Child's Play

by Alison Taylor

  Folding the letter with shaking hands, he pushed it back in the envelope and damned every single person who had crossed her path since that tragic December day, beginning with her murderously avaricious parents and finishing with himself. Had he returned after taking away her crutches, she might have told him the truth, but the complete mental disarray that followed his insane capitulation to Freya Scott gave Imogen time to make an irrevocable decision. Harrowed, enraged and even close to tears, he left the school, after first arranging for Imogen’s room to be locked and sealed. When he arrived at the police station, he contacted Berkshire police and faxed a copy of her letter. Realising that Jack also needed to know, he scribbled a covering note and sent that, with the letter and, as an afterthought, the report from pathology, by messenger to his house. Then he drove to the hospital.

  29

  Matron felt worse rather than better after she had lost control and screeched at McKenna, as if letting the cauldron of emotion boil over had spilled fat on the fire beneath. Grimly hauling herself upstairs by the banisters, she promised herself that ugly, obese Therese Obermeyer was the next in line for a lesson she would not forget in a hurry. She had been utterly appalled when the headmistress told her what Therese had done to Charlotte’s clothes. Dim-witted and thoughtless Charlotte might be, but she was harmless and surely more to be pitied than condemned.

  Therese was not in her room. Matron marched and puffed up and down the top floor, throwing open one door after another. Only a few of the girls were asleep; most were wakeful, intensely troubled by the second ambulance drama of what had been a truly horrible day.

  Ainsley was head down in one of her books, pretending as usual that the world beyond the written page had no importance. For several moments Matron watched her in silence, before stalking away.

  Yelena and Daria were closeted together in one room, gossiping in Russian. ‘Speak English,’ she snarled at them. ‘D’you hear me? You must speak English!’

  Without even registering their bafflement, she made her way to the sixth-form common room. Nancy was there, in the midst of a small group of admirers, still watching television.

  ‘Where’s Charlotte?’ Matron demanded.

  ‘Showers,’ one of the girls replied, not taking her eyes from the screen.

  ‘How long has she been there?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  Then how much time was left, Matron agonised? Once she had showered, Charlotte would choose her clothes for the morning, wanting to look her best for her public even though she had nowhere to go. Very soon, now, she would be pulling from her wardrobe one ruined garment after another. So frightened that she could barely draw breath, Matron stomped into the smokers’ den. Francoise was almost invisible behind the cloud of acrid smoke that wreathed around the other three occupants before drifting towards the open window. When Matron made out Therese, the cauldron bubbled over again. She walked up to her, lifted her huge hand and hit her across the face with every ounce of her strength.

  ‘You monster!’ she screamed, as Therese reeled back. ‘You fat, evil, ugly bitch!’

  30

  There was little respite in the accident and emergency unit at Bangor hospital any day or night of the week, for if the locals were not at each other’s throats after downing yards of ale, holidaymakers were falling into the sea or off the mountains. McKenna fought his way through the swollen crowd of Friday night disasters to the reception desk, only to be elbowed out of the way by a man with blood pouring from a wicked gash on his right cheek. Eventually he managed to catch the receptionist’s attention, but had to wait while she twice searched the computer records before telling him that Imogen had been moved to the intensive care unit on the third floor.

  The hospital was a labyrinth of intersecting corridors, each with a broad line of colour painted on the floor, but too distracted to remember which colour would take him where he needed to go, he zigzagged back and forth interminably, until a young nurse extricated him from his confusion and pushed him into a lift. As he rounded the corner by the unit he almost fell over Vivienne’s feet. She was seated in a flimsy-looking chair, long legs stretched out, lovely face more bruised-looking than ever.

  He stood over her. ‘How’s Imogen?’ he asked.

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘But how bad?’

  ‘Nobody’s saying. They’ve done what they can, so it’s in the lap of the gods.’ Wearily, she gestured towards the unit’s door. ‘You could ask the doctor. Dr Scott’s in there, too.’

  ‘Would you know if the Olivers have been told?’

  ‘Matron was supposed to do that.’

