The Dare, page 3
When the adverts come on, Ross turns the volume down and shifts position so that he’s facing me.
‘What do you think about having a housewarming party?’ he says.
The suggestion throws me. I stare at the muted screen, trying to think of what to say. I’m not a great fan of parties. Standing around in a room full of strangers. Watching everyone else get drunk while I’m sipping yet another soft drink. Frankly, I’m amazed he’s even suggested it. What with one of the partners at the surgery being on long-term sick leave and a succession of unreliable locums, he’s been rushed off his feet and stressed out by work ever since we moved in. I didn’t think he’d have the time or energy to contemplate having a party.
‘I thought it might be nice,’ he says, and there’s such an eager expression on his face that for a few seconds I see the little boy he once was – the little boy who lost his mother. ‘I could invite my colleagues from the practice. And some of the old gang, of course.’
The old gang – the guys he trained with at Imperial College and played rugby with. I try to picture them all squeezed into this room, laughing and telling embarrassing medical anecdotes, or worse still, reliving their laddish exploits. I could do without all that, to be honest, but it’s about time I met the people he works with. About time they met me. It won’t do any harm for all those nurses and receptionists and secretaries to meet Dr Murray’s fiancée. Do they even know we’re engaged? Because if not, it’s about time they did.
‘All right,’ I say, before I can change my mind. ‘Let’s do it!’
Later, though, as we’re climbing into bed, I’m already starting to regret the idea.
‘When exactly were you thinking of having it?’
‘I dunno. Next Saturday?’
I think of all the boxes still cluttering up the living room, and one in particular. The one that’s been exerting its siren call on me ever since it arrived in the house.
‘But that only gives us a week, and we haven’t unpacked half our stuff yet.’
Ross laughs. ‘Lizzie, it’s a housewarming party. People will expect a few boxes.’
Visions of drunken strangers helping us unpack flit through my mind: cardboard and newspaper scattered all over the floor, our possessions being plonked in strange and hilarious places. Sometimes I wish I was less uptight about these things. A fun-loving party girl. Someone who could down tequila slammers and Jägerbombs.
‘Tell you what,’ he says, leaning over to switch his lamp off, ‘we’ll have it in a couple of weeks. What about the first Saturday in April? That’ll give us time to go to Ikea and buy some more glasses. I can let people know tomorrow.’
I go to switch my lamp off, too, but before I can reach it Ross straddles me and his hands are in my hair.
I giggle and raise my arms above my head, let him slip my top off and fling it on the floor. ‘Now then, Miss Molyneux,’ he says, in his best impersonation of Sean Connery’s James Bond talking to Miss Moneypenny, ‘please lie very still while I carry out a totally unnecessary breast examination. It’s an innovative technique, part of the new NICE guidelines,’ he adds, deadly serious. ‘I shall be using only my mouth.’
I lie on my back, sweat cooling on my skin, till the nightmare fades. The one where a train is bearing down on me and I can’t move my feet. Can’t run away in time. I’ve had it before, lots of times, but not for ages. I always wake a split second before the impact, the deafening whine of the engine still roaring in my ears. I must have fallen into a deep sleep as soon as Ross left for work this morning. That’ll teach me to close my eyes again.
I go to the bathroom for a shower, let the water drum down fast and furious on my head. Things will return to normal soon. The news of poor little Elodie’s death will disappear from the headlines. Another story will take its place and the demons will hunker back down in whatever recess of my mind they inhabit. Until the next time some poor child dies on a railway line.
After I’ve had my breakfast and taken my medication, I potter about the house and make a half-hearted attempt to tidy things up. I’m procrastinating, I know I am. Putting off dealing with the contents of that box. There are still so many other boxes to unpack, so many things to find a place for, but right now, I can’t face any of it. I feel restless and out of sorts. It’s that nightmare. It must be.
