Izzy was thirteen when the new girl arrived at school, and she was instantly drawn to her. Her name was Ciara, and, like Izzy, she seemed to have difficulty making friends. In class, she always sat at the back, in the farthest corner, and made no attempt to contribute to discussions. At break time, she could generally be found standing by the railings, watching the other students playing and chatting and laughing. Her face was never brightened by a smile.
Izzy approached her one day. Went right up to her and introduced herself and asked her if she was settling in at school.
‘It’s okay,’ Ciara said. ‘I probably won’t be here very long.’
‘Why’s that?’ Izzy asked.
‘Because we move every couple of years. My mum and dad like to buy a house, do it up, then sell it and move to a better one in a nicer area. We’ve been all over the country.’
‘Where do you live now?’
‘It’s called Bramley Lane. Do you know it?’
Izzy nodded. ‘That’s a nice road. The houses are really big.’
Even though she hadn’t got to know Ciara properly yet, she could detect the sadness in her. The poor girl was being shunted from pillar to post, unable to put down roots or make friends before being ripped away from them and transported to a new and unfamiliar location, and all so her parents could have a better lifestyle. It seemed so cruel.130
‘Do you read much?’ Izzy asked.
Ciara nodded. ‘I’ve read the Harry Potter books a million times.’
‘Me too. What are you reading now?’
Ciara reached into her bag, pulled out a dog-eared paperback.
‘Oh, I don’t know that one,’ Izzy said. ‘Is it good? What’s it about?’
And so a friendship began. One of the few true friendships Izzy ever had at Hemingway.
The first big lie came about a month later.
There had been smaller lies before then. Saying she had eaten when she hadn’t. She was as skinny as a rake and clearly had issues related to food, but she hadn’t taken it to extremes, not like some other girls Izzy had seen.
This one wasn’t about food. She came in one day with her fingers strapped together. Told everyone she’d broken her little finger playing netball. Plausible enough. But not to Izzy.
‘Looks painful,’ she said to Ciara.
‘It’s okay,’ Ciara said. ‘It’ll heal.’
‘Did you really do that playing netball?’
‘Yeah. What are the chances, right?’
‘Million to one, probably. Maybe even higher.’
Izzy left it at that. She didn’t want to come right out with it and call her a liar, not to someone who was pretty much the only friend she had.
But that was the problem. She had failed to nip it in the bud, and so it grew. Ciara started going off sick – a day here, a few days there. When she eventually turned up at school again, she would say it was period pain or the flu or some such. All lies, but her parents supplied her with the appropriate sick notes to explain her absence and excuse her from sporting activities.
And then one day Ciara showed up with her arm in a cast.131
‘I fell down the stairs,’ she explained. She accompanied it with a laugh, as if to say, Stupid me, I did it again! And everyone else laughed along with her and signed her cast and thought nothing more of it.
Everyone except Izzy.
‘How did you manage to fall down the stairs?’ she asked when they were alone.
‘I tripped. My dad calls me a klutz. I’m always doing stuff like that.’
‘What did you trip on?’
‘Just the carpet, I think.’
‘The carpet?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Uh-huh. Ciara … is there something you want to tell me?’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. Anything. About stuff that’s happening to you, at home maybe.’
She felt how Ciara teetered with indecision, how she wanted to open up and let it all out, but at the same time knew she couldn’t do it.
‘I’m not sure what you’re going on about, Izzy.’
‘Please, Ciara. You need to talk to someone about this. If not me, then somebody else. A doctor or one of the teachers.’
A flash of annoyance then. ‘I’ve got nothing to tell them. I had an accident, that’s all.’
Izzy was on the verge of crying herself. ‘Please, Ciara. I’m your friend. I’m trying to help you.’
Ciara stared for a long, long time. Tears welling in her eyes, words bubbling up in her throat, just awaiting permission to be released.
And then a sniff, a tightening of the lips, the sense of everything being reined back in and imprisoned inside where it would fester.132
‘This isn’t one of your fucking novels, Izzy. Leave me alone.’
She stormed off, took her cloud of hurt with her. Izzy watched her friend’s departing back and felt the helplessness pressing down on her.
She spent the night lying awake, thinking only about Ciara and what she should do. At times she damned her gift and wished she could accept Ciara’s story just as everyone else had. At other times she was supremely grateful for her unusual talent, because perhaps this was the best opportunity she had ever had to do some good with it, to right wrongs, to save her friend.
The next day she made an appointment for a confidential discussion with her form teacher, Mrs Gordon.
‘First of all,’ she said, ‘I want you to know that this isn’t about me. I’m fine. It’s about my friend.’
Mrs Gordon’s smile was beatific, and Izzy soaked up her genuine interest and desire to help. It bolstered her confidence that she was doing the right thing.
‘Are you willing to say which friend it is?’