  Lost for words, he uttered in the end the obvious cliché: ‘If she pulls through, she’ll have you to thank.’

  ‘You think she’ll thank me? If I were in her shoes — or shoe, to he more precise — and somebody rescued me I’d be distraught.’

  ‘Don’t!’

  She sat up straight and regarded him levelly. ‘Imogen’s overdose was virtually a foregone conclusion. We’ve known it for months, even if Dr Scott and Matron preferred living in cloud-cuckoo-land.’ Putting her hand to her mouth, she coughed and it sounded like a bark. ‘Torrance has been doing a lot for her that should have been done by professionals, including keeping track of the pills she was shoving down her throat. If my wits weren’t addled I’d have realised sooner that she’d emptied the bottle. I gave her a bollocking at lunchtime for taking an extra dose.’

  ‘Why did she have so many tablets in her room?’

  ‘Because — and I quote — “she had to learn to take responsibility for her medication”. In actual fact,’ Vivienne went on, ‘Matron couldn’t be bothered doling out a day’s supply at a time, or making sure she wasn’t stockpiling.’

  Grasping at straws of comfort, he said, ‘The fact that she hadn’t locked her door suggests she wanted to be found.’

  ‘Does it?’ She gazed at him speculatively. ‘Perhaps she just couldn’t make it that far after you pinched her stick and crutches.’

  He left her and took the stairs down to Torrance’s room. She was now ‘sleeping’, rather than ‘unconscious’.

  He sat in the car, chain smoking, letting memories of the day roll past his eyes like a cavalcade of disasters peopled with the wounded and battle-weary, so absorbed in his reverie that he did not even see Freya emerge from the building, scan the car park to find him, then wave.

  31

  On her own initiative, Justine had assumed responsibility for the absent Torrance. She toured the Tudor dormitories, answering questions and calming fears where she could, but refused to let Daisy interrogate her about Imogen’s stick and crutches, and their removal by the police.

  ‘If you won’t tell me,’ Daisy had said, trying to goad, ‘I’ll have to come to my own conclusions.’

  ‘You will, anyway,’ Justine replied shortly, before switching off the dormitory lights and closing the door.

  Barely five minutes later, Daisy had heard Francoise scream. She shot out of bed and ran for the door, but rushed back into the dormitory when a siren wailed in the distance. Shouldering her way through the girls now crowded at the window, she found herself a prime viewing slot and so missed nothing of the ambulance’s arrival nor of Imogen’s sensational departure. When McKenna’s Jaguar slewed to a halt on the forecourt, she watched Matron waddle out to meet him and waited then for the next instalment of the drama.

  Nothing happened. One by one, almost numbed by shock and weariness, the other girls drifted back to bed. Daisy stayed at the window, desperately afraid of missing something that might let her see which way the wind blew, and perhaps show her what else there was to fear, but McKenna’s own departure was all that took place and in the end she too returned to her bed.

  She could not sleep. Memories, thoughts and imaginings scuttled round and round her brain like rats in a maze, until she lost all sense of the boundaries between truth and fiction, romance and reality. In turn, she sweated profusely and shivered uncontrollably
, first jettisoning the bed covers, next wrapping them about her like a shroud, but whatever she did she continued to burn and freeze. Then that hot, horrible itch began its assault, as if her groin were infested with insects. She groped in the locker for her diary, although there was no real need to check. Since she was eleven years old, and two days short of beginning her first term at the Hermitage, her periods had come upon her with such regimented regularity that she often felt her body was possessed of a demon and no longer her own.

  She heard a door slam overhead, then shouting, then thundering footsteps and more shouting. Thrusting the unopened diary back under a pile of clothes in the locker, she disentangled herself from the bedding and sat up.

  ‘Alice!’ she hissed across the few feet that separated their beds. ‘Alice!’

  Alice mumbled and jerked her head, but remained asleep.

