I Thought I Knew You

by Penny Hancock

  I look down at my cigarette. I don’t want to tell her. But she persists.

  ‘Has it? Holly, tell me . . .’

  ‘They’ve found a body,’ I hear myself say. ‘Near the Ouse Washes. Up there.’ I wave the cigarette in the direction the river snakes, north through the Fens. I probably shouldn’t, but I keep talking. I can’t stop myself. All the usual boundaries have collapsed. None of the usual rules apply. ‘They think it might be Saul, though they haven’t identified it yet. It’s too . . . Well, let’s just say it’s difficult to tell from the remains who it is.’

  The cigarette held in front of me, I watch the smoke rise into the damp night air and wait.

  Saffie hasn’t made a sound since my last utterance.

  At last I turn to look at her. One arm hugs her knees; the other hand holds the cigarette between her fingers. She’s sobbing quietly, her head bent, her back heaving, large, round tears falling onto the grass. A wave of shame washes over me. What was I thinking? I’ve just told Saffie, a terrified thirteen-year-old, that the boy I believe she loves, if she will only admit it, the boy who got her pregnant, might be dead.

  I put my arm round her, feel her tense, and then her whole body convulses as she begins to cry openly.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I say pointlessly.

  ‘It’s not OK,’ Saffie says when she can draw breath. ‘It’s awful. It’s terrible. It’s all because of me.’

  Yes, I want to say. It is all because of you. You are a troublemaker and a coward. You cared more about your stupid friends and what they think of Saul than about your true feelings. Instead, I squeeze my eyes tight shut.

  ‘It’s not all because of you. It’s a combination of all sorts of things, and none of us could have predicted it. It might be because of me.’

  ‘How could it be because of you?’

  I can’t explain to Saffie. The inadequacy I feel as Saul’s mother. Jules’s words echo in my ears: You yourself called him a misfit. Well, you were right. Why hadn’t I done more to help Saul fit in? When Jules suggested, soon after we moved out of London, that I should encourage Saul to join some of the more wholesome activities the popular boys participated in, I’d dismissed the idea. But perhaps he’d wanted to – the vision of the dumb-bells and protein powder I found in his room comes back to me. He was ashamed of telling me he wanted to belong, because he knew I loved his creative, individual side. I recall Pete’s words: You have separation anxiety . . . You need to let him be. Saul was so unhappy. I should have taken Jules’s and Pete’s advice and then he wouldn’t have been singled out and bullied by the Fenland youths. And accused of rape, and run off, and done something terrible to himself so that he has ended up in the swamps north of here. Where he never wanted to live in the first place.

  ‘I don’t think I handled things very well,’ is all I say.

  Saffie doesn’t answer. She’s still crying, quietly now.

  ‘I’m sorry, Saffie. It was wrong of me to dump this information on you just because I needed a shoulder to cry on. You’re too young.’

  At last she sighs. Calms down a little.

  ‘I’m not that young.’

  ‘Too young to deal with whatever has happened to Saul. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You didn’t tell horrible lies about Saul that made him kill himself.’

  I look at her. Her words hang in the air, and I have to repeat them to myself silently, to see if I heard them right.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That I lied.’ She can’t bring herself to meet my gaze. ‘Saul never raped me.’

  There’s a commotion in the reeds then and a swan glides into the water and starts to paddle upstream.

  Saffie speaks again before I can respond.

  ‘He’s killed himself because I lied,’ she wails. ‘I said he raped me. I lied. And now he’s dead!’

  She begins to weep copiously again, a low moaning, keening sound.

  I put my arm round her. She’s telling me what I always knew. It’s a bit fucking late, but the truth is coming out at last. I let her weep for a while longer. When she’s quietened, I say, ‘You could have told your mum you loved each other. She wouldn’t have been angry. Even if you did have unprotected sex. Which was, of course, Saul’s responsibility too.’

  Silence.

  ‘Didn’t you realize how serious it was to say that he raped you?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Come here.’ I pull her to me.

