Dreaming Of The Bones

Darcy wails, “I only meant to stop her crying out! She didn’t want—I never meant to hurt her —”

“Shut up!” Lydia screams, and Nathan hears a slap. She tugs on Nathan’s arm. “Get help, we’ve got to get help.”

“No time.” He tries to remember a sixth form first aid course. Clear the airway. Compress. Breathe. Compress. Breathe. Her lips are cold, her skin flaccid beneath his fingers. No breath resists the invasion of his own. Breath blurs into compression, compression into breath Sweat pours from his body, drips onto her still breast, until he feels Adam pulling him away.

“It’s no use, Nathan. You can’t help her.” Adam holds him in his arms. Lydia is crying, little frightened, hiccupping sobs.

Darcy drops to his knees beside them. “It wasn’t my fault. I never meant to hurt her. She shouldn’t have—”

“Shut up! You bastard!” Lydia is on him in a fury of kicks and pummeling fists. “You stupid fuck. You drowned her, you bastard. We’ve got to ring the police, tell someone—”

Panting, Darcy managed to twist her arms behind her back. “You won’t. You won’t tell anyone. Because you’re responsible, too.”

Nathan pulled away from Adam’s restraint. “That’s crap, Darcy. You know we didn’t —”

“But no one else will, will they?” Darcy is cold and urgent now. “Tell them just what happened, why don’t you? You brought her here, undressed her, gave her wine and drugs, but you didn’t touch her after that, oh, no. And even if they believe you, you’ll be sent down, you know that, don’t you? Your parents will have to know, of course, and yours are ill, isn’t that right, Adam? It might even kill them, but I don’t suppose that matters as long as you’re doing the right thing.”

“Fuck you, you son of a bitch,” said Adam, but Nathan heard the uncertainty in his voice. He thought of his own parents’ pride in him, the first child in his family to go to university, and of Lydia’s mother … A look at Lydia’s stricken face told him the shaft had hit home.

“Whatever happens now won’t make any difference to her, you see that, don’t you?” said Darcy. “I’m sorry she’s dead”—his voice quavered and he cleared his throat—“but it was an accident, and I don’t see how ruining our careers and our parents’ lives will help her.”

“You’re crazy.” Nathan licked his lips. “We’d never get away with it.”

“No one would ever know. Not unless one of us tells.” Darcy looked at them each in turn. “And if one of us tells, we’ll all suffer for it.”

In the silence, Nathan saw his hoped-for First in natural sciences turn to dust, saw his parents shamed beyond bearing by the scandal And he had tried to save her, he’d done all he could…

“What …” began Lydia so softly that he might not have heard. She rubbed a dirty hand across her tear-streaked face. “What would we…”

Darcy sat back on his heels and closed his eyes for a moment, then took a shuddering breath. “I know a place, in the Fens…”

Nathan crossed the road below the mill and took the path to Byron’s Pool. It was treacherous where it ran along the river, humped and barred by twisting tree roots, and he went carefully in the dark. When he reached the edge of the clearing by the pool, he stopped. After a moment, he made out a darker darkness between the trees a few yards away, then he heard the snap of twigs beneath shifted weight.

“Darcy.”

“You were always punctual, Nathan. It’s one of your more endearing traits.” Darcy stepped forwards, brushing at his waistcoat. “But I didn’t know you had a penchant for the cloak and dagger. This is a bit much, insisting on a clandestine meeting in the woods.”

The air felt warm and moist against Nathan’s skin, as it had that long-ago night. He knew now what he should have done then; he had always known, just as he’d somehow known it would come to this. He felt his rage settle into icy calm. “You’re a bastard, Darcy,” he said. “You were always a bastard, but until today I thought you had some scrap of human decency. I didn’t know until today that you’d killed them—Lydia … and Vic.”

He heard Darcy’s quick inhalation, sensed him regrouping. “Don’t be absurd, Nathan.” Darcy’s voice held the concerned condescension one used to a child. “You’re talking absolute nonsense. You’ve been ill, and I’m afraid your policeman’s been giving you very upsetting ideas. Why don’t we go back to your place and have a drink, talk it over.”

“Do you think I’d be fool enough to drink with you? Lydia should have known better—she knew what you are— but even she must have believed you wouldn’t sink to premeditated murder.”

“You’ve no proof of anything,” Darcy said, still unruffled, but Nathan saw him lean forwards a bit, shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet. The moonlight washed the color from his clothes, making a monochrome of the affectation of his waistcoat.

“I don’t need proof.” Nathan swung up the barrel of the gun and racked in a shell, the sound ominous and unmistakable in the silence. The gun rested easily in his hands now, angled slightly across his body. His father had taught him to shoot, years ago; the old pump-action shotgun had been his pride and joy… Never point a gun at someone, son, unless you intend to shoot them. “It’s long past that,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if he answered Darcy or his dad.

“Nathan, you can’t let some stranger’s suspicions destroy a lifetime of friendship,” said Darcy, changing tacks. “We have a history together, a past to protect. You can’t just throw that away.”

“Oh, but I can, you see. One can’t be, friends with a hollow man, Darcy.” Nathan caught the glint of a watch chain with the rise and fall of Darcy’s chest. When had Darcy started wearing a watch chain? He hadn’t needed the silly waistcoats or watch chains, once. His charm and facile wit had been enough—enough to make Lydia see Rupert in his ruddy good looks, enough to fool them all. “You manipulated us. All these years, you counted on our loyalty to each other binding our silence, and when you saw that failing, you resorted to murder. Did it get easier each time, Darcy? Vic wasn’t as much of a threat as Lydia—she might never have put all the pieces together.”