The Bridal Party, page 19
Clarisse nodded, sadly. ‘The Noah I knew … he was gone, really. You killed him, that night in the Lake District. He’d become cruel; violent. Even to me; especially to me, perhaps. He was obsessed with justice, with constructing this game. I could never have stayed with him; not the way he’d become. Today … today was an opportunity to give him what he wanted and let him go. But now I have the evidence.’
There it was; those words again, repeated like a mantra.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Nada, dreading the answer. ‘What evidence?’
Clarisse’s eyes came into focus, and she grimaced. The shock was gone; now there was only anger, only fury.
‘Evidence to hold over you. I didn’t have it last time; there was nothing to threaten you with, nothing to pin on you. But now …’ Her eyes hardened; she turned her gaze on the others. ‘Now you have to make up for everything you’ve done to me, for the rest of your lives. This will be hanging over you until you become the people I thought I loved, the friends I deserved. If you cross me again, I will snap my fingers and your lives will crumble around you.
‘I can make you do whatever I want; I can make you into murderers; I can make you the Jersey Witches. I’ve been filming you a lot today, you know. Gathered round a pagan dance with me forced into the middle; executing people with a crossbow at Geoffrey’s Leap. And I’ve got more. I’ve got documents with your fingerprints all over them relating to hunts, and murders, and rituals. A deer head in a bag that I can identify as Tamsyn’s with just a simple explanation of a nickname; blood from the same animal on the costume you gave me to wear. All I have to say is that I was there, stuck in the middle of it all. I didn’t book anything. Nothing is in my name. I was the victim; you were the perpetrators.’
Nada had to take a step back, stunned. Everyone else was silent too, overwhelmed by the person standing in front of them.
‘You are all in my debt,’ spat Clarisse. ‘You will do what I ask, and you will grovel, and then I will spare you. Who knows? Maybe we can go back to being the friends we were. But I will never forget. Never, for as long as I live.’ She looked up at the outcrop, where Noah’s body lay, and her eyes brimmed with tears.
Tamsyn tried to approach her; to place an arm around her shoulders, as if she hadn’t meant any of the things she’d just said.
‘Don’t you touch me!’ screamed Clarisse, flaring up again. ‘Don’t you ever touch me again, unless I ask you to.’
Tamsyn retreated, startled.
‘Now …’ Clarisse took a long breath. ‘You are going to get rid of the bodies.’ She took out her phone again. ‘And I will have more of my evidence.’
After
‘So remind me then, Nada. What are the ingredients of an outstanding English lesson?’
Clarisse is hard, cruel. Her eyes brim with resentment, with the trauma that life has inflicted upon her. Nada hates meetings with her now; it is the moment in the week when all pretence, all effort to mask what happened, fades.
‘Everyone progressing. Everyone engaged,’ she breathes.
‘Exactly.’ On the other side of the desk, Clarisse barely moves. Inside, they are both raging, torn with emotion, but she hides it best. Her gestures are precise; infrequent. With every pause, their conversation grinds to a halt, making the silence weigh heavily. ‘But yet again, when I came to visit your Year 9 class, I counted at least ten students who were off task. Why?’
‘Because I hadn’t scaffolded the task so they could all access it, perhaps. Or maybe because I wasn’t following the school behaviour policy rigorously enough.’
‘Maybe.’ Clarisse leans forward; it is one of her theatrical gestures. Nada’s instinct is to flinch; she’s not sure why. ‘But it’s been years now, Nada. I know we’re friends, but I’m afraid that this is something that needs to improve. The head is concerned. Senior leadership are on my back.’
Nada doesn’t speak. There is nothing to say. She is doing her best; they both know that, or at least Nada thinks they both know that. It is possible that Clarisse is unaware of it. More likely, she does not care any more.
‘I took you on as an NQT, remember?’ Clarisse leans back. Nada’s lips tighten.
Not this talk, she thinks. Anything but this.
‘I was advised not to,’ Clarisse continues. ‘Everyone just thought I was doing you a favour because I knew you. I was determined to prove them wrong. I knew you to be hard-working. Honest. Loyal.’ Her eyes flicker at this last word, showing a flash of emotion. ‘I was happy to defend you. I still am. You’re my friend, after all. I couldn’t let you down.’
She places her hand on Nada’s. It is a parody of friendship. Nada’s fingers tighten at the touch, and Clarisse squeezes with a force too tight for warmth.
‘But you have to show me you can improve. Learn from your mistakes.’
Learn from your mistakes. The words shudder through Nada, every syllable like a point pressing on her skin.
‘I’ll be honest, Nada. You’re better than this. I saw that you could be a great teacher back when we did our PGCE. But recently you’ve been letting yourself down. And that means you’re letting me down too.’
A tear, just one, escapes from Clarisse’s left eye; it barely leaves a mark before disappearing from her face. There is some kindness, some love there, but it’s buried too deep to be retrieved. All there is, all there ever will be, is the disappointment, the anger. The fingers squeezing Nada’s until they turn bone white.
It is as Gaia said. There are those who are generous, and those for whom kindness is conditional. Clarisse has given much to Nada, but it has always come with expectations. Demands that Nada has not met.
‘And we both know …’ Clarisse’s voice wavers, but only a little. She swallows, and then her tone is firm. ‘We both know that letting me down is not an option.’
Nada finally responds. ‘I know,’ she breathes.
Clarisse sits back, finally letting go of her grasp on Nada’s fingers. She nods, to herself as much as anyone else, and gets up. Then, without another word, she leaves the classroom, leaving Nada alone, facing nothing, facing nowhere.
Nada exhales as if she has been holding her breath. She gazes around. There are pictures of texts: Macbeth with the guilty, bloody hands, An Inspector Calls with words of responsibility. They look down at her. Surround her.
There is nothing emptier than a vacant classroom; nothing more silent than a room used to noise.
Nada gets up quickly, but is then unsure why. She wants to do something; perhaps tackle the hundreds of exercise books that need marking, or prepare the next day’s lessons. But the moment she is on her feet, Clarisse’s criticisms needle through her, stopping her in her tracks.
It is like this after every meeting. Clarisse’s words are layered, thick with the past; they need digesting, contemplating. Nada wishes she didn’t have to, but she knows that she will spend the rest of the hour unpicking everything that was said, pondering the insinuations and the threats.
She slowly goes around the classroom, mindlessly putting every chair in place, picking up scraps of paper to throw them into the bin.
She thinks of being back at that table in Herodias House. Of that weight upon her shoulders, the burden of thinking that someone was about to point at her and declare her a murderer, a criminal. She wonders whether she will ever be able to leave that table; whether the murder mystery will ever truly be finished. She thinks back to it every day; she remembers what it was like to sit there, the past swirling around her like a spirit, urging her to confess.
The past is still there; it will never leave. Nada knows this. It is there in every word Clarisse has said to her since Jersey. It is there in the images of that hill in the Lake District, and Noah bleeding into the stream; images that enter her thoughts and dreams. There is no escaping them; no relief. They sear, they burn, they hiss in her ear.
Returning, endlessly.
J G Murray, The Bridal Party
