The way she hugged him was just like the old days. For a second there were no intervening years, there was just them, holding each other, feeling the pulse of their blood.
And then she pushed him away. She looked at him, taking in the bloodied and swollen jaw. He had made a quick effort to clean himself up but Erasmus still resembled a cross between the Joker and the Elephant Man.
‘Jesus Christ, what happened to you?’
‘Filling,’ he replied and smiled, although from her wince he could tell it didn’t have the effect he had hoped.
She busied him into the house.
‘I need to show you something.’
Karen took him through to the computer in her study and sat down in front of it. There was another stool next to hers and Erasmus took it. He read the email.
‘I’m so sorry, were you close? And the Black Rose, I’ve heard of this before. Do you know what it means?’
Karen sucked in her cheeks, she was holding back tears.
‘I used to be best friends with her mother when we were in school. We did everything together: first school dance, first kiss with a boy, we told each everything. And now,’ she started to choke up, ‘we share this.’
Erasmus placed his hand on top of hers. She smiled weakly.
‘I don’t remember you mentioning her,’ said Erasmus.
‘She’d moved away by then. Her father was a doctor and he took up a post in Australia. We drifted in and out of touch but, you know, life gets in the way sometimes.’
Erasmus closed his eyes. Life gets in the way. He felt the years stretch out between them again. He opened his eyes. A tear ran down Karen’s cheek.
‘Her daughter cut herself, killed herself. My daughter is cutting herself and I think wants to kill herself. It’s not a coincidence.’
Erasmus closed his mouth. He had been about to trot out the coincidence line.
She bit her lip.
‘I know what you think and what the police think. You think it’s just a teenage thing. Inevitable hormonal casualties, but it’s not.’
Erasmus placed his hand on her arm.
‘And the Black Rose?’
Karen looked away and out of the window.
‘A gang, of sorts, it was just friends messing about. It was nothing.’
She seemed reluctant to say any more.
‘Well, your friend mentions it. Was she part of the gang?’
Karen looked at him. Tears were budding in the corner of her eyes.
‘When we were at school, things got passed around: rumours, school myths and half truths. The kid who was meant to have died in the swimming pool, the teacher who fiddled with the kids, and usually there was nothing to it then the over active imagination of the children. The Black Rose was like that. There were woods near the school and many, many years before the school was built there was a mill. We were always told to stay away from the woods by the teachers, there were still bits of old, rusted mill machinery down there and I think the school was terrified that we would injure ourselves and sue the school. But, of course, the more they told the kids not to go there the more we did. Even before my time there had been the Black Rose, kids who would hang out in the woods, smoke cigarettes, make out and tell each other stories. When I was growing up, hell, and this is no different to most of us, I just wanted to belong, so I hung around with the cool kids in the woods and we called ourselves the Black Rose, that’s it.’
She looked away again.
Erasmus knew Karen well but she had never told him about any school gang and it was hard to imagine her as one of the rebellious, troubled kids at school. She certainly hadn’t been like that when he met her a few years later.
‘Why would Ella mention it, do you think?’
Karen sucked in air through her teeth.
‘The Mill had one wall still standing. On it was painted a large black rose. God knows who did it. I was once told that the Black Rose had been going for a hundred years, maybe a thousand years, who knew, and that’s what gave the name to the place. Have you heard about the suicide forest in Japan?’
Erasmus shook his head.
‘There’s a forest, a very old forest, and for some reason, and no one really knows why, for years Japanese people, old and young, have been going into that forest to kill themselves. Every year – ’ she shut her eyes for a second ‘ – every year they have to send in teams of people to clear the bodies hanging from the trees. The Mill, the place of the Black Rose, was like that. In my time at the school, a girl called Alison Shaw hanged herself there. She was a troubled child, she used to – ’ she swallowed a sob ‘ – cut herself, and we knew about it, but Erasmus, we did nothing to help her. Maybe Ella remembered that? It was a big deal at the time, a pupil killing themselves.’
She broke down crying and fell into his arms.
He let her cry it out and then gently moved her back into her seat.
‘But why would this be relevant to your daughters now?’
Karen shook her head.
‘I don’t know but it can’t be a coincidence that me and Ella were friends and now this has happened to our daughters.’
‘Rebecca hasn’t been in contact with Ethan, has she?’
She shook her head.
‘Not as far as we know.’
She stood up and stared at him defiantly.
‘I don’t know but something is happening. Will you do something with me? Something that might sound idiotic and paranoid?’
Something moved inside him, an old dragon reawakening from a long sleep. Whatever it was he would do it. They both knew it.
‘With a face like this how can I refuse?’
‘Will you come to Sheffield with me right now?’
Erasmus looked directly at Karen. After she had dumped him, and when he had dragged himself out of his alcoholic fugue, he had spent months analysing how he had missed the iceberg in what had seemed an unsinkable romance. And when he had done this he had begun to recall moments that he never noticed at the time, when she had seemed distant, part of her brain engaged in other thoughts, of something being held back. He saw that on her face now. She wasn’t telling him everything.
‘What is it?’ said Karen.
‘Nothing. Sheffield, sure. Don’t they call it the Paris of the North?’
Karen picked up her car keys.
‘I’ll drive and no they don’t. It’s a shit hole. Come on.’