  ‘Saff,’ I say. ‘You being in love with Saul, it was nothing to be ashamed of. You are too young, it’s true, and Saul should have known that. But you’ll soon learn not to care what other people think about your choice in boys.’

  She tugs away from me and sits up.

  ‘I don’t love Saul, Holly. Not in that way. Nothing happened. Don’t you see? Saul never touched me. He never came near me. And now he’s killed himself because everyone believed that he raped me, and it’s all my fault.’

  ‘You didn’t have sex with him that night?’

  She’s looking down, her head bowed, wisps of fair hair sticking to her wet cheeks, and she shakes her head so the bobble on her hat wobbles.

  ‘He’s never even touched me. We’ve never touched each other. Not like that. I made it up to . . . to . . .’

  The water roars over the sluice. I try not to think of what the police have found. Of the remains that lie out there in the Fens. I try not to think how this very water has swallowed Saul. Instead, I breathe deeply, beginning to loathe the taste of the cigarette, needing clean air in my lungs in order to assimilate everything Saffie’s saying. In order to stay calm. I let some time go by, taking in her confession.

  I need to make Saffie trust me. I need her to tell me what’s really been going on for her. If Saul didn’t go into her room, if he didn’t touch her, not even as her boyfriend, then she must have some other reason for blaming her pregnancy – a lie that’s turned out to have fatal consequences – on Saul.

  ‘I won’t ever forgive myself,’ Saffie says. ‘For saying those things.’

  ‘Why did you?’ I ask quietly. ‘Why say Saul raped you if he didn’t? You could have told us the truth. Before all this . . .’ I have to stop myself going further. I have to play Saffie so very carefully at this point. She’s gone to such extreme lengths to stick to her story. I have to dig carefully, an archaeologist with some delicate find, brushing gently to uncover a truth that has been buried for so long. ‘Saff, if you tell me why you blamed Saul for what’s been happening with you, it will help everyone. Something happened to make you say he raped you. Didn’t it?’

  She’s silent.

  ‘If you explain, it will help me deal with all this.’ I wave my arm in the direction of the Ouse Washes and the Old Bedford River and the Hundred Foot Drain. ‘With what the police have found. It will help me if I at least know people will remember Saul as the person he was.’

  But she turns her face to me and the anguish on it is apparent, like a small child who is so terrified of being in trouble, so frightened, they can’t speak.

  At last she draws in a breath and says, ‘It’s . . . Holly, I’ve been . . . I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone. And especially not Mum. I said Saul raped me when I was afraid I was pregnant. And Mum made me do the test and it was positive, but it was wrong. Because I’m not. I’ve made everyone hate me. I’ve been horrible to Mum too. Because I get in such a mood when I’m on my period and it makes me go mental and that’s why I was late in from school today, and why I rowed with Mum.’

  ‘You’re on your period?’

  ‘Yes. It was late. And it’s really heavy and painful, and I always get in such a bad mood when I’m on my period. But this time it’s worse than it’s ever been. And she wanted to take me to the doctor, but I didn’t need the doctor anymore.’

  She stops, gulps, the way a child does who’s been sobbing so long they cannot get their breath. ‘If I’d known my period was going to come, I would never have said that stuff about Saul
and I could have kept everyone safe.’

  I let her words sink in. She’s losing the baby and she doesn’t even realize it, not fully. She’s so very young. I close my eyes. Behind my eyelids, I see floods, red floods, blood swirling and curdling in eddies. When I open my eyes, I’m aware again of the river water gushing beneath us into the Fens. And for a moment it seems everything and everyone I’ve ever loved is being sucked away. The way the dykes and drains have sucked away the water that once covered this land and provided a living for its inhabitants, leaving it flat and exposed. And I remember how when I first came here, I thought of the Fens as a land with the life drained out of it, and now it is draining everything I know and care about from me.

  ‘What do you mean, you could have kept everyone safe? What are you frightened of, Saff?’

  ‘I can’t say. And Mum keeps asking and asking me where I’ve been and what I’m doing and checking up on me, and she won’t realize that I just can’t tell her, because . . . I can’t tell anyone . . .’

  ‘Saffie!’

