‘Right. Let’s go again. Ready?’
‘Ready.’ Hours later, when Sally’s mouth is all sticky from talking and lack of water, we get up.
‘I think you can do it,’ I say.
‘Really?’
‘Yes. But only if you do as I say.’
‘Thank you. Thank you. You are the only one to have told me that.’ I want her to feel indebted to me, so she will never tell people the truth, but I also realise that I’ve had fun for the first time in ages and perhaps, just perhaps, I’m the one that should feel indebted.
2014
Gracie and I are still in her room half an hour later. My mind is curling around the fact that Freya never meant to kill herself. Beautiful, golden Freya, who was so desperate after what happened that she was driven to make it look as though she wanted to die and, unwittingly, she nearly did. I look at Gracie, who’s rubbing my arm and telling me to stop shaking and that whatever I’m thinking, it’s OK. She’s feeding me sips of water from a white plastic cup and I’m grateful she’s here to help me.
And then I think of Freya and that there was no one there to help her when she needed it most. No one. When she was shrinking into hell from the pain of what happened, I was the only person during that time who could really have done something and I wasn’t there. Instead, I shut her down, over and over, so she could see no other way out. Freya, who would have given her right arm to make me happy. Who could hardly bear to even swat at a fly. To think that she was driven to this by . . . me.
‘Josephine? Do you want me to call someone?’ I can hear the echo of Gracie’s voice but I can’t respond. Not just yet.
Freya still needs me. She needs to talk to me again and I’m doing the same thing, shutting her down again and even if . . . even if she wants to hurt me, that’s OK because I know if I don’t, history will come smashing back at me. In trying so hard to cast away the shadows of Mother, I’m letting this whole scenario work its way into my life again, eighteen years later. When I think of this, Freya’s beautiful smile fades from my mind and I’m left with the image of her snarling at me, red-eyed. Her shouting at me outside Mrs Kitts’s study that time, telling me I was a bitch. Those red eyes, hunting me, willing me to come back at her so she could go on the attack.
I start thinking about Freya’s suicide note that Mrs Allen handed me all those years ago.
The more I think about it, the more the words in that note weren’t Freya. Just an approximation of her. They were never meant as a reality. A cry for help, yes. A cry for me to confess the events of that night in a public forum, just like I had done with The Lens. I claw back the memory of her writing on that crisp, white page. The smart writing paper she had used to leave her mark.
A confession: I’m sorry to do this but I can’t cope anymore. I can’t go on. Josephine Grey, you outed me and my love and this is what I have to do, to get away from it all . . . I’m going to kill myself. Sorry to everyone who I’ve hurt but I have to do this. Freya Seymour.
Dissecting her words now, I see that if Freya had truly intended on ending it all, she would never, ever have called Mrs Kitts ‘her love’. At best, Mrs Kitts was a distraction for Freya. A distraction from her mother’s death, a distraction from the fact she wasn’t crazily academic in a school that prided itself on being so. A distraction from life. Mrs Kitts offered her the glamour of insight into adulthood. Except there must have clearly been something wrong with Mrs Kitts for her to have an affair with a student. I can see Freya now, toying with her, offering up her youthful flesh and the promise of exciting times when she left school. The reality was, Freya was set on going to Oxford, marrying a good-looking, high-achiever called Guy, and settling down into a boho-chic life of travelling and work. This note was not Freya intentionally wanting to die, to be disintegrated into the earth. No. It was a desperate, desperate clutch at survival.
A clarity seeps into me and I know that if I need to help Freya, and myself, I must resolve to see her. I know that if I don’t she’ll never let go, and that she’s right not to. Because, otherwise, I won’t be able to either.
1996
Sally Aylsford goes to her interview and I wave her off by the school gates.
As she gets onto the bus, I stretch my back up, making a pulling motion at the top of my head. ‘Up,’ I mouth.
