‘I’m sorry, Charlie,’ I say aloud under my breath. ‘I didn’t understand. I should have helped you.’ And tears roll down my cheeks as I realise that I’ll never be able to say it to her now. Because Charlie is dead.
I brush the tears away angrily. I was young. I had my own problems. I can’t be blamed. But even as I make these excuses to myself another voice, a cool and ruthless voice inside my head, is insisting otherwise. You were eighteen. Old enough to know better. You destroyed her life and you never took responsibility.
‘I’m bored,’ said Charlie. She was standing on the swing. And as she spoke, she stretched her arms out, letting go of the chains, making me worry she was going to fall.
‘What shall we do now?’ she asked when she finally grabbed hold of the chains again and sat down. ‘There’s a party at Nessa’s. Shall we go?’
‘Sure, why not?’ said May Ling, lazily.
‘I don’t know,’ I hesitated. I had promised to help my mother at a charity auction the next morning and would need to get up early.
‘Please come.’ Charlie gave a mischievous grin. ‘James will be there.’
I shot her an angry look. I’d been infatuated with James since I was eleven and had never told anyone. But recently, in a moment of weakness, eager to please and to maintain our new-found closeness, I’d told Charlie. I had made her promise to keep it a secret, but here she was making it obvious in front of May Ling and Jenson that I had a crush on him.
‘Do you fancy James?’ May Ling asked curiously.
‘No, he’s just a friend, that’s all.’
‘Yes, you so do. You’re going red,’ said Jenson, laughing.
‘Shut up, Jenson,’ said Charlie. ‘He’s just her friend, that’s all. Please come with us. It won’t be the same without you. Besides, we need someone to drive.’ She clasped her hands together as if she were praying. ‘Please, Cat.’
I hesitated just for a second. Then I smiled and nodded.
‘All right,’ I said.
What made me say yes? It wasn’t that James would be there. I had given up on James ever being interested in me in that way. I think it was the fact that Charlie said she wanted me there. I could never say no to Charlie.
What if I had said no? What if I had never gone to Nessa’s party? If only I could go back in time and just change that one decision; what happened next would never have happened. Charlie and I could have stayed friends and so many lives wouldn’t have been destroyed.
I stand up and walk briskly towards the park gates. There is no point in brooding and wishing things could have been different. Nothing can be changed. Time travel only happens in science fiction.
As I walk past the yew hedge, I look again at the picture of the park on my phone. It’s just a coincidence, I think, dismissing my misgivings as paranoia, the product of a guilty conscience. The picture couldn’t be a reference to that night. Even if someone else knew what had happened back then, how would they know we’d come here earlier in the evening? And besides, no one could possibly know about that night.
There are only two people who ever knew what happened. One of them is me and the other is dead, stabbed four times in the chest.
Nine
‘Ah, finally, Catherine.’ Mum embraces me on the doorstep and looks me up and down critically. ‘You haven’t been answering your phone. Your father and I have been worried about you.’
‘I’m fine,’ I lie. ‘I’ve just been busy, that’s all.’ I’ve dropped in to see my parents on my way home, because I know if I don’t, my mum won’t stop ringing. I know I will have to explain the photofit eventually, and I’d rather do that in person than over the phone.
‘Well, you look nice, darling,’ she says dubiously. ‘You’ve changed your hair. You look as if you’ve lost some weight too, have you?’
‘A little.’
Thin as a rake, my mother has never been able to understand how she could have a fat daughter. When I was a child, she used to weigh me before every meal and proclaim in mystification at my inevitable weight gain. She didn’t know that I was spending the money she gave me for after-school gym class on sweets and crisps.
I follow her into their long, dark kitchen – the result of a badly thought-out extension in the seventies – and sit at the large pine table.
My mother doesn’t sit down. She rarely sits. She’s one of those people who keeps busy all the time. Just now she’s bustling about making me a coffee and wiping invisible crumbs off the kitchen counter.
‘How are Dylan and Theo?’ she asks.
I roll my eyes. It annoys me the way she insists on talking about them as if we’re still a family unit. ‘Dylan’s fine. I don’t know how Theo is,’ I say pointedly.
‘Well now, there’s no need to be like that,’ she says huffily.
‘Like what, Mum?’
‘Theo is still my son-in-law. I care about him, you know. I can’t just switch off my feelings, unlike some people.’
God knows I’m aware of her feelings about Theo. Mum adores him and refuses to believe anything bad about him. She knows that he was the one that cheated on me, but somehow has rationalised this in her mind as my fault. She assumes that I didn’t treat him right – and I probably didn’t by her standards, if the way she treats my father is anything to go by. My mother subscribes to an old-fashioned view of marriage, where the women look after the men and the
