NATASHA: Is this a guilt question? I think about it sometimes, of course I do. But I couldn’t have done it. Even the way people talk about it – going under – it’s like drowning. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t.
(Pause)
Are you saying I should feel guilty? No one knows I refused hypnosis apart from us and the police. No one knows I said no.
DR HARVEY: No, I don’t think you should feel guilty. But that doesn’t mean you don’t.
NATASHA: (Pause)
Well, I don’t. Like I don’t feel guilty about not talking to Becca any more.
(Pause)
I talk to her ex-boyfriend a bit though. Aiden? I like him better now he’s grown up a bit. We chat on Facebook. Text sometimes. I think he’s going to ask me out again.
DR HARVEY: How do you think Rebecca will feel about that?
NATASHA: Stupid question. She won’t like it. She’ll hate it. But it’s not like I broke them up or anything. And you can’t go through life worrying about other people’s feelings all the time. What about your own feelings? I saw Hannah die. She did it so easily. So carelessly. It was like a light being switched off. She was just gone. No more Hannah. She spent all her life worrying about other people. Maybe if she’d been more selfish she’d have had more fun. I was so close to being as dead as her. It could have been my funeral everyone fucking Instagrammed and was so emotional at and forgot the next day.
DR HARVEY: Why are you finding this so agitating, Natasha?
NATASHA: (Pause)
Sorry, I didn’t realise I was so heated. I just . . . I just can’t get my head around how quickly we’re forgotten. I mean, we might as well have some fun, right? That could have been me. Why worry about all this inconsequential stuff? Maybe that includes other people. Maybe they’re inconsequential, too? Unless you love them. And maybe even then. Does that make me sound crazy? It’s hard to explain what I mean.
DR HARVEY: Are you trying to say you don’t care if you hurt Becca by talking to Aiden?
NATASHA: (Laughs)
Yes, I guess that’s what I’m saying. Although it makes me sound like such a bitch. Weird, huh? They tried to kill me because they thought I was a controlling, selfish bitch, and now I am one. But he asked me out first. And we’re teenagers, it’s not like they were going to get married or anything. I’m probably doing her a favour.
(Pause)
Sometimes I think I should stop talking to him, but it’s not as if that would make him get back with her, would it? So what would be the point? I can’t make him not like me. And I like him. He’s not braggy like the boys at school. Do you think I’m a terrible person?
DR HARVEY: I don’t think there are terrible people. There are only people.
NATASHA: Careful, that was nearly a smile!
(Laugh)
There you go. You look almost human.
DR HARVEY: How are you sleeping now?
NATASHA: (Pause)
Did you do that on purpose? On the shelf?
DR HARVEY: What do you mean?
NATASHA: Those shells. There are thirteen of them. And the books on the window ledge. Thirteen. I don’t remember them being there before. So are they a test?
DR HARVEY: You’re very observant.
NATASHA: Why didn’t you just say, ‘Are you still seeing thirteens, Natasha?’ in that Siri voice of yours? Why set a trap for me?
DR HARVEY: I didn’t see it that way. Have I upset you?
NATASHA: I don’t like being tricked.
DR HARVEY: I apologise.
NATASHA: What if I’d seen them and not mentioned them?
DR HARVEY: I was interested in whether you would mention them.
NATASHA: Why?
DR HARVEY: Because mentioning them implies you want help understanding it.
NATASHA: So you can persuade me to keep coming back?
DR HARVEY: I understand why you want to move on, but I also think you could still benefit from continuing our sessions.
NATASHA: You think I’m mental.
DR HARVEY: I think you’ve been through some extremely distressing events.
(Pause)
NATASHA: I’m sorry.
For snapping about the number thing. It doesn’t matter really, does it?
DR HARVEY: How are you sleeping?
NATASHA: On my side mainly.
(Short laugh)
Sorry. I don’t know. Just . . . I still have the fear of the darkness. I still have the dream. You know, the voice in the dark.
DR HARVEY: Whose voice is it?
