t breathe. I’d been plunged off the cliff edge into the abyss, but I had to answer. I had to say something appropriate or they’d both know just how deep I’d got myself worked into my own fantasy romance with her.
“Yeah,” I croaked. “She’s alright I think. She’s like, pretty hot.” I watched my hand trembling as I reached out to grab Darren’s magazine off him, as if the conversation suddenly bored me. I tried to focus on a picture of perfect waves rolling into a blue water point break somewhere thousands of miles away, but my eyes were full of tears and the image blurred. I wanted to be thousands of miles away.
It was horrific sitting with Darren that night, thinking about what John and Cara were getting up to, listening to Darren speculating. John didn’t say anything more about his plans, nor did we ask any more questions. So we sat there, Darren moaning about how crap the waves had been, as if this mattered any more. As if somehow life was still supposed to go on as normal. All I could do was see them in my mind, sitting together in some fancy restaurant, her beautiful shoulders bare in a posh dress and John snapping his fingers at the waiter like some sort of fucking big shot. Or maybe her kicking off her high-heeled shoes so she could dance better in some designer nightclub, the crowd parting to give John the room to spin her around and around, her dress rising higher and higher with every twirl. Of course they didn’t really do anything like that. They just went to the cinema in the next town and sat in awkward silence before her dad picked her up, but I didn’t see it like that. I’m not normally a glass half-empty kind of guy, but that night the glass was dry, it was fucking barren.
Darren loitered around like some bad smell but when he finally went home and I could go to bed I spent the night alternating between miserable insomnia and torturous semi-dreams of John’s bare white arse - that I’d seen a hundred times when he’d changed into his wetsuit - pumping himself into a gasping Cara’s beautiful body in the luxury flat that I knew he didn’t have.
The dawn brought some relief. Perhaps, I reasoned, the date had gone badly. Maybe she’d even stood him up? I watched out for John the whole morning, but he didn’t turn up, and there was no way I was going around to his house. In the end he stayed away the whole day and eventually Darren dragged me off fishing. I think it must have occurred to him by then what I was going through. He wanted to help me out.
In fact we didn’t see much of John for a while. Somehow the school rumour mill picked up that Cara was properly loved up with her new bloke, who was definitely much older and drove a sports car. The word was she was definitely having sex with him too, you could see it in the way she walked. I couldn’t bring myself to look.
Obviously I didn’t talk to Cara at school any more, and she certainly stopped talking to me. I guess she realised that with John and me being friends it was just better that way. A few years later, when I could look back on that time without it feeling like my stomach was being ripped out of my body, I kind of worked it out. She’d probably spotted John some time before and she only really befriended me as a way of meeting him. I’ll never know if I did have one chance with her though, that night we walked back together to Darren’s house. That was what really got me back then, the thought that I’d blown that chance. Fucking that up dragged me right back down to my lowest point since arriving in Wales.
sixteen
THERE WAS LITTLE Natalie could do but wait. Her sister left, promising to be back when she’d found a babysitter for the boys. The policewoman stayed and tried to re-assert leadership of the situation. She explaining how she was now assigned to the case, and how Natalie’s friend Dave had joined two Sea King helicopters and three RNLI lifeboats, from Padstow, Rock and Sennan Cove. She told her about the grid pattern they were working, and how they had to take account of the strong tides found in that area. But Natalie hardly listened to any of it. All she could do was think of those wide open expanses of ocean, far from the beaches and cliffs. She wondered what it must feel like to be out there, alone, with the light fading from the sky, the hope fading from your mind.
Then the policewoman’s phone rang. Natalie asked at once what it was, but the officer put up her hand and shook her head.
“It’s not news, I’m sorry.” She went to the other side of the room and listened for a little longer. A few minut
es later she ended the call. She turned to Natalie her face screwed up, puzzled.
“Natalie, I need to ask you a question.”
“What’s happened? Who was that?”
She answered reluctantly. “That was the officer who found the car. They’ve undertaken a closer inspection…”
“So?”
DS Venables paused, like she was working out how to continue.
“Natalie I need to ask you about your husband’s state of mind. Was there anything troubling him? Perhaps there were money problems?” Again she softened her voice. “Were there any difficulties in the marriage? Had you argued? Anything like that?”
Natalie stared at her blankly. Thoughts flashed through her mind, one burned so brightly she thought the woman must be able to see the image reflected in her eyes.
“No. Why?”
The policewoman paused, then continued carefully.
“They didn’t see this at first because they were under the seat, or perhaps whoever broke into the car kicked them underneath by accident. Or perhaps your husband tried to hide them.” She watched Natalie’s reaction to this.
“Hide what?”
Natalie felt the other woman’s eyes on her face.
“Hide what?” She said again.
“There were three packets of painkillers. Paracetamol, on the floor of the car. Empty packets. Natalie was Jim using painkillers for any medical reason?”
The question was so unexpected it took Natalie some time to answer.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I mean he gets headaches sometimes. But no more than anybody. Look I’m sorry but I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
The Wave at Hanging Rock: A Psychological Mystery and Suspense Thriller Page 9