“We have talked of her,” his words suddenly came through. “I try not to talk of that night. The pub…” He trailed off again for a minute. “None of it should ever have happened.”
“No, it shouldn’t.” That didn’t mean we had to stop talking about her. I was there, I remembered exactly what happened. We couldn’t just polyfiller over the event and pretend that it didn’t! I couldn’t let her disappear.
My gaze drew back to the kitchen as Tye jumped up from his seat at the table, he had his phone pressed to his ear, looking panicked about something.
“I need to go.” My words were sudden, needing to end this conversation. It was a bad idea to have phoned him. It hadn’t helped. I just felt nauseous. I longed for Rosie to be beside me.
“Wait, love-”
I cut the call, despite his protest. I sat perfectly still, unsure what to do when Tye emerged from the kitchen doors, hurrying across the grass.
We hadn’t made up from our argument earlier that day. I expected we would, but I was in no mood to apologise. I just wanted the day to be over.
“Ivy, I need your help.” Tye’s words surprised me as he reached my side.
“What is it?” I stood, just about seeing his face set in worry lines in the fading sunlight.
“It’s Isabella. We need to go get her. Now.” He turned to walk across the garden, and I hurried to keep up, feeling fear lurch in my stomach.
“What is it? What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t really know,” he ran his hands through his hair. “I just got a call from an old school friend of mine. They’re at the pub where Isabella’s gone – he said she’s out of it. Drank way too much.”
“How bad?” A strange mirror image was appearing in my mind as I ran for the car, suddenly urgent to get her out of there.
“He tried to put her on the phone, she couldn’t form words.” Tye shook his head as he jumped into the car.
My nausea had morphed into something else.
It was dread.
By the time we had reached the pub, both Tye and me were terrified. His friend had called again and through the Bluetooth in the car, we could hear the slurring of Isabella in the background.
Tye burst through the door with me close behind him. It was startlingly like my parents’ old pub. Quaint, old, always busy, dark wood panels and benches, old pastoral paintings on the walls, golden light fittings and it smelled of damp alcohol.
I followed Tye through weaving people, like a maze we meandered past tables and through nooks to an area at the back of the pub.
Around a table were a bunch of people roughly our age, some underage, as Leonora was, others older like Tye. One guy Tye made a grab for, presumably the friend who had called him.
“Where is she?”
The friend pointed to the other side of the table. I ran round a chair to see her on her knees, clutching her head. She was leaning so far forward her forehead was nearly on the floor. There was a girl by her side who I unceremoniously kicked out of the way.
“Let me see her.” I knelt down and slowly lifted Isabella’s eyes. The cocoa irises were practically slits, then they slipped away, showing nothing by white. Tye dropped to her other side, putting his arm around her and urging her to talk.
“Isabella? Look at me,” he tried to turn her to face him, but she couldn’t do it. I don’t think she could even hear him. She teetered forward again. “Isabella?”
“She can’t look at you.” I shook my head and placed a hand on her neck as I had once been taught to do. I had seen the signs before. Seen it all before. Last time it had been so catastrophic, I couldn’t let it happen again.
She appeared to be slipping in and out of consciousness.
“How much has she had?” Tye stood and snapped at the friend, then spun his anger on the others. “Who kept buying her drinks? She’s seventeen!”
One of the guys next to him shrugged.
“We thought she was eighteen. She bought some of her own. She looks old enough.”
“And who bought her the rest?” Tye stepped towards the guy who had spoken, so incensed that he might throttle him at any second.
Isabella made a wrenching sound.
At the noise, my blood ran cold. I had been here before.
I grabbed her around her waist and hauled her to her feet, the door out the back was but two yards away.
“Ivy? Where you taking her?” Tye asked, following behind.
“Outside for this.”
He didn’t understand me. I shoved the door open and pulled her out, allowing her to drop to her knees on the courtyard slabs as Tye knelt down the other side.
She convulsed – it was all so similar.
“Tye – call an ambulance.” My order only made him freeze.
“You think it’s-”
“Yes – it is just that bad. I am telling you, call them now.” My firm voice brooked no refusal and he dived into his pocket for his phone. “Isabella?” I stayed at her side as my hand took hold of her chin. “I am really sorry about this, but it is the only way.”
She made a weird noise, it meant nothing.
I stuck my fingers down her throat, just as I had been shown to do, she convulsed, wrenching again – I pulled my hand away, holding her hair back with my other as she began to throw up, dispelling the alcohol over the slabs.
We spent hours sat in the white waiting room. Tye’s parents on one side of the chairs, him and me on the other.
The doctor’s