  We both look up. Jules is hurrying along the bank towards us, her face contorted with worry.

  This is where Jules finds me and her daughter, sitting on the damp ridge staring out across the river towards the flat lands, our arms round each other. I’m too tired, too beaten emotionally to talk anymore. Except to say, as I stand up and walk away, ‘Jules. Saffie has something to tell you.’

  18

  JULES

  Holly walked away into the darkness, leaving Jules alone with her daughter on the riverbank.

  ‘Come here, Saff.’ Jules reached out to hug her, caught the smell of cigarette smoke, felt Saffie flinch away. ‘Sweetie,’ Jules said. ‘I need you to speak to me. We’ve missed the doctor’s appointment. I should have realized how frightened you were.’

  ‘I don’t need the doctor.’

  ‘Saff . . .’

  ‘I’m on my period.’

  ‘Ah.’ Saffie wasn’t on her period, because the pregnancy test had been positive. If she was bleeding, if she was really bleeding and not simply avoiding the doctor, then she was losing the baby. Jules felt swamped by Saffie’s words. By everything. She could barely breathe. It was as if she were floundering under the Fenland water that gushed past beneath them. She’d felt out of her depth ever since her daughter first told her about the rape. Now she knew she should explain to Saffie that she was miscarrying, get her to Donna so that she could be checked out, but the words seemed to lodge in her throat.

  Before Jules could find her breath and speak, Saffie went on: ‘And Saul’s dead . . .’

  Jules felt herself sink further, but heard herself: ‘Hang on a second, Saffie. We don’t know that.’

  ‘He is. Holly told me. And it’s because of me. Because I lied about him raping me. And I might as well not have bothered because I’m not even pregnant anyway.’ Saffie’s voice cracked.

  Jules began to shiver. The sense that she was drowning subsided a little and now she just felt cold, freezing. She turned over in her mind what Saffie had just said, her teeth chattering. Did Holly know more than Pete? Had they identified the body after all? Then Holly’s words came back to her, in her office: She’s turning into a devious little troublemaker. Words that still cut Jules to the quick. What lengths would Holly go to, to prove her point?

  Even now?

  What had she just said to Saffie to make her retract her allegation? Had she told Saffie Saul was dead, and by implication blamed her?

  When at last her shivering subsided a little, Jules said, ‘Saff, we don’t know Saul’s dead.’ She didn’t let herself think about the remains that were in too bad a state to be easily identified.

  ‘They’ve found a body, though. Holly told me.’

  Jules swore under her breath. ‘They don’t know it’s Saul’s. Holly should never have mentioned it to you.’

  ‘But it must be. And it’s my fault. Because I lied.’

  ‘Did Holly make you say this? That you lied?’

  ‘No. I said it. I told her I lied.’

  ‘You’re saying what? That Saul didn’t do those things to you that night? The night Holly and I were out?’

  Saffie hung her head.

  A train went by on the line a few hundred metres behind them, blasting its horn, two notes, in a falling cadence, almost jaunty. Jules wanted to go home. She wanted to be indoors, cooking in the kitchen, pouring Rowan a beer, laughing with him at some picture of Saffie in one of her dance performances on the computer, their arms round one another, that closeness she used to feel that they’d produced this extrovert, confident, pretty child between them. The plans they made for her. The fantasies they shared about Saffie’s glittering future. She wanted to be leaning against Rowan’s side the way she used to, at parties, with that sense of inner triumph that the man she’d met was prepared to do anything for her. Move to the country, build her a house, tell her she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes on. Or, better still, she would like to be in bed next to Saffie, the Michael Morpurgo book on her knees, a glass of wine on the bedside table, Saffie’s warm head smelling of baby shampoo against her shoulder. She did not want to be out here, in the dark, with her teenager smelling of smoke, telling her she was bleeding, the dank-smelling river water roaring over the sluice, and with a miserable sense that she no longer knew the people she loved most.

  Holly’s face, desperate to persuade Jules that Saffie and Saul loved each other, came into view. Begging her, in the midst of the Auction of Promises, to believe it.

