The Guest List(76)

‘You know it, Will,’ I say. A noise comes up from somewhere deep inside my chest, a sound of pain. I think I might be crying. ‘We should have paid for it, what we did.’

I remember how Will pointed to the bottom of the cliff path. That was when he produced some laces. Nothing fancy, the laces from a pair of rugby boots.

‘We’re going to tie him up,’ he said.

It was easy in the end. Will got me to tie him to the handrail at the bottom of the cliff path – I was pretty good with knots, that sort of thing. Now I got it. That would make it a bit more difficult. He’d have to do a Houdini to get out of there, that was the part that would take the time.

Then we left him.

‘For God’s sake, Johnno,’ Will says. ‘You heard what they said, at the time. It was a terrible accident.’

‘You know that isn’t true—’

‘No. That is the truth. There isn’t anything else.’

I remember waking up the next day and looking out of the window in our dorm and seeing the sea. And that was when I realised. I couldn’t believe how stupid we’d been. The tide had come in.

‘Will,’ I said, ‘Will – I don’t think he could have untied himself. The tide … I didn’t think. Oh God, I think he might be—’ I thought I might throw up.

‘Shut up, Johnno,’ Will said. ‘Nothing happened, OK? First of all, we need to work that out between us, Johnno. Otherwise, we’re in big trouble, you get that, right?’

I couldn’t believe it was happening. I wanted to go to sleep and wake up and none of it be real. It didn’t seem real, something so fucking terrible. All for the sake of a few bits of stolen paper.

‘OK,’ Will said. ‘Do you agree? We were in bed. We don’t know anything.’

He’d jumped so quickly ahead. I hadn’t even thought about that stuff, telling someone. But I guess I would have assumed that was what we had to do. That was the right thing, wasn’t it? You couldn’t keep something like this secret.

But I wasn’t going to disagree with him. His face kind of scared me. His eyes had changed – like there was no light behind them. I nodded, slowly. I guess I didn’t think then about what it would mean, later, how it would destroy me.

‘Say it out loud,’ Will told me.

‘Yeah,’ I said, and my voice came out as a croak.

He was dead. He hadn’t been able to get himself free. It was a Tragic Accident. That was what we all got told a week later in assembly after he had been found, washed up further along the beach, by the school caretaker. I suppose the ties must have come undone after all, just not in time to save him. You’d have thought there would have been marks, anyway. The local police chief was a mate of Will’s dad. The two of them would drink together in Will’s dad’s study. I guess that helped.

‘I remember his parents,’ I say to Will now. ‘Coming to the school, after. His mum looked like she wanted to die, too.’ I saw her, from the dorm upstairs, getting out of her car. She looked up and I had to step out of sight, trembling.

I crouch down so I’m level with Will. I grip his shoulders, hard, make him look me in the eye. ‘We killed him, Will. We killed that boy.’

He fights me off, throwing his arms out blindly. His fingernails catch my neck, scratching under my collar. It stings. I shove him against the rock with one hand.

‘Johnno,’ Will says, breathing hard. ‘You need to get a grip of yourself. You need to shut the fuck up.’ And that’s when I know I’ve gotten to him. He hardly ever swears. It doesn’t fit with his golden boy image, I guess.

‘Did you know?’ I ask him. ‘You did know, didn’t you?’

‘Did I know what? I don’t know what you’re talking about. For Christ’s sake, Johnno – untie me. This has gone on long enough.’

‘Did you know that the tide would come in?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Johnno – you’re not making sense. I knew it last night, mate, and in the speech. You’ve been drinking too much. Do you have a problem? Look. I’m your friend. There are ways to get help. I can help you. But stop with this fantasising.’

I push my hair out of my eyes. Even though it’s cold I feel the sweat come away on my fingers. ‘I was a fucking idiot. I’ve always been the slow one, I know that. I’m not saying it’s an excuse. I was the one who tied him up, yeah, when you told me to. But I didn’t think about the tide. I didn’t think about it until the next morning, when it was too late.’

‘Johnno,’ Will hisses, like he’s scared someone might come.

It only makes me want to be louder. ‘All this time,’ I say, ‘All this time, I’ve wondered that. And I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I thought: yeah, Will could be a dick at school at times, but we all were. You had to be, to survive in that place.’

It made us into animals.

I think of the kid, how he was an example of what happened if you weren’t – if you were too good, too honest, if you didn’t understand the rules.

‘But,’ I say, ‘I thought: “Will’s not evil. He wouldn’t kill a kid. Not over some stolen exam papers. Even if it meant he might get expelled.”’

‘I didn’t kill him,’ Will says. ‘No one killed him. The water killed him. The game killed him, maybe. But not us. It’s not our fault he didn’t get away.’