The Girl I Used to Be(76)

When my e-mail alert sounded, I knew it was safe.



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    THAT NIGHT I went to bed early, exhausted from the day. The tiredness I felt then seemed like the result of having to hold myself in for fifteen years.

I couldn’t risk looking at the photo again. There was no one I could speak to except Rachel, and she was running her own gauntlet at the moment. I heard my mum downstairs, talking to Joe on the phone. She’d told him I was having an early night, but I’d made her promise not to tell him about my panic attack.

Why was David at the party? This thought raced around my mind for hours. What was he doing there? Rachel had said he and Alex were best friends, but that party had only been for people from school. I remember him saying that at school, when a girl asked him if she could bring a friend.

“It’s just for us,” he’d said. “I don’t want anyone else there, just us lot. It’s the last time we’ll all get together.”

And I’d been there from the beginning and I hadn’t seen David. I would have noticed him simply because he wasn’t someone I’d met before. Everywhere I’d looked that night there were people I’d known for two years. Even if someone took completely different subjects than me, I had still seen them in the canteen or in the library or on the school bus. And he was a good-looking man, too, but that was the thing—all of the other students, well, they were more like boys to me. We called them boys, not men. David looked older than us and would have stuck out a mile.

I picked up my phone and sent a Facebook message to Jack Howard, the guy who’d taken the photos, and asked him to call me whenever he was free for a quick chat. Within a few minutes, my phone rang.

“Hi,” I said. “Sorry it’s late.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “What is it?” His voice was deeper than I remembered, but I knew I would have recognized it. He sounded friendly and I realized again how cut off I’d been from my old school friends.

“Thanks for sending the photos,” I said. “There’s one that I wanted to ask you about. It’s a photo of Lauren.”

“Which one?” he said drily. “I took tons of her.”

I laughed. “You liked her, didn’t you?”

“I was crazy about her. Took me a while to get over her. Still, that’s a long time ago.”

I remembered his Facebook status. “You’re married now?”

“Yes; we’re having a baby in a few months.”

“Oh that’s lovely,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. So the photo—which one was it?”

“It’s the one where Lauren’s in the kitchen, sitting on Tom’s knee.”

“Just a second, I’ll have a look at it on my laptop.” I waited a few seconds, then he said, “Oh that one. Yeah, I was a bit of a masochist, wasn’t I?”

“You see that guy in the background? Do you know him?”

“That’s weird. I never noticed him standing there. He wasn’t in our school, was he?”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“What was he doing there?” he said. “It was just meant to be us, wasn’t it? I remember I had to tell some guys they couldn’t bring their girlfriends because they weren’t from our school. Alex’s mum and dad were really strict about that.”

“I heard Alex tell someone that, too,” I said.

“I have seen him before, though. He looks older than the rest of us, doesn’t he?” He was quiet for a while, and then he said, “Oh, yeah, I know who he is.”

I held my breath.

“I met him once or twice when he played hockey for All Saints School. We’d play against him sometimes. Alex went to All Saints until he was sixteen, when he came to our school.” There was a pause. “I remember now. He went to Glastonbury with Alex.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, just the two of them went. The rest of us couldn’t afford it. I heard all about it when Alex got back. He’d had a great time.”

“Do you know his name?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I would have known it then. I’ll get back to you if I remember.”

“Thanks. You’ve been a great help.”

“Gemma, is this something to do with what happened that night?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t know.”

“I just couldn’t believe Alex had done that. I thought I knew him pretty well.” I said nothing and he went on, “I’m not saying you were lying. Honestly I’m not. It’s just . . . well, he was one of the last people I would’ve thought was capable of rape.”

I ended the call without another word and found that my face was drenched with tears. I wanted Joe. I wanted him to hug me and tell me everything would be all right. I knew he’d be out with Mike but sent him a message:

I love you, Joe. I miss you. I’ll be home soon xx

Immediately my phone beeped.

I miss you too, sweetheart. It’s not the same without you here. I love you. I’ll call tomorrow xx

I smiled and sent him a photo that my mum had taken in the garden. I had my arms around Rory, my face next to his.