After the Eclipse

by Fran Dorricott

  “That’s not my home any more,” I said. It was the truth. “Maybe I wanted that before I came back here. Wanted things to stay the same. But they can’t. I’ve seen…” I couldn’t put it into words. How I’d seen my future, what could be, in Marion’s eyes when she laughed and in the curve of her neck and the mole on her chin… “I’m moving on.”

  “But you haven’t moved on,” he said. “I know you. Are you going to ask her on a date?”

  I glanced from side to side, suddenly aware of how loud he was speaking. I was totally fine with being Out and Proud, as Henry called it, in London. But up here it felt different. Smaller. Closer. Less forgiving.

  I remembered the way my mum had looked at me when I’d told her about Marion. This was years after that summer, a long time after Olive was gone – and I’d needed to tell somebody. That was the first time I really felt angry at Olive, because when she’d been taken I had lost my sister but I’d also lost Marion. Lost what could have been, whatever had been growing between us during the darkness of the eclipse.

  I told Mum that Marion and I had been more than friends. Mum had been angry. Not just angry but livid. Then quiet. So quiet. I’d carried that with me for a long time, aware that my sexuality was still a big deal to some people. Henry had normalised that. He had supported me. He knew what it had taken to come back to this town, afraid that Marion wouldn’t want to connect in an offline world.

  Henry was right, though. I hadn’t moved on. Smug bastard.

  “I don’t want to ask Marion on a date,” I lied, pushing back the inevitable for another day. “It’s not like that.”

  Henry shook his head. “But don’t you want it to be?”

  36

  MARION OPENED THE DOOR with a glass of wine in her hand. Three days gone. She’d been working around the clock and I didn’t blame her for needing to relax and get a solid night’s sleep for once. I was grateful her evening plans included me at all.

  “I didn’t realise you’d be here so early,” she said by way of greeting. “Figured you’d be with your gran.”

  “Her pain medication knocks her out. Doctor White prescribed some sleeping pills too. She’ll sleep until morning now. I just have to make sure I don’t get home too late. Anyway, I won’t tackle you for a glass of wine, I’m not an animal.”

  “Shame.” Marion smirked. “What time is it?”

  “Half eight?”

  I imagined what it was like for Marion. Her days a blur of false leads, sending teams out to re-canvas areas already searched. The weight of a missing girl on her shoulders. And all this circumstantial evidence pulling her in so many different directions. I was only making things worse, throwing information at her and hoping it might mean something when it didn’t even mean anything to me.

  I knew exactly what day it was. I was aware of every second that passed. But that didn’t help anybody. Clock-watching wouldn’t find Bella or bring her home.

  Marion led me into the lounge and sat down on the sofa, grabbing a take-away menu.

  “I thought we could have pizza,” she said. “I haven’t got any food in.”

  I nodded and let Marion choose the pizza. She looked exhausted, lines around her eyes and mouth that I was sure hadn’t been there last week. She looked thin, too. I wondered if she’d found time to eat at all today.

  I held my questions back until we were done eating. Marion cradled her wine glass. She swirled the ruby liquid round and round but didn’t drink. When she realised what she was doing, she looked away.

  “Sorry. I’ll stop.” A pause. “You make me nervous.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  Marion didn’t dignify that with a response. “I’m exhausted,” she said instead. She gulped a mouthful of wine and then put her glass back on the coffee table. “I haven’t slept in – ages. I don’t know. We’ve got officers re-canvassing the area around the school and around Bella Kaluza’s home. They’re searching off the main grid this time, in the fields and around the lake again. We’ve tried to expand the search, into Matlock and the Peaks, but there’s a lot of empty space and there are only so many of us. Nothing’s turned up yet. Tips are coming in, but so far it’s all rubbish.” Marion shook her head.

  “I spoke to my dad about Darren Walker,” I blurted.

  Marion didn’t say anything, but I saw that I had her attention.