  ‘Sod you,’ Daisy muttered. She found her slippers, padded to the door and eased it open and, one foot in the corridor, one still in the dormitory, listened avidly, trying to work out who was yelling what, for Therese’s stentorian proclamations virtually drowned out Matron’s hoarse song while Elisabeth’s angry soprano counterpointed both. It reminded Daisy of an operatic trio, hectic and discordant, and when Justine took up the recitative it became a quartet teeming with Wagnerian overtones. Therese had done something to Charlotte — no, to Charlotte’s beautiful clothes — but she had not. She had only said she had, but Matron could not know that when she smacked Therese in the face. Daisy quivered with the delight of violence done and the prospect of more to follow. Therese was cruel and dangerous and arrogant, Matron shrieked, and obviously did not care that Dr Scott was already beside herself with worry. This was the last straw. It was terrible!

  Too bad, Daisy said to herself, paraphrasing Therese’s scornful rejoinder. The voices were growing louder as the skirmish proceeded to the head of the stairs, so rather than be caught, she closed the dormitory door behind her and slipped along the corridor to the infirmary.

  Five of the twelve beds in the long, narrow room were occupied, four of them with weedy youngsters not yet tempered by school life.

  Grace was in the last bed on the right, hunched against the bedhead with the duvet up to her chin. When she saw Daisy slithering along the linoleum towards her, she scowled. ‘What do you want?’ she muttered.

  Daisy sat heavily on the bed, and started bouncing up and down. ‘You-can’t-hide-for-ever,’ she said, the words sprung with the rhythm of her body. ‘Did-you-do-what-I-said?’

  ‘I’m not hiding and yes, I did!’

  ‘Liar!’

  ‘I did!’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Earlier, so shut up about it.’

  ‘I’ll-find-out-if-you-haven’t.’

  Still scowling, Grace snapped, ‘Oh, give it a rest!’ Then, wiping her face of all but innocent curiosity, she asked, ‘What’s all the noise upstairs about?’

  Daisy stopped bouncing. ‘Imogen’s been carted off in an ambulance. I think she’s dead. Charlotte must have done something to her, because Therese was going to do something to her, so Matron clouted Therese.’

  ‘You do love trouble, don’t you?’ Head on one side, Grace stared at her. ‘I’ve never known anybody who can make things up the way you do. Imogen probably took an overdose. She’s absolutely full of self-pity.’

  ‘I’m-not-imagining-the-noise,’ Daisy replied, bouncing again.

  Grace dropped the edge of the quilt and grabbed Daisy’s bare arms. ‘Stop that!’ she seethed. ‘You’re getting on my nerves!’ When Daisy tried to pull away, she tightened her grip like a vice.

  Daisy yelped. ‘Let go! You’re hurting me!’

  Grace pulled her down. ‘And if Imogen was dead, they wouldn’t bother putting her in an ambulance,’ she said. ‘She’d be in a mortuary van.’ Then she pushed her so hard that Daisy tumbled off the bed.

  ‘Cow!’ Daisy scrambled to her feet, rubbing herself. ‘Fucking cow!’ she added savagely, backing away towards the door. Grace watched, her mouth a thin line.

  Daisy’s flesh stung and under the bright light in the corridor outside the infirmary she could see the livid bracelets Grace’s fingers had left around her forearms.

  32

  Hester had informed the ward staff that she intended to leave, argued with them and the hastily summoned psychiatric registrar, scrawled her signature on the release papers, made herself presentable and left the hospital all without any conscious awareness of having made a single decision, driven by a compulsion to act that was generated by her husband’s late-afternoon visit.

  After they left the police station in the small hours and went to their hotel, he had acquired a new bottle of whisky and spent the rest of the night slouched in a chair in their room, silently and steadily drinking, not once uttering a word. At some point she had fallen into a fitful but dreamless sleep. When she awoke he was on the bed, curled up beside her, his arm a dead weight across her hips, the empty bottle wedged under his cheek, his foul breath filling the room.

  So that he would not know where she had gone, she ordered a taxi. When she arrived at the mortuary, she was asked to wait and sat on a leatherette bench in the chilly, gloomy foyer for what seemed a long time. The place stank of death. Eventually the pathologist with the kind eyes and gentle voice came to tell her it would not be possible for her to see Sukie. He touched her shoulder comfortingly. Glancing at that pink, well-scrubbed hand, she realised what it must have been doing and fainted.

