Gold and silver decorations have been strung across the atrium and a tall Christmas tree twinkles its gaudy lights as they make their way through the hospital entrance to the orthopaedic ward. This is the second time she’s visited with her mum and Ellie knows the way now, knows what to expect through the heavy double doors where Edward lies strung up in traction.
He’d been lucky to survive the fall, the pink-cheeked nurse who was clearly already a little bit in love with him had told them on their first visit, counting off his long list of injuries like impressive battle scars. Internal bleeding. Severe concussion. A cracked skull. Shattered pelvis. Broken wrist, collarbone and femur. ‘He’ll be like the bionic man when we’re finished with him,’ she’d joked, leading them to his bedside.
‘I don’t know how he survived it,’ Rachel had murmured. The only explanation seemed to be the dense autumn leaves blown like a snowdrift against the high walls of the folly, which had gone some small way to breaking the severity of his fall, and Rachel’s Herculean CPR efforts to keep him alive before help had arrived. Without those two things, everyone agreed he would have most certainly died. Instead, Edward was staring at a long road to recovery, months of healing and physio, but with life all the same beckoning on the other side.
‘Put it this way,’ he’d told them with a brave smile, ‘I don’t think I’ll be riding my motorbike anytime soon.’
His face visibly brightens at the sight of them at his cubicle and Ellie adjusts the folder in her arms so that she can give him a small, shy wave. He looks different, and not just for the convoluted contraptions and machines all around him. His hair has grown out into wayward feathers and he sports a dark, unruly beard.
‘It’s good of you to visit again,’ he says, looking genuinely pleased. ‘I can’t tell you how tired I am of staring at these ceiling tiles.’
‘We’ve brought you some things,’ says Rachel, offering him headphones and an iPad. ‘So that you can watch movies and listen to podcasts while you’re stuck in here.’
‘That’s really thoughtful. Thank you.’ He beams at Rachel, before turning his attention to Ellie. ‘What’s that you’ve got there?’
‘Mum thought you might like to see my art portfolio.’
‘Your mum’s right. I’d love to. I heard you smashed the assessment. Highest possible marks, and you got the whole town talking, too, from the sound of it. Very clever.’
Ellie nods. ‘It was only up for twelve hours. I had to take it down after that. But I got loads of photos and a bit of press coverage, too. It’s all in here. I’ll show you.’
She lies the folder across the bed and talks him through the various stages of her creation, the replica advertising hoarding she’d created, mimicking the CGI display of the Easton Development’s plans for the wildflower meadow. At first glance, it looks like the original, but on closer inspection it’s clear she’s stripped away the glossy sales pitch. All the details of the happy scene have been subverted. The trees are leafless and dying. The grass is brown. The baby in the pram is wailing. The cars in the cul-de-sacs send out plumes of emissions. The houses have cracks, missing roof slates and broken windows. There’s dog shit on the pavements and most striking of all, a tiny cemetery of crosses, marking the graves of all the wild animals destroyed in the build, a river of blood flowing down from the woods and weaving among them.
‘It was so big I had to work on it in sections. Some of it in spray paint, some of it in oils. I kept my kit at a site in the woods so I didn’t have to drag everything back and forth from campus all the time. When it was finished, I went out after dark and assembled the design over the original with a time lapse to record myself. What’s fun is that I caught all the cars on the video the next morning, slowing down to look at the art piece, people getting out to take a closer look or snap photos.’
‘I heard the housing development is under council review?’
Ellie can’t hide her delighted smile.
‘Yes,’ says her mum, full of pride. ‘Ellie’s certainly galvanised community feeling. A news station came out to talk to her. But it’s not all thanks to Ellie. There’s Malcolm Crowe, too. His studies of the horseshoe bats roosting in the quarry caves have got a national conservation group fired up. They’ve found evidence to suggest the wildflower meadow is an important bat corridor. Any major development on the land will disturb their path and could put them at risk. They’re an endangered species so it’s looking pretty open and shut. Between Ellie and Malcolm, not even Christopher Easton will be buying his way out of this one.’
