All These Perfect Strangers

by Aoife Clifford

  Chapter 11

  There was still no sign of Rogan as I moved towards the music. I attempted to shove a path through, but the crowd was resistant to latecomers and I got shunted to the far edge of the speaker stack, with half the stage obscured. I couldn’t see much through the people in front of me, other than the lead singer, a thin girl in the middle of the stage, wearing a black singlet, jeans and enormous hooped earrings.

  The guitars and drums were dialled up to eleven and next to the speakers, the bass line became my heart beat. The girl was playing her guitar, dancing in a sideways shrug. As she came up to the microphone, her face hidden behind her fringe, her voice smacked into me.

  She was strong and sexy and I doubted if any guy had ever abandoned her during a first date. I watched her as she whispered, screamed and scowled her way through the songs. Sometimes, when the crowd shouted out the chorus, her voice was swamped but she sang on and didn’t care.

  Still angry after my run-in with Rachel, I pushed forward again and made it to the moshpit by the time that emotion was jostled out of me. After several songs that I felt in my bones, my ears were ringing and slam-dancing giants seemed to be circling me, completely shutting out the world. I moved further back. That was when I caught sight of Rogan sitting at the bar. Stoner was perched alongside him, talking in his ear. It was hard to work out Rogan’s expression, but it was clear he wasn’t looking for me. I moved further into the crowd, but every few minutes I would catch myself looking in his direction and even though Stoner disappeared after the next song, he sat there not moving.

  The encore finished, the lights turned on at full strength revealing a grimy floor, and I was standing like an idiot amongst blinking couples who had been making out in the anonymous darkness. I turned away from where Rogan was sitting, trying to see if there was anyone I knew, to look as if I had been having a great night with friends. Through the crowd, I saw Michael coming towards me. He waved an arm to catch my attention, but being with him would be even worse than being alone, so I pretended I didn’t see him and began to move towards the pool tables in search of Toby.

  A hand reached out and caught me around the waist. ‘There you are,’ said Rogan. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ He pulled me close to him.

  I was too conscious of the warmth of his arm, the length of his body against me, to convincingly play it cool. He leant forward and kissed me on the mouth. Any recriminations vanished.

  ‘Had a good night?’ he asked.

  ‘Had its moments,’ I answered, a little breathlessly. ‘You?’

  ‘To be truthful, I’d have to say right now is definitely the highlight.’ He smiled. ‘Still, I thought the band sounded good.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, my world suddenly exploding with possibilities. ‘Their singer is great.’

  Rogan ordered beers and found us a couple of seats near the wall.

  ‘Sorry about before,’ he said. ‘I just wanted this night to be easy. See the band, have some drinks. Fun, you know. But Rachel. Look, I know she’s your friend . . .’

  I thought back to her in the bathroom. ‘She’s not my friend. Just has the room next to me.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Rogan. He put his arm around my shoulders. ‘I don’t like saying this about anyone but she is full of it. The stories she tells, I wouldn’t believe a word of them.’

  ‘Toby warned me about that at the start of the year,’ I said, relief washing over me.

  ‘Maybe we should head into town after this?’

  I nodded enthusiastically. For Rogan I’d leave the confines of university.

  People were finishing their drinks, making plans for the rest of the night and beginning to leave. We sat and watched. Dale was waiting for those in front of him to move. He gave me a nod. As I went to wave goodbye, Rogan grabbed my arm.

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Sure, I was talking to him earlier. He’s a cop. Toby thinks he could be working undercover.’ I said this as a joke but Rogan stood up quickly.

  ‘I’ve got to head back to college. You coming?’

  Not waiting for an answer, he grabbed my hand. And with none of the electricity from earlier, he pulled me through the crowd, towards the fire exit.

  He kicked the paint tin propping the door open out of the way. It lurched sideways, cigarette butts and sand spilling on the ground. The door slammed behind us and the noise was instantly cut off, as if it had been strangled. Standing in a small courtyard surrounded by a timber fence and a gate, I could smell fermenting beer and rotting food. Two large industrial bins were next to us. Far away, I could hear sounds of people leaving, laughing, talking and singing, but out here there was no one.