Izzy wanted to laugh at the way the question was framed, because she had only one real friend.
‘Ciara.’
‘What about her?’
‘I think … I think somebody is hurting her.’
Grave concern furrowed the teacher’s brow. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Her broken arm. And her finger that time. And all the times she’s been off ill. I think somebody’s abusing her.’
A long pause, because there was a lot to take in here, a lot to assess. ‘Who do you think is doing those things, Izzy?’
‘I’m not sure. Her parents, probably. Maybe someone else in her family.’
‘Did Ciara tell you this?’133
‘No. She denies it.’
‘Then what makes you think—?’
‘I just know, okay? She’s my best friend. She can’t hide things from me.’
Another lengthy pause. ‘Izzy, this is a very serious allegation. If you haven’t got any proof, then—’
‘I don’t need proof. I know Ciara. I know what she’s going through. Please, somebody has to help her. I can’t do it by myself.’
She started crying. Mrs Gordon passed her a tissue and clutched her hand when she was done.
‘What do you want to happen, Izzy?’
‘Talk to her. Ask her about her injuries. Nobody ever comes right out and asks her. I think if they did – like a teacher or someone – then she might talk about it. Please. Before it’s too late.’
Mrs Gordon mulled it over. ‘All right. We’ll bring her in and have a chat. But if she denies it again—’
‘I understand. Really, I do. But we have to try. I couldn’t stand it if something happened to her and I hadn’t said anything.’
‘Leave it with me, Izzy. Go to your next lesson. I’ll sort something out.’
And she would, Izzy could tell. She was taking it seriously.
‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’
She left, the tears flowing once more. It had been one of the hardest things she had ever done. A betrayal of sorts, but a necessary one, even if it meant that Ciara would never speak to her again.
Later in the day, the French lesson was interrupted by the arrival of Mrs Gordon, who asked if she might have a quiet word with Ciara. Izzy noticed how Ciara looked at her before leaving the room and felt a stab of guilt.
It was her final image of her friend.
When the home-time bell sounded and Izzy returned to her 134form room to collect her things, she was asked by Mrs Gordon to stay behind for a few minutes.
‘I thought you’d like to know,’ Mrs Gordon said, ‘that you were right. It wouldn’t be proper for me to go into details, but we think there are things going on in Ciara’s life that shouldn’t be. She didn’t come right out with it, but there was enough in what she told us for us to arrange immediate protection for her. She’s safe now, and it’s thanks to you. I’m sure it must have been difficult for you, but you did the right thing. A good thing.’
Izzy thought about those words for a long time afterwards. The right thing. A good thing. It made it easier to look at the empty desk in the classroom. Wherever Ciara was, she wasn’t being hurt, and that was all that mattered. For the first time in her life, Izzy felt that she had done something really beneficial with her powers. It was a comfort that helped to salve the pain of her restored loneliness.
And then, two weeks later, Mrs Gordon called her in again.
She didn’t need to say anything. Izzy instantly felt her pain, her distress, her reluctance to talk about this. Tears were staining Izzy’s cheeks before a word was uttered.
‘We heard some distressing news today,’ Mrs Gordon began. ‘I wanted you to hear it from me first, before the rumours started.’
‘It’s Ciara, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, darling, it is. It saddens me deeply to tell you that Ciara has taken her own life.’
Izzy sat and stared for the longest time, until the world turned blurry and the teacher’s voice seemed a faint echo. When she blinked, she saw that Mrs Gordon had produced tissues for them both.
‘Why?’ Izzy asked. ‘Why did she do that? She was safe. We saved her, didn’t we?’
‘That’s what I thought, too. Ciara left a note. She said she 135 couldn’t bear to live with the shame of everyone knowing what had been going on in her family. And even though life had been so cruel to her, she desperately didn’t want to go into care.’
Izzy took this in, spat out her immediate thought. ‘It was my fault. I caused this.’
‘No, honey, no. That’s not true. This is why I needed to break the news to you. I had a feeling you might react like this. But you’re not responsible for what happened to Ciara. If anyone’s to blame, it’s her parents, for the way they treated her for years.’
‘But I told on her. I broke up her family.’
‘You told the truth, and anybody else in your shoes would have done the same. She was being abused, and you stopped that happening. You had no way of knowing where that would lead.’
‘If I’d said nothing, Ciara would still be alive. She’d still be my friend.’
‘Perhaps. Or perhaps her abuse would have grown so bad that it would have killed her anyway. Please, Izzy, don’t beat yourself up about this. You did the right thing.’
They talked some more. Mrs Gordon did her best to console her, told her she would contact her mother, arrange for Izzy to see the school counsellor. And when Izzy came away, that phrase was ringing in her ears again.
The right thing.
It didn’t feel like the right thing.
It felt like she had taken Ciara’s life with her own hands.