‘See you there.’
PRESENT
46
You are off to some fancy do tonight – high heels, hair-up, full face of make-up, and a floaty dress that looks almost as seductive as the body-hugging little numbers you usually go in for. Watching your taxi pull away, I’m tempted to follow. You are my vision of summer. But I have some self-control. You’ll be out for the evening. And I’m in luck. You left your curtains open. This is the ideal opportunity to try out my latest gadget. Small, light, quiet, unobtrusive, responsive and easy to control. Delivered overnight – my quadcopter drone.
The drone comes equipped with camera live video and an adjustable wide angle/zoom lens Wi-Fi camera. It features GPS, Return to Home, Follow Me, Altitude Hold, Long Control Range, Night and Day Modes – all the functionality I require to hover outside your window with a bird’s-eye view of the inside of your bedroom. I get hard just thinking about it.
Once darkness falls, I position myself between the skip and the parked cars. All is quiet on the street. Judging by the British summertime smells of smoke and charred meat hanging in the air, all your neighbours have been busy barbecuing in their back gardens. Gently, I position the drone for take-off and adjust the controls. I take a deep breath – up, up, up it goes.
Believe it or not, I bought the drone on Amazon for less than one hundred and fifty pounds. It does the job to perfection. You are worth every penny.
*
Despite the dark purpose behind her coming, Celeste thought it might be nice to see Harry and the boys. Harry had assured her that Ben would not be at the event and with the passing of time, she felt fewer qualms about exchanging small talk and banter with the others. They had grown up. She had developed her social skills through dealings with the public at Seventh Heaven and she was happy speaking to just about anyone these days (with one or two notable exceptions) as long as the conversation remained on a superficial level.
The RAC Epsom, was a lovely venue for a reunion, an elegant country mansion, with magnificent gardens, wide green lawns, and far-reaching views of open countryside. They stood around for drinks and canapés and listened to dull speeches about projects undertaken by the school foundation. After the obligatory fundraising auction, Celeste took her opportunity to speak to Harry alone by suggesting a stroll around the grounds.
‘It’s such a beautiful evening,’ she said. ‘Let’s take our drinks out to the garden. We can watch the sunset.’
They found a bench with a fabulous view over the fields and hills. As the sun sank below the tree line, they were treated to an impressionist tableau of clouds and sky lit up in a painter’s palette of purples, pinks and greys. When the colours began to fade, Celeste jumped straight in. ‘What do you remember about the night of the party?’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently and I want to find out exactly what happened.’
Harry was taken aback. ‘It’s a long time ago,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t feel real anymore. I’m not sure I can be much help to you.’
‘Perhaps this will help to jog your memories,’ said Celeste icily, taking the leather jacket from her shoulder bag. ‘Remember this?’ She threw the jacket at his head.
Harry recognised it immediately.
‘What the f… My leather jacket.’ He laughed. ‘Where did you dig this up?’ He stood up to try it on. ‘God, I must have been slim.’ Although Harry was still in pretty good shape, there was a three-inch gap at his torso when he went to do up the zip. ‘I never got to wear this. Ben grabbed it off me for every party. He said it looked better on him than on me.’ Suddenly the real significance of the jacket clicked.
‘Ah shit… I’m so sorry.’ He looked up at Celeste.
She brushed it aside.
‘Typical Ben!’ she said. ‘So, you hooked up with him again? I saw your Facebook. I thought you’d fallen out?’
‘Yes, we went our separate ways. To be honest, after I was kicked out of school, I wanted nothing more to do with him… well, you know why…’
Harry was guarded despite being on his fifth glass of Champagne.
‘As I’m sure you heard, he abandoned his place at Cambridge that he’d grafted so hard for and went off to an American uni. Left the shit-storm behind. His parents wanted to get him as far away as possible from home. He told me they had been worried that the police would decide to investigate further and perhaps launch a prosecution. “Out of sight, out of mind”. I guess his parents thought the police wouldn’t go to the trouble of issuing proceedings to bring him back from America to stand trial.’
‘I thought we were friends,’ said Celeste. ‘You knew all this, and you said nothing?’
