The Exclusives

by Rebecca Thornton

  ‘So how are you finding the doctors here?’ She wipes her hand across her mouth.

  ‘Fine,’ I reply, not wanting to get into it. ‘They’re fine. Helping me with my mother.’

  ‘Your mother. Oh yes . . . wasn’t she ill at school? I remember the teachers calling a meeting once, to tell all the girls we had to be careful not to mention her because you didn’t want anyone to know, but that we had to look after you. What was wrong with her?’

  ‘The teachers? Told everyone my mother was ill?’ I’m shocked. I thought no one knew.

  ‘Yeah. Everyone knew everyone else’s business, didn’t they? Whether you wanted it to be private or not.’

  ‘She was fine.’ I squeeze my fist, enraged. ‘And yes, that was the way it went, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Are you OK? Did I say something wrong?’ Gracie asks. Her voice has gone all flat and her eyes sunken and I realise that I’m making her paranoid. I need to make her feel as comfortable as possible if she’s going to tell me about Freya.

  ‘No, no, I’m sorry, Gracie. I didn’t mean to snap. I was just thinking about something else entirely. What else then?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘I’ve got nothing. Really, I don’t know why you are even talking to me. I’m just . . . I’m useless, aren’t I?’

  I’ve lost her for tonight, so I get up and leave, saying I’m exhausted and I have to go bed.

  ‘By the way,’ I say, before I leave, ‘you’re probably not totally, a hundred per cent useless.’

  When she smiles, I’m surprised to feel a quiet pleasure.

  1996

  Melody and I sit in the taxi for fifteen minutes. Neither of us talks. The driver is ashen. He keeps looking at us through the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Alright to go now are we, girls?’ he asks. Melody is clutching on to my coat, pressing in close. I’m still shivering.

  ‘Want my scarf?’ she asks.

  ‘Thanks. I’m OK.’

  ‘Here.’ She takes off her blue school scarf anyway and winds it around my neck.

  ‘Let’s go up. I’ll take you to your house.’ Melody knows too. I saw her look at me when the stretcher went past. When we finally caught a glimpse of the slender outline of her body, the line of her chin beneath that mask. And then we saw her hair. It was all shorn and for the life of me I still can’t work out why, and I feel like screaming.

  ‘It’s OK. She’ll be OK,’ she keeps whispering.

  ‘Shall we go to the hospital?’ I ask. I’m surprised I can’t seem to make a decision.

  ‘No. We won’t be allowed. Let’s go up to the house and find out what’s going on there. OK?’ Melody leads me through the grass and up the pathway. When we arrive at the house, all the lights are out. Mrs Sands, the matron, is sitting by the front door on a small plastic stool.

  ‘Girls. You’re OK. Thank God. I knew you were going to be late, Josephine, but Mrs Kitts has just rung. She’s been . . . she’s been held up somewhere, so you’ll have to lock up for her.’

  ‘It’s OK, Mrs Sands. We know. We’ve just been down at Main School,’ Melody says.

  ‘Well? What happened?’ she asks. Her hands are ruffling her pleated skirt and the shushing sounds volcanic in my head.

  ‘She’s . . . she looked dead,’ I say in disbelief. ‘Dead.’

  I’m looking straight at Mrs Sands then I turn to Melody, who pulls her shoulders back.

  ‘No,’ says Melody. ‘I’m sure she’s going to be absolutely fine, Josephine. You don’t know what happened. None of us do, so let’s not be melodramatic.’

  ‘Don’t lie, Melody.’ My voice sounds all strangled. ‘She looked dead.’ Melody looks down. Mrs Sands is crying. I’m now on the floor. Mrs Sands is stroking my hair and I’m pulling at my Head Girl badge. Tearing it out of my jumper.

  Melody is holding my hair back and I’m retching into a little grey bin that holds three lacrosse sticks. My head is full of these weird little flashing lights: green, white. I can hear the music from that night and it’s shooting down my spine in rhythmic beats. After five or so minutes, the phone rings. Mrs Sands picks it up and nods, making noises of acknowledgment to whatever is being said. Melody and I are looking at her. She holds up an arthritic finger. A shiny brown colour, like she’s been oiling it with linseed.

  ‘Right. I’ll let her know.’ She hangs up and looks at me. I’m now standing up. Regained my composure. I feel much better. Melody’s right. I’ve overreacted.

