Say Her Name (9 page)

Chapter 12

The sadness of the dream lingered long after she’d woken. It was like a heavy, leaden shawl around her shoulders. She burrowed further under her duvet, blocking out daylight. God, she hated Tuesdays. Mondays held so much promise for the week ahead, Bobbie always thought, but by Tuesday the novelty had worn off and you were still miles away from the weekend. She had a feeling this Tuesday would be even more of an uphill struggle than most.

Bobbie closed her eyes, her heart still feeling a little broken. If that sort of bullying was what Mary experienced at Piper’s, perhaps it went some way towards explaining why her spirit hadn’t moved on. As Bobbie understood it, a lot of people thought that ghosts were spirits of the dead with unfinished business: ethereal fingers desperately digging nails into the fabric of this world without passing on to the next.

Of course, that opened a whole RE can of worms that Bobbie
definitely
didn’t have time for.

Bobbie remembered Sadie’s original tale about how Mary had committed suicide in the bathroom. The cruel laughter of the girls made her skin crawl. If that had chip-chip-chipped away at Mary over the years, it was no wonder she hadn’t wanted to live. Bobbie felt wretched and hopeless, and they weren’t even her memories. Assuming Mary had killed herself, what unfinished business could she have left? Were they meant to complete the business on her behalf? Bobbie sighed. If someone kills themself, the burst bubble of potential leaves nothing
but
unfinished business.

The glimpses of Mary’s past she saw were telling, but went no way to explaining Sadie’s fate, or what was going to happen to them on Thursday. Time was galloping away.

It was almost time to meet Caine. Eight thirty-five. Bobbie kicked the duvet off. Mrs Craddock had already been in and given her permission to stay in bed. Bobbie had gone through the necessary martyr act:
‘No, I’ll be fine, I just need a shower and maybe a bite to eat,’
before Craddock announced she was much too weak to attend lessons.

Depending on whether Craddock came back to check on her, she was off the hook. That said, there was still the hardest task to accomplish: getting out of Piper’s Hall without being seen.

She dressed quickly. The disguise, she had to admit, was genius. She’d swept her hair into a messy topknot, found some riding boots and borrowed Naya’s Barbour jacket. The massive insectile sunglasses and McQueen scarf were the cherry on the cake. She looked every inch the horsey mummy dropping off a Lower at the school gates. The Piper’s Hall student body was made up of about twenty per cent day pupils. In the hierarchy they were the lowest of the low and mostly stuck together for company. The theory was that only those hard core enough to give up their parents and home cooking were truly worthy of calling themselves Piper’s Ladies.

The bell for registration would sound at eight fifty-five. This was the only time of day where people came and went with any regularity. It was now or never.

A few girls were milling about Brontë, getting the last bits they needed for class or changing into uniform after breakfast. Walking through the school in disguise was too big a risk. Bobbie weighed it up, and the fire escape was a better option than the secret passage, as that would bring her out by the kitchen just as the staff were clearing up from breakfast. Only one problem: it was alarmed. Idiot girls were
always
crashing into the ‘push to open’ bars, however, with such regularity that teachers and Craddock hardly ever seemed to investigate. The alarms turned off as soon as the door was shut again. At least, that’s what Bobbie hoped.

Without her real glasses her vision was a fuzzy mess, but the corridor looked deserted, so she tiptoed to the exit. She gritted her teeth. Timing was key; she’d have to clear three flights of noisy, rickety metal stairs before someone attended to the alarm and caught her in the act.
Come on, Bobbie. Quick and clean.
Taking a deep breath, she pushed through the fire escape.

The alarm, a nasty, low buzz like an angry bee, sounded throughout Brontë House, but Bobbie didn’t look back. Taking the stairs two at a time, she almost glided down the damp iron railings, letting gravity pull her along. She didn’t stop to think about how many eyes might be seeing her through the windows she darted past. With any luck, she’d be nothing more than a blur.