‘I know this sounds bad. But it was all in the past by the time he told me about it,’ he said.
Celeste shrank away from him. For him it might be in the past but for her it was in the searing present. She knew she would have to control her anger and act a part in order to get the information she craved out of him, so she steeled herself. She said nothing while he continued: ‘Don’t forget I was expelled,’ he said. ‘To be honest it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Being in that gang of boys was toxic. I was shell-shocked by what had happened – felt somehow contaminated. Anyway, I moved on. I made new friends at my new school and then at Exeter university and cut ties with my Surrey Grammar School friends.’ Harry tipped back his Champagne. ‘So, I lost touch with Ben for years. But then he looked me up two years ago when I started work in New York. He stalked me online until I agreed to have a drink with him.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘He’s matured a lot,’ he said. ‘A changed man.’ He tailed off. ‘That’s enough about me… What about you?’
Celeste ignored the question. She was determined to get to the truth.
‘What happened that night?’ she said passionately. ‘I’ve been torturing myself for the last seven years, trying to work out what happened the night of the party… how my little brother got killed.’ She turned to Harry and gripped his arm. ‘I’ve got so many blackouts from that night. And then I find this.’ Losing her cool, she shook the jacket violently. ‘And what I find in the pockets makes me think that bastard lied to me and to everyone else all along. I need your help…’
Harry kept his eyes on the horizon, which was now a bank of dark grey clouds.
‘It’s a long time ago,’ he repeated with a sigh.
But having made up her mind, Celeste was not going to be deterred.
‘I left the jacket exactly as I found it,’ she said. ‘Look in the pockets.’ Harry began to go through the pockets one by one without saying a word.
‘I want you to tell me everything,’ she said. ‘And I mean everything that you remember about that night.’ Harry unfolded the Rizla papers and gave her a pained look.
‘I can’t believe we were such sexist pigs,’ he said, going off at a tangent again. He shook his head.
‘I guess I was “the most boring girl”,’ said Celeste in a matter-of-fact voice as she watched Harry reading the scraps of paper.
Harry grimaced. ‘Well it’s true, until then you’d had a reputation among the boys for being a girly swot and a bit of a prude,’ he said, reverting to the teenage lingo. ‘But then there was that thing with the nudes that caused such a scandal at the time. You’d gone up in our collective estimation because of that. Of course, Ben, (being Ben), had circulated every one of the nudes you had sent him to all of us boys. Suddenly you shot up in the popularity stakes.’
Celeste faked a smile. She knew she’d have to rein in her disapproval of the group’s appallingly sexist behaviour in order to get full disclosure. The important thing was to keep Harry talking.
‘God it’s all coming back to me now. How did you girls put up with us?’
Harry told Celeste how one of the boys had come up with the idea of the dares, and they had all drawn lots out of a beer mug before the girls arrived at Ben’s house.
‘It was so cruel,’ said Celeste.
‘We were only se
venteen,’ said Harry. ‘It was just schoolboy pranks.’
‘Eighteen,’ said Celeste. ‘Anyway seventeen, eighteen? What difference does it make? You were all old enough to know better.’
‘For most of us it was just a quick kiss and a fondle in a dark corner. You know what those parties were like,’ said Harry. ‘Ben took it more seriously. He was always the ringleader… Everything was a competition. Had to win every time.’
‘I know exactly what Ben was like. I pretty much lived round his house between the ages of five and ten, don’t forget,’ said Celeste. ‘I blame his parents in part. They put such impossible expectations on him. Rugby. Cambridge. Whether it was on the pitch or in the classroom, he had to be the best at everything. Selection for the county wasn’t good enough. It had to be the nationals. A place at university wasn’t good enough. It had to be a scholarship to Cambridge. They were the sort of parents who, if you came home and told them you got ninety-four per cent in an exam, would turn around and say, “Well that’s good, darling, but what happened to the last six per cent?” Anyway, the upshot is he was always a deceitful coward and a bully. But we can’t blame his parents for the fact he became a sexual predator.’
