Follow Me Down (9 page)

‘How did you know that?’ I asked and her cheeks went from pink to red.

‘I was just walking past and—’

‘Were you listening?’ I stepped forward. This place is like a damn goldfish bowl. ‘That was a private conversation, Orla. How dare you? What did you hear?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, shoulders shuddering, then she dissolved into tears. I felt awful for snapping at her, but when I went to reach for her hand, she wouldn’t let me touch her. ‘You know, don’t you? Everyone knows!’

‘Know what?’ I asked, but when she lifted her sticky eyelashes to look at me I knew.

I knew before she said it.

‘That I was raped.’

2 DAYS AFTER

MAY

Scarlett isn’t back.

I don’t know how Molly knew that Scarlett’s parents were doing an appeal on
BBC Breakfast
this morning but, just before it started at 6 a.m., I could hear her opening doors and waking everyone up. I didn’t want to watch it in the Common Room with everyone, but Orla made me, saying it would look bad if I didn’t. So I checked my other cellphone again and when I discovered that he still hadn’t called me back, I reluctantly joined the sleepy shuffle down the stairs into the Common Room.

It filled up quickly, girls chomping on slices of toast and passing around mugs of tea as though we were waiting for Saturday Film Club to start, not waiting to hear what had happened to one of our school friends. I sat huddled next to Orla on the couch, cupping a mug of tea in my hands while Molly sat cross-legged in her pyjamas on the coffee table.

‘This is it,’ she said with the air of a girl about to be made queen, ‘we knew it was going to happen.’ She looked around to check that everyone was listening and when she got to me, her gaze narrowed. Perhaps I didn’t look as awed as the other girls, or maybe she was concerned that with Scarlett gone, I was going to make a grab for the throne as well.

I glared at her until she turned back to the television. ‘You can’t keep running away like that. Something was bound to happen.’ She flicked her hair. ‘Daddy says the police are putting MISSING posters up in Marlborough this morning. He just saw someone walking around with a pile of them. They’ve used last year’s class photo.’

My stomach clenched so suddenly I thought I was going to be sick. ‘Posters?’ I sat forward, tea spilling over my knuckles, but I didn’t feel it as I asked myself why I didn’t talk to Olivia yesterday.

I should have talked to Olivia yesterday.

Molly didn’t acknowledge me. ‘They’ve never put up posters before, have they?’ she went on, and the urge to reach over and push her off the coffee table was unbearable. ‘She’s usually back before they’ve finished printing them.’

A girl began crying and I felt another long roll of nausea. Molly was enjoying it too much, her shoulders back, as though we were gathered around a campfire and she was telling us scary stories. I couldn’t take it, but as I was about to leave, Mrs Delaney came in. She was fully dressed, her hair immaculate as she sat on the arm of one of the couches.

‘I don’t want you to worry, girls. Scarlett will be fine,’ she said, her voice steady, but I saw her playing with her wedding ring. ‘She’ll be fine. Just fine.’

Three fines.

‘Oh my God. This is it. This is it. Turn it up!’ Molly said, hands everywhere, as though the radio was playing her favourite song.

I looked up as the photograph of Scarlett came on screen. She was in her Crofton uniform, her hair down and falling over her shoulders in dark waves. As soon as I saw it, I looked down at the drying tea stain on the rug and I didn’t lift my head for the rest of the segment. But I heard it all: how Scarlett had left home to meet a friend on Sunday afternoon and hadn’t come back. It was strange hearing her reduced to a few facts – age, height, hair colour – the presenter describing her in a dull, flat voice that made her sound so ordinary. Then, when he described The Old Dear, referring to it as a ‘green Land Rover’ – not the car she charged around in, singing to herself because it didn’t have a stereo, or the car her father drove me back to Crofton in when I went to her house for dinner, gushing about a recipe he’d found for yam porridge – I started playing with my necklace to distract myself from crying.