The ringing stopped. Bobbie pressed her back against the wall. If she looked up she could see through the holes in the corrugated metal. No one stepped onto the fire escape. Perfect. Just as she’d hoped, someone else on her corridor (probably the poor soul who had the room next to the fire escape) must have come out and simply closed the door. Bobbie breathed a shaky sigh of relief. She continued down the steps. When she reached solid ground, she got her bearings: she was on a functionless patch of grass just to the front of the staff car park. Hopefully all the teachers would be in by now. Sticking close to the walls, but avoiding the windows, Bobbie prowled the school perimeter to the front entrance.

Perhaps those ‘boarding school for spies’ novels weren’t such a waste of time after all.

At the front of the school, there was a doughnut-shaped driveway with a fountain in the middle designed for the purpose of dropping off pupils at the main entrance. Pupils entered through a nondescript door at the end of the old wing, while only visitors were allowed to use the grand double doors flanked by grumpy, weather-worn stone lions.

Most parents or nannies acted as chauffeurs, slowing the BMW or Mercedes for only the briefest of moments to offload their offspring, but some walked their kids to school too. Bobbie knew this would look a lot more convincing if she had a dog of some sort, as many parents chose to combine the journey to school with walking the family pet.

As casually as she could, she fell into step alongside a trio of mums emerging through the visitors’ entrance. They’d probably been in to pay a library fine or to get tickets for a piano recital or something equally lame. Either way, it was perfect timing; they were even dressed similarly. As they approached the end of the drive, Bobbie pulled ahead of them – the foreboding building behind her getting smaller and smaller with every step. By the time she stepped through the curling wrought-iron gates at the end of the drive, Bobbie realised she was light-headed from holding her breath.

She’d done it. She was actually free.

Far below, the waves crashed onto the rocks – a roar and then a shiver as the tide rolled back over the shingle. A battered-looking Fiat with one door a different shade of red to the chassis waited by the turnstile to the coastal pathway. That
had
to be Caine’s car. She darted across the road and saw two people in the front seats – Caine and Mark. What was he doing here?

Bobbie tapped on the window, and Caine twisted around to open the back door for her. ‘Nice outfit,’ he said, eyeing her up and down. ‘You know Hallowe’en was last week, right?’

‘Very funny. It’s a disguise, and one that apparently worked. Hi, Mark. No offence, but why are you here?’

The stockier boy rolled his eyes. Caine answered. ‘Mum needed the car today. Mark said he’d drop us off cos he has a free.’

‘Oh. Okay.’

‘Yup, today I’m a taxi service. I must be mad – going to a freaking loony bin in my free. I should be in bed, man.’ Checking over his shoulder, Mark pulled out into the road and started on the journey towards Oxsley. At this time of the day, the traffic was awful – this could take forever.

‘Anyway.’ Caine sat sideways on so he could talk to both of them. Today he was wearing a cute jumper that looked like vintage skate gear. The deep maroon totally worked against his dark skin. ‘You gotta see this.’

‘Gotta see what?’

‘Dude, where’s your phone?’ he asked Mark.

‘In my pocket. Just watch where you’re putting your hand.’

‘Dream on, mate.’ Caine gingerly fished the iPhone out of his pocket with pincer fingers while Mark drove. ‘It’s the video Mark made while we were doing the dare.’

‘You told him?’ Bobbie’s skin suddenly felt hot. She didn’t like the idea of dragging more people into this, and if she was really honest, she sort of liked having Caine to herself.

‘I didn’t need to. Look.’ He handed her the phone all ready to go – she just had to press play.

She really didn’t want to see this, but knew she had to. Pressing play, she waited for the show to start. It was surreal seeing it all happen
to
them. In her head, it had all seemed more epic, but the video showed the three of them standing in a poky bathroom with terrible lighting. The flickering candlelight illuminated them, but that was all she could make out. There was only a suggestion that even
they
were reflected in the mirror. The noise was better though. She could hear their giggles – the first time they’d lost their bottle.

Then the real thing started.
‘Bloody Mary,’
they all said, looking dead into the mirror. There was a pause and they repeated the refrain. How could they have been so stupid? Now, sat in the car, Bobbie wondered who or what in her life had led her to believe she was invincible. She thought of the girls in her year: drinking, smoking, eating junk as if none of it mattered, simply because they were young. They all assumed that bad things only ever happen to other people – old people. She’d been just as dumb. They’d played Russian roulette and got the bullet.