Forcing herself to stay calm, Celeste pressed Harry to carry on with his account of his memories of the night. Once the party got going, Harry told her, Ben hadn’t wasted much time in getting his first dare (who was not ‘officially’ in their friendship group as the boys considered her a bit frumpy and fat) over and done with, after which the poor girl (who had been plied with drink to facilitate the challenge) was sick, and he sent her home in a taxi to get rid of her. Having successfully disposed of ‘dare number one’, he turned his attentions to ‘dare number two’.
‘He’d always secretly fancied you,’ said Harry. ‘I think he’d always been a bit in love with you since you spent all that time together as little kids. But he kept it quiet – because you were special to him…’ Harry hesitated. ‘And also, because, well… you weren’t cool… you know what I mean… a bit awkward and shy… until the nudes, of course.’
‘It’s hardly surprising I was socially awkward,’ said Celeste bitterly. ‘He was always doing me down and ordering me around. He destroyed my self-confidence.’
‘Well anyway,’ continued Harry. ‘That night, he was determined. He wanted you and nothing was going to stand in his way. He knew we’d all been drooling over your pictures and I think that fired his determination to hook up with you – to bolster his position as pack leader, make us all jealous… You get my drift… As you know to your cost, Ben wasn’t the kind of boy to take no for an answer.’ Celeste gave a hollow laugh while Harry took another slug of Champagne. ‘We tried to talk him out of taking his father’s car. He’d already been drinking. But we couldn’t stop him. You arrived with Tom. You were looking bloody fit and you were on everyone’s radar after the pics so all the boys were trying to chat you up.’ Celeste sat in silence, gazing at the rising moon. Her face shone white in the moonlight. Harry glanced across at her, and suddenly lost his thread.
‘You know, you’re very beautiful,’ he said. ‘Did anyone ever tell you that?’
‘Stop trying to change the subject,’ she said. Then she tried to lighten the tone. ‘You’ve been in the US for too long. Are you going all gushy and sentimental on me?’
Harry touched her hand. ‘Are you sure you want me to carry on?’ She nodded and moved her hand away.
‘You were in a flirtatious mood and Ben was getting really rattled because Tom kept bugging him. Ben had installed Tom upstairs in his bedroom to keep him entertained with his vast Xbox collection but Tom kept coming downstairs and asking him stuff about changing channels or setting up the games. He wanted some attention from him mainly, I think – you know how Tom hero-worshipped Ben.’
Harry paused, shifted closer along the bench to Celeste and took her hand.
‘Do we have to talk about this now? It all happened so long ago.’
‘I’ve got to know,’ said Celeste grimly.
‘OK. So, Tom kept coming downstairs asking Ben for help, and bothering you too, saying he was tired and asking when you’d be going home and the like. Obviously, this was cramping Ben’s style and his efforts to make progress with “dare number two”.’ In his discomfort, Harry got up from the bench and stood with his back to her. ‘In the end Ben got really exasperated with Tom,’ he said, ‘and he must have worked out what he was going to do. The last time I saw them going off together, he turned around to me… I’ll never forget these words because his look was hard as nails…’ Harry turned around, and Celeste shrank from the look in his eyes too as she hung on his every word. ‘“This time I’m going to lock the little bugger in.” That’s what he said.’
When Harry glanced across again at Celeste, this time her eyes were lit with an icy sheen that had nothing to do with the moonlight.
‘I didn’t think he would do it, of course,’ he said hastily.
‘Look in the inside pocket,’ ordered Celeste. Harry yanked open the zip and pulled out the key. While Harry sat silently staring at the key, Celeste’s hands gripped her Champagne glass so hard that it shattered, spraying liquid and shards of glass all over her dress. Blood streamed from the palm of her hand. Harry jumped up to help her.
‘Now what do you think?’ she hissed through gritted teeth. She clasped his arm, careless of the bloodstains on his white shirt. ‘I need to know everything.’
‘Oh my God, we need to get your hand sorted out.’
‘If you don’t tell me everything, I’m going to scream my head off and tell everyone you tried to rape me.’ She glared wildly at Harry.
There was nothing for it but to plough on.
