The Things We Do to Our Friends(86)

“So, Clare, we’re up to here. You’re all on the roof, drinking no doubt, maybe something other than booze too?” He gave me a conspiratorial wink and rechecked his notes.

I didn’t respond.

His colleague looked irritated.

“This is all a lot for you, I’m sure.” He changed tack. “Anyway, Tabitha ends up on the scaffolding below at about one a.m.? She’s fallen from multiple stories, bashed around a bit on the way down.”

Bashed around. Horrible.

“She hit some obstacles,” he corrected himself quickly. “So, from our perspective, the question is simply, what happened up there? I’m struggling to work out how she gets from being on the roof to being on the scaffolding. Let’s go back to the beginning: what were you doing outside to start with?”

“We go up there all the time. The flat has these amazing views.”

“Yes. A very nice address, your pal’s place.”

I nodded, not sure what to say.

“So, why don’t you talk through the fall. What happened right before she fell?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “We were dancing, and it was so dark up there; we’d been drinking. We were close to the edge, and she just…fell, I guess.”

“How? Did she slip on something?” He tapped his pen on the table, waiting.

The woman leaned in, coming closer toward me. “It’s funny, Clare,” she said. “People respond to trauma in different ways. For some folk we see, it seems to almost go into slow motion. The world stops, time stops. For some, it speeds up; everything goes a hundred miles an hour—it’s the adrenaline. Despite what you see in films or what you might read, it’s incredibly rare for someone just to block it out, to actually not remember what happened. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand.”

“Okay,” she sighed. “To be completely clear, I think you remember. And I want to understand, from you, exactly what happened on the roof that led to your friend falling, your friend who might die. That’s why it’s so important you tell us now.”

Silence.

She sighed. Her lipstick was smudged around her mouth. “I’m going to ask you another question. Did your friend Ava push Tabitha off that roof?”

My eyes widened. “No, of course not, she’d never do that. Tabitha fell.”

The policewoman looked very tired of the whole thing. “Tabitha slipped off that roof? Because she was drunk? Because she’d taken drugs?”

“No, I mean we’d drunk a bit.”

“And what were you drinking?” the man asked.

“Champagne,” I replied.

He gave me such an ugly smile. It reminded me of the way Imogen sometimes smiled. I could feel his contempt.

“Drinking champagne on the roof? Okay, then.”

They both looked at me expectantly, as if I might jump in and start speaking. I didn’t.

Then there were more questions, but nothing from me. I’d reached the end. I was spent. They never actually accused me of doing anything and I spent a lot of time nodding, agreeing—Yes, we were good friends; yes, I was happy to be there—or shaking my head emphatically—No, I wasn’t taking any hallucinogens—until it stopped, slowly grinding to an unsatisfying end.

Eventually, the woman said, “Okay. Let’s leave it there for today, we’re not charging either of you with anything, but we probably will want to speak to you again. I’ll take you both back to the hospital.” She stood up and then, almost as an afterthought, added, “Do either of you have parents you want us to call? The university will have a duty of care over you both, but it might be worth speaking to your parents?”

I shook my head. My granny would’ve hated to get involved.

“There isn’t anyone.”

I walked out, and Ava sat there in the chair in front of me. And it was hard even to look at her, hard not to ask her, to scream out and demand to know why she was protecting me.





73


At the hospital, away from the police, we went outside. Ava led me further away from the building until we reached a housing estate. The place was bleak, with some teenagers milling around doing tricks on bikes, and a group of men leaning against a parked car, looking like they might suddenly smash the windows in. It was so early in the morning, and everyone should have been in bed. People were up though; they were still in the night before. It didn’t seem like a safe place to discuss anything.

We reached a bus stop crowded with broken glass. Ava stepped over it and perched on the bench, patting the seat, but I didn’t want to sit next to her, to relax, so she stood up next to me instead and offered me a cigarette.

I got right to the point. “Why are you saying she fell?” I asked.

She shushed me with a flick of the wrist, lit her cigarette, and inhaled deeply. “I needed that. Right, there are people around here, and I don’t want them to hear this. On parle en fran?ais?”

“I never speak in French anymore.”

“Oh, I’m sure you can manage it now,” she replied mildly in perfect French.

I hadn’t known about her language skills then. But it didn’t surprise me.

“Locked-in syndrome,” she said. “At least, that’s what the consultant thinks; they’re not sure about the full extent of any of it yet. It’s worked out well for you.”