46

Damon

I hear them howling. They can’t be playing another Game, though, not after last time, not without me. Are they looking for me instead?

One howl, two . . . I wait for the third. A gust of wind blocks my ears. I hunch in tighter to the rock face. It feels like I’m on the run, like I’m playing the Game for real and the boys are hunting me out. But maybe it should be me hunting them out – for not telling me how they played the Game with Ashlee, because Ashlee told me a secret that night that they might’ve been a part of.

Slowly, slowly, by feel more than sight, I move down the rock face. I’m on the wild, empty side that no one gets to know. Maybe I’m wrong about Mack keeping people’s secrets. Maybe he’s told Ed and Charlie everything he knows about that night – and maybe now they’re coming for me. What do they all think I’ve done? Are they coming to tell me? Are they coming to tell me to run?

I’m aiming for those rocks that jut out below me like teeth – the boulders – for the crevice I saw in between them, for what I think I saw inside it. The full force of the wind is blasting at me, but I’m glad of it – it’s knocked some of that haziness from the joint out at least. I’m glad of the moonlight too. While the wind tries to drag me off, I stay clinging like a limpet, my fingers and toes wedged into tiny cracks. I’m feeling the rough, grainy texture of the limestone, the electricity in my fingers. I sense the empty space of air around and below me. If I slip I’ll be heading for that, I’ll be free-falling to the bottom. I have to force myself to keep going. Seems this isn’t called Suicide Drop for nothing.

It’s easier once I’ve got both feet on a boulder; I lower myself ’til I’m curled between it and the rock face. I don’t look at the drop beyond. Sharp wind pierces into my lungs, whirls round me. But there’s another sound too, isn’t there? Something from the summit? A voice? I don’t look up to check, can’t risk losing my balance. I wedge myself in tighter to the rock instead. If there is anyone up there, they won’t be able to see me here. When I bring my fingers away from the stone they’ve gone white and stiff, hard to unclench. Very slowly I shuffle sideways across the boulders. I move to the crevice I saw from above. Then I tip forward to the gap and push my arm inside it. The wind is whooshing into my face and making my eyes stream but I keep digging about. I feel moss and pebbles and wet leaves. I force my eyes open against the wind, drop on to my belly, put my face close to see.

It’s there!

Just like I’d thought!

Wedged inside this crevice is something pink and sparkly.

It’s Ashlee’s phone cover. Maybe her phone’s there too.

I try to breathe deep, try to stop myself from moving hasty. With shaking fingers, I stretch to grab it. The phone cover’s material is sodden through, cold. As I dig about I feel the phone is also here, but it’s in several pieces – smashed. I take a hold of what I can and wrench my arm out, pull myself back ’til I’m leant against the rock again. I’m trembling, and not from the cold. I look out to the sky and the dark sea of trees below for one second, two . . .

Ashlee’s lips were pink and sparkly that night, the same colour as this phone case, they’d smelt like raspberry.

I take a breath and look at it all in my hand. The phone has split apart. The back of it is detached, the screen a faint cobweb of cracked glass, the battery separate again. How hard was it hurled down here for it to break like this?

I didn’t throw it, did I?

I don’t remember it.

I stare at these bits in my hand like they can give me some answers. But nothing comes. If I was spinning so much that night that I don’t remember getting home – that I don’t even remember when I last saw Ashlee – how could I have climbed up here to throw this? I rest my head against the cold rock and try to think. But all I’m getting is some random conversation I had ages ago. I’d been propped up at the bar of the City Arms by Mack’s dad – maybe the first time I ever got proper drunk. Mack’s dad had held court, telling the whole place about one of his mates:

‘He got so drunk once that he chucked his wife off a balcony,’ he’d said. ‘Seventh floor and all! It was an accident, though, they were arguing, they was just having a holiday! It just got a bit out of control, like!’

I think that’s how it went. I remember Mack’s dad explaining that when his friend woke next morning and was arrested, he could remember nothing – he even asked where his wife was.

Is that like what’s happened to me?

Is there a whole story of terrible things I did that night, that I don’t remember? Did Mack see it all? Did he take me home and away?

My throat goes tight. Maybe I should be checking into a mental hospital rather than a police station, maybe Mack was right when he said I was going loony. Maybe Mack saw me going loony that night. Maybe I don’t know anything about who I am – what I’m capable of.

I put the phone cover in my pocket with Ashlee’s collar, then lay the pieces of her phone out on the rocks. I get an ache thinking about the phone being whole, being held by Ashlee. My hands start shaking again and I almost lose all the bits.

Could Jon Shepherd have thrown it down here instead? I remember Emily telling me that he was scared of heights, but she could’ve been lying. Couldn’t she?

I slot the battery in. I have to wedge the back of the phone in hard to make it stick. I turn it on, expecting nothing, and nothing happens. I bang it against the palm of my hand. Now there’s a flicker on the screen: tiny, but there. A spark. I bang it again. And somehow, it works. Somehow this battery still has juice!

Ashlee’s home screen comes up. It looks kind of disjointed, and the cracked glass doesn’t help, but straight away messages are coming through, hundreds of them it seems, all from me or her friends or her family. They’re all asking the same things – where is she, is she safe, what’s happened – they get more desperate as they come. It hurts to look – it hurts to hold this tiny part of Ashlee in my hands but not the rest of her. It hurts to know that she never read these words.

I run the back of my hand over my eyes and click on to anything just to make the messages stop. I open up her picture folder, and I feel kind of desperate now. I’m scrolling back to her earlier pictures fast, just wanting to see Ashlee from months ago, wanting to see her alive. I find all the pictures she took and sent me of her in her underwear and pyjamas, but these don’t make me feel no better. I want – need – to see a picture of her and me. In the photo I finally click open and stare at for ages, Ashlee’s got her mouth pressed against my cheek, biting me gently, and I’m staring straight at the camera and grinning like a loon. I got no right to be that happy. It’s not fair that the grinning, thoughtless loser in this picture gets to keep hugging her for always.

I move the images on. Now I’m surprised. Because there are loads of films here, not just photos. Which is weird, because I don’t remember Ashlee filming anything ever. Even the last two images in this folder are films! And all these films seem to start with an image of something dark and blurred. It’s like they’re all filmed at night. All filmed some place with trees. And now I’m curious.

I click on the one that’s second to last, just because it’s shorter. The image starts shaky and dark, and, combined with the cracked screen, I can’t make much sense of it. I hold the phone closer and try to work it out. I think I hear wind. Light rain? A rumble of thunder? There’s something about this image that’s starting to feel familiar, horribly so.

Then the camera flash goes on, illuminating everything. The image takes a second to focus. And I see it then. I see! My breath leaves me in a rush.

Because in the image is a body slumped on a forest floor.

And I know who it is. Course I do.