That night, when I lay with Rachel in her bed.
It came to me.
I should have taken his wallet and all the things that I’d left in the den. I should have picked up the knife, too.
I had to go back.
I pulled on my clothes, found a scarf to hide the bruising, checked that Rachel was still sleeping and let myself out the door.
Early morning. The estate was deserted. I walked quickly through the streets. On the main road, I paused.
Which way?
I could turn right. Go home to Mum and Bob. Mum, who would give me one look and know there was something wrong. She would take me in her arms and tuck me into bed and listen to my story. She would tell me none of it was my fault and then she would call Dad and he would come rushing back to me. Maybe he would stay.
I thought of the heat of Mum’s arms, the new kindness I had found in Bob. The safety.
Then I thought of Rachel, waking. The first few moments of peace before the memory of the orchard filtered into her consciousness. She would wonder where I was. Maybe she’d call out and then go downstairs looking for me. But the house would be empty and slowly she would realise that I had abandoned her, just as everyone else had done. She would sit cross-legged in the hall just as she had that time before until the police came knocking.
It wasn’t going to happen.
Rachel was a part of my story now and I was a part of hers. We were in this together. The crazy girls.
It was cold beneath the trees, with the mist rising about me like ghosts. I ran, stumbling over roots, and still I kept thinking what if I’d been wrong and he wasn’t dead?
The birds cried out as I approached the den. I had no time to stop and listen, or to change my mind. I dropped to my knees and eased through the bushes, down to the dip.
He lay there still. Blood dried and crusting. Carefully, I crouched over his body. Holding my breath, I touched his skin. So cold. Like marble. I recoiled. The trick was not to think. Moving my gaze from his face, I quickly searched his pockets and found his wallet. I took his keys too. It was instinct moving me forwards. I thought of his work bag. Where was that? Would people miss him at the building site? No. Men left all the time. They came and they went. No one would care.
I went to the place where I kept my provisions and took them too, then, I grabbed leaves and branches, stones and clumps of grass and lay them across his body. It was the best I could do. Scrambling up the side of the dip, I scanned the wasteland. I found the work bag at the edge of the orchard. I searched and searched for the knife, tried to identify the exact place where I’d stood with Rachel, but my mind was blank. The wasteland was different in the early morning light. In the end, I gave up.
The cafe was open by the time I left the wasteland. I went in as the policeman came out. ‘You’re early,’ said Maggie, giving me a smile.
I told her Mum had a headache and that I’d come out to give her some peace and did she want any help?
She looked at me. ‘Your voice sounds scratchy.’
‘Sore throat,’ I replied, touching the scarf.
As soon as a delivery man came with a tray of cakes, I took my chance, mumbling about fetching clean cloths and then racing up to the flat.
I took forty pounds from the bundle on the shelf. I hoped Maggie would be confused and not notice, or that she’d understand and forgive me if she did. I vowed to pay it back as soon as I could.
By the time I got downstairs, the delivery man had gone and Mrs Joseph had come in, on her way to Spar. I fiddled about, wiping down the counter, listening, trying not to think about what I’d done.
They were talking about the housing estate. Mrs Joseph said she didn’t want to be triumphant yet, but the old lady in Australia wasn’t budging. The building company would be lucky if they got their hands on any land while she was still alive.
Afterwards, I went home. Mum was still in bed. Bob had gone to work. I raced to the bathroom and washed, changed into fresh jeans and a high-necked jumper. I gathered school clothes, toiletries.
I asked Mum if I could stay with Debra for a few more days. Debra hadn’t been well recently and she could do with a friend.
Mum was mildly surprised, but she didn’t mind. She thought it was nice of me to help out Debra. I guessed she was glad that I had a distraction and she had time with Bob.
I went to Spar and bought bread and cheese and apples and took them back to Rachel.
When she woke, first she smiled and then she cried. ‘I thought it was a dream,’ she whispered, ‘but then I remembered.’
She pushed back her cover. Blood was leaking through the towel and onto the sheets. I soothed her, rubbing her back until she was calm, then I took away the towel and replaced it with another because she was still bleeding, although now I thought the blood had slowed.
‘Will everything be all right?’ Rachel whispered.
‘Yes,’ I whispered back. ‘I’ll protect you. You know I will.’
‘What will you do?’ she asked.
