Then She Vanishes(11)
‘What?’ He stares at me in shock.
‘For two or three years she was my best friend.’ Best friend. It seems so trivial to call her that when she’d been so much more. Our friendship had burned with an intensity I’ve never experienced with anyone since. Not even Rory. I didn’t realize how rare it was at the time. I’d taken it for granted. And thrown it away as though it was nothing, not knowing I’d never have another friendship like it. I’ve spoken about her to Rory a few times in the two and a half years we’ve been together, in passing, and only in reference to something that happened at school. Like the time we got a detention for accidentally flooding the girls’ toilets or were sent out of chemistry for laughing at the back of the class. Heather was the quiet one of the two of us, softer than me, but she had a wicked sense of humour and would often have me in fits of giggles at the most inappropriate times. Yet none of the anecdotes I shared conveyed the true depth of feeling I had for her back then. For a moment in time she meant everything.
I’m hit with a sense of melancholy for that schoolgirl. So innocent. What changed? What went wrong for her?
Although I know some of it. We both changed after what happened in 1994.
‘Blimey!’ exclaims Rory, when I’ve finished filling him in on today’s events. ‘Are you allowed to report any of this, considering she’s in a coma?’
I drop teabags into two mugs and nod. ‘The case is only active if she’s charged. And she can’t be charged because she’s unconscious.’
Rory runs a hand through his hair. ‘What was she like at school? Did she have violent tendencies? Was she the kind of kid to pull the legs off a daddy-long-legs?’
‘Of course not!’ I cry, a little too quickly. Heather would never hurt an animal, or insect. ‘She was just a normal schoolgirl.’
Except she wasn’t.
We were almost twelve when we first met. Mum and Dad had only recently divorced so we’d moved from a four-bedroom detached house in Bristol to the little cottage in Tilby in time for me to start the one and only senior school there at the beginning of the Easter term. At first I didn’t have much to do with Heather. A girl called Gina, big and butch with spiky hair and too many piercings, took me under her wing. She was popular and I was easily accepted into her group. I always did have the gift of the gab, as my mum would say, and I found it easy to make friends. Heather, on the other hand, was a bit of a loner. Apparently, according to Gina, she’d only recently moved to the area from Kent and was finding it hard to fit in.
I first noticed her in our art lesson. We were put together by our art teacher, Miss Simpson. Heather didn’t really speak to me much, just sat beside me drawing the bowl of apples we had been asked to sketch, her long dark hair falling over her shoulder and pooling onto the desk, deep in concentration. I was mesmerized by the way her hand sped across the page, shading in the apples with expert precision and flair. I could tell, even then, that she had a talent. I enjoyed art but she was so much better than me.
‘Wow, that’s amazing!’ I’d exclaimed, when she’d finished. Mine looked like two blobs on a plate while hers were so lifelike.
‘Oh, thanks,’ she said, smiling and blushing slightly. When she turned to look at me I was struck by how pretty she was. Her eyes were hazel with flecks of green and her pale skin flawless – unlike mine with a few stubborn pimples on my chin – with a sprinkling of freckles over the bridge of her nose. She was wearing the ugly green school uniform, just like I was, but she managed to make it look exotic. There was something about her, and I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, but she seemed different from the other girls. She was quiet but she appeared self-assured rather than painfully shy; she didn’t need to flock around in little cliquey groups like I did.
After that I made sure I always sat next to her in art. And even though she still didn’t speak much she would often pass me one of her earphones, the other in her ear, so I could listen, too, to her Walkman (art was the only lesson in which we were allowed to do this). She loved The Cure, and even though I didn’t know much about their music, I soon started to look forward to those art lessons.
One day, towards the end of year seven, we were asked to make something for Father’s Day. She’d turned to me and said, ‘My dad’s dead.’
I’d stared at her, appalled by her forthrightness and not knowing how to answer. She didn’t look embarrassed or worried by my reaction. I paused, then said, ‘And my dad’s done a runner so …’
‘Does that mean we get this lesson off? I’ll ask Miss Simpson.’
She went to put her hand up and we both collapsed, laughing.
After that I asked Gina about Heather but she’d scoffed, professing her ‘weird’. At home time I often saw Heather leave school with an older girl. ‘That’s her sister, Flora,’ said Gina one day, standing beside me and crunching mint Polos in my ear. ‘She’s in year nine. They live up on Tilby Manor. Own the caravan park there. Moved here last year. Think they’re snobs.’
They didn’t seem snobby to me. They were like two pretty black cats. Aloof. Mysterious.
After that I began to seek Heather out. She usually disappeared to the library at lunchtime to read or to draw. One day I followed her and saw that she was writing what looked like a story. I loved writing, and would spend hours in my bedroom making books out of A4 paper that my mum would bring home from her office job especially for me to use. I knew Gina and the others would take the piss out of me if I told them about my hobby. It wasn’t cool to be clever at Tilby High in the early 1990s. But I was getting bored of Gina and her cronies, their incessant talk of boys, and who fancied whom. I wasn’t ready for all that. I didn’t want a boyfriend: I wanted a friend. A best friend. Someone I admired, who had similar interests. And I quickly realized that the person I was looking for was Heather.