Sworn Secret Page 5

  Kate looked around the hall and the sickness thickened; a memorial peopled with children. It was so wrong. It didn’t matter what you believed in – nature, science, God – the death of a child was against the rules. Death was for old people. The young should be left outside in the parks and playgrounds, laughing and running, all full up with being alive. She noticed how many were crying. Young girls huddled in twos and threes. Boys in groups or alone. Teenagers, each the centre of his or her world, utterly convinced of themselves, utterly convinced that nobody else felt the agony of grief like they did – until lunchtime, of course, when Anna would be all forgotten and they’d be giggling across plates of over-salted chips, playing football, beating each other up, bitching, lusting, teasing. She didn’t blame them for that. They were no more than babies, babies with longer hair, scruffier clothes and self-absorbed, petulant, hormone-fuelled bodies. Babies like Anna. Babies who still needed protecting and shepherding, given help to negotiate the dangers in life. Protected against their own poor, sometimes fatal, errors in judgement. Kate squeezed her eyes shut and winced against the pain. What kind of mother was she to let her baby play on a roof? To let her get drunk. To let her die. How does a mother let her baby die?

  Kate opened her eyes and for the hundredth time caught Anna’s picture full-on. She flinched. Why hadn’t he told her about the photograph? Was it supposed to be a surprise? Did he think it would make her happy? A six-foot image of Anna as she was. Every time she looked at it her heart stopped. How could she be dead? There she was, aged fourteen, not more than a year before she fell, her face shining, the deep brown of her eyes like polished stones, her smile almost a laugh.

  Kate would have given her life to hear Anna’s laugh just one more time. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure it. Almost immediately a rush of dread filled her as she realized she couldn’t hear it. All she could hear was Lizzie’s laugh. So similar, yet worlds apart. It was the inflection. The heaviness. Lizzie’s laugh was a shade or two lighter; Anna’s came from somewhere deeper. She concentrated. A couple of times she nearly had it, but then it was yanked out of reach by invisible rope. It was like chasing a carrier bag in the wind.

  Kate’s hands began to sweat. She tapped her toe on the wooden floor trying to ward off the sweeps of panic that came like contractions. Her vision faltered. She leant closer to Jon.

  ‘I can’t remember her laugh,’ she whispered. She tried to keep her voice level.

  ‘Of course you can,’ Jon murmured.

  Kate shook her head, trying not to cry. ‘I can’t. It’s not there.’

  ‘Try at home when it’s quiet.’

  ‘No,’ Kate whispered back. ‘It’s gone.’

  Jon reached for her hand and patted it twice. The double pat meant be quiet. Kate pulled away from him. I’m losing her, I’m losing her, I’m losing her was all she could hear in her head.

  And then there was a fuss from the back of the hall.

  At first Kate couldn’t hear the words, shrouded as they were by the rumbling voices of people around as they craned to see. She moved left and right trying to see through the heads.

  ‘Get your hands off me,’ a girl’s voice said. Then louder, ‘No, I won’t be quiet!’ Then she started shouting. ‘Get off me! This is bullshit! How can you listen to it? It’s a fucking joke!’

  In glimpses Kate saw Rebecca. Her lips were snarled into a grimace and angry tears poured down her cheeks. She saw two girls trying to calm her, a worried teacher useless beside them, a group of boys smirking. Everyone else was shocked, staring. There was the scrape of a chair to the side. Kate looked. It was Angela Howe. She was marching to the back of the hall, her heels on the polished parquet, clip, clip, clip.

  ‘Who on earth is that?’ muttered Stephen loudly, still on the stage beneath the picture of Anna. He looked to the back of the hall. His eyebrows lifted. His hand pointed, then gesticulated, his irritation thinly masked by his effort to stay in control.

  Kate turned again to the back of the hall and saw Angela bustling out of the double doors pushing Rebecca in front of her. Then the doors closed. The excited murmuring in the hall continued. Kate strained to hear the muffled shouting as their footsteps hurried away.

  Rebecca knew something.