  “I went to his house because – I found this photograph from the youth group. The one Darren was a member of. I didn’t know… There’s a picture of my dad and Cordy Jones. D’you remember, he ran it? Apparently my dad helped out a few times but I don’t remember that. He knew Darren.”

  “And?”

  “And… don’t you think it’s weird how Darren’s so afraid all the time? Of me, of you. Could he have been confident enough to lure Olive away? I don’t know.”

  That was the truth of it. It wasn’t that I couldn’t imagine him hurting Bella, because anything was possible these days with phones and technology, the lure of the Insta-creep; what I couldn’t get my head around was the idea of a much-younger Darren Walker somehow successfully getting Olive to go anywhere with him.

  “I don’t know.” Marion shook her head. “If they’re connected—” She stopped, catching my expression. “If they are, then you’re right. Walker would have been, what, fifteen? And given his current conversational abilities I’m not sure he’d have known what to do or how to hide it.”

  “Exactly.” I rubbed my hands over my face. “So where does that leave us?”

  This was the most we’d spoken about Olive in years. We’d never talked about her. About the eclipse. About that day, and our kiss and how it had spiralled into something so hideous. Marion had tried to talk to me but I’d always shut her down, my anger and guilt so hot they were likely to incinerate anything they touched; I couldn’t afford to let Marion get close.

  But tonight I needed to talk about my sister, to air out her ghost for fear that this time it might be me that burned up from keeping it all bottled inside.

  “I used to say Olive wouldn’t have gone off with anybody. But now I don’t know. We know she left Chestnut Circle by herself. Gran said somebody gave Olive that mood ring. As a gift. Somebody gave it to her – just like somebody gave it to Bella. How much did I really know about her? She could have gone with anybody. Olive wasn’t stupid, but if somebody was nice to her or made her feel special…”

  “Yeah,” Marion murmured. She reached for her nearly empty glass again and fingered the stem with delicate hands. I had always admired Marion’s hands, the long pianist’s fingers and slender wrists. She always wore the nails plain, pink and natural, unlike my own bitten and painted ones.

  “I wish I could remember more.” I watched the wine move in Marion’s glass and felt my heart flutter. “I just – you’re all I can think about. It’s always been the same.”

  Marion went pink. “The kiss,” she whispered.

  “I feel so guilty. You know I’d been telling her off? Before you came over to join us? She wouldn’t stand still and she was driving me mad, so I got angry with her.”

  “That wasn’t what made it happen,” Marion said quickly, her defence weakened by unsteadiness of her voice.

  “You don’t know that,” I said. “What if she wandered off because of what I said to her?”

  How could I explain it to Marion? Olive’s ghost, haunting me all these years? She had dealt with what had happened by being her usual practical self. She studied. She became a police officer. She helped people.

  “I might be able to help you remember more.” Marion sucked in a deep breath and reached over. Her hand was warm on my knee and I felt a familiar tingle. “I do it sometimes with the people at work. It can help. If you replay the same moment over and over in your head, it might get distorted, or cut off. What if there’s something inside your head that you’ve been – well, ignoring? What if you could prompt your brain, gently, into letting that image resurface?”

  I started to
shake my head but stopped myself. I had tried this once with Henry. Or something similar. It was when I first started dating Helen, my defences lowered by new love. I had been drunk – I had to be drunk before I’d do it – and nothing happened.

  I didn’t remember anything.

  Marion was breathing faster now. I realised that this was something she had wanted to ask me for a while. Something she had held in. Her eyes were wild almost, the desire to know making her grip my knee hard.

  I had been so selfish. In all the years it had never occurred to me to think about how Marion felt. How she blamed herself. How she blamed me.

  Suddenly it all made sense. It wasn’t my fault, what happened; it wasn’t Marion’s fault. It was ours. And Marion wanted to fix it as badly as I did.

  “Okay, I said. “I’ll do it.”