I didn’t realise until that moment how much I missed her, how much I used to like her, so when Orla reached for my hand, I was grateful, especially when I heard Scarlett’s mother’s voice, small and broken, begging for information. If Orla hadn’t been there, I might have given in to the urge to run out of the room.

As soon as the segment finished there was a moment of silence then Molly turned to Mrs Delaney. ‘Oh my God. Do they think Scarlett’s dead, Miss?’

I jumped up. ‘Shut up, Molly!’ I hissed, tea splashing over the rim of my mug and soaking through my socks. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’

She leapt off the coffee table to stand opposite me. ‘Like you care, Adamma.’

‘We may not be friends any more, Molly, but I’m still a decent human being. Olivia must be worried sick,’ I reminded her, guilt biting at me again. ‘She shouldn’t have to come to school today to hear everyone talking about how her sister is dead.’

‘Decent human being?’ Molly cocked an eyebrow up at me. I knew what she was going to say and I wanted to cover her mouth with my hand. ‘You were her best friend and you threw her away for Dominic. So get off your high horse, Adamma.’

‘I don’t know how many more times I can say this, but I’m not with him!’

Molly rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah. Yeah.’

‘That’s enough, girls,’ Mrs Delaney said, suddenly between us.

She ushered Molly towards the kitchen and Molly stomped off to be comforted by a group of girls, not before she had called me a
two-faced bitch
, which earned her a swift telling off from Mrs Delaney. Ordinarily, I would have stuck around to enjoy it, but I was so desperate to see if he’d called back that I rushed to my room.

I pulled the pillow and blanket off the shelf in the closet in my impatience to get to my tuck box, almost tripping over them as I walked to my bed. As soon as I opened it, I snatched my phone. It was on top and I had left it switched on after checking it at 3 a.m., then again before I went to the Common Room, so I didn’t have to wait long to find out that he hadn’t called. My heart sank. I thought he might have seen
BBC Breakfast
, too. So I texted him –
Call me. Please.
– and managed to put the phone back into the tuck box a second before Orla came in.

‘Are you OK, Adamma?’ she asked, running over to me and pulling me into a hug. ‘I just told Molly off. I don’t know why she said that. Everyone knows that isn’t true. You didn’t steal Dominic from Scarlett. She didn’t even want him.’

I contemplated defending myself again but sighed and shook my head instead.

‘I don’t know what’s got into her,’ Orla went on. ‘She’s behaving like—’ She stopped, her cheeks suddenly pink. Yesterday she would have said Scarlett.

What a difference a day makes.

‘I don’t care any more,’ I muttered, stuffing everything back in my closet and closing the doors. Luckily, Orla was too distracted to notice that I had my tuck box out, and if she did, she didn’t think it was worth asking why.

I was pulling my towel off the radiator when Mrs Delaney came in and told Orla to give us a moment. I thought she was going to tell me off for what had happened with Molly, but when Orla left, she closed the door and told me to get dressed.

‘Of course, Mrs Delaney,’ I said, reaching for my washbag and checking that my wide-toothed comb was in it. ‘I’m just getting in the shower.’

‘Be as quick as you can please, Miss Okomma.’

I looked up with a frown. ‘Why, Miss?’

‘We need to get to the police station.’

211 DAYS BEFORE

OCTOBER

I don’t know what to do. I begged Orla to tell the police, I even offered to go with her, but she won’t. She says that she doesn’t want her father to know and I get that. I could probably deal with being the Girl Who Was Raped at Crofton, I might even be able to stomach the questions about what I was wearing and how much I’d had to drink and why I’d walked home by myself, but I couldn’t tell my father. Not because he’d be ashamed, but because he’d never forgive himself for not being there and I don’t want him to stop thinking that he can protect me from everything. The day he realises he can’t is the day I stop being his little girl and then what will I be? That’s all I’ve ever been. I don’t know if I can be anyone else.