‘Anything,’ I replied, but she was asleep already.
The next morning, I took the bag I’d filled with Mr Wright’s clothes, his wallet and his keys and I caught the first bus to the river. No one saw me or, if they did, I was sure they wouldn’t care. I was Elizabeth Valentine, the girl of no consequence. I was invisible. I always had been.
At the river, I walked far enough to be out of sight of any houses. There I opened the bag and filled it with stones. A few swans drifted in the shade by the bank, weed streaming around them like tangled hair. I took the bag, looked about me, made sure I was alone, and then, leaning forward, I dropped it into the water. Shivering, I heard the splash, watched the ripple.
It was only the beginning. Gradually I’d take the rest of his things, his clothes, his tools, little by little, dumping them in public bins, rivers and canals, annihilating his existence.
Rachel stayed in bed. She slept and the bleeding slowed and I fed her and soothed her as if I was an adult and she was my child.
I tried to make plans, but my mind was numb. At night, my dreams were filled with visions of a cold, hard body rising from the dip, wrenching away the branches, shaking the leaves from its hair. In the daytime, everywhere I looked, Peggy’s face was there, her eyes reproaching me for not telling what I knew.
Gradually and together, Rachel and I went through the box of papers, trying to understand. The rent had been paid until the end of the month. That meant we had time to work out what was next, to contact Charlotte with a story.
I reread her note and thought about the flat in Plaistow.
Rachel summoned the strength to phone Charlotte, telling her that Mr Wright had gone away and hadn’t told her where.
‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ Charlotte said. She asked Rachel to come to Norfolk, but Rachel said she wanted to leave school, take the flat in Plaistow, make a go of it there. She practically read out the script I wrote for her, and held my hand as she made the call.
‘You’re sixteen,’ Charlotte said. ‘You can do whatever you want.’
I think she was glad to help her niece, but relieved too that she no longer had to take responsibility for her. She contacted the school, made the necessary arrangements for her to move into the flat. When the time came, she swept down from Norfolk and sorted out the furniture in the house.
By then I had got rid of most of Mr Wright’s clothes and toiletries and Charlotte was convinced he had gone elsewhere. She didn’t want any of what was left, she said, even though most of it was hers. Mr Wright had contributed nothing, hadn’t even paid any rent. Typical. He was a leech. No doubt he had moved on to the next woman he could live off. She was only sorry she had stayed with him for so long.
That first day when Rachel moved to London, I went with her, helped her settle in. We sat in the dingy living room hardly registering each other, feeling the memory of Mr Wright slithering between us, along with our guilt. Still. We’d made it this far and we had to keep on going.
She got a job. A shop girl in Fenwick’s, selling make-up. She had the perfect face.
In the park, a breeze quickens, shadows move.
There’s a rustle in the bushes behind me and when I turn, I see the dim outline of a figure. It’s a young man, with eyes of slightly different colours. There’s another figure behind him, roll-neck jumper, platform shoes, tapping his foot to the rhythm of Barry White. Then comes a procession of ghosts, released at last from the prison of my mind – there’s Mum and Bob; John and Debra and her mother and Frank; and Charlotte and Melissa and Dave, headphones on, nodding to the beat. Peggy, bits of grass and earth and broken twigs sticking to her hair. Mr Wright. As he was. Large and real, with hands held out to grab me. He dissolves, flesh dropping from his body until only his bones remain, and then another figure appears. Rachel’s mother – distant, face blurred, holding out her hands for help.
‘You all right?’ says a voice.
It’s the park keeper, standing in front of me, the litter picker still in his hand. I smile at him gratefully as the tears fall.
He shifts, scratches his chin. Confused. How could he know that his words have catapulted me right back to the beginning?
‘It’s clean,’ he says, holding out a handkerchief.
I laugh, taking it. ‘Thank you.’
He nods. ‘Are you coming?’
‘Yes,’ I say, getting up.
I relax as I walk with him back across the grass and through the gates.
‘Do you have far to go?’
I smile at him sadly. ‘That depends.’
I don’t tell him what it depends on and he doesn’t ask. He drives away in his van, giving me a wave from his window before settling back into his own life. One more connection severed.
Afterwards, I walk slowly down the street with the dark sky pressing down and the hot, sticky air holding me tight, still uncertain of what will happen next.