  ‘Josephine?’ she says.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry. You are to go and pack your things and take a small bag with you down to the san.’

  ‘I’m fine, Mrs Sands. I just got a shock that’s all. You know this isn’t like me.’

  ‘I do know, yes. And I’m glad you are OK but this isn’t about that. I’m afraid Mrs Allen has requested that you are to go down and be in isolation. Not sure why but you’re to meet her outside her office in ten minutes.’

  ‘I’m to go down alone?’

  ‘She’s called Mrs Keats to come and walk you down. Left a message. Says if she doesn’t turn up in five minutes, you’re to walk down by yourself.’

  I look at Melody. ‘What about her?’

  ‘This isn’t about what you’ve just witnessed. I need you to go and get your things. Quick.’

  I run upstairs. The younger girls in my dormitory are awake, wanting to know what’s going on and I tell them Mother’s ill. I can’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘Turn your lights out, quick. You know you’re not meant to have them on after ten. If you get caught Mrs Kitts will make you get up early and collect the rubbish. She’s on the rampage at the moment.’ The lights go out and I’m relieved no one can see my face. It’s all over. I’ve been caught out. When I come down, Mrs Sands asks me why I’ve got so much stuff. Only two minutes must have passed and I have no idea what I’ve packed.

  ‘Just . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘Right. Well, Mrs Keats isn’t here yet, so if you could make your way down.’

  ‘Of course.’ Get it together, Josephine. Deny, deny, deny. ‘Absolutely. Right, I’ll see you tomorrow, Melody.’ Mrs Sands opens the door, practically pushes me out into the pitch black. When I turn around to ask her if she’s got a torch, the door has already closed. I can’t lift up my feet too far, for fear of missing a step. Leaves slide under me and I think of me and Freya when we were young; ten or eleven or so; blindfolding ourselves in her back garden. She would demand I twirl myself around until I was nearly sick. We would play blind-man’s chase for hours on end, until one time when I wrapped a black cloth round her head and span her, round and round.

  ‘One, two, three, four, five, go, carry on twirling,’ I had shouted. She did. Carried on for about twenty more seconds until I heard a thump and she lay giggling on the ground. ‘Get up, more,’ I said. She did as she was told.

  ‘I’m going to be sick soon,’ she laughed.

  ‘OK. You can catch me now . . . try and catch me.’ I had waited two or three seconds, then left the garden. I had gone up to the playroom, turned on her TV and forgotten all about her. Twenty minutes later her mother had come in and asked me where she was.

  ‘Freya? Oh, she’s in the loo,’ I had said. When she left the room, I had run downstairs and found Freya sitting on the white love seat at the bottom of the garden. She had been crying; her dress was muddy and wet.

  ‘Freya,’ I had said. ‘I only went upstairs for a bit.’

  ‘Please can you take off my blindfold? I can’t get it off.’ I had knotted it four or five times so it had squeezed against her skull. It had left red marks either side of her eyes.

  ‘You’ve got marks on your face,’ I had said. She had looked at me.

  ‘J, please don’t do that again. You really scared me.’

  ‘Come on. Let’s go and get some lemonade,’ I had replied. ‘By the way, your mum asked where you were, I said you were in the loo. Is that alright?’

&nb
sp; ‘Yes.’ She had taken my hand and squeezed it.

  I was now nearing the bottom of the hill and I realise I had never apologised to Freya for scaring her like that. If she pulls through, I will tell her I’m sorry. Sorry for leaving her alone like that. Her mother had come in, taken one look at Freya and her wet dress and told her to go and get washed. Freya had, of course, told her she was in the loo.

  If she’s alive, I will wash her now, I think. I will wash her if she needs me to wash her. I will wash her hair. I will wash her face. I will do anything. The recent events are looping in my mind and, no matter how much I try to distract myself, they won’t stop. Freya’s Dirty Little Secret, over and over, like a stuck showreel and the regret, the awfulness, is turning my heart into a cavernous black hole. I wonder if I will ever be able to forget this. The san is dark. No patients. Mrs Allen opens the door for me and points to a bed next to the window.

  ‘There’s a reading light there,’ she says, pointing at a little table. I put my toothbrush and clothes in the bedside cabinet and sit down, waiting for her to say something. She doesn’t. Just pats the end of the bed. Tells me to get some rest before tomorrow.

