Final Cut(19)

‘No?’

I ignore the sarcasm.

‘Look. I’m just trying to find out what happened. Maybe I can help. Did she tell you anything, before she went?’

She sighs, then turns to face me. ‘Zoe didn’t fit in. She was pretty. Clever, too. Work it out.’

‘So she was bullied?’

Despite herself, she wants to talk. ‘It was nothing at first. Just having a go, you know? But then they started sending everyone photos on Snapchat.’

‘What kind of photos?’

‘Zoe in the showers, and … well …’

I can imagine it. The word FAT, used as a weapon. The word BITCH. Worse.

‘Didn’t she tell anyone? Her parents?’

‘They weren’t really talking by then. She was stopping out late. Drinking. They said it was affecting her schoolwork.’

‘Was it?’

‘Like I said, she was clever. Her parents wanted her to go to university.’

‘And what about her?’

‘Don’t think she knew what she wanted.’ She puts her gum in the bin. Her T-shirt rides up as she does so, and I notice her arm. There, half hidden by a tattooed rose, there’s a purple, thumb-shaped bruise. I force myself not to ask what caused it.

‘Did she do drugs?’

She laughs. ‘What d’you think? You’ve seen the film. Everyone does. There’s not much else to do.’

‘What film?’

She sighs theatrically. ‘Kat and Ellie. Eating chips. Are you blind?’

I resist the urge to rise to her bait, to tell her I’ve seen a thing or two and she needs to be careful before pissing me off. Instead, I smile thinly. I remember the clip she’s talking about. I’ll look at it later. ‘Did she have a boyfriend?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘I heard she did. It ended.’

‘Maybe, but she was really weird about it. She wouldn’t even tell me there was anyone, for ages. Kept saying she was busy whenever I asked her to go anywhere.’

She sounds hurt. I wonder if she feels guilty. Her friend ran and she has no idea why. Maybe she and I aren’t so dissimilar.

‘Any idea who it was?’

She glances past me, towards The Rocks. ‘Someone told me they’d seen her up there.’

‘What? That big old house?’

She nods.

‘Who lives there?’

The room falls quiet. It feels like Sophie and I are at the bottom of a well. I can see the sky above us, but the walls are smooth and greased with sludge.

‘David.’

David? The word is cold, it’s like plunging into freezing water, but when I try to remember why, nothing comes.

‘Alone?’

She laughs, as if the question is ridiculous.

‘Yeah. He lives alone.’

‘Why’s that funny?’

‘Go and see him. You’ll see.’

I just might, I think.

‘What’s he like?’

She shifts awkwardly. ‘Old.’

‘How old?’

‘Older than Zoe, put it like that. And he’s weird.’

‘How?’

‘You never see him. And when you do he’s always got binoculars. Goes and stands on the beach at night. Always by himself.’ She pauses. ‘And Daisy “jumped” from right outside his house.’

The air fizzes with her sarcasm. I can hear the quotes around the word.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Look,’ she says. ‘I don’t know anything. But they say Daisy weren’t the type to kill herself. But she did. And I know Zoe weren’t the type to run away. But she did.’

Before I even know what I’m doing I’m asking the question.

‘And the other girl? Sadie?’

‘Sadie?’ she says. She stares right at me, and for a second it’s as if she’s seeing straight through me, past the reshaped teeth and the lasered eyes, past the plastic surgery and the lost weight and the dyed hair, and seeing me for who I am. Poor, awkward Sadie. ‘No one ever really talks about her. They say they found her but she wouldn’t come back. And I suppose with Daisy dying she kind of got overshadowed.’

‘But—’ I begin, but a door at the back of the shop clatters open and someone enters with an urgent ‘Sophie?’

‘I need to go,’ she says, her voice low. ‘But, like I say, some people think Daisy killed herself. But some people don’t. They think she was pushed. Stick that in your little film, if you like. Only don’t say it were me that told you.’





11


I find the clip. The bench at the bottom of Slate Road between the slipway and The Ship, overlooking the water. Two girls are sitting, each with a packet of chips. The cliffs are visible just over the taller one’s shoulder. The other looks younger; she has ginger hair and a dirty pink rucksack sits at her feet. The camera zooms in with that peculiar wobbliness of a hand-held device. We’re close now. The younger girl devours her chips anxiously, barely tasting them, while the other is more measured, taking a mouthful between drags of her cigarette.

I lean forward, closer to the screen. As well as Kat, I recognise the shorter of the two girls; she’d recorded an earlier film, the one in which she’s arguing with her parents. Ellie. Now I watch the film again I realise they’re unaware of the camera. The person filming must be standing somewhere out of sight – in the alley that runs between the visitors’ centre and the pub, perhaps – watching them.