  ‘You coming back to Scullin?’ Rogan asked, dropping my hand.

  ‘How about town?’ I asked. ‘Go to a club?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve got to get back.’

  Unsure what had gone wrong, I stood there confused. He opened the gate and began walking. The wind picked up and I could feel goose bumps forming. My clothes were still warm, damp with the sweat from the bar. I followed, pulling the gate shut behind me, giving it a shove to make sure the catch had clicked into place. Tracey always said you could tell a country kid by their compulsive need to close all gates.

  ‘Always finish what you have started,’ she’d say, imitating her dad’s English accent. ‘Take responsibility. No excuses.’

  He was quick with the clichés but even quicker with his belt.

  The path we were walking along, more a worn dirt strip, was the quickest route between the bar and the sporting fields on the other side of the river, but only if you were prepared to get wet. A full moon, partially covered by clouds, gave the ground a faint glow. Trying to catch up to Rogan, I tripped on an uneven patch of ground, a tree root lying just under the earth. At my stumble, Rogan turned back. He stood there, tense, waiting for me.

  ‘C’mon, it’s freezing,’ was all he said. He started moving ahead in long strides.

  This part of the river was wide. Clumps of ferns and sprawling bushes covered the banks. As the path ran parallel to the water, I looked across to the far side. Scrubby poplars stood to attention, guarding the playing fields behind. But as I watched, a smaller shadow moved amongst the trees. I stopped to look again but the wind pushed clouds across the moon, the light dimmed and I lost sight of it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Rogan asked, less impatient now. He looked back in the direction I had been staring.

  ‘Thought I saw something,’ I said. He gazed out into the darkness. The clouds shifted and the river turned from black to scum-flecked grey in the moonlight.

  ‘In the river?’

  ‘No, over in the trees.’ But the direction of his gaze didn’t change.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked, not pointing across the bank, but down into the water. It was a larger patch of darkness, rotating on the river’s flow, stuck amongst the reeds on the far side.

  ‘Just some rubbish,’ I said. But Rogan frowned, pushed past branches and slapping leaves, and clambered down the embankment.

  ‘It’s definitely something large.’ His voice moved from curious to anxious. ‘It kind of looks . . .’ but without finishing, he pulled off his socks and shoes.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said, scrambling down the loosened dirt and pebbles to stand next to him. ‘It’ll be junk.’ But at the water’s edge, it was more solid than that.

  Rogan ignored me and put a foot in. Swearing under his breath at its coldness, he began to wade out.

  ‘How deep’s the water?’ I called. ‘You can swim, right?’

  A sudden drop in depth took him from knees to waist. His arms windmilled and he almost overbalanced. The water got deeper still as Rogan neared the shape and he began to swim. The churn from his splashing freed whatever it was from its moorings and it began to float along the river, as though this was a game and it was trying to evade him. Rogan stretched out his hand and grabbed. It lifted before flopping backwards with a sucki
ng slap, submerged, and then bobbed back up. Now it was longer, blossoming in the river.

  ‘Too deep to stand . . . can’t get it out of the water on my own.’ His teeth were chattering and I could hear his fear. I began to take off my shoes, slipping my heels out, peeling off my socks, hoping that someone else would turn up, take charge and we could leave. But there was no one.

  As Rogan came nearer, pulling the thing behind him, I stepped in. Sharp stones cut at my feet, so kicking my legs behind me, I swam out to him, clothes weighing me down, my breath snap-frozen in my lungs. Even as I got to Rogan, a matter of metres, I was shivering, but it wasn’t the temperature. The shape had become a body. An arm stretched out towards me in the water.

  ‘We need to flip it over,’ Rogan said. He counted, as if we were going to lift an awkward piece of furniture. I stood in the chest-high water, my heart sinking down into the slimy silt, not wanting to touch the skin. Both of us grappled with the wet clothes around the torso, and like a monstrous puppet, it staggered upward, turned and fell.