She gives me a thumbs-up and, as I’m shouting good luck, I can see Mrs Kitts walking out the gates alongside Mrs Pownall and Mrs Allen. She’s holding two suitcases and her husband is behind her. Her head is down and Mr Kitts is sliding his hands down his face. He is saying something, I can’t quite hear but Mrs Kitts is shouting back: ‘Nothing. Nothing.’
‘A child,’ he replies. ‘Just a child.’ And then I can see tears running down his face. Oh God, get it together, please.
Mrs Allen asks all the sixth-form Prefects for a meeting in the aftermath of Mrs Kitts’s departure.
‘Girls.’ She’s flicking through a copy of The Lens. Just watching her makes the sides of my throat come together.
‘Girls, as you probably know by now, Mrs Kitts has left the school. She didn’t admit much and Freya still hasn’t said anything either other than what she wrote in her note, so we don’t have anything to go on, but she’s left voluntarily. Suffice to say she won’t be coming back and I hope that’ll be the end of it. Now, it looks like Freya’s definitely going to make a full recovery so, until she does, I suggest you girls go about your business. When she returns, we’ll try and find out a bit more about what happened. If you decide there’s any information you must impart, my door is always open.’
‘Mrs Allen.’ Verity’s raising her hand high in the air, lifting herself off the seat as though she’s begging to answer a question in class. ‘Can we go and see her? Freya, I mean.’
‘I’m not sure that’s wise at the moment, Verity, given the circumstances. I’ll tell her you were asking after her. See what she says.’ It’s at that point that I decide what to do next. I will go and see Freya myself. I need to see her face. To believe she is getting better and to see the life in her. Otherwise the last time I will have seen her, she would have been carried out on a stretcher, limp and, in my head, gone forever. The rest of the girls file out slowly. I stay behind. I can see Verity pause, desperate to know what I want, but I move over and wave her out, shutting the door behind her.
‘Mrs Allen, do you mind if I go to the library now?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Sorry – I mean the library in town.’
‘Right. Fine. Just make sure you sign out and don’t come back after . . . it’s four o’clock now so just make sure you are back for supper.’
I make my way out of the school gates and up to the hospital. The receptionist tells me where to go and I ask if Freya’s father is still there. ‘You’ll have to find out yourself,’ she says, looking down at her magazine. ‘Third floor. Ivy Ward, bed six.’
The lift stinks. A sweet smell of body odour and disinfectant. Most people hate hospitals. I love them. There’s a certain type of security I get when I’m in one. Perhaps it’s something to do with having seen my mother in so many. Knowing she’s safer there than in her own home. There’s the sterile smell, the swish of the mops, the human stench. Anonymity. That is, until I walk past the Ivy Ward. There is an old woman, in her own room, just before the nurses’ station. She is caterwauling, with a piece of broccoli stuck to her chin and her legs are out of the sheets. Blotched red, blue, yellow. I can see her catheter filling up with yellow liquid.
There’s no one at the nurses’ station. I can see Freya’s name in green marker pen, on a big whiteboard. Freya Seymour. Ivy Ward, bed 6.
I walk down a long corridor. It’s quiet, apart from whispers, beeps of the machines and the rustle of newspapers and magazines. I see someone in bed six. Thankfully there’s no one else there. This person has a shorn head. Where is she? Then, I remember Mrs Kitts waving that ponytail around. Freya, what have you done? Her hair? What happened to
her hair? I step closer and can see little baubles of blood congealed into the scalp. There are marks, red lines, across her skull.
I sit down next to the bed. Her eyes are closed. The bed is narrow but somehow she looks lost within it. She looks quite peaceful. I’ve seen her asleep a million times and, for one moment, it’s like we are hanging out together after a big night out. Freya would always nod off whilst we were talking, keen to stay awake so as not to offend me. I can see her eyeballs flickering ever so gently. I walk over. Sit down. Wait. A thin, loping nurse walks past and points to her watch.