NATASHA: That’s the thing – in my dreams I know who it is, but when I wake up, I don’t remember. All I know is that someone speaks to me and I’m terrified. I thought when my memory came back it would stop, but it hasn’t.
DR HARVEY: It may take some time. Your subconscious is still processing all of this. These dreams may last until you remember exactly how you got into the river.
NATASHA: Great.
DR HARVEY: I know you’re reluctant, but hypnosis might help you. Perhaps if we could reach your dream state and—
NATASHA: No. No hypnosis.
DR HARVEY: Well, think about it.
NATASHA: I won’t change my mind. I won’t change my mind about ending these sessions, either. This is the last one. It’s over. Your seashell trick backfired. I don’t trust you any more. I don’t want to talk to you.
DR HARVEY: I’m sorry you feel that way. I can recommend a different—
NATASHA: No more therapy. I don’t need it.
Forty-Seven
She didn’t know if the newspaper had been left open at that page on purpose for her to see, or whether it was just accidental. It was hard to tell these days. Spring sunshine streamed through the large windows and it should have lifted Becca’s spirits. She loved the approach of summer, the thought of the long holiday ahead, the joy of leaving the house without being nagged to drag on a coat, but now the bright end-of-March warmth barely touched her. Everything was fucked up, everything had been fucked up since Hannah’s funeral, which felt like forever ago. A long, drawn-out hell with no imminent pardon. The headline was just the icing on the cake.
Suicide note found in Nicola Munroe case confirms tragic teenager took own life.
Fucking great. Her heart sank with the memory of storming into Jamie McMahon’s house like some screaming banshee. All that worry for nothing. Aiden had nothing to do with it after all. She stared at her phone, chewing hard on her bottom lip. She typed fast before she could change her mind.
Saw about Nicola Munroe.
V sad, but must be relief for
it to be over? x
She hit ‘send’. She didn’t know if it would be a relief or not. She didn’t know if the police had interviewed him again. She didn’t know much of anything.
In the first few days after he’d broken up with her, she’d done all the things she’d sworn she wouldn’t: sent drunk texts begging him to come back, sent angry texts, sent friendly texts, tried calling him. She cringed when she thought of some of the messages she’d left. The only times she’d heard back were replies to one or two of her friendly texts but even those were perfunctory. Like they were strangers. Like she hadn’t ridden him in his car or screwed in his bed and told him she’d love him forever.
Forever. That word haunted her. Best friends forever. I’ll love you forever.
Forever had turned out to be flighty. The only ones who’d found forever endings were Hannah and Mr Garrick. Becca didn’t sit in the Science corridor any more, even though it would be preferable to the sixth form common room, where everyone ignored her. She’d tried, but it felt spooky. As if Hannah was lingering there. Waiting for her, filled with reproach. She’d never thought of Hannah as vindictive but it was hard to separate Hannah from all the Hannah backlash, as
if her ghost had somehow caused it.
She stared at her phone. No answer from Aiden even though she’d put a question mark on the end to prompt a response. She tried not to feel disappointed. She should be used to it by now. She hated herself for even texting. He wasn’t her business any more, even if she still woke up every morning and hoped to find a text saying he’d changed his mind, dumping her had been a terrible mistake. That he still loved her.
She stared at the paper but didn’t read the story. She should have been in Theatre Tech but she was bunking off. It wasn’t like she was going to get in any trouble. It was easier all round if she dropped out of that subject – in fact, she was pretty sure everyone would be happier if she dropped out of school completely.
Tasha didn’t speak to her any more, either.
I’m sorry Bex, I really am, but
when I look at you all I see is
poor Hannah and what Hayley
and Jenny did to me. I know
it’s not your fault, but I really
need to try and move on.
She’d even stopped answering her texts about their chess game. She had her new Barbies in tow as well as the continuing sympathy of the whole school and town. Becca could only imagine how many Facebook friends Tasha had now. Sometimes she was tempted to log back in and see what was going on in that other world, but she’d deactivated her account and deleted her Twitter feed after all the bad shit happened.
