Marie keeps walking. She doesn’t pay any attention to where she’s going. She’s outside her body, looking down. Can’t feel her feet. Can’t feel her body. Everything has unravelled. Leaving Graeme in that house was like being pulled apart at the seams. He is broken. He doesn’t even know what he did. And it is all her fault.
Moments of clarity burst through the clouds of her mind. Crushing up the pills. Mixing them into his drink. She thought he’d just slip away. That lad at Jack Henderson’s had been lucky – he’d convulsed for a bit, but then he’d thrown up and the stuff was out of him. Those other kids that she’d read about in the paper – they weren’t so lucky. One of them had been taking steroids for a bout of acute asthma. The drugs hadn’t agreed with each other. Another one had taken his with half a bottle of Jaegermeister. Heart attack.
Graeme’s had been mixed with alcohol. And with his troubled mind. She hadn’t expected the outcome. She’d wanted his heart to stop. It was the only way to stop him from taking over her life. But that’s not what happened.
Marie doesn’t really know what happened. Doesn’t want to. Memories spin inside her skull and she can’t shake them away. When he’d turned up at the party, she’d panicked. She tried to push him out of the door. She’d begged him. Screamed at him. He’d just smirked. She remembered someone coming into the hallway, remembered screaming at them too – fuck off, just fuck off, leave us alone . . . and later, with Anne. Another argument with her best friend, the one she’d never been able to share her darkest secret with, despite her being the only one to give her a chance when she’d turned up in Banktoun all those years ago, all badly shorn hair and unrelenting anger. Scott had said something, and the news had spread. Marie has a brother . . .
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Anne had begged, gripping her shoulders, trying to shake the words out, hurt shining in her eyes.
There was nothing else for it. When she’d put the pills in her bag, she’d fully intended on taking them herself. Using them to forget all the shit that was going on in her life. But when Graeme had appeared, clearly having followed her there, he’d taken her choice away.
She’d drunk too much. There are gaps. Blackouts. Time seemed to slow down and speed up. The place was packed with bodies, and then it wasn’t. The party was winding down. After giving Graeme the cocktail, she’d gone upstairs with the vodka and the wine. Passed out in one of the spare rooms. Laid herself down in a corner. Covered herself with coats.
Had Graeme come looking for her?
There must be witnesses. Some of those people in there were sleeping it off. Someone was in the garden.
Someone must’ve seen something.
What Graeme did.
What she did.
Even without her contact lenses, she’d known what she was walking through in that room. She’d known that the coppery tang in the air was blood. Recognised the dark-brown stains on the rubber soles of her shoes.
She left her shoes with Graeme. She doesn’t know why. Her plan was to finish what she started, but when she saw him there in that room, she knew she couldn’t do it. She’d wanted to curl up, go to sleep. Wanted it all to be over.
She finds herself on the railway bridge, the first one along the old line that they call the Track. It’s a popular walking spot. Other stuff happens along there, too. Good things. Bad things. Strange things.
She stands on the bridge and looks along the path towards the stagnant pool that lies hidden amongst mossy boughs and tall reeds. Hidden from the sun, it is a dark and frightening place. From her viewpoint on the bridge, she can just make out the edge of the water. She can see a flash of white from the statue of the fairy with the water lily. She’d found the pool when she’d first moved to Banktoun. She’d stood too close to the edge, reaching out to touch that statue with its cold, blank eyes. She’d almost slipped in, caught herself by grabbing onto an overhanging branch.
She wants to go back there now. She wants to soar from the bridge, dive into the pool. She wants to sink to the bottom. How deep is it? How dark?
What’s in there?
She feels the statue calling to her. Beckoning her. Marieeeee . . .
There’s a faint rustle of wind catching leaves. No one else is around. No one has come looking for her. Not yet.
She strains her ears, listening for the sounds of police sirens. Nothing.
Graeme . . .
She lays her hands flat on the cold stone wall and pulls herself up. She rolls onto her knees, positions her feet on the wall and stands up, slowly, carefully. Tries not to wobble.
Her feet are cut and bleeding. Her blood now. No one else’s.
There is too much blood.
She has to get away.
She stands up straight and tall. Holds her hands out at her sides. She wonders if anyone can see her – from a distance, she must look like she’s on a giant cross.
Marie the Martyr.
She leans forwards slightly, gets a better view of the pool. She can see about a quarter of it now. Bright-green scum coating the surface. If she leaps . . . if she soars . . . will she make it to the pool? She imagines herself sinking through the soft, slimy surface. Feels it enveloping her into its depths.
She takes a breath. Sixty . . . fifty-nine . . . fifty-eight . . .
Do it, Marie. It is Graeme’s voice.
Do it.
Jump!
She jumps.
27th July 2015
Dear Marie,
Sorry. Again. I don’t like to get angry with you. I never liked to get angry with you. But sometimes you do stuff that is just so infuriating. I don’t think you can help it. I was thinking about you at breakfast this morning. The way you always put three sugars and half a sliced banana on your cornflakes, and then you threw the other half of the banana away. Why didn’t you eat it? Do you know I used to take it out of the bin? I imagined you biting it. Your lips around it. Sometimes I used to rub it on myself, then eat it. Imagining it was you. Wishing you would touch me just one more time. I never wanted it to stop. No one said it had to stop. Only you, Marie.
You wanted it to stop.
You tried to replace me with that boy. Why?
I realise my mistake now. It was him I should’ve taught a lesson. Not you.
Love,
Graeme