‘Visiting hours finish at eight, remember,’ she says. And Freya turns her head, ever so slightly. There’s a shift in her eye movement. I can see the shuddering stop. Peaceful now. What were you dreaming about, Freya? Was it a good dream? Or was it filled with horrors? The horrors of why you are here now, in this bed with your arm crooked against the wires and tape, your bloodied head. Your eyes that look like they did when we tried to do the ‘smoky-eyed look’ from Just Seventeen. It’s perfect now. Did you really do this because of me? How could I have done this to you? I touch her hand. The skin is soft, like a kitten’s nose.
Her eyes open, just a fraction, then shut. I find myself startled out of my reverie and I come to. What am I doing here? If Freya woke up and saw me, she’d probably have a screaming fit. Or call the police. I seem to have forgotten that I’m the reason she’s in this place. I walk backwards out of the room, staring at her, willing for her to wake up and see me just for one second, so I can see her reaction. To see how much hate there is in her eyes. She doesn’t. She stays peacefully asleep, so I run back to school, ready to behave as though everything is totally normal and that I haven’t just come back from hell.
For supper, there’s spaghetti Bolognese, chicken Maryland or baked potatoes with cheese and beans. I opt for the chicken. No one speaks to me as I make my way through the girls and then I see Sally. She’s sitting with a load of girls from the year below and I go and join them. I remember I haven’t yet found out about how her Oxford interview went. All the girls look up from their food, wondering why on earth I would be sitting with them – the younger years – and I offer nothing by way of explanation.
Sally looks at me a couple of times, frowning and leaning her neck forward, silently saying, Are you OK? I give her a brief nod. ‘Fine,’ I mouth, putting pieces of chicken into my mouth.
She looks worried. I try to reassure her. ‘Sally, I bet you did brilliantly in your interview,’ I say. ‘Tell me all about it after supper?’
She gestures for us to go and I pick up my tray, leave with her.
‘Is all OK?’ She links arms with me.
‘Fine. Fine. I just wanted to find out how things went.’
‘Great. I think it went great. I don’t know but I think they’ll make me an offer. Unless I totally misread them.’
‘I’m sure you didn’t.’
‘Really? Do you really think so?’
‘I’m sure. Did you do everything I told you to do?’
‘Yes. Everything. It helped so much. Josephine, thank you. I’m not getting my hopes up but thank you. For everything.’
‘No problem.’ Strangely, I want to confide in Sally. Want to tell her that I want this whole thing to be over. That I went to see Freya and that the whites of her eyes will haunt me forever. Instead, I ask her what questions she was asked in the interview.
‘What about you?’ she asks, when she’s finished telling me. ‘Do you think you’ve got a place guaranteed? I mean . . . it’s you, so of course you have but, I mean . . . did you find the interview OK?’
‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘Interview was fine. But, of course, I have to wait and see how this whole thing with Freya pans out.’
‘Why?’ she asks.
‘Because if any of us are found guilty of The Lens, we get expelled. And that means we might get our offers rescinded from our universities. If we get an offer, of course.’ I look at her and she doesn’t react. Looks down slightly but other than that, nothing.
‘Sally?’ I say. I can’t believe I’m actually in this position with Sally Aylsford of all people.
‘Yes?’ she replies.
‘What do you think?’ I ask.
‘I think that we’ll be alright. Just carry on. Just carry on as we are now and deny everything and we’ll be alright.’ She turns to me. Her cheeks have fired up. ‘I can’t let my father down. I just can’t,’ she says, mouth set.
She’s with me. She feels the same way so now I can’t go back.
I can’t ruin Sally’s life too.
2014
The doctors and nurses are worried about me. They say I’m not eating enough again. In truth, I’m totally preoccupied with the idea of seeing Freya. I’m starting to feel weightless with the idea of it. But at the same time, I don’t want to leave the comfort of this place; the thought of not being told what to do and how to fill my days fills me with dread. I’ve grown used to not having to think about where to go, what to do next. No pressure to perform and no responsibility. But I’m going to have to leave here at some point and all I can think about is what Gracie and I discovered together and the thought that Freya is never going to give up tracking me down. I decide to get someone else’s take on the whole thing.
