Say You're Sorry Part 26

"What do you mean?"

"You were with Piper and Natasha."

"Only until ten o'clock."

"What happened then?"

"I got a call saying that Mum was in hospital. I came straight home."

"But you saw Piper later?"

"She woke me. I heard her knocking on the bedroom window. Straight away I knew something was wrong, but she wouldn't tell me. She said they were running away in the morning. I said I couldn't come-Mum was in hospital."

"But you changed your mind?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

She shrugs.

"How were you going to live in London?"

"Tash had money. She said her uncle owed her. She used to work for him."

"What did she do?"

"Filing in his office."

"I thought she was a waitress."

"That too."

"Did she get on with her uncle?"

Emily reacts as though slapped, holding her cheek.

"What was that?"

"What?"

"That thing you just did?"

"What thing?"

"You reacted when I mentioned Tash and her uncle."

Emily lets out an avian squawk, shaking her head. "I didn't say anything! I didn't! You're putting words in my mouth."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

She calms down, sinking back into the sofa.

"Tell me about the accident."

"We went to a party at this house in Abingdon. It was thrown by one of Aiden's friends. He was Tash's boyfriend: Aiden Foster. The party was full of university students and stuck-up girls who treated us like we were in pre-school."

"Tell me about Aiden."

"He was all right, I guess. Older. He had a car. Tash didn't like taking the bus so she sort of used him. Aiden got wasted at the party and Tash started flirting with Callum Loach. He was a couple of years ahead of us, but went to a different school.

"Aiden got p.i.s.sed off. He grabbed Callum and acted like a complete psycho and then laughed."

"You saw this?"

"Piper told me later. I was inside."

"What happened then?"

"Tash was sick. Callum offered to drive her home, but he came back for her phone, which was upstairs. Callum was getting back in the car when Aiden came around the corner in his Subaru and he just ran him down." Emily bites down hard on her lip. "We thought he was dead. He flew into the air and over the car and landed on the road."

"What happened to him?"

"He lost both his legs. He's in a wheelchair."

"And Aiden?"

"He went to jail."

"Is he still in prison?"

Emily shrugs.

"Would your dad know?" I ask.

She stares at the ceiling. "I don't want to ask him."

On the morning after the party, two police officers came to Tash's house and took her to hospital where they tested her blood for alcohol and drugs. Then she went to Abingdon Police Station and made a statement.

Aiden Foster arrived at the station late that afternoon, along with his father and a big-shot barrister. He was charged with attempted murder and was granted bail the next day. They confiscated his car and told him not to approach any of the witnesses.

The police came to my house on the Sunday and asked me a lot of questions. I was a minor so I had a social worker with me during the interview. The only bits I left out were about the drugs. I was scared they might charge me for having puffed on a joint.

That night I heard Mum and Dad arguing downstairs, saying that I had "run off the rails" and "gone feral" and was going to finish up in prison or worse. The next morning I didn't get woken for school. Mum didn't knock on my door. I dressed in my school uniform and came downstairs, but she told me to go back and get changed. That's when I noticed the suitcase in the corner of the kitchen.

Two men came to get me. Their van was so clean and s.h.i.+ny that clouds rolled across the sides and the roof. I thought I was going to the police station, but instead they took me to some sort of boarding house with gardens and high walls. Not in Oxford or in London. It was surrounded by fields and had the sea on one side.

Mum came with me that first day, but she didn't stay.

"Please be a good girl and you'll be home in no time," she said.

I grabbed her arm and begged her not to leave.

"This is only because we love you," she said.

Parents always say things like that-like "this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you," but how can that be true?

That night I heard them lock my door. And every couple of hours someone came along the corridor and looked through a hatch. I couldn't turn the lights off even if I wanted to. The next day I kicked off at one of the nurses and she threatened to handcuff me to the bed. I didn't believe her, until she waved the cuffs in front of my face.

That day they gave me all these different tests, showing me pictures and shapes. Some of them were just images flashed onto a computer screen and I had to press either a red or green b.u.t.ton depending on how the picture made me feel. I a.s.sumed the red was supposed to symbolize anger and green was calm. I tried to throw the results out by pressing red on the pictures of puppies and green on the pictures of riots.

My therapist was called Vernon and he asked me if I ever touched myself. I tried to think of what Tash would say. "Constantly. I use cuc.u.mbers, candlesticks, anything I can get my hands on."

There were group sessions with other girls. Never boys. Some of them were anorexics or bulimics or were suicidal or into cutting themselves. The therapists were never specific in the group sessions. It was all about "feelings."