‘I was about to go after Ben,’ said Harry, ‘to tell him to stop being a bloody idiot. But as he walked off, you came up to me. And actually, you seemed to be coming on to me. I didn’t want to break away.’ Harry put his arm around Celeste’s shoulders and this time she didn’t resist as she sat rigid on the bench. ‘You’re shivering,’ he said. ‘If you must know, I had pulled the dare, the hottest girl at the party, and you were my target. I was going to give it my best shot for a quick snog in the corner while Ben was distracted by Tom.’ Harry looked long and hard at Celeste. ‘Now, of course, those words are etched into my brain – This time I’m going to lock the little bugger in – and I can never forgive my crass teenage self for just standing by.’
Celeste had no interest in Harry’s futile and belated self-recriminations. But now a clear picture seemed to be emerging. Ben had locked Tom in his bedroom to keep her little brother out of the way; put the key in the pocket of his leather jacket – Harry’s leather jacket; plied her with alcohol (possibly spiked with other blackout-inducing illegal substances such as ecstasy or cocaine that temporarily set her bouncing off the walls and stripped away her inhibitions); got her away from the other boys; and taken her upstairs with the intention of having sex with her. He had been unable to use his own bedroom because he had locked Tom in there; couldn’t use the bathroom because it was otherwise occupied; and couldn’t use his parents’ room or his older brother’s room because they had taken the sensible precaution of locking them too before leaving Ben alone in the house for the weekend. So, in the end he had taken her off to the lake… And finally, got down to the serious business of notching up his second sexual conquest of the night, down and dirty on the earthen floor of the boathouse.
It wasn’t a pretty tale, but it was plausible. As she processed all this, Celeste felt as if the grey mists of confusion that shrouded her memories were gradually melting away only to be replaced with a red mist of impotent rage – seven years too late.
But there was one piece of the jigsaw still missing.
‘How did your jacket end up in my wardrobe?’ The key was in the jacket and the jacket had been in her wardrobe. She was still tortured with the horrible thought. Could she have been the one to turn the key as Ben had claimed all along? What if Harry was wrong?
/>
‘I remember the scene very clearly,’ he said. ‘It comes back to me in dreams.’ Harry was looking away from her now, staring at the moon. ‘The sight of the barn in flames, and a group of us, refugees from the party (many drunk and dishevelled) huddled on the lawn. Someone was trying to do a headcount. And some of the girls were screaming for you and Ben. We’d all forgotten about Tom. And then suddenly you appeared out of the trees, barefoot, in your red dress, like some kind of wild woodland nymph, sprinting for the house, heading for the flames. I ran across the grass to intercept you. You were hysterical. Out of your mind. I remember grabbing your arms to restrain you. Your dress was ripped at the chest and your arms were bare.’ He turned to her and said pointedly, ‘I remember that – bare, so slender and pale. I just held you.’
He knocked back the rest of his Champagne. ‘The next thing, Ben appeared out of the trees, yelling and waving his arms like a lunatic. He was wearing my leather jacket. I watched him running over to the police officer. He was out of control. At one point it looked as if he was going to punch him. Then he came over to us. You were trembling in my arms. He took off his leather jacket – my jacket – and put it around you. It seemed a thoughtful, gentlemanly gesture putting the jacket over your shoulders. But now I think he already had an agenda – hiding his guilt and shifting the blame. Maybe he was trying to cover up the rip in your dress. And maybe he was trying to plant all the incriminating evidence on you. Even in the heat of the moment, he was always one step ahead… watching his back.’
Celeste sat silently for more than a minute, taking it all in. ‘Why the fuck didn’t you say something?’ she said very quietly, shifting away from Harry.
‘It’s complicated,’ said Harry. ‘I was scared, and I was weak, and I was stupid. What else can I say? When the police spoke to us on the night, I was drunk and in shock, like everyone else. But yes, you’re right. Later, I should have spoken up. There’s no excuse. I knew that he lied at the inquest. But I got caught up in his lie. And then I got caught up in other things. It was easier that way. He had so much power over us. It wasn’t only the girls who were afraid of him. All of us boys were in awe of him and scared of becoming the next object of his ridicule.’
No Smoke Without Fire Page 25