I wake and there’s a grey light above me, like very early morning. I lie for a while, still and unmoving, feeling every inch of my skin against cold sheets. There’s something around my neck so I can’t move my head, and I can’t seem to hear properly. Somewhere a light glows and something beeps rhythmically until someone turns it off. I hear a voice buzzing distantly behind a curtain, and the squeak of shoes walking away. I remember for a moment; Banks walked away too. He left me. Then I sleep again.
I eat the breakfast they give me, and I’m told that in the afternoon I can go home. Before this, though, a policewoman comes to see me. She wants to know what happened, in my own words, but I have no idea what to say. How far back do I go? Do I tell her it’s all my fault because I told the lie that started it? Do I bring Joe into it? I don’t know, so I say nothing. I just say that Alec attacked me down on the beach – that he tried to drown me.
‘And Mr Banks,’ she says, ‘what was he doing?’
‘He saved me,’ I tell her. ‘He shouted for help and tried to protect me. He didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t do anything. Nothing at all.’
When she’s gone, I think of Banks and his voice pleading with Alec as his foot crushed my hand: ‘Mate… please…’ and how every time Alec hit him he just kept saying it, and I let it all settle in my mind like dirt on a riverbed.
Later on, Mum and Dad come and take me home. We drive in silence and I watch the world go by through the glass as if it were a film set I’ve been fired from. We reach the house and Ben and Matt are there with flowers. They give me a hug and then go – making little scrunched-up faces at Mum and Dad as they leave. Mum puts the flowers in water while I go upstairs and get into bed, and a few minutes later she and Dad both come in and sit like two awkward teenagers next to me. ‘You’re home,’ Mum says.
‘I’m fine,’ I tell her, surprised by the paleness of her face. She smiles at me, and takes my hand. ‘You might have died,’ she whispers. ‘What were you doing with those people?’
‘Now, Karen, don’t,’ Dad says, and Mum looks at him like she’s a little girl.
‘Banks isn’t those people,’ I say. ‘He looks after me… looked after me.’
Dad sighs. ‘We know Stuart helped you,’ he says. ‘We’re not accusing him. But – where did we let you down so much that this has happened?’
This is my chance. Now is the time to tell them exactly what I think; exactly what it feels like to have to shout that loud. They look at me, waiting.
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘You didn’t do anything.’
Dad puts an arm round me, and I don’t push it away. ‘We let you down,’ he says. ‘There was just so much—’
‘– to think about,’ Mum breaks in. ‘To worry about and deal with. We thought you’d just roll along, do the right thing. We tried to keep you out of it.’
‘I killed him,’ I blurt out, and the relief seeps out of me like guilty poison.
Mum and Dad look at me, and at each other, and I can’t stop. I have to go on. ‘I killed Sam. I was there that night – the twenty-first. I worked it out. I was at his room and I heard him. I could have done something!
‘I met him in town and he begged me to ask you to let him come home. I went back with him and his room was disgusting. The bed was all unmade… there were bottles everywhere… and he peed in the sink, Dad. In the sink…’
I see it all again: Sam stumbling back to the bed and lying down. His voice whining on, begging me to give him money, and after I refused, starting on me with insults and threats. Then his sudden leap upwards, to grab my arm and pull me down.
‘He hurt me,’ l tell Dad. ‘He punched me! He frightened me and I just needed to get away.’
I swallow it again, all the way down, but it’s all right this time, because they know now. They hear.
‘I got away,’ I say. ‘I ran out and stood outside. He called me, but I pretended I was gone, and then I heard him making a funny noise, like a gurgling and groaning. Then there was this big sigh, and the sound of something falling, but I ran. I ran away, and maybe if I hadn’t… maybe he wouldn’t have died.’
I look at them and wait for them to hate me, but they don’t.
Dad just says, ‘No. It wasn’t that day. I spoke to him after that. I remember he asked me for money and I put it on the calendar like I always do, and that was the twenty- second…’
He took a deep breath and mum shushed him, ‘Don’t get upset—’
‘Upset?’ Dad gave a little laugh. ‘It’s a little late for that.’
He turned to me again. ‘I’ve thought about it so much, Coo – blamed myself because I should have known something. After he asked me for the money, I swore I wouldn’t give him any more, ever. And I won’t now, will I? Stupid – I thought maybe it was my fault, because of that.’
Mum’s face is all screwed up, but he ignores her and goes on looking at me, like it’s just us there. I realise in a blinding flash, that though he’s Dad, he feels the same as I do – that it’s our fault. Maybe it’s both our faults, or maybe it’s neither. Maybe it’s just a thing that happened.
‘It wasn’t you,’ he says now. ‘If anyone was responsible, it was me. I should have called round where he’d been staying. You couldn’t have done anything.’
‘I doubt anyone could,’ Mum adds, taking his hand.
We sit there, and inside our heads we’re all counting days. The police said Sam had lain there for three days before he was found. Three days when he was dead, and no one noticed; but not my days. I knew that now.
‘Why?’ I say. ‘Why would he just die?’
Dad pauses. ‘It was his heart they said. At first, because of some… bruises and cuts… they thought maybe he’d been attacked, but he was in his room, and they found out it was his heart. They think he must have had a weakness, and the drinking was too much.’
My heart is racing like a greyhound. Bruises and cuts? I look at Dad, but there’s nothing to say. It’s all too late.
‘I wanted him to stop being like he was,’ I say. ‘I wanted that for Banks too, but I couldn’t change him either.’
Dad sighs. ‘No,’ he says, ‘sometimes there are people and things that no one can change. Nothing anyone can do.’
‘We’re sorry,’ Mum says, ‘really, so sorry.’
When she says it, that word, something gives. It’s something so small and weak I’m surprised it’s been able to hold the rubbish back all this time. It’s like the tiny bone of a bird’s skull that you can crumble under your thumb, and it crumbles now. Dad’s arm becomes a warm circle that I curl into and relax, and the three of us sit there while the room settles into silence. For the first time, we’re in it together.
After a while, Mum gets up to make me a boiled egg and some tea. Dad sits on a while longer and then stands. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘everything will work out. It’s not too late.’
He follows Mum downstairs and I lie back on the pillows watching the room as it relaxes in the fading light.