The Girl I Used to Be(67)

Hi Lauren, I replied. Great to hear from you. I was just thinking about the old days.

Oh me too, she wrote. Especially after seeing Jack’s photos. Can’t believe how young we look!

Jack?

Jack Howard. Remember him? That geeky boy who took Business Studies in school. He’s quite good-looking now—I should’ve gone out with him when I had the chance! He’s put photos up of that trip to London we went on, remember?

I thought back. Jack Howard. That was a name from the past. He’d had a crush on Lauren, but she hadn’t had time for anyone except Tom.

I hadn’t kept in touch with anyone from school. Even my friendship with Lauren had faded pretty quickly. I’d wanted to put that part of my life behind me, to start again, and in those days, before social media was so popular, it was easy to lose touch. When I met Caitlin she easily replaced the friendship I’d had with Lauren and, although I knew that was unfair, I think Lauren was relieved by it, too. By the time she married Tom and they moved to Australia, our friendship was reduced to Christmas and birthday cards.

I searched for Jack on Facebook. His profile was locked down, so I sent a friend request and went back to chat to Lauren.

We talked for a while, but it was difficult, really. I hardly knew her now. I didn’t know her friends, had never met her children. In a way, though, she was living the life I’d thought I’d lead when I went to university. I’d thought I’d emigrate; go as far away from home as I could. The thought of bumping into people from school for the rest of my life had horrified me. Even though my name hadn’t been in the press, everyone had known. I knew there had been reunions over the years and normally I would have loved that, loved to have gone back and reminisced with old friends, reliving our youth and celebrating new achievements. I doubted I could have done that even if Alex had lived, but once he’d died he was deified.





FIFTY


    GEMMA


I’D GONE TO bed by the time Jack accepted my friend request on Facebook. Joe was still out, clearly making the most of his late pass.

As soon as I found he’d accepted me, I went to search his photos. He was surprisingly organized and his albums were clearly labeled. I opened Term 1, School and there we all were. I found Lauren with her long blond hair standing next to me. That morning we’d both straightened our hair; it had taken us ages and we’d both burned ourselves. We were laughing at Tom. My heart thumped at the sight of myself then, aged sixteen. Contrary to everything I’d thought about myself, my skin looked smooth, my hair shone, and I was much, much thinner than I remembered.

Alex was in that first album. Unlike Lauren and me, he wasn’t taking any notice of the camera at all. There were photos of him standing for class rep, of him playing football, and of him lying asleep along three chairs in the canteen, surrounded by hundreds of students. One photo was a close-up. He was doing an experiment in a science lab and the photo showed him looking at the results of a test tube, his expression thoughtful and clever. The photo was used later for the school’s prospectus and he was overheard saying he was actually thinking about what he’d have for lunch rather than the results of the experiment.

I lay back in bed and looked at the photos of him. He looked so young. There was nothing predatory about him in those photos, yet he’d come into a room where I was sleeping and he’d shut the door and turned off the lamps and he’d raped me, before leaving like a thief in the night. He stole something that night. I was never the same again.

There must have been twenty or thirty albums there. I was just looking through the photos to see whether I recognized anyone when I heard the key turn in the front door. Joe was home.

It took him about half an hour to shower and get into bed and tell me all the exciting things that the running club were up to. Given I didn’t know many of the people he was talking about, I struggled at times to keep track of what he was on about, but I let him talk and talk until eventually his breathing slowed down and finally I knew he was asleep. I got out of bed to go to the bathroom and he didn’t stir. He was lying on his side, facing away from me, so I was able to prop myself up on my pillows and open my iPad again.

I could see on Facebook that Jack was online. I looked at the time—it was after midnight. I quickly typed a message:

Hi, sorry it’s late, just wanted to say hello. I was at Wirral School with you—I was Gemma Taylor then. I was Lauren’s friend, remember?

I was nervous about his response. He’d been a friend of Alex’s—how would he react to me now, after everything that had happened? Just a couple of minutes later a response popped up.

Hi Gemma! Nice to hear from you.

How’re things? I asked. Just looking through some of the photos you’ve posted—brought back so many memories.

While I waited for him to reply I flicked through more of them. There were so many people I hadn’t thought about in years.

It must be tough for you to look back, he replied.

I stared at the screen. Did that mean he believed me? I’d always thought everyone would have been on Alex’s side. Facebook hadn’t been around then, thank God, but I knew there would have been a lot of speculation and guessed I wouldn’t have come out of it well. He was far more popular than I was at school. That was why I’d rarely gone home in the years following the party; I felt protected from the gossip when I was hundreds of miles from home.