  * * *

  Marion dimmed all of the lights and set up her phone balanced against a pillar candle in the centre of the coffee table. She had an app that made a flashing silver-white light. It moved from one side of the screen to the other on a black background, and subconsciously I found my eyes following it. Marion sat opposite me, perched on the edge of the pouffe that matched the armchair. She had her elbows planted firmly on her knees, her white shirt unbuttoned at the neck.

  “I want you to follow the light with your eyes,” she instructed.

  “Like hypnotism?” I asked.

  “No. Well, sort of. Shush.” She leant further forward, her collarbones drawing my gaze. I realised she was smiling, a tired, drawn-looking smile, but a warm one anyway. I’d always loved that smile. Loved it more when I’d caused it. “Pay attention to the dots – or I’ll have to take the damn shirt off.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “Don’t be so vulgar.” Another smile. “Now, try to relax. Don’t move. Just breathe. I’m going to start with some obvious questions, questions we both know the answer to. And then I’m going to be a little more sensory, let you think a bit about stuff outside your brain – outside your repeated memories, that is.”

  “Okay.”

  “It was August. We were standing in the Circle. Outside the corner shop there was a shaded spot. You got there before me and you were with Olive. What time did you get there?”

  “Around ten maybe,” I said, letting myself remember. “It was already getting dark anyway. Olive and I walked from Gran and Grandad’s. We walked because Gran was getting her hair done and we wanted to watch the whole eclipse. She was fine with us going – said I was old enough to watch Olive. We’d read that it would take an hour to get totally dark, maybe more… You met us there. And I was glad you came.”

  “What did you do then? Before I got there?”

  “We hung around a bit.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  I dragged back into the depths of my memory. I remembered the walk from Gran’s house. Olive was chattering about astrology. Her current obsession was Mars, which somebody had told her was the planet associated with aggression and conflict.

  “What’s lust?” she’d asked. I felt my face get hot as I ignored her, frustration and nerves and the heat a deadly cocktail of irritation.

  “Come on Olive,” I snapped. “We’re going to be late and then we’ll miss it and we’ll have to watch the stupid thing from this stupid road.”

  “We won’t.” Olive had shrugged in her careless way. She knew she was right. I was edgy, wanting to get a good spot. Secretly hoping I could stand somewhere I’d be able to see Marion when she arrived. Hoping she would see me. I’d been fascinated by Marion’s walk, her legs, her body…

  Olive kept on talking, oblivious to my discomfort. The air was dusty and hot, the kind of heat that made my mouth taste like rocks and salt. It felt like we were wading through treacle.

  “We won’t see it properly for a while anyway,” Olive said. She was jingling some money in her fist, a couple of pounds in change that Gran had given her to spend. It was driving me insane.

  When we got to Chestnut Circle people were already there. The air was getting colder all the time. Shadows grew longer, and it was like twilight in the middle of the day. Some shops were closed. Others were buzzing with business.

  “What can you see?” Marion’s voice brought me back to the room and I once again saw the flashing silver light moving before my eyes.

  “Bollocks,” I said.

  “That seems like a strange thing to see.” Marion laughed. “Sorry, was that my fault?”

  “This isn’t going anywhere. I’m just seeing… Before. That’s what I always remember; before and after.”

  “Just follow the lights,” Marion said. “Come on, we’ll try again.”

  I made my eyes focus, tried to block out Marion’s father’s ornaments on the mantelpiece. I followed the lights as Marion instructed. Silver flashing dots, over and over and over, like a thousand shooting stars.

  “What did you and Olive do when you got to the Circle?” Marion asked. “Did she want to stand somewhere in particular? Did she mention anybody, or talk to anybody?”

  “No. We just wandered about a bit. We decided to stay outside the corner shop because it was the only place left to stand. People were coming and going but nobody was that far back from the stage near Earl’s. We stood underneath the awning where it was cool.