  At some time during this interminable day her husband discovered where she was and came to see her, but not before making an effort to keep up the ever essential appearances. He wore a clean shirt, a different tie, his suit was brushed and his face washed and shaved, but he could do nothing about the stench of whisky seeping from every pore. As he leaned over her, puzzled and even distressed, she turned away her head.

  He was so drunk that his usual belligerence was beyond him and he left within fifteen minutes. Watching his retreating back, Hester knew that never again did she wish to set eyes on him.

  Once she had discharged herself she took another taxi into Bangor. The taxi driver directed her to a cafe-bar, where she sat unnoticed among the students and tourists. She ordered black coffee, swallowed it without tasting a drop and left.

  At twilight, she was standing in the middle of the Menai Bridge, her fingers tight around the tall iron railings, the wind ruffling her hair and humming through the suspension cables. By now she had acquired a raincoat and umbrella but had little recollection of their purchase. She could only remember the summer rain falling like shards of glass on her bare arms. The silky raincoat felt warm, but she shivered nonetheless.

  The walkways projected from each side of the bridge and once she had moved into the lee of the towers she was standing on air. Behind her, the tide ran towards Puffin Island and beneath her the floodlit reflection of the bridge shimmered in the dark waters far below. She looked only downstream, her gaze fixed on the dense, dark shadows of the woods that surrounded the school. Had she raised her eyes even a little, she would have caught the full glory of a summer nightfall, but she could see nothing beyond the terrible contours of her new world. Grief slung about her like a shroud, she contemplated the anguish of her child’s lonely death and the horror of it threatened to stop her heart.

  Saturday 10 June

  1

  On Friday night, sheer nervous exhaustion had kept Alice in the grip of sleep throughout the rumpus on the sixth-form corridor. She missed Daisy’s exit from the dormitory, but for some unfathomable reason, was roused briefly by her stealthy return. Within minutes of sliding into bed, Daisy had begun snoring gently, and despite sporadic noises and raised voices from the top floor Alice too went back to sleep.

  When she woke again, clawing her way out of a nightmare with her heart thumping wildly, the sky was blue and freshly washed. The outside security lights had already switched themselves off. She scrambled into a sitting position and looked acros
s at Daisy, whose hair was a tumble of curls on the pillow, framing a face innocent of all expression. Alice despaired. Try as she might to disbelieve Daisy’s terrible accusation about Torrance, the poison had done its work. Was Daisy simply a wicked liar, or was Torrance truly a monster? She knew Daisy, knew how deeply she felt her parents’ neglect, saw the hurt behind that ever ready smile, the brutal disappointment when neither of them showed for Sports Day or Open Day, but what did she really know about Torrance? Everyone wore a false face at times. Alice had shown hers to her mother when, instead of hugging her as she so desperately wanted to do, she had wounded her with one barbed comment after another.

  Why did some people say Torrance was devious? Did she beguile with her kindness? Alice asked herself wretchedly. Had her detractors seen a face Torrance only exposed to the secret, perhaps passionate transactions that took place in those dingy sixth-form bedrooms under the roof? The girls in the dormitories below heard everything but saw nothing, and so constructed their own context around the laughter, arguments, slamming doors, running footsteps, creaking bed springs, the thump of Imogen’s false leg and the mystery of nocturnal meetings, when voices were suddenly quenched, when whispers drifted through an open window to hang tantalisingly in the still air of a summer night, or someone sobbed with such deeply felt heartache that the eavesdroppers wanted to weep themselves.

  Some time after five o’clock, Alice crept to the bathroom. Turning the cold tap full on, she held her wrists under the gushing water, then doused her face. With a towel to her chin, she stared into the mirror, searching for the outward signs of her inner turmoil, bemused by the familiar, ordinary reflection that returned her gaze. Daisy looked her usual self, too. She had scoured her friend’s face for the tell-tale marks of dishonesty and dishonour and found nothing. Would to God Daisy had her mother’s transparency, she thought bitterly.