Edward throws her mum a wry look. ‘I heard he’d been buying inside intel from a dodgy copper.’
Rachel nods. ‘Yes, Ben was pleased to see DC Crawford dismissed. I’m told, on the downlow, that he’d been a total liability throughout the Sarah Lawson case.’
Edward turns back to Ellie. ‘Your project’s a triumph, whichever way you look at it. I hope you’re putting it all into your college admission forms. This is the sort of stuff they’d love to hear about, details that will set you apart from the other applicants.’
Ellie flushes pink. ‘Our substitute teacher isn’t nearly as good as you, but she’s helping me with all the uni forms.’
‘I’m pleased, Ellie. You’ve got a bright future ahead of you.’
Talking about her future is exciting, but it brings another less pleasant thought to mind. ‘What’s going to happen to Olivia? Does anyone know?’
‘That’s up to the courts,’ says Rachel. ‘I believe a date’s been set for a hearing. In the meantime, Ben says she’s being held in youth detention.’ Rachel turns to Edward. ‘He told me you’re reluctant to press charges against Olivia for the assault at the tower?’
Edward tries to shrug but winces instead. ‘She’s already facing criminal proceedings for Sarah’s death. After the emotional distress of what Sarah put her through, followed by the traumatic events of that week, the state of her relationship with her parents, well, I think she’s been through enough already. The most important thing is that she gets the help she needs. I don’t know how the system will treat her, but I hope there is some room for compassion.’
Her mum nods. ‘You can withdraw your statement, but you must know the Crown Prosecution may continue, regardless? It’s unlikely they’ll let it go,’ she warns.
‘Whatever happens, I felt it was important that Olivia knew I didn’t blame her. I hope it’s a small comfort, whatever lies ahead for the girl.’
Her mum shakes her head. ‘I still feel so awful that I assumed… that I thought you capable of…’ She trails off.
Edward shakes his head. ‘Don’t, Rachel. You’ve already apologised. The evidence she showed you, everything she said. What were you supposed to think?’
Ellie considers Edward’s generosity towards Olivia. She wonders if that’s why she hasn’t told anyone about Olivia’s creepy messages, the taunting words sent from sally@ inthewoods in the days after Sarah’s death. She thinks she understands why Olivia sent them now. She’s talked a lot with her mum in the aftermath, trying to make sense of Olivia’s state of mind and put the events at the folly into some kind of order in her head. ‘I think Olivia was desperately lonely,’ her mum had explained. ‘After Sarah’s betrayal, after losing trust in her best friend and a man she thought truly loved her, after the awful fight at the folly and Sarah’s death, she desperately needed love and care. Sadly, I suspect Olivia’s mother hasn’t been able to care for her in a long time, not since her riding accident, and her father was so caught up with his work, so determined to fight anyone who put up resistance. She needed her family more than ever after Sarah’s death, and there was no one there for her.’
Ellie had understood then that Olivia’s anonymous messages had been her attempt to keep Ellie from stirring up trouble. A way to scare her from her disruption of the project and the plans she had shared with Sarah up at the folly, that Sarah had in turn shared with Olivia. Olivia had been trying to smooth the path for her father’s development so that she might, in turn, draw him back into her life.
Shining a light on Olivia’s screwed up home life and desperate behaviour had made Ellie feel sorry for Olivia, rather than frightened of her. She guesses, from what Edward’s just said, that he feels the same way. Was this what he’d meant by ‘facing your fears’? That opening them up and understanding them a little better somehow removed them of their power?
‘You might be interested to know,’ says her mum, ‘that I did a little digging into Sarah’s life, before she moved to the UK. I spoke to the head teacher at her previous school in Dubai. He told me that this wasn’t the first time Sarah had pulled a catfishing stunt, that she’d tricked her former best friend in a similar way, creating and managing a fake profile on social media – a fictional boyfriend – to interact with her. When it all came out, she was shunned by her peer group. It was one of the reasons for her move here. The Dubai school agreed to keep it quiet. They didn’t want the scandal getting out. The head told me they went easy on Sarah, given her father’s death and the fact she’d decided to withdraw from the school. The incident was never written up in her file.’