  “Olive insisted on climbing about. She found a crate or a box or something but she still couldn’t see. She tried to drag me closer but her hands were sticky from spilled pop and I got mad at her and pushed her off. Everything was annoying. You know when you’re so frustrated you can’t stand it? Even the smells and sounds were driving me crazy. It smelled like…”

  The heat was oppressive. It was the hottest it had been in weeks. Olive and I were in shorts. My T-shirt kept sticking to my back and I was getting worried about seeing Marion and her noticing the sweat patches under my arms. The air smelled like onions – somewhere, a van was selling hotdogs and burgers. And under it all, the persistent, sharp and tangy smell of… “Oranges.”

  “Oranges?” Marion asked. “Where was that coming from?”

  “I don’t know…” I shook my head, trying to draw on the memory, to make it real. This wasn’t something I had thought about before. The smells. “I think… It might have been Olive.”

  The tang of orange was strong, though, as though Olive was peeling them right in front of me. And then Marion was there, walking out of the crowd with her head high, people parting to let her through. She had that power and I felt a thrill that she was headed straight for us.

  Olive was kicking off because she wanted something taller to stand on. She twisted and twisted that mood ring on her finger like it was a worry doll. And I didn’t care.

  “I can’t see.” Olive pouted, her golden eyes narrowing at me. There was nothing to see except the sky and she could see that just fine.

  “Olive, Gran said you’re not meant to wander off.”

  And then Marion was at my side. The eclipse had started in earnest now and the sky was getting so dark that the hairs on my arms rose and I felt a cold breeze snaking up my back. But that had everything to do with Marion’s lips on mine. That first kiss, stolen, and the scent of oranges still there but forgotten. And then…

  “And then Olive was gone.”

  I reached up to wipe my face, realising that it was wet. Tears made my lips salty and they stung viciously. The memory of the frustration I’d felt had twisted and grown in my stomach, anger now fully-rooted there.

  I slammed my hand down on the coffee table. Marion’s phone fell over with a clatter and she jumped.

  “It was because of us.”

  “Cassie—”

  “No, Marion. I can’t… I don’t know where Olive went. Not because I can’t remember, but because I never knew. I didn’t even notice she’d gone!”

  “Cassie, I’m sorry.”

  “You said we needed to watch her. I told you she would be fine. I wanted her to go away – and for a second, when she was gone, I
was glad.”

  I grabbed my jacket and left the house, stalking into the darkness.

  37

  I DIDN’T GET INTO my car. I needed to walk, to get some air. I sucked in the damp evening, breathing so deeply my lungs were on fire. I marched with purpose so that nobody would dare stop me. But there wasn’t anybody around anyway. I walked all the way to the Circle, my mind beating against itself as my thoughts piled up.

  Keep an eye on her, Cassie. The words haunted me, following me like a spectre down the street. I walked faster, my arms pumping and my heart thudding, trying to outrun the feeling. As though any minute somebody might leap out and attack me, drag me screaming to the ground as they yelled IT WAS YOUR FAULT.

  And suddenly I was by the fountain in the middle of the Circle. The sound of the water brought me back to the present and I realised how hot I was, how sweaty and out of breath. I stopped for a second, hands on my knees, the anger clouding my vision receding slowly. I sucked in several more deep breaths, and then looked up.

  A light caught my gaze. Warm orange light, which I realised was from the corner shop. I didn’t know what time it was, didn’t care really, but it must be gone nine. I could never remember what time the shop stayed open until. The Circle was empty except for me. Me and Ady. It must be lonely. I walked over to the shop, fists digging around in my pockets. But I avoided him as I stepped inside.

  I stalked straight to the fridge section and grabbed two bottles of the cheapest wine with screw-tops. Marion couldn’t expect me to do this without liquid courage. I needed it. No, I deserved it, didn’t I? Something to blunt the sharp edges?

  I stalked to the counter as though I had something to prove. Maybe I did. Ady scanned the first of the bottles with none of his usual chattiness, and I thought again of our conversation about the mood rings, how it had been bothering me ever since.

  “The mermaid.”

  I hadn’t realised I had spoken aloud until Ady stopped scanning and I realised he was staring at me, his expression the picture of confusion. I felt a swoop of adrenaline deep in my gut.