So I promised Orla I wouldn’t tell a soul, but I don’t know if I can keep my promise. I lay awake all night with it scratching at my insides and now I need to get it out. I’ve just written it all down, because I had to do something. She says that she doesn’t remember anything, but she told me enough to make me sure that the guy in the car at Savernake Forest is more than just another Crofton rumour. Now that I know that, now that it’s all typed up and I have half a page of words and a stack of printouts about how to report it, and details about a rape sanctuary in Swindon that can help if she decides not to, I want to do something even more. I suppose that’s why I ended up lingering outside the newsroom when classes were over this afternoon.

I guess Mr Lucas saw me pacing in the corridor through the glass panel in the door, because he opened it and asked if I was OK. He wasn’t wearing his glasses so he looked strange – young – and he’d taken his jacket off to reveal a navy pinstripe waistcoat that I hadn’t noticed him wearing when I’d seen him earlier in class.

It was odd to see him in something so fitted. I could see the shape of his arms beneath his shirt, the curve of his shoulders. Most of the girls in my year are besotted with him. I don’t know why, he isn’t my type at all; tall and thin as a toothpick with a mop of brown hair which he is incapable of willing into submission, no matter how many times he runs his hand through it. But it made sense, I suppose; compared to the grumpy, greying faculty at Crofton, he’s Adonis. Put a dozen teenage girls in a classroom with a twenty-three-year-old teacher who wears waistcoats and quotes Bob Dylan and they’re bound to find him attractive.

I wonder sometimes what the other teachers think of him; he’s at least twenty years younger than most of them. They must walk past his classroom and see him charging around, hands everywhere, or hear him from their classrooms, quoting Shakespeare until he’s out of breath, and think he’s mad. Last month, when we were studying
Richard III
, he made us all stand on our chairs and we could only sit down when we had answered a question correctly. He’d only managed to ask three before the assistant headmaster swept in and told us all to sit down, reminding Mr Lucas that it was a Health and Safety violation. As soon as he left, Mr Lucas rolled his eyes and told us to stand on our chairs again,
but more quietly this time
.

‘Miss Okomma?’ he prompted with a frown.

‘I’m fine, Sir,’ I said, breathless from pacing.

‘You don’t seem fine. Is something bothering you?’

‘No, Sir.’

‘Are you here to file something?’ He nodded at the folder I was hugging.

‘I did this morning, Sir. But I need to speak to Hannah. Is she here?’

‘She’s with Headmaster Ballard getting his message for the first issue.’ He stepped back and gestured at me to come in. ‘But you can speak to me.’

‘It’s OK, Sir. I don’t want to bother you.’

‘No bother, Miss Okomma. Come in.’

Before I could object, he turned and walked back into the newsroom.

The newsroom
sounds so fancy. I’m sure most people would be underwhelmed by it. It’s just a classroom with a long desk in the middle and computers around the edges, but I love it. It’s the only place I’ve ever felt a buzz at Crofton. It’s loud and untidy, the bins spilling over with balled-up pieces of paper and the walls covered in huge, messy noticeboards of printed-out photos and newspaper clippings, their corners curling. Mr Lucas swept past one on his way to the desk at the far end, the strips of paper fluttering as he did.

I followed him in gingerly, as though everyone in the room was asleep and I didn’t want to disturb them. I wouldn’t have, of course. It must have been 3.15 p.m. by then, so the room was cluttered with pupils trying to get their pieces in by the 4 p.m. deadline. It was hardly
The
New York Times
, but the chaos (chaos for Crofton, anyway), still made my heart stutter. Cellphones rang and keyboards rattled while, in the corner, two girls stood in front of a computer screen, bickering over two photos that looked identical to me.

‘How do you spell vociferous?’ a guy called out as I walked over to Mr Lucas.

But before I could tell him, Mr Lucas said, ‘Try to keep it simple, Lambert. You’re writing about a hockey match.’

When I got to his desk, Mr Lucas was putting his glasses on. He reached for a piece of paper, the skin between his eyebrows pinching as he read it.