When the phone rings I go into the bedroom to answer it. Recording an answerphone message is yet another thing I need to do. But all I can hear when I pick up is a weird muffled sound before the line goes dead. It’s like the one I had yesterday which I assumed was Mum. Although I’m sure I heard a faint voice in the background this time, almost like a voice on a tannoy system. How strange. I dial 1471, but it’s a withheld number. Oh, well, if it’s important, I’m sure they’ll ring back.
I’m just about to do a bit more unpacking when a much better idea occurs to me. I retrieve the local paper from the small pile of junk I’ve left by the front door and turn to the advert I was thinking about yesterday. The one for the open day at Greenwich University. It’s taking place this afternoon. I read it again. Maybe noticing this was a sign. Serendipity, isn’t that what it’s called?
My epilepsy’s under control now and it’s time to make something of my life. Perhaps I could even do a PhD one day. Then there’ll be two doctors in the house. I smile. Getting ahead of myself, as usual. But I’ll definitely go along later and see what it’s like. It’s good to have something other than the past to focus on. It’s good to have a plan.
6
I’ve passed through Greenwich lots of times on the bus, enjoying the sight of the elegant quadrants and colonnaded facades of the Old Royal Naval College, but now that I’m actually walking through the campus I can’t shake the idea of studying here from my head. Sometimes I get a strong feeling about a place. An affinity for it. As if I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’ll come back, or that it will have some special significance for me. All this grand baroque architecture, all this history. I feel inspired just being here.
‘No wonder they use this location for so many films,’ says the girl walking next to me. We’ve just bonded over a croissant and coffee in the café under the chapel in Queen Mary Court.
‘I know, I keep expecting Johnny Depp in full Captain Jack costume to leap out from behind one of these pillars.’
I’m delighted at how easily we’ve fallen into conversation. How fast we’ve clicked. It was the right decision to come here today. I’ve got a stack of information already and I get the distinct impression from the tutor I’ve just spoken to that, with my A-level grades and the fact that I’m a mature student – mature, it makes me sound like a ripe cheese – I’ll be in with a good chance of being offered a place. What’s more, if I study part-time, I can even apply direct, without all the rigmarole of going through UCAS.
It’ll be expensive, of course, but Mum and Dad have always said they’d help me out financially if I wanted to do a course. I can apply for a student loan as well. It’ll mean giving up on the idea of a full-time job, for the time being at least, but ultimately, I’ll be better qualified. And Ross is hardly likely to complain, not after the conversation we had the other day.
The sun twinkles on the River Thames and the sound of violins floats out of the open windows of King Charles Court, where the Trinity Laban music students are doing their practice. It’s a beautiful piece of music, something classical I vaguely recognize but can’t name. The type of music that fits this setting perfectly. It’s like having my own personal soundtrack, and I imagine walking back from the library with my fellow students, books under our arms, exchanging confidences between lectures, discussing what we’re reading and the assignments we’ve been set.
As we pass the Painted Chapel, one of the violinists plays a discordant note and the music comes to an abrupt stop. The noise is so ugly and jarring, so thoroughly unexpected, that I recoil almost as if I’ve been shot, suddenly feeling as fragile as a blown egg. My new friend turns to me, one eyebrow raised, a wry look of amusement on her face, and I feel foolish and embarrassed about my extreme reaction.
‘You must be a nightmare to watch a scary film with,’ she says.
I don’t tell her that I never watch scary films, that there’s enough horror in my head to last a lifetime, thank you very much. No, I don’t tell her that. I just laugh and say, ‘Yes, I am.’
When I get off at the bus stop on Little Heath and turn into the side-street that leads to our house, I ring Mum and tell her about my plans. She puts me on loudspeaker so Dad can hear, too. She sounds really pleased – they both do.
‘Your dad’s always said you’d make a good academic. We always wanted you to go to uni, but you were so adamant you didn’t want to.’
I can’t help smiling at her version of events. What actually happened was that they did everything they could to persuade me to go to the local university so that I could still live at home with them. They were terrified I’d go to Edinburgh or Aberystwyth or somewhere miles away and they wouldn’t be there to protect me. In the end, I decided not to go at all. I wasn’t ready.
