Friend Request(25)
Tim looks away into the distance.
‘I don’t blame you, Louise,’ he says stiffly.
‘Really? I think Esther Harcourt does,’ I say without thinking.
‘Esther Harcourt? Do you still see her? She’s a lawyer now, isn’t she?’
‘Yes. Do you remember Esther then?’
Part of me is surprised that someone like Tim, who was part of the cool crowd and didn’t even go to school with us, should recall Esther.
‘Yeah, she spoke at the memorial service, didn’t she? And Maria saw a lot of her in the time before… you know. Mum talks about her a bit too. She’s kept an eye on her career over the years. Esther was a good friend to Maria.’
The unspoken hangs in the air like a bad smell: unlike some people.
‘How is your mum?’ I think of Bridget the last time I saw her, the night Maria disappeared: the rising panic, her fear-drenched eyes locking onto mine for those few heart-stopping seconds.
‘Not great, to be honest. She’s not been at all well recently, and she’s lonely. She never met anyone else after Dad left. Having a grandchild helps a bit, but she’s never got over what happened to Maria.’
Of course she hasn’t. How could you?
‘Look, Louise, none of us know what happened that night.’
I try to keep my face neutral.
‘Mum believes Maria killed herself, but I don’t know… she’s tougher than… she was tougher than she seemed, Maria. I know she was drinking that night. If she wandered off, if she was upset, she could easily have missed her footing up there.’
The baby stirs in her buggy, and Tim jiggles her gently back and forth. She sighs and relaxes back into blissful sleep.
‘I know I was hard on you back then, but I felt so protective of Maria, especially after what had happened to her in London. And I was so angry; at our dad for leaving, and at Maria sometimes, for getting involved with that boy, although of course it wasn’t her fault. Really, of course, I was angry at myself. I thought I should have protected her, I should have seen what was happening with that boy earlier. I thought it was my fault, that if I’d behaved better, not made such a fuss about leaving London, then Dad wouldn’t have left.’
He assumes I know the story about the boy in London, thinks that Maria told me. Of course she didn’t, but I don’t feel I can ask him now.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I say.
‘Well,’ he says with obvious effort, ‘it wasn’t yours either. I know you didn’t behave well, but you weren’t to know what was going to happen. No one did. I should have kept more of an eye on her at the leavers’ party. We were close, Maria and I.’
How close, I wonder? Everyone used to comment on how protective he was of her, she even said so herself. Close enough to want to reopen old wounds, to punish the girls he sees as responsible for his sister’s unhappiness?
‘I knew she was… having trouble, you know…’ he goes on.
Having trouble. It’s kind of him to frame it like that, but I know the truth. We had made her life a misery.
‘No one else can take the responsibility for what happened to her. Either she bears that herself, or it was an accident, a misstep, a one-in-a-million chance.’ He’s watching me closely, and I shift from foot to foot, wishing the encounter over.
It’s a comforting fallacy, and I wish with everything in me that his version of events was the true one. Or if that can’t be (and of course it can’t), I wish that I could tell someone the truth without being judged, or worse. I wish that I could loosen this secret knot within me, a knot that is tied so tightly I don’t think anyone will ever be able to get their fingers into its intricacies to tug it apart, however hard they try.
Tim doesn’t know it, but we are talking at cross-purposes here. He thinks we’re talking about the fact that I abandoned Maria for Sophie and the promise of popularity, and how I was partly responsible for ostracising her at school. He thinks we are talking about a bit of schoolgirl bullying, not sticks and stones but words that were meant to hurt, and did. And it’s true; I did do all that. I ignored her, I deserted her, I let her down. What Tim doesn’t know is that I also did something else. Something much, much worse.
We say our goodbyes, and I drive slowly back through the streets of my childhood. As I put my foot down on the A11, something about my conversation with Tim tugs at the corners of my mind. It takes me a while to figure out what it is, but then I get it. She’s tougher than she seems, he started to say, but then corrected himself. A slip of the tongue maybe, or perhaps seeing me threw everything up in the air, flung him back in his mind to 1989. But whatever the reason, there’s no getting away from it: Tim referred to Maria in the present tense.
Chapter 11
Some days she feels like a prisoner in her own home. There’s no reason why she can’t go out, of course. Nobody could tell from simply looking at her. But on days like today, it feels as though someone has peeled back a layer of skin, leaving her face red raw, offering no protection from the elements. From anything. On these days she hides away, waiting until she feels able to face the world again; ready to put her mask back on, to keep smiling.
She wonders sometimes how long she will be able to keep it up. For ever? In some ways, she’s so used to keeping this secret that it comes naturally. And on the days when it doesn’t, when she yearns to open her heart, her mouth, to let it come spilling out, he is there to remind her, as he has been over all these years. Keep quiet. Don’t tell. The consequences will be worse for you than for anyone else. He’s just trying to protect her, she knows that, and is grateful for it.