"You want my feelings-I feel p.i.s.sed off about being in here," I told them. That lost me TV privileges for the evening. I told them I didn't give a f.u.c.k about the TV, which lost me dessert privileges for a week. I lost a lot of privileges. I can't even tell you what they were because I lost them before I had the privilege.

They gave us each a work roster. We had to set the tables or clear away dishes, or help in the kitchens. Our beds had to be made and rooms tidied. It was like being at boarding school because even our socks had to be folded in a certain way.

"Don't knot them together-fold them with a smile," the matron said.

"Mine are smiling like the crack of your a.r.s.e," I told her.

That lost me games room privileges.

At least they let me write. It was encouraged. I had to write lists of things I liked about myself and the things I disliked. The way I looked, for instance; my swearing; my temper; the fact that I'm c.r.a.p at math...

I was allowed to make one phone call every week to Mum and Dad. I begged them. I cried. I tried to guilt them into letting me come home. My father's voice would start to shake, but Mum would grab the phone from him before he broke down.

I didn't have a mobile. I couldn't talk to Tash or find out what had happened to Callum or Aiden. Days stretched into weeks. A month. Two. There were more therapy sessions and lectures on drugs and alcohol.

My parents thought I was a drug addict-or well on the way. I was "heading down the slippery slope," they said.

After eight weeks they let me go home. They didn't tell me until half an hour before my parents arrived. Even then, the matron just said, "Pack your suitcase."

Mum came to the reception room. Dad stayed outside, standing by the car. That was it. We drove home in silence and I went to my room. I looked at my computer and at my mobile. I didn't call Tash. I didn't email anyone. I pulled out all my old toys and played with them. My Barbie dolls. I combed their hair and changed their clothes. I hadn't done that in years.

Miss McCrudden, my English teacher-the one who loves my stories-always told me not to have pa.s.sive characters when I wrote. They have to make things happen, she said, not just have things happen to them.

That's when I realized what she meant. I was a pa.s.sive character in my own life, letting things happen instead of forging my own way, finding my own path.

Not any more, I decided, never again.

23.

The caretaker is easy enough to track down. He hasn't covered his tracks or crawled into a deep hole. n.o.body is far from the surface these days-not with emails and Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. They leave an electronic trail behind like mouse droppings in cybers.p.a.ce.

Nelson Stokes works as a street cleaner for Oxford City Council, pus.h.i.+ng a barrow in the pedestrianized precincts and laneways too narrow for the machines.

Thirty-eight, with long hair and an angular face, he's wearing a plaid wool s.h.i.+rt and a reflective jacket. His barrow is propped outside a shoe shop while he rolls himself a cigarette. Inside the shop, a young salesgirl is standing on tiptoes, putting boxes on a high shelf. Stokes is watching her thighs and rump flexing beneath her short skirt.

"Mr. Stokes?"

He turns his head slowly. "Do I know you?"

I hand him a business card. He reads it carefully, taking a moment to decide if I'm an inconvenience or an opportunity. I've seen his police file, which is depressing reading. Arrested twice in his early twenties for accepting stolen goods, he pleaded guilty and was given the benefit. Before that he was studying engineering at university but lost his place for cheating in his first year exams. Odd jobs since then; married; divorced; one failed business. He worked at St. Catherine's as a caretaker/groundsman for two years before being fired.

According to the police file, a handful of senior students at St. Catherine's complained about Stokes taking photographs of them. It emerged that some of the girls had opted to do a quick change at the back of the sports hall after gym instead of going to the locker room upstairs. Stokes had used a digital camera to record them. Pictures of Natasha were found among the images.

The caretaker spent two days in custody and was interviewed for eight hours, but he had an alibi for the Sunday morning that the girls disappeared.

Propping his broom in the barrow, Stokes takes a seat at a bus stop and lights his cigarette.

"I was hoping we could talk about the Bingham Girls."

"What's that got to do with you?"

"I've been asked to review the case."

"Nothing to do with me."

"You knew the girls."

"Found them, have they? The bodies."

"What makes you think that?"

"Stands to reason." He blows smoke from the corner of his mouth. "Missing all this time-they must be dead."

He raises his eyes and glances across the street where a group of girls are chatting outside a Starbucks. I notice the heat in his eyes and his unwashed smell.

"I know about the photographs."

"I never touched those girls. Not a hair."

"You took pictures."

He flicks ash. "That's all. Why you bringing this up again? Did one of those little b.i.t.c.hes make a complaint? Wants to sue. She can go ahead. Got no money. Can sue me for the barrow." He laughs and nods to his brooms.

Stokes isn't a practiced deceiver. If you're going to lie, you show your hands, let people see you're unarmed. And you lean forward a little to reinforce your convictions, without breaking eye contact.