In the video, as they finished the fifth ‘Bloody Mary’, Bobbie scrutinised the clip. The candles flickered, and for a second the video was almost pitch-black. The room settled before they’d burst into hysterics. Bobbie held the phone centimetres from her eyes, desperately looking for a hint of the girl in the mirror, but at the same time scared to see her face. ‘I can’t see anything.’

‘It’s not something to see.
Listen
,’ Caine told her. He reached over and bumped the volume up to full. Their laughter and chatter became noisier. ‘Can you hear that?’

‘Us?’

‘No. In the background.’ Bobbie shook her head and Caine held the speaker to her ear. That was when she heard it. Behind all their giggling, a baby was crying. It was faint but unmistakeable. The baby
howled
, the cries rattling inside her skull. There was something unique about that noise – a crying baby – a noise you instinctively
have
to stop; hearing such distress was unbearable.

‘Oh my God.’ Bobbie stopped the video. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘Is there any way there could have been a baby in school?’ Caine asked.

‘Well, we do have a mother and baby wing,’ Bobbie deadpanned.

‘Serious?’

‘What do you think? I’m kidding!’ Bobbie smiled and Caine smiled back. He was gullible and it was kind of cute. ‘There’s no babies at Piper’s Hall … this … baby … it can’t be real. It’s
her
.’

Mark shook his head in disbelief. ‘You know what – I think you are getting each other all fired up. I am not buying all this
Woman in Black
shiz.’

Bobbie looked to Caine, who looked back sympathetically. ‘It’s all real,’ she said. ‘I had another dream last night. About her. I think she’s trying to show me why she killed herself.’ Caine frowned, and turned to sit properly in the passenger seat. ‘What?’ she prompted.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just … just that I’ve been having weird dreams too.’

Bobbie sat forward, clinging to the back of his chair. ‘About what?’

‘I dunno. They were … I don’t wanna say.’

Mark rocked back in his seat, laughing. ‘Oh my days! You had a proper filthy dream! You have to tell us, man!’

Even with his skin tone, Caine visibly blushed. He said nothing. ‘Caine, it might be important … ’ Bobbie said, although she suddenly felt the most irrational jealousy of her life towards the dream girl.

‘You know what?’ Caine finally admitted. ‘I couldn’t talk about it even if I wanted to. I was so out of it … I mean, in the dream it was half like it
was
me and half like I was
watching
it.’

‘That’s how I felt too.’

Mark carried on cackling. ‘Dude … it was hot though, right?’

Caine said no more, but a coy smirk crossed his lips and Bobbie experienced her second ever swoon.

The Royal Seahaven Hospital didn’t look unlike Piper’s Hall, except the hospital was set amongst the outskirts of woodland, making the approach feel even more intimidating somehow. As Mark drove down the long, oak-lined drive, Bobbie recalled
The Shining
and
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
and suddenly this didn’t seem like such a great idea.

The trees cleared and the hospital came into view. It was an old building with modern features artificially grafted to its bones – gleaming handrails and sliding doors on an antique hospital. It did nothing to make the place any more inviting.

Mark drove past the ambulance bay, following signposts towards the psychiatric unit. The Charity Sawyer Ward was set behind the main hospital, a square structure with square windows neatly arranged in parallel lines – not a curved edge anywhere in sight so as not to upset the mad people within, Bobbie thought.

‘I gotta get back to school for second period. I can come back period three if you need me to.’

‘Nah, it’s cool – we can get the bus into Oxsley,’ Caine suggested, and Bobbie nodded agreement. At this stage, she was so nervous she could taste bitter bile at the back of her mouth. This didn’t feel like playing or ‘being mischievous’ any more; this was serious – they were about to break into a hospital to interrogate a person with a mental illness.

That was the whole problem, though. What if Bridget Horne wasn’t ill? Or what if she was and
they
were seeing things too? Bobbie wished she’d grabbed something to eat before she left school; her whole body felt hollowed out and empty, like the rotting jack-o’-lanterns left over from the weekend.

‘You okay?’ Caine sensed her unease.

‘Not really. We could get in serious trouble for this. Like police trouble.’

He shook his head. ‘We’re just visitors. There’s no law against that.’