It was always going to be this way. Tasha was still the beautiful victim, but haters needed someone to hate and Becca was the ideal candidate. She’d controlled the light, after all. She’d let Hayley go up the ladder. Technically, as she’d overheard in the girls’ toilets when she first came back to school, she was as much a killer as Hayley and Jenny.
It also turned out Hannah did have other friends. Becca might have been too self-absorbed to notice them, but they existed. Perhaps Hannah had liked her best, but Becca wasn’t her only friend. Apparently, being invisible in school wasn’t the same as being friendless. When Becca started hanging around with Tasha again, it wasn’t just her mum that Hannah shared her hurt with. That nameless girl Becca had seen Hannah head to Geography with turned out to be called Adele Cotterill, and Hannah had cried on her shoulder a lot. The worst part was, according to Adele and all her posts on the Hannah Alderton Memorial Page she’d set up, Hannah was never bitchy. Hannah had always seen the best in Becca. It was probably true, as well. But Adele had taken it on herself to tell the world that Rebecca Crisp didn’t deserve any sympathy. The Aldertons didn’t think so, either, and she agreed with them. There were victims here, but Becca wasn’t really one of them. She was just a shallow girl who dumped a good friend and then inadvertently killed her. Adele was careful never to actually blame Becca for Hannah’s death. It all just hung there, a stagnant cloud covering her webspace that just wouldn’t clear.
About an hour went by after the Memorial page went up before Becca saw the first nasty post. She couldn’t miss it. Her phone pinged with new notifications of people writing on her wall. None of what they said was good. Other people tweeted her. She’d felt sick. She still felt sick when she remembered it. Worse was Tasha trying to calm people down and stick up for her. Saintly Natasha, who was suddenly everyone’s friend. No one cared that Tasha had never given a shit about Hannah. Because at least Tasha had been honest about that. She hadn’t been her friend then dumped her. Not like she’d done to Becca back in Year Seven, although that appeared to have been forgotten. But Tasha gave up fighting against the online onslaught after a day or so, and in the end Becca had just closed everything down, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all of it. It was easier that way. People weren’t so good at being bitchy face to face and she could take being ignored and the snide, half-heard comments in the corridors. But that was enough.
Sometimes she looked at the wreck of her life and thought, How has this happened? I was only trying to help. Worse, Natasha was wrong about Hannah being forgotten quickly. Hannah had become a symbol of a kind of quiet purity. Becca, on the other hand, was a pariah. A user. A shallow, selfish, weak girl who only cared about getting back in with the in crowd and had taken advantage of Tasha’s accident to make it happen. No one wanted to forget Hannah – even though no one had a clue who she was until she died – because that meant they wouldn’t get the fun of hating Becca.
Two girls and a boy came in, glanced her way, then sat in a circle of chairs in the far corner, and Becca took it as her cue to leave. She wanted a cigarette anyway and had one already rolled and ready to go. She’d stopped smoking straights and moved to roll-ups because she was smoking so much now, maybe twenty a day, that she couldn’t afford them on her allowance. Even her mum had noticed the increase – Becca could see it in the continually pained expression she wore when she looked at her daughter. Julia Crisp clearly had so much she wanted to say but was no doubt under advice to just let Becca work it out for herself. Julia Crisp had never been very good at that. Becca thought it must be killing her to smile and be sympathetic and nothing more. Still, at least she got to smoke as much as she wanted without being bitched at.
The breeze bit enough to make her shiver but the sun was warm. Within a month the last of winter would be banished, packed away again until October. Hannah was the one who’d died, but out here, Becca was haunted by Hayley. Or rather by Hayley’s absence. She could almost see her leaning against the wall, expression so full of disdain, carefully inhaling her Vogue. No harsh, head-spinny roll-ups for her. I might be in prison, Hayley’s absence said in Becca’s head, but you’re not exactly a winner here, are you?
Before self-pity overwhelmed her, Becca abandoned her half-smoked cigarette and headed back inside. She didn’t want to stay in school but she had nowhere else to go. No play rehearsals to look forward to, no Aiden to hook up with, no friends to meet. Maybe she was the ghost, aimlessly drifting the corridors.