  ‘What’s going on tomorrow?’ I ask, keeping my voice light.

  ‘Just go to sleep,’ she says.

  2014

  The next morning, I don’t see Gracie. I’m wondering whether I should get Father to email Freya and tell her I’ve moved somewhere random, so she just leaves me alone for good. I banish the idea quickly. Too much. Too much to unravel. Too heavy. At lunchtime, Toby visits me in the day room. He’s brought two bunches of flowers. One huge array of sunflowers and one small little bouquet that he’s picked himself from the park.

  ‘I brought them over here with no water. Look a bit dead,’ he laughs and then looks nervous. ‘You look really, really well. This place is doing you good.’ He chubs my cheeks. ‘You’ve even put on a bit of weight.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. It’s true, I can feel my jeans getting tighter. I’ve even been eating a lot of cake at tea.

  ‘It suits you, though. You look really well. Better than I’ve seen you look in ages.’

  ‘I’m not wearing any make-up,’ I laugh. ‘I don’t know how you can say that.’

  ‘I’ve seen you without make-up plenty of times,’ he says and we both go silent, thinking of the times he’s seen me bare-faced. Those times when we’ve spent days in bed, eating Arabic flatbread and drinking fresh coffee after fresh coffee and, and . . . I can’t look at him anymore.

  ‘How is your girlfriend?’

  ‘She’s fine. Morning sickness.’

  ‘Right.’

  And then it comes:

  ‘She wants to get married.’ Toby has sworn faithfully to me that he will never, ever get married. It is the one thing about him that I could be absolutely sure about.

  ‘Really,’ I say, calm in the knowledge that he’s about to tell me how ridiculous it is.

  ‘I’ve said yes, Josephine. I’ve said yes.’

  It doesn’t happen quickly but, when it does, my face folds in on itself without warning. That’s the second time I’ve cried in this place in the past week. The second time I’ve cried in about twenty-five years.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I wish I didn’t have to tell you here. Now. But there’s an engagement notice coming out in The Times tomorrow. I didn’t want you to have to see it without me telling you first.’ I don’t say anything for the next ten minutes. I just sit and cry.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I say, when I’ve finally stopped heaving.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Thank you by the way.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For forcing me to see Dr McKinnie. Did you ever sleep with her by the way?’ I feel carefree in asking him this, since he’s put our relationship off the agenda.

  ‘Dr McKinnie? No, are you joking, J? She’s my doctor. Is that what you were thinking about all that time she was treating you?’

  ‘Not all the time, no.’ To his credit, Toby laughs.

  ‘Toby, I need to ask you something.’

  ‘Go on?’

  ‘If someone was . . . someone from your past was trying to see you when you had told them no, what would you do?’

  Toby stops and sits back down and takes my hand.

  ‘What do you mean? Is this what’s been troubling you all this time?’ He looks all serious. ‘What’s going on, J? Do I need to get the police involved? Get someone to look after you? I know people, you know . . .’

  ‘No, no.’ The prospect of having told someone about Freya is so enormous, black spots appear in front of my eyes. ‘One moment.’ I sit and shut them, breathing, counting one to ten.

  ‘I can’t go into it too much. I just want someone to leave me alone. That’s all. Dredging up too many memories . . .’ As I’m saying this, my head starts swelling with noise. Trance music. For a moment I think someone’s turned on the radio next door and then I realise it’s in my head.

  ‘OK, well, if you can’t tell me what’s going on, you can tell me why you are suddenly sweating so much. Here, let me wipe your forehead.’ He trails the back of his hand underneath my fringe and shakes it out. ‘You are absolutely soaking. What the fuck, J?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing. I wish I’d never said anything. I can’t talk about it. Leave me alone. Just go.’

  Toby stands up, points at the flowers. ‘Want me to put them in water?’

  ‘Just get out. Get the fuck out.’

  Toby shuffles backwards and lifts his hands up. ‘J . . . I . . . are you alright? I can help you, I told you. But you aren’t making any sense. When you are ready, let me know. Alright? Just let me know. And I’ll be there.’

  I don’t answer him. I’m too afraid to talk, the words are bulging in my throat, making me feel sick. Fuck you, Freya, for making me feel like this. I’m going to find out from Gracie, once and for all, what she wants and then I’m going to hatch a plan which means Freya Seymour will never, ever contact me again. Which means I can get on with my life in peace. Without the blackness of her memory, our memories together, rotting my core.