‘Ah. Yes!’ he said, looking up and waving it at me with a smile. ‘I have read your story, Miss Okomma. It’s good. I could almost hear the sticks clashing.’

I don’t know what was worse, the
good
or the fact that he’d forgotten he’d read it. Either way, I knew, I hadn’t got in. I felt my ego wrinkle as I imagined
Granta
Girl’s piece making him weep, and I held the folder a little tighter to my chest.

‘But that’s not what you need to speak to me about, is it?’ he said, before my brain could engage with my feet and tell them to start walking.

I went rigid. ‘Sir?’

‘You’re clearly anxious about something. You were distracted in class today and please don’t take this the wrong way, but it looks like you haven’t slept. A perfectly pleasant piece about a hockey match doesn’t usually incite such anxiety.’

He smiled, but when I didn’t respond – just stared at him – he nodded at the folder. ‘I’m guessing whatever you’re concerned about is in that folder.’

‘I. Um –’ I went to take a step back, but stopped myself. I had to do something. ‘Is there somewhere we can speak privately, Sir?’

He gave me a look that pleaded with me not to tell him I was pregnant and, for a second, I wondered if he could deal with what I was about to tell him. But then he caught himself and gestured towards the door at the back of the newsroom.

It led to what would have been the darkroom. I guess it hasn’t been used much since everyone started using digital cameras, but it still smelt strongly of chemicals. I don’t know if it was that or the panic suddenly pulsing through me, but I felt very dizzy.

‘Are you OK, Miss Okomma?’ he asked, catching me by the elbow as my eyes swam out of focus, then steering me towards a stool.

When I’d caught my breath, I climbed onto it and watched as he dragged another one across the small darkroom and sat opposite me.

‘What’s wrong, Adamma?’ he asked with a frown. He’d never called me by my first name before and I don’t know why, but it made me feel better.

So I took a deep breath and made myself say it, ‘Sir, has anyone ever told you a secret that you think is too big to keep?’

He considered this for a moment, then leaned a little closer and looked at me from under his eyelashes. ‘Is there something that you’d like to tell me, Adamma?’

I nodded and when I did, my chin trembled.

He must have seen it, because he said, ‘Do you need a moment?’

I nodded again and took another deep breath, but I still couldn’t do it. I kept thinking of Orla and the promise I’d made. I’ve never broken a promise before.

He waited for me to say something, but when I didn’t he folded his arms and said, ‘I can’t say that I know you as well as your classmates do, Adamma, or even Mrs Delaney, but I do know that you’re very bright.’ He stopped to sweep his hair back with his hand. ‘So if there’s something you want to tell me, then I’m assuming it’s because you haven’t been able to resolve it by yourself.’

I nodded.

‘And you think maybe I can help.’

I nodded again.

‘So please let me.’

I must have looked like I was about to erupt into tears, because he tugged a handkerchief out of the pocket of his pants and handed it to me. I took it and balled my fist around it, grateful that I didn’t need to use it. Given how much of a klutz he is in class sometimes, tripping over his words – and his laces – I don’t imagine he’d know what to do with a sobbing teenage girl.

‘I’ve never betrayed a friend before,’ I said at last.

‘Unfortunately, you have to sometimes, Adamma.’

He was right. And it’s funny, not funny
ha ha
, more funny fucked-up, how twenty-four hours ago, I wouldn’t have given Orla Roberts a second thought, let alone referred to her as a friend. What a horrible thing to be united over.

I looked at my hands. ‘My friend was raped,’ I said, finally, and the room suddenly felt smaller. I felt the nearness of the walls, the ceiling.

He went very quiet and I couldn’t look at him, so I started fiddling with the edges of the handkerchief while I waited for him to respond.

After a minute or so, he said, ‘When did this happen, Miss Okomma?’

‘This weekend in Savernake Forest.’

‘Does your friend know who did it?’

I shook my head. ‘Some guy in a car.’

‘A car?’

I nodded. ‘There were two girls, actually,’ I told him, rolling one of the edges of the handkerchief between my forefinger and thumb.