In the end, she went to the only place where she felt any sense of peace – the Art Rooms. Down in the basement, stuffily warm now that winter was fading but the school heating remained on, it felt like a world outside of school, quieter than the library, students lost in the sleepy calm that came with concentrated creativity, and with plenty of space to set her easel up in a corner and hide behind it. It was easier not to feel ignored in the Art Rooms. People didn’t talk much in here, anyway.
It wasn’t a coursework piece, but something Dr Harvey had told her to try. Just painting her feelings. It seemed to be working. Becca had thought she’d be left with some kind of vivid postmodern canvas of angry coloured splashes, but somehow what had arrived was woods and snow and an icy river at breaking dawn. It was an image of the calm before the storm. The empty stage before Tasha burst through the trees and was either pushed or fell into the water. It was the beginning. Yes, it was all going on behind the scenes for Tasha, Hayley and Jenny, but this was the grand entrance onto centre stage that swept Becca into the action.
‘It’s starting to look quite beautifully eerie.’ Miss Borders put two mugs of tea down on the nearby table and pulled up a stool. ‘I particularly like the hints of red in the sky and the sheen on that corner of ice.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’ve been down here quite a lot.’ She waited for Becca to put her paintbrush into the water pot and then handed her a mug. ‘I put one sugar in. Hope that’s all right.’
The tea was too milky for Becca and also too sweet, but she smiled anyway. ‘Thanks again.’ She liked Miss Borders but hoped she wasn’t going to launch into the well-meaning Are you all right? conversation that so many teachers had insisted on having with her. They’d all noticed how she was being shunned, and they’d probably all heard about the Facebook and Internet stuff, and they brought it up but didn’t really want to talk about any of it. The students thought all this was happening to just them and that the teachers didn’t count, but Becca had seen their strained, upset faces. Mr Garrick
must have been quite popular and now he was dead. Shamed and dead.
‘It’s funny,’ Miss Borders said, thoughtful. ‘I remember you all in Year Seven. Hayley was quite gangly then, wasn’t she?’ She didn’t look at Becca as she talked, her eyes still studying the painting. Becca figured it didn’t take a genius to figure out why she’d picked this landscape. ‘She admired you, I always thought. She always glanced your way if she said something funny.’
‘I think you got that wrong,’ Becca said. She put the tea down and picked up her paintbrush and palette again, not wanting the pools of acrylic to dry. ‘Natasha was our centre. She was probably looking at Tasha.’
‘Oh, she looked at Tasha first, but it was a different kind of look.’ She paused and sipped her tea. ‘I paint portraits of people in my spare time. I understand looks.’ She let out a small half-laugh, half-sigh. ‘God, it feels like yesterday, but now you’re all grown up. I’d only been teaching a couple of years when you started your first at Secondary. All so eager to please. No attitude. How times change.’
Becca didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t know what to say to any of it. She was fond of Miss Borders, but what could she possibly understand about them? She probably didn’t even remember her friends from when she was at school.
‘It’s very rare for Year Sevens to fall out the way you did, you know?’ This time the teacher did look at Becca, but it wasn’t a pitying look. They could have been talking about some TV show rather than the slow destruction of teenage lives. It was just a chat. A thoughtful chat, but that was all. It made Becca feel a bit better. ‘There are arguments and tears and they fall out and make up,’ Miss Borders continued, ‘but Year Sevens are normally still too much in awe of the big school to get really bitchy. That stuff kicks in around Year Nine.’
‘I must have just been unlucky,’ Becca muttered. She leaned forward, concentrating on a small patch where the river met the bank.
‘It’s odd.’ Miss Borders had settled in. She was obviously going to talk for as long as it took to drink her tea. ‘How things have turned out. Of the three of you it was only Natasha I didn’t like. I shouldn’t say that, I know. Unprofessional.’ She winked at Becca. ‘But it’s true. I still don’t, if I’m honest, even after everything she’s survived. She always struck me as spoilt. Children shouldn’t be allowed to have everything they want. It’s not good for the character. And I’m not sure hers was too pleasant to start with.’