We chat for a little longer about this and that. Mum’s plans for turning my old bedroom into her craft room. Dad’s new shed.
I laugh. ‘How many sheds does one man need?’
‘Three,’ Dad says in the background. ‘Ross has got a lot of catching up to do.’
We say goodbye and I tuck my phone into the top pocket of my coat. The warm spring weather has brought the cherry blossom out early and transformed the grey uniformity of our street into something pink and hopeful and pretty. It’s that time of year when anything seems possible. A time of new beginnings. New growth.
When I used to come down to London on the train to visit Ross in his old flat, I couldn’t imagine living here. But now that I am, I’m seeing things in a different light. I’m starting to appreciate that wonderful sense of anonymity as I go about my business. It’s so different from the small-town life I’m used to.
As I approach the house, I notice that someone has balanced a toy truck – one of those little metal ones – on top of the low brick wall enclosing the strip of concrete that passes for our front garden. For some reason, our wall seems to have been designated as the home for the street’s lost property. The day we moved in, it was a man’s leather glove.
Ross once joked that whatever you leave outside your house in London, someone will invariably take it, and that sometimes it’s cheaper than going to the tip. Which might explain the chest of drawers that’s been plonked on the pavement at the other end of the street.
It’s only when I come a little closer that I realize this isn’t a toy truck.
My stomach clenches. It’s a little train.
7
Then: After
Monday, 27 August 2007
It’s been three days since Alice’s funeral, and I haven’t left the house. There’s nothing to leave it for. Not now Alice is gone.
Dad suggested we drive to the seaside. Walk along the promenade and have an ice-cream. Sit on the beach. But Mum’s had a migraine since yesterday and I said I didn’t want to eat ice-cream and pretend everything was normal, because it isn’t. How can it be normal when I’ve spent the last few weeks being interviewed by the police and going to see a counsellor? How can it be normal when Mum and Dad keep talking in hushed voices whenever I leave the room and stop the minute I come in?
How will anything be normal ever again?
It’s night-time now and I’m lying in bed, trying to sleep. Mum brought me some hot chocolate to drink about an hour ago. She lay on the bed with me and stroked my arms with the tips of her fingernails, the way she used to when I was a little girl. Scratchy tickle, I used to call it. ‘You’re still my little girl,’ she said. ‘And I hate seeing you so sad.’
I hate seeing her sad, too. And Dad. It’s as if all the stuffing’s gone out of them. They look old and ill. A horrible woman in the supermarket told Mum that if I was her daughter she’d spank the living daylights out of me until I told the truth, and that Mick and Sheena Dawson have a right to know why Alice died.
Mum doesn’t know I know this. I heard her telling Dad in the kitchen when they thought I was upstairs. Dad got really angry and made her tell him who it was, but she didn’t know. ‘What did she look like?’ he said, and the way Mum described her, I thought it sounded like Melissa Davenport’s mum. ‘Why are people so ignorant?’ he said.
My fingers curl into fists and my nails dig into the soft flesh of my palms. What’s it going to be like going back to school? Everyone staring at me and whispering behind my back. Someone put a note through the door yesterday. It was in a little flowery envelope addressed to me and, idiot that I am, I thought it was a sympathy card. Someone saying how sorry they were that I’d lost my best friend. But inside was a page torn roughly from a notebook, and on it the words ‘You killed Alice, you epileptic ginger freak’ in big red letters.
I should have shown it to Mum and Dad, but I was too ashamed. Couldn’t bear to see their shocked faces. Didn’t want to hear Mum telling me all the usual stuff, like ‘You have to feel sorry for people like that, Lizzie. You have to pray for them.’
No way am I going to pray for the person who sent me that note. And no way was I going to upset my parents even more by showing it to them. I put it through Dad’s shredder so I didn’t have to look at it any more. But the words are still in my head. They always will be now. Along with everything else I don’t want to think about.