‘Two?’ he asked, his voice a little higher.

‘He stopped one girl when she was walking back here and tried to get her into his car, but she ran away. My friend wasn’t as lucky.’

He didn’t say anything for a long time and I could hear the murmur of the newsroom – a cellphone ringing, followed by a long laugh. But then I heard him take a breath and panic pinched at me. He was going to ask for names and I couldn’t.

I couldn’t.

But he said, ‘You spoke to both of these girls, Miss Okomma?’

I nodded.

‘And you’re sure they’re telling the truth?’

‘Of course.’ I looked up to find him frowning at me. ‘Do you think I should tell the police, Sir?’

He thought about it for a moment longer than I expected him to. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, and the shock of it nearly knocked me off my stool. But then he caught himself, ‘I mean,
of course
you should tell them, Miss Okomma,’ he said, flustered. ‘But they won’t be able to do much if these girls won’t speak to them.’

He was right, and I felt the injustice of it pinching at my insides. It was so unfair. This guy – this asshole – did this awful, disgusting thing. Why should he get away with it because Orla was embarrassed? It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair.

‘So I should get my friend to report it?’

‘Why won’t she?’

‘She was drunk. She thinks it was her fault.’

He took off his glasses and rubbed the red mark on the bridge of his nose, then sighed heavily. ‘That’s what most girls think, sadly.’

‘But I have to do something, Sir.’

‘I get that.’ He was quiet while he cleaned his glasses with the end of his tie, then he sighed, and when he put them back on again, he said, ‘When I was your age, something similar happened to someone I knew.’

I lifted my eyelashes to look at him. ‘That’s horrible, Sir.’

He nodded. ‘Her name was Charlotte and the same thing happened: she was walking home alone after a party and someone offered to give her a lift.’ He stopped and I didn’t want him to, I wanted him to tell me what had happened, that she was OK, but I wonder now if he had to stop. ‘If you want my advice, and I think you do, then the best thing you can do right now is get your friend to speak to someone.’

‘But what if she won’t go to the police?’

‘There are other people she can speak to. The school has a counsellor. I’m sure we can arrange for them to meet.’

That was a good idea. ‘Thanks, Sir. But what about the police?’ He hesitated again, and when he did, I stuttered out, ‘Even if she won’t report it, I should warn them, right? What if this guy does it again? What if he’s done it before?’

He waited for my breathing to settle, then he nodded. ‘So wise so young.’

I tried to smile, but when I thought of us in class, standing on our chairs as we answered his questions about
Richard III
, Scarlett with her arms out saying,
So wise so young, they say, do never live long
, my heart started to throb.

Throb and throb.

I knew I was doing the right thing, but a voice in my head still told me to leave it as I walked out of the newsroom.
Leave it. Leave it. Leave it.
But I didn’t listen, didn’t think, I didn’t even miss a step, as though I was out for a run and I had to keep my heart rate up. I had to keep going before I thought about it too much, like Orla with her list of reasons why no one would believe her. I believed her and someone would believe me, too. But as soon as I walked out into the courtyard, someone stepped into my path, and I screeched to a cartoon halt.

It took me a moment to recover, but when I did, and I realised it was Scarlett and Olivia, I was relieved.

‘Olivia, thank God,’ I gasped, reaching for her arm.

‘Oh good. You’re late, too.
Someone
’, she turned to glare at Scarlett, ‘made me late running lines with her. Frailty, thy name is sister.’

I know they’re twins, but they look like day and night – Olivia with her paper-straight blond hair and Scarlett with her mess of dark waves – but when Scarlett glared back, as distracted as I was, I still noted that they’d never looked so alike.

‘Actually—’ Scarlett started to say, but I interrupted.

‘I can’t make Debating Society today. Can you cover for me, Liv?’

Usually, Scarlett would have been livid at being talked over, but her eyes lit up. ‘What’s this? Princess Adamma bunking off? I am shocked.
Shocked
.’