  Rogan recoiled and I could hear shock catching in his throat. But I already knew who it was, the scars glistening on her wrists, the golden anklet and the handbag, twined around her like a hangman’s rope.

  We dragged her over the rocks, until she lay on the riverbank. Panting, I knelt on the ground next to her, Rogan on the other side. I stared at her face, expecting her eyes to pop open, to hear her laugh and say ‘got you’. But Rachel’s skin was blue in the moonlight, naked without her makeup, and she didn’t move at all. The bangles she always wore were missing.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Rogan, his breath shallow. He felt her wrist for a pulse. All I could hear was my own heart beating in my chest. He moved to her face, covered her mouth with his, and began pumping in air, feeling her ribs, positioning his hands, hesitantly at first and then becoming firmer, pushing down on her chest. But it was like handling a slab of meat.

  ‘Go get help,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep trying.’

  · · ·

  Much later that night, I was taken back to the river. People talked in hushed tones, huddled behind official tape. I looked for Rogan and saw him in the distance, wrapped in a blanket as I was, talking to a policeman. Uniforms were moving around a plastic cocoon, strapped to a gurney. A tall man slid it gently into the ambulance as if he might wake her up. They drove away.

  No sirens. No flashing lights.

  People talked to me but it felt as if I was the person underwater. I could see heads nodding and mouths moving but I caught few words. When I tried to listen, the ambulance officer talked of stitches and a tetanus shot. The problem was their questions only had one answer. All of this was my fault. I just kept shaking my head until they gave up.

  The Sub-Dean took me to his car to drive me back to college. He winced as I sat down on the passenger seat which he had already covered with a towel. Looking down at myself, I saw my dress was ripped and wet, covered with mud. He kept talking at me but I looked out of the window and watched the campus floating past, a different place at night, hiding its secrets as I had tried to hide mine. When he turned into the car park, I told him I was going to take a shower. He said something about finding Toby to take care of me but at the front door, I told him I just wanted to be alone and limped up the stairs straight to the bathroom.

  The hot water burnt needles into my flesh. As my body began to thaw, pain returned. Turning the tap to maximum strength, I crouched, huddled in the cubicle. The bandage on my right foot where the rocks had cut deepest began to peel off, so I unwound it. The heat burnt the raw flesh. My leaking foot turned the water pink. I watched it splash on the white tiles. Blood, dirt, river, shower, this night, everything disappeared down the drain. I wanted to be washed away.

  I turned off the shower and wrapped myself in the blanket again. Unlocking the door, for one moment I thought I saw someone standing in the bathroom, but it was only my reflection in the mirror. Rachel would often be in there, brushing her teeth, putting on make-up or plucking her eyebrows, saying how the light in the bathroom was better than in her room, when really what she wanted was an audience. My last picture of her was the face in the toilets, looking at me in triumph, as if she had held all the cards. That was when I felt the hard pebble inside of me. A tiny piece of flint that said at least my secret was safe.

  As I left the bathroom, I walked past the chair where Rachel had been eating noodles, the cup and spoon still lying on the floor. I passed Joad’s door, Kesh’s door, until I got to Rachel’s. All was quieter than I ever remembered it being. Everyone must be asleep or still out. I looked back down the corridor. Only one door had a light shining under it, Michael’s, but there was no noise coming from inside.

  Opening my own door, I felt a breeze from the window and noticed a piece of folded paper had fallen to the floor. A newspaper article. The one Rachel claimed was missing. The date was from three years ago. A stark two-word headline: ARRESTS MADE. She had scribbled my name at the top of the page. Had she slipped it under my door, giving it back to me as she had promised? That thought was almost too much to cope with. Feeling lightheaded, I stared down at the article. An enormous picture of a solitary wreath stuck to a wire fence. Two fifteen-year-old girls were taken into custody late last night and charges are expected to be laid this morning, it began. No names mentioned in the article of course. We were minors after all. But what was there was enough. The whole town knew it was Tracey and me.