  ‘Saffie, if you and Saul were having a relationship, and you had sex, it would be better to tell me. Whatever you believe Dad might say. Whatever you believe your friends might think. Let’s get it out in the open. Now, before we go home. You can tell me, and you’ll feel better for it.’

  ‘We weren’t.’

  ‘However embarrassing you find it. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to. Except perhaps Holly. Because it might just help her. She needs to know,’ Jules said, in spite of herself. ‘Because it will take away a little bit of the pain of losing Saul, if that’s what’s happened, if she can reassure herself he loved you and would never have hurt you.’

  ‘I’ve told her,’ Saffie said. ‘Saul never came near me. We’ve never even touched each other. Not in that way.’

  Jules closed her eyes. Rowan came into her vision, saying he would beat the daylights out of Saul.

  ‘Then there is someone. Who is it?’

  ‘I’m not saying.’

  Jules could nag Saffie until she got the truth out, but Saffie had lied to everyone – to her, to Rowan, to the police even – to protect whoever had made her pregnant. And the damp was seeping up through her coat, and Saffie must be exhausted and starving by now.

  ‘Saffie, let’s go home. I won’t ask you any more. You need some rest.’

  ‘I don’t. I need to stay here. Saul’s out there, in the Fens somewhere, and it’s all my fault. Because I lied about him raping me. So I should stay here and be cold and get wet, and probably I should just die myself.’

  ‘Don’t say that, Saff. Please never say that.’

  Saffie’s hand was plucking at her sleeve. Jules gently lifted it and tucked it under her arm.

  ‘You are very young,’ Jules said after a while. ‘Too young to be dealing with any of this.’ She reiterated her words from earlier. ‘And you are not to blame for whatever has happened. Even if Saul has done something to harm himself.’

  ‘Kill himself.’

  ‘You are not to blame. Saul had troubles already.’ Jules thought of Holly, in the taxi on the way to the pub for Tess’s birthday drinks, bewailing her worry that Saul didn’t fit in, that there was something else going on with him. That he might be depressed.

  ‘One false accusation would not be enough to push him to suicide. OK?’ Jules said to Saffie. ‘Saying he raped you if he didn’t was foolish. But you didn’t know that, and you did not force him to run away. You’re not responsible
for whatever’s happened to him.’

  Jules was still trying to make sense of what Saffie had told her. Saffie, Jules remembered, had been convinced that Jules and Holly, as such old, close friends, would deal with her rape allegation quickly and with little fuss, between them. She had, in her naivety, believed that it would all be swept under the carpet after they’d confronted Saul. He would, of course, have denied it. But no one, Saffie must have thought, would question her. And once the pregnancy was terminated, they would, in Saffie’s innocent vision, have carried on as they were before. She’d had no idea how her allegation would reveal the fault lines that lay beneath every one of their relationships. Hers and Rowan’s. Hers and Holly’s. Holly’s and Pete’s. It was as if Saffie’s allegation had precipitated a tsunami that had ripped the surface from each of their lives to reveal the mess that lay beneath.

  Saffie didn’t reply but continued to weep over what had happened to Saul, repeating that it was her fault, and in the end Jules decided to back off until she was less distressed. She would sit here and wait until Saffie was ready to move. Donna – and everything else – would have to wait. Apart from anything, the poor child was having an early miscarriage and didn’t even realize it. Jules reached out again, pulling her daughter to her and squeezing her tight.

  There would be time enough to get Saffie checked out, medically, later. And the mystery of who had got her pregnant, and why she’d lied, could be solved when she and Jules and all of them had had time to take on board this terrible news about Saul.

  And so Jules sat next to her daughter in the dark, listening to the sounds of the Fenland night. The roar of the water on the sluice. The occasional flap of wings overhead and the intermittent sigh of the wind in the reeds. The clouds had covered the moon now and it was dark, but this darkness was a comfort. Jules thought of Holly, sitting here when she had arrived. Now she knew Saul was innocent, she began to appreciate how hellish this whole thing must have been for her friend. She didn’t know how Holly could bear it. Knowing the police had a body but hadn’t identified it. It was so cruel of them to have told her.