On the second afternoon after Ashleigh’s death, I meet Ronnie on the promenade at St Clair. It’s cold, the wind whipping the waves into frothy peaks. We sit on a bench, a few centimetres of distance between us.
‘I talked to the police for ages,’ she says.
My heart skitters. ‘And?’
‘They were OK. I was offered trauma counselling.’ She tugs her beanie over her ears. I want to touch her, to hold her hand, but I don’t dare.
‘Will you go?’
‘I don’t think so. What’s the point in reliving these kind of things?’
‘True.’ I have to ask, though. ‘What did you tell them?’
Ronnie takes a ragged breath. ‘Just what I told the cops on the night.’ She tells me the story I’ve already heard.
I clench my fists. ‘And then …’
Maybe I should stop Ronnie now, but what I’m imagining might be even worse.
‘I ran downstairs and outside. She’d gone over the fence, or maybe she hit it first, I don’t know, and she was lying on the concrete. She was making gurgling sounds. And I couldn’t see very well, but I think she was … bleeding. From her head.’ Ronnie looks down at her hands, shaking in her lap. I take one now, enclose it in both of mine. ‘And I touched her to say “It’s OK, I’ll get some help”, and then she went quiet. And I checked to see if she was breathing and she wasn’t and I panicked and I ran inside to call an ambulance and then I called you.’
‘I’m sorry you had to deal with that.’ I take her in my arms, kiss her on the forehead. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘I’m all right,’ Ronnie says. ‘Are you?’
‘I think so. I don’t know. It’s … I hope she didn’t suffer. For long.’
‘I don’t think she did.’
I’m sure that, like me, she’s thinking of the newspaper article, the one that said Ashleigh Marlow had died of severe head injuries after jumping out of her window.
She was making gurgling sounds.
Hell, no, I’ll never be able to unhear that detail, to get that image out of my head.
She’d gone over the fence, or maybe she hit it first.
Jesus Christ.
Ronnie rests her head on my shoulder. ‘I had a nightmare last night.’
‘About Ashleigh?’
‘Yeah.’ She’s silent for a moment, then says, ‘In my nightmare, she came back.’