  1996

  I’m woken up by the drawing of the blinds.

  ‘Wake up,’ says Mrs Allen. It’s six in the morning. Saturday. We’re usually allowed a lie-in on the weekends until eight thirty. It feels strange, Mrs Allen seeing me in bed. Our relationship has never really evolved from past her study door and I feel uncomfortable, pulling up the duvet right over me, even though I’m fully clothed.

  ‘Get dressed in five, I’ll see you outside.’ I get down off the bed. There’s the big pile of clothes I picked up last night, and I go for a black gypsy skirt and smock top. Flat pumps to finish it off. The rest of the clothes, I fold back up and squeeze them into my book bag. It’s been five minutes and I take out the clothes, repack them and put them in again to distract myself and stall for time. I can hear Mrs Allen pacing the corridor.

  ‘Josephine?’

  ‘I’m coming, Mrs Allen.’ The school is freezing. The heating is normally on full blast but, when I touch the radiators, they sting with cold. We make our way to Mrs Allen’s study and she offers me a seat before she sits down. The usual protocol of sitting after the teacher has gone out the window.

  ‘Josephine. I can tell you want to know why you’re here.’

  ‘Freya,’ I say.

  ‘She’s alive. Just. She’s OK. We think she’s going to be OK.’ Mrs Allen looks down at her desk. Taps her hands on the wood. She brings out a note from her top drawer, unfolds it and passes it to me. I take it. Read it. It’s the note that Mrs Kitts was holding when the ambulance took Freya away. I hand it back to Mrs Allen without saying a word.

  ‘What do you have to say about this?’ The words of the note are playing themselves over and over until they scramble before my eyes, and they make no sense at all.

  Can’t. Cope. Josephine. Blame. Kill. Josephine. Outed me. The Lens. My love. Kill. Myself.<
br />
  I start to laugh. Mrs Allen looks at me.

  ‘Well we’re going to have to call Mrs Pownall in immediately. If not the police. But you know my thoughts on that. And your father. He’ll have to come earlier than planned.’

  ‘What about Verity?’ I ask.

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘What about the part she played in all of this? I had no knowledge of the late addition to the “Guess Who?” section. None.’

  ‘Well, that’s good. But we need to get to the bottom of this. Need to find out what’s going on. I don’t want the press to get wind of this either. Do you understand? Otherwise we’ll lose our standing.’

  ‘I know. I know. I don’t want that to happen any more than you do, Mrs Allen.’

  She smiles. ‘I know. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Am I being blamed for this?’ I want to ask about Oxford and then suddenly I feel like I’m going to throw up. My best friend is nearly dead and it’s because of me. I’ve nearly killed someone. This whole thing, this ugly, ugly thing has got so out of control that Freya’s nearly lost her life.

  ‘No. Not yet. We don’t know what happened. It is a serious accusation to make from Freya’s side. So we’ll have to wait for her to get better . . .’

  ‘She will?’

  ‘I hope so. She’s still unconscious but the doctors seem to think she’s stabilised.’

  Still unconscious? I thought she would be up and about by now. I’m nearly standing up, ready to flee the room.

  ‘How?’ I manage to ask.

  ‘Pills. Pills and there are some rather deep cuts on her wrists. We think she might have had some sort of . . . episode. She cut off all her hair, too.’ I think of her long blonde ponytail and the shiny, pink scars on her pelvis.

  ‘Who found her?’ I ask.

  I wish I had been there to find her. To look after her. To tell her it’s OK. I want to take her in my arms and tell her that that night – it didn’t need to destroy us both like this. That I am sorry for hurting her. I am sorry. But the guilt, this horrendous thing is too enormous. It’s taken on a life of its own, formed into a mass of gruesomeness and, for that, I’m going to have to deal with the consequences. I fire through every way in which I can make this better. And the only solution in my mind is to carry on as normal. That way, Freya will recover, Verity will get the blame but she’ll still probably get into Oxford and then Freya and I can be the successes we were always meant to be. She’ll make her father – and her mother – proud. And I’ll carve out my own career, my own life, away from the threat that I’m turning into Mother. As I’ve decided this, I look up at Mrs Allen.