‘You seem . . . lighter,’ Dr Anthony says at our next session, as he hands me some water.
‘I’m just trying to work a few things out. I’m . . . this girl . . . the one from my past. She’s called Freya. I’m wondering whether to see her. Things have changed. The idea of her in my head has changed and I’m just trying to work out how to best deal with it.’
‘Would you like to tell me a bit more about her? What happened with her?’ Academically, I want someone to talk through it with, the events that followed that night – The Lens, the attempted suicide. Emotionally, though, I’m not sure I am capable.
‘What’s stopping you?’ Dr Anthony leans forward and taps the desk with his right hand, a movement that makes him seem impatient, even though I know he just wants me to talk.
‘It’s just quite a lot to go into. That’s all. I can’t even be sure I’ve got all the details right. Remember everything correctly. It was so long ago.’ I give a nervous little laugh.
‘That’s alright. Why don’t you start with how you met this girl? What you remember about her. Those first impressions. Then we can go on from there. Stop any time you feel uncomfortable.’
I talk about the Freya I used to know. Before all the horrid stuff. The innocence of her, even when bad things happened. Those eyes, alight with hope and joy. And the confidence, even when her mother was dying with all the surrounding ugliness, that of course everything would be alright. Her body was like a gilded cage that no amount of hurt could penetrate. The buttery tone of her skin. The straightness of her nose. The rich curve of her lips that always hovered on a smile. My friend Freya.
‘You look sad,’ Dr Anthony says. ‘You look as though you want to tell me more.’
I don’t really, but Dr Anthony’s voice is hypnotic. And I feel so, so tired. Too tired to resist.
‘Well, she was just Freya. Everyone at school wanted to be her. She would come in wearing a new pair of shoes and, the next half-term, everyone would come back wearing the same ones. I made her wear a pair of her mother’s old platforms once, just as a joke and, of course, they came in fashion the month after. She was just one of those types. And she just got people. But then she changed. Something in her changed.’
‘Why did she change, do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’ I dare Dr Anthony to accuse me of lying. To tell me I do know.
‘Can you think of any occasion that led her to change? Or was it that your relationship became different?’
‘Both. Probably. Just that . . . we, we drifted apart and then there was this whole thing where I published something I shouldn’t have done in the school newspaper and . . .’
Dr Anthony is drawing
lines on a notepad. Long, strokes of black pen. ‘And?’
‘And then she attempted suicide and all this time I never realised but I think, perhaps, that she didn’t mean to do it. I thought she just got lucky. That she got saved in time but . . .’
‘Oh?’ Dr Anthony’s now making sharp little lines on the page. I can’t even begin to explain about Gracie and how we found this all out, so I let it lie.
‘I think . . . Well, I think that . . .’ I stop for a moment. Dr Anthony tells me to take my time. ‘I think she might have felt betrayed by some of the things I did. Felt that her suicide attempt might have been the only way she could get through to me. Didn’t mean it to go so far but wanted my . . . or someone’s attention. It’s just so . . .’
Dr Anthony nods and stares at me with an expression I can’t work out. Concern? Trying to make sense of the things I’ve told him?
I sit and wait for Dr Anthony to speak but he doesn’t say a thing. Just scratches a point on the page and hovers his pen over the desk.
And, out of nowhere, it happens. A flash. It happens so quickly I can’t grasp it back. A flash of that night. It’s the first memory recall I’ve had of that time, beyond blurs of lights and sound and drips of red and the roar of the dance floor. Freya is standing over me, smiling, as I take a drink she’s bought for me. Her hips are swaying in time to the music, in that slow, sexy way of hers, as though she knows absolutely everybody is looking at her. I remember being in awe of her then and, still, now.
The Exclusives Page 24