  Kate had known it since that night, as soon as she and Rachel had arrived on the scene. They had come as soon as Jon called, Rachel flustering around the place, shaking her head and making excuses, pleading ignorance, trying to make sense of her part in the tragedy. In some sort of hellish trance Kate had stared at the muted Rebecca, whose face was lit in blue flashes as the light of the ambulance twirled in its eerie dance. There was a look on her face, a muddle of guilt and fear and knowing, that, as a mother, she recognized immediately; it was the look that tells tales on children. Kate had gone to her side, taken hold of her limp hand, and struggled to ask her what happened, but Rebecca wouldn’t meet her eyes. She insisted she knew nothing. Over and over again she shook her head. But she was Anna’s best friend; she knew something. Kate was certain.

  Kate started to follow, but Jon grabbed her wrist.

  ‘Stay here,’ he hissed.

  She pulled herself free.

  ‘Kate!’

  She hurried away from him, to the back of the hall, out onto the corridor, past tatty displays of artwork, deserted classrooms, school bags that spat their contents across the floor. She heard their voices. Angela’s high-pitched and furious. Rebecca’s through tears.

  Kate started to run.

  She found them in Stephen’s office. Rebecca was sitting on a chair. Her fingers pulled at each other and tears fell like drops of black paint on to her grey school skirt. Angela was picking up the phone. When she saw Kate, she replaced the receiver.

  ‘I can only apologize for her,’ she said. Her voice was at once a canny blend of blame directed at Rebecca and theatrical sympathy towards Kate. ‘Please, go back to the hall, Mrs Thorne. I will deal with her. You don’t need to be here.’

  Though Kate got on well with Stephen, she and Angela Howe, who was brusque, direct and rarely smiled, were on different pages, and since Anna died they’d scarcely spoken. She often walked away from Kate and Jon rather than talking, though this wasn’t an unusual reaction. Many of Kate’s friends, and most of her acquaintances, found it hard to meet her eye or strike up conversation. Some people just found death impossible to deal with.

  Angela was the deputy head. And a good one at that. She was a formidable character, straightforward and driven, who suffered fools neither gladly nor otherwise, respected at arm’s length by parents and pupils alike. With her practical haircut, tweed skirts and comfortable brogues, her sexuality had been discussed in hushed voices by scores of parents. It had come as quite a surprise when the position of head teacher became available and the man who took the job – that most assumed would go to her – turned out to be the woman’s husband. She even had an eleven-year-old son who then joined the school. Nobody thought this would be good for the school – working with your spouse never worked; the interests of the children would be compromised; they would be forced to look elsewhere for schooling. But the Howes proved them all wrong. Together they were an educational powerhouse, and suddenly the doubting parents couldn’t believe their luck. Within two years of his appointment, Park Secondary became one of the most oversubscribed in west London.

  ‘I have no idea what’s got into the child,’ Angela continued. ‘The emotion of the day, I’m sure. The girls were close, of course, but the behaviour,’ she glared at Rebecca, ‘is unacceptable.’

  Rebecca glanced up at Kate, caught her eye then quickly dropped her head, pulling at her fingers more frantically.

  ‘Tell me,’ Kate said. She dropped to her knees at Rebecca’s feet. ‘Please, Rebecca.’ Kate’s voice cracked in desperation.

  ‘Please go back to the hall, Mrs Thorne. This is a matter for me to deal with.’

  Kate leant closer to Rebecca. ‘Rebecca?’

  Again Rebecca looked up
at Kate, this time holding her gaze for a few moments. She seemed so close to speaking but then, with a quick nervous glance at Angela, she lowered her eyes. Kate felt an irritated stab of frustration and her fingers clenched, digging into Rebecca’s knee. The girl flinched. Kate was suddenly filled with an overwhelming urge to scream at her, demand she tell her what the bloody hell it was that she knew. She’d never liked Rebecca that much, not really. She certainly never understood why Anna was so fond of her. Familiarity, she knew, had much to do with it; they’d been friends since they were babies, when Rachel and Kate saved each other from a hair-wrenchingly dull NCT group. But as the girls grew, Rebecca turned out to be quiet and withdrawn; she didn’t play sport or like drama, she wasn’t bright or funny or even that pretty, and there was a permanent glumness about her. Her father leaving didn’t help – she seemed to retreat even further into herself, sometimes unable even to say hello. But, like it or not, the two girls were inseparable, until that fateful night, of course, when Rebecca stayed safe in her bed and Anna didn’t.