‘I still don’t really understand why she would do such a thing,’ murmurs Ellie. ‘Why catfish your best friend? Your own cousin? It’s so weird.’
‘It is, but it does happen. I imagine manipulating the people closest to her brought Sarah a feeling of power or control,’ explains her mum. ‘She’d lost her father not long before. Her life might’ve felt out of control and frightening. Her behaviour may have been a reaction to his death. Grief can do funny things to people,’ she says. ‘It can isolate us, make us angry, resentful. It can make us feel detached from the people we love.’ Ellie appraises her mum and has the distinct feeling that she’s not just talking about Sarah anymore.
‘I was sorry not to make it to Sarah’s memorial service,’ admits Edward. ‘I would’ve liked to have been there.’
‘The school did a lovely tribute,’ her mum admits.
‘Did you go, Ellie?’
She nods. She’d felt uncomfortable about attending, frightened that the service would churn everything up again, but her mum had told her it was important to go; that it was a chance to honour the best parts of Sarah’s life. It would give everyone the opportunity to process her death and say goodbye. In a way, her mum had been right. Hearing the tributes from Sarah’s teachers and fellow students, listening to the choir perform some of Sarah’s favourite songs had stirred her emotions. It had helped Ellie to remember Sarah as the living, breathing girl who had lived alongside them all, not just the girl in the woods, the girl from her nightmares. Some of the more complex feelings Ellie had been wrestling with had seemed to soften in the aftermath of the memorial.
‘What’s the plan for Christmas, Ellie?’ asks Edward, changing the subject, steering them towards lighter topics.
‘Not much. Christmas morning at home with Mum. Then the afternoon with Dad in his new flat. There’s an end of term sixth-form ball at school. Just a little celebration… on campus,’ she adds, with a wry look. ‘Mrs Crowe thought the year group deserved something fun, after everything.’ She tugs at her sleeves. ‘It’ll probably be lame, but I think I’ll go. Jas and Danny say I have to. No excuses. So…’ She shrugs.
‘Good for you.’
‘It’s a shame you can’t come.’
Edward pulls a face. ‘My best Nineties dance moves in the school hall?’ He waves at the bed and the surrounding equipment. ‘See, there is a silver lining after all.’
Ellie smiles, but she can see he’s putting on a brave face. It must be awful being trapped on the ward for goodness knows how long. ‘You will be OK, won’t you?’
Edward nods. ‘A few more weeks in here and a whole lot of physio to come, but they’ve promised me I’ll be an all-new and improved version of myself when I’m done.’
‘I’m sorry this happened to you.’
Edward shares a sad smile. ‘I’m sorry it happened to you, too.’
When it’s time to leave, her mum gathers their coats and makes promises to return again. Ellie waves goodbye then makes a tactful retreat, allowing them a private moment.
‘You didn’t have to do that,’ says her mum, as they walk back into the atrium. ‘There’s nothing going on between us.’
‘Nothing?’ asks Ellie. ‘I wouldn’t mind, if you did want to date someone.’
‘Good to know.’ Her mum smiles, pulling her in for a hug. ‘But right now, I think I’m steering clear of anything heavy. For a little while, anyway. I’ve got some things I still need to figure out.’
They exit through the automatic doors, leaving the over-heated hospital and stepping out into the cold, bright day. Her father sits on a bench beneath a tall plane tree, right where they left him, waiting to escort them home. He takes the portfolio from her hands and tucks it under one arm, folding her free hand into his. ‘All OK?’ he asks. His gaze is fixed on her mum, a hopeful look on his face.
‘All OK,’ says her mum.
Ellie notices how she holds his eye as the three of them turn towards the car. Interesting, thinks Ellie, a small smile playing on her lips. Very interesting.