  I ripped it up viciously until all that was left were wisps of paper that meant nothing.

  *

  Frank is being quiet today. There are often long silences in our sessions. Anxious silences, bored silences, angry silences and sometimes we are both playing chicken, attempting to force the other to speak.

  But this is an odd silence because I can’t quite grasp the nature of it. I don’t know what he is thinking and I need to.

  All good liars tell the truth most of the time. Today, I am lying the easiest way of all. I am telling the truth selectively. I make my excisions razor-sharp. I only tell him how we found Rachel in the river, just like Frank had asked me to. Nothing about what happened at the bar beforehand. Nothing about college afterwards. This is one of the advantages in telling the story, you choose where it starts and finishes.

  Frank looks out the window while I speak. I have asked him why he does this and he says that some patients get self-conscious and more guarded if he looks at them directly. They find it confronting. He says he will look at me if that’s what I prefer, but I tell him no because it’s easier to skip pages if he isn’t watching.

  Sometimes he takes notes as I read but the rule is he isn’t allowed to interrupt. He has to wait until I have finished the part for today before he can ask questions. That was my prerequisite before agreeing to do this.

  Once I finish speaking, I carefully close my diary so he can’t see I have written lots more than I am reading out. Ivy has been keeping to a strict fortnightly schedule, so there has been plenty of time for writing. But Frank doesn’t notice. He is too busy looking out the window, leaning back on his chair, hands clasped. Thinking.

  The man who owns the gift shop is out the front today, sweeping the verandah and brushing away the dust from between the railings. They are a glistening black, topped with arrowhead tips. You could pick them up and hurl them like spears. He shines them every day but only so he doesn’t have to stay inside to talk to his mother. Even though she’s retired, she’s often there with a vinegar look etched into her face.

  If I didn’t hate him, I’d almost feel sorry for him. I hate his mother more though.

  ‘I’ve sent the report to Bob,’ says Frank.

  I stop looking outside. ‘So, that’s it then. The end of our sessions?’

  His voice is measured. ‘That’s up to you, of course. But the purpose of these sessions was for me to write a report for your legal case. I’ve done that.’

  I sit there, almost bewildered, not quite knowing what to do. Shake his hand? Head
for the door?

  ‘Can I read it?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘I can print a copy for you now, but I imagine Bob will send you one, in any case.’

  I imagine he would as well. That way he can charge for it.

  ‘I’ll get it from him, then.’

  We sit there for a bit longer.

  ‘You seem surprised,’ says Frank.

  ‘I hadn’t realised it would be finished so quickly. You said it would take a while.’

  ‘One of my main recommendations is that you should continue in therapy,’ Frank says. ‘Particularly, after what you read out today. The death of a friend is a traumatic thing to have to deal with, as you know. I’ve already spoken to Bob and he’s certain that the university will pay for more counselling. But it’s up to you, Pen.’

  I pretend to be weighing up my options. I thought I would be running out of here the moment I could, but now it has come to it I’m reluctant to go. There is something seductive about the attention, about being the centre of the universe if only for fifty minutes at a time.

  Frank senses my hesitation and continues. ‘If you do consider staying on, I want to broaden out the diary idea.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask, instantly suspicious.

  ‘Revisiting traumatic events like Rachel dying could open up wounds that you consider closed. Events we never got a chance to discuss properly last time.’

  I can tell he is trying to avoid saying Tracey’s name.

  ‘You should allow yourself to explore that territory in your diary as a starting point,’ he says.

  ‘No,’ I say, because there is nothing I want to talk to him about regarding that. Nothing at all. I bite the inside of my mouth to stop myself from saying any more.

  ‘Pen,’ he says, with almost a pitying look on his face. ‘People think there are set stages to grief and that as long as you tick the boxes, a magical closure will occur, but life is a lot messier than that. Facing that grief is important. I understand you are reluctant but you will carry the burden of it until you do. The grief you feel – maybe it’s even guilt about what happened – is distorting the way you view the world.’