  Angela began to dial. ‘I’m calling her mother, Mrs Thorne. Go back to your daughter’s service. You should be there. This young lady has much to answer for.’ Angela lasered Rebecca with a terrifying glare. ‘She will be dealt with appropriately.’

  She held the phone to her ear, glowering, never once lifting her eyes off Rebecca, but when she said a terse hello to someone Kate assumed to be Rachel, Rebecca jumped up, shoving her chair so hard it fell backwards as she ran for the door.

  ‘Don’t you go anywhere!’ bellowed Angela Howe, moving after her as far as the phone cord would allow. ‘Come back here this minute!’

  Kate didn’t hesitate. She ran after Rebecca.

  ‘Mrs Thorne!’

  Kate had to get to her. If Rebecca knew something about Anna’s death Kate was going to find out what it was, right there and then. ‘Rebecca!’ she called. ‘Stop. Please!’

  But Rebecca kept running.

  She hurtled through the maze of corridors, with Kate desperate and gasping behind her, trying not to slip over as she threw herself around corners, ricocheting off walls, pulling work off display boards as she tried to keep up. Kate kept shouting at her to stop but Rebecca ran on. They banged through two sets of double doors. The air in Kate’s unfit lungs was burning. Up ahead she saw Rebecca disappear through a door, and outside.

  Kate shouted again.

  ‘Rebecca, stop! I just want to talk!’

  Kate followed her outside. It took a few moments for her eyes to grow accustomed to the brightness. When they did, however, and she realized where she was, she stopped dead in her tracks and a chill fell over her. She stared around her in horror, panting heavily, dizzy, her head swirling both with the effort of running and spikes of hideous recollection. There was a spindly apple sapling in a large plastic pot with an extravagant white bow tied around it like some sick present. The sight of it snatched her breath. Why had he put it in there? Surely not to mark the exact spot of vile concrete that had taken Anna from her? Kate struggled to breathe. Bile rose in her throat. This was hell itself.

  From a distance away there was a despairing shriek that broke the silence in the deserted playground. Kate heaved her head, a leaden weight, in the direction of the noise. Rebecca was wailing and beating feeble hands against a wrought-iron gate in the boundary wall. Kate made herself breathe in and out. She listened to the sound of it, concentrated on her lungs filling and emptying, her heart rate calming. Then she took a step, then another, one foot in front of the other, slowly advancing on Rebecca, walking on autopilot. She didn’t care now if she reached her or not. If Rebecca ran again, or made it through that padlocked gate, Kate wouldn’t follow; she was ready to give up, ready to fall to the ground, defeated.

  But Rebecca didn’t run. She, too, it seemed, had lost her fight, collapsed as she was against the gate, wheezing and crying with exhaustion. She turned slowly to face Kate, who put her hands gently on the girl’s shoulders, panting heavily, her lungs burning. Then, as Kate stood just inches away from her daughter’s closest friend, mere feet from the exact spot where her daughter had died, she began to be bombarded with horrific images of Anna that she’d spent a year trying to wipe from her mind. Kate closed her eyes tightly and violently shook her head, desperate to block them out. Anna’s twisted body. Rigid on the ground. The pool of blood that circled her head like a devil’s halo, shining black in the moonlight. Her creamy skin spattered with grit. Dead eyes staring at the stars. Her blue-tinged mouth open as if calling for her mother.

  ‘Not here,’ Kate rasped.

  Kate tried to drag her away from the shadow of the gymnasium, back towards the main school building. Rebecca started to pull and wriggle, digging her feet into the playground, yanking her arm back again and again. But Kate held on, desperate to get away from the recollections of Anna. When at last they began to fade enough for Kate to think, she turned Rebecca to face her, held the girl’s hands in hers, and bent so she was level with her face.

  ‘Now,’ she said, flat and quiet. ‘Tell me.’

  Rebecca lifted her eyes and for a moment or two they held each other’s stare, but then her face set hard, eyes narrowing, mouth clamped shut, surly, uncooperative.

  Make me, she said silently to Kate. You just try and make me.