Eventually, my limbs grow heavy and I feel myself sinking deep into the mattress. Suddenly, I jolt awake. Something has just hit my bedroom window. It sounded like a stone.
I get up and peer out at the dark, empty street. Maybe I was dreaming. I’m about to let the curtain fall when a figure emerges from behind the hedge. I drop the curtain, heart thumping in fear. Someone really is out there.
I move to the side of the window and peer round the very edge of the curtain. The figure is still there, staring up at me, and for one heart-stopping moment I think it’s Alice, come back from the grave, but whoever this is, she’s taller than Alice. She’s dressed in jeans and a shirt, a long scarf wrapped round her neck and the lower half of her face.
She stares up at the window, slowly unwinding the scarf with one hand. My breath freezes at the back of my throat. It’s Catherine Dawson, her hair fanning out in the breeze, her accusing eyes drilling into my face, just like they did at the funeral. Did she send me that note as well? What kind of adult does that to a child?
I want to open the window and yell at her to leave me alone, but all I can do is stand and stare, transfixed by those terrible, hate-filled eyes. At last, she turns and walks away without a backward glance. I hear the clack clack clack of her high heels on the pavement, stand there listening to the sound get fainter and fainter. I won’t sleep again tonight.
8
Now
I pick the toy train up and examine it, trying to ignore the sick little feeling in my stomach. It must once have been bright blue but is now patinated with scrapes that reveal the grey of the diecast metal. By the looks of it, more than one generation of children have rolled this little train along the ground and sent it careening into walls.
I place it back where it was and scan the street in both directions in the hope of seeing the child who might have dropped it. The sick feeling intensifies. What’s wrong with me lately? I pull my key out of my handbag and go inside, determined to tackle that box of memories Mum and Dad brought over. Maybe then I won’t see a kid’s toy train as some kind of ominous portent. Won’t have this vague sense of dread hovering over me all the time.
Five minutes later, I’m kneeling on the floor of the living room, drawing out a well-thumbed copy of The Little Princess. I flick through its brittle, yellowing pages, remembering how closely I identified with poor Sara Crewe, humiliated by the vile Miss Minchin, taunted by Lavinia and the other horrid girls. I knew exactly how that felt.
The Order of Service card for Alice’s funeral is where I left it yesterday, wedged down the side. I prise it out and tear it up before I can change my mind. The black-and-white pieces of card flutter into the bin bag like charred confetti. Then I pile the books on to the floor and reach down to the layer of coloured exercise books underneath. Don’t even think about opening them, says a voice inside my head.
I grab a handful, trying not to read my tiny, neat handwriting on the front of each one. Not that I need to. The topics come back to me easily. Yellow for history, orange for maths, red for English and pink for German. Then there was grey for French and purple for geography. But the green ones – what were they? I rack my brain, but it’s no good. I lift a cover and peek inside.
Science. Of course. I turn the pages and find the summary I wrote on dissecting a heart, my childish handwriting so familiar and yet so different from the way I write now. It’s funny, reading this again. The time Mr Chatterjee asked us all to choose a partner and bring a pig’s heart in so we could dissect it in pairs. Except Alice’s dad, who was a butcher, thought he’d go one better and gave us an ox heart.
I couldn’t believe it when Alice took it out of the plastic bag and brandished it in front of me. I had to hold on to the bench for support while she stuck her latex-gloved fingers into the slab of wet, raw heart that was three times the size of everyone else’s.
‘There’s still some dried blood in the chambers, sir,’ Alice had said. She always loved the practicals.
‘Well, rinse it out then,’ Mr Chatterjee snapped, and since Alice was doing all the cutting, it was me who had to carry the huge, slippery mound over to the sink and hold it under the tap. As the pink water swirled down the plug hole, I retched over it. Nearly fainted. Alice couldn’t stop laughing and Mr Chatterjee got really cross.
