“Vodka and coke, double.”
Conscious of Mia’s eyes following him, Julian ordered her drink and the same for himself. Upon returning to the table, he said, “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your friend.”
The eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “Why should you be sorry?”
“Because, well, because I am…” Julian trailed off lamely.
Mia drank her drink. Then she reached for Julian’s and drank that, too. “Is that why you’re here, because you feel sorry for me?”
Julian was silent a moment, then he admitted, “No.”
Mia tapped her glass. “I’ll have another.”
Julian fetched another round. Mia lit a cigarette. She smoked a little self-consciously, like someone for whom the habit wasn’t yet automatic. Looking at her through the smoke she exhaled in his face, Julian caught a glimpse of what she really was — a fifteen-year old girl trying to look and act eighteen. As if suddenly conscious of this, she crushed the cigarette out after only five or six puffs. “Tell me what Jo looked like,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Julian asked, although he knew what she meant.
“What did she look like when you found her?”
“Do you really want to know?”
Face intense as a knife-cut, Mia leant forward close enough so that Julian could smell her alcopop-sweet breath. “I want to know every detail.”
Julian glanced around. The bar was busier than the previous night, most of the surrounding tables were occupied. Although the music pumping out over the sound system made conversation difficult to overhear, he didn’t fancy describing how Jo Butcher’s corpse had looked with other people in earshot. He didn’t fancy describing it again at all, but something told him he’d have difficulty refusing Mia that, or anything else she asked. “My car’s outside. Let’s go somewhere else, somewhere quiet.”
Mia gave Julian that quick, weighing-up look again. She spoke in a flat, hard voice that went through him like a shiver. “Just so long as you promise not to rape me and murder me and hide my body in the forest.”
The queer deep, heavy feeling flared, pushing up Julian’s throat, big as a fist. “That’s not funny.”
“It’s not meant to be.” Mia threw back her drink and stood up. When Julian remained seated, frowning at her, she said impatiently, “Well, come on then, let’s get going.”
“But I haven’t promised yet.”
Mia gave a little smirk, as if to say, oh, I think I can handle anything you’ve got, and then some. Biting back his irritation, Julian led her to his car. “Nice wheels,” she said.
“Where shall we go?”
“Start driving and I’ll tell you, rich boy.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not? That’s what you are, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah, I suppose, but-”
Mia cut Julian off with a loud exhalation. He stared at her a moment, then started the engine. “Which way?”
She pointed and he followed the line of her finger. She switched on the radio and, finding a tune she liked, turned it up loud. She sat slumped down in the car seat, listlessly staring out the window, trying to appear relaxed, bored even. But there was a tension about her. Julian noticed that her right hand trembled ever so slightly, while her left fidgeted with something in her jacket pocket. They drove to the northern edge of town, to The High Bridge.
“Stop here,” Mia said.
They pulled over in front of a sign displaying the telephone number of The Samaritans, which had been put up a few years earlier after a spate of suicides. They walked beneath the arched steel frame to the centre of the three-hundred foot span. “You can understand in a way why people come here to end it all,” said Mia, leaning out over the murmuring black water. “It’s such a beautiful place.”
Staring down at the swirls of foam stirred up by the bridge’s massive concrete feet, Julian couldn’t help but shudder. As Mia leant out further, he resisted an urge to grab her and pull her back. “Tell me about it,” she said, almost as if she was speaking to the river.
So Julian told her. She listened seemingly impassively, but after he was finished she took a quivering breath and said, “Fuck, I need a drink. You got anything to drink?”
Julian took out a lump of dope. “I’ve got this.”
“That’ll do. You got anything we can sit on?”
“There’s a blanket in the car.”
Mia started back towards the car. “Where we going now?” asked Julian.
She didn’t reply. They got the blanket and Julian followed her, groping his way in the moonlit dark, down a narrow dirt path that snaked back and forth along the steep grassy bank beneath the eaves of the bridge. At the bottom of the bank was a flat space with a graffiti-scarred concrete pillar at its centre. There were cans, bottles and scraps of blackened foil strewn around. Mia picked up a can of lighter fluid and squirted it over the remains of an old fire. She lit a match and dropped it. Flames whooshed up, throwing crazily dancing shadows everywhere. Julian spread the blanket over the ground and they sat watching the fire, smoking a joint.
“So do you think someone killed her?” asked Mia, fidgeting in her pocket again.
“I dunno.”
“You said there were marks on her face and neck.”
“Yeah, but my dog made those. I think. Anyway, everyone I’ve spoken to thinks she overdosed.”
Mia snorted. “They would.”
“You think they’re wrong.”
“Fucked if I know. She probably did OD. She always said that’s how she’d go. And, hey, if she was right, all those fuckers you spoke to can tut and nod and shake their little heads.”
It’s not like that, Julian wanted to say. But it was like that, and he knew it. “What was she taking?”
Mia shrugged. “Anything she could get her hands on. Speed, acid, E, ketamine — she was crazy for it all.”
“Heroin?”
The light of the flames picked out frown lines gathering on Mia’s face. “She said she didn’t do that stuff. But I know she did. I saw the needle marks.”
“What about you? You ever tried it?”
“Once,” Mia admitted as if it was something she’d rather forget. She added quickly, “I didn’t inject it, though. There’s no way I’d stick a needleful of that shit in my arm. I didn’t want to do it at all, but Jo kept nagging and nagging me. She had this thing about trying everything once before she croaked. I ended up giving in, like I always do. But I made her promise we’d only do it once. We had this big fuck off argument when I saw the needle marks. I called her a liar, and she told me to go fuck myself. That was a couple of weeks ago.” She chewed her lips, pain shining in her eyes. “We never spoke again.”
“Where did you get the heroin from?”
Mia laughed as if to say, you’ve got to be fucking kidding. She dragged the joint down to its roach, and flicked it into the fire. “Roll another,” she said. As Julian did so, she asked, “So what’s it like being a rich kid?”
Julian ignored her.
“Come on, don’t be shy,” she persisted. “I want to know. What’s it like living in a big house, driving a nice car, knowing you only have to put out your hands and everything you ever want’ll fall into them.”
Julian sighed. “Am I supposed to be ashamed? Have I done something wrong?”
“I dunno. Have you?”
To his irritation, Julian found himself blinking away from Mia’s gaze. He bent to light the spliff in the fire. “Must be nice,” Mia said. “Not being stuck in this shitty little town, living a shitty little life.”
Now it was Julian’s turn to snort. “Who says I’m not stuck?”
“You go to university down in London, don’t you?”
“How do you know that?”
Mia smiled coyly. “Someone told me.”
Julian passed her the joint. “Yeah, well, did they tell you I’m doing a business degree I fucking hate, and that