  And then every emotion Kate had, everything that occupied her, the anger and frustration, the guilt, pain, hurt, the bastard unfairness of it all, swelled up inside like boiling milk. Why wasn’t it you instead of her? Why did she have to die and you get to live? Kate would have sold her soul for sixpence to have the tragedy the other way round. Was it wrong of her to feel that?

  ‘Tell me!’ she screamed. ‘For Christ’s sake, speak!’

  But Rebecca gave her nothing. Kate started to shake her, as those returning images of her dead daughter bit into her with every push and pull. Rebecca’s head flopped back and forth like a rag doll’s. There was no resistance from her, just blankness, acceptance and a glaze that covered her eyes like a scab with whatever she knew buried beneath.

  ‘Why won’t you fucking tell me?’ Kate screamed. ‘You stupid little girl! I know you know something!’

  Kate kept screaming at her, on and on, and the more she screamed and the longer Rebecca stayed quiet, the angrier Kate became until everything blurred and all she could see was the six-foot photograph of Anna that hung over the stage, but instead of her glowing skin and breathing beauty, the face she saw was bloodied and deformed, flattened so there was no definition, a nose so badly broken it didn’t protrude from her face, her teeth smashed, her skin saturated beneath the surface with blood, all swollen and bloated like a purple balloon.

  Kate lost all control of herself then. She lifted her hands and began pounding them into Rebecca. Again and again she beat her fists against her, hitting out at all the pain she felt, begging Anna to be alive. Kate’s hands flailed, smacking into Rebecca in a clouded frenzy, her sobbing mingling with Rebecca’s and Stephen’s speech on angels, and Angela Howe shouting from somewhere behind her, and then Jon, close to her, begging her to stop.

  Blame and Reflection

  ‘Please, God, Kate! Stop it!’ He pushed himself between them, putting a hand on Kate’s shoulder to distance her from Rebecca. ‘Kate! Stop! Stop.’

  Eventually Kate’s exhausted hands stopped hitting and fell to her sides as if she’d run out of batteries.

  ‘Kate?’ he breathed.

  He saw her eyes focus on him and as they did, the realization of what had happened, of what she’d done, slowly grew. With his hand on his wife’s shoulder, Jon turned to Rebecca, who was hunched and shivering on the floor like a terrified animal. Her arms covered her face, a split lip just visible beneath the crook of an elbow. He reached out to touch her. She recoiled, and as she did the enormity of what had happened fell on him like a dead weight.

  He looked then at Angela Howe, who was doing her best to control the gathering crowd. He frantically scanned the faces until he foun
d Lizzie, her bewilderment and terror a reflection of his own. He was torn between going to her and staying with Kate and Rebecca, but when Rebecca made a soft whimpering sound, he dropped to his knees and gathered her in his arms, held her head to his chest, stroked her hair, told her over and over that she was safe. He ventured a glance at Kate, scared in case she caught his eye and saw his shock. But she wasn’t looking at him; her terrified eyes were bolted to Rebecca.

  For a split moment it was deathly quiet around them, but then the place erupted. There was a rumble of muttering, the odd scream, people were crying. Angela Howe shouted for someone to call an ambulance. Voices started saying police. He heard Lizzie then, calling out for Kate, saying no, no, no, repeatedly. Jon searched the crowd again, but she’d gone. He called her name, then tried to stand, desperate to find her, but Rebecca clutched at his jacket.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ she sobbed softly.

  He turned back to Kate. ‘Lizzie?’ he shouted over the noise. ‘Where’s Lizzie? Can you see her?’

  Kate didn’t move; she didn’t even register she’d heard his voice.

  ‘Lizzie!’ Jon called. ‘Lizzie!’

  Then Stephen was at his side. He crouched next to him. Leant close to his ear. ‘The police are on their way. You should go with Kate. They have to talk to her.’

  ‘Rebecca doesn’t want me to leave her,’ he said.

  ‘I think you’ll have to, Jon,’ Stephen said. ‘Someone needs to be with Kate.’

  Jon looked down at Rebecca, who stared back at him. ‘I’m going to leave you with Dr Howe,’ he said, as gently as he could.

  Rebecca didn’t let go of him.

  Dr Howe held out a hand towards her. ‘Come on, Rebecca. Mr Thorne has to go. You’ll be OK. It’s only for a few minutes; your mother is on her way.’