by Jane Casey
‘Why did she think that?’
‘I don’t know. The things he said and the way he said them, according to her. I thought at the time it was just that she read what he sent her as if it had come from me because she still hoped we might get together.’
I didn’t say anything – too busy considering what he’d said – and he shifted uneasily beside me.
‘I knew I was going to end up sounding like an arrogant twat.’
‘Don’t be silly. You’re just telling me what happened. If that’s the truth of it, that’s what you’ve got to say. She still liked you and the messages made her think you were starting to feel the same way.’
‘I had to tell her again that I didn’t fancy her, which was worse than the first time – weird, that, because you’d have thought it would be easier second time round.’
‘Oh no,’ I said seriously. ‘Much worse. You can’t let someone down gently twice in a row. It’s kicking her when she’s down but you’re wearing steel-capped boots. And you stepped in dog dirt just before you started kicking.’
‘That’s more or less how it felt.’
‘Why wouldn’t you just have told her you’d changed your mind? Why would you bother with anonymous messages?’
‘No idea. Maybe she thought I was shy.’
‘Yeah, but you’re not.’
‘I don’t know . . .’ Will said slowly. ‘It’s difficult, sometimes – getting up the nerve to tell someone how you feel about them. Especially if you’re not sure what they’ll say.’
‘But you knew she liked you.’
‘I wouldn’t have been worried about telling Freya, if I’d liked her. It would be different with . . . someone else.’
I blushed, aware that he was looking at me. It was very quiet up there on the headland, apart from the birds singing in the trees behind us and the waves rushing against the rocks below. Quiet enough that I could hear my heart thumping. Had he almost said ‘you’ before he broke off? Wishful thinking, I told myself firmly, and struggled to find something intelligent to say.
‘So you’re saying it definitely wasn’t you because you wouldn’t have made a production out of telling her you liked her.’
‘Got it in one.’
‘And the reason you couldn’t go to Sandhayes any more was because you were too embarrassed.’
‘No, the reason I couldn’t go to Sandhayes any more was because I wasn’t welcome.’
‘After turning her down again?’
‘After I put my foot in it.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told her not to waste her time with someone who wasn’t willing to tell her who they were.’
‘Sensible,’ I observed.
‘You might think that. Freya didn’t.’ Will looked grim. ‘She thought I was being condescending. Patronizing was the word she used, actually.’
‘I can sort of see where she was coming from. I wouldn’t have enjoyed being warned I was in danger of making a fool of myself.’
‘Yes, but she wasn’t like you. She didn’t have a cynical bone in her body.’
‘Whereas I’m a registered card-carrying sceptic.’
‘Exactly. She needed to be told. You’d have had more sense. You’d have been entitled to be peeved about getting a warning from me.’
‘Move on,’ I ordered. ‘Less about me. More about Freya. What did she tell you about the mystery boy?’
‘Just that she’d had messages from him.’
‘Messages? As in emails or texts or what?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t see them.’
‘What did he say in them?’
‘I don’t know exactly. It was someone who knew her, she said. Someone who saw her regularly, because he mentioned things that had happened that he wouldn’t have known about otherwise. She said he said he was in love with her and he was just waiting for the right moment to tell her. She said he was articulate and intelligent.’
‘And like you.’
‘Supposedly.’
‘So she wasn’t impressed with your warning and . . . what? You had a fight?’
‘She told me to stay away from her and the house so the guy, whoever he was, wouldn’t be put off.’
‘In spite of Tilly.’
‘She was too cross with me to care about what her mum thought.’
‘And you just did what she asked?’
‘I didn’t know what else to do.’ Will looked troubled. ‘The thing is, I had the feeling something was off with this person who was sending her messages. It was too perfect. The only reason he had for not talking to her face to face was that it was complicated, apparently, and that made me think something weird was going on.’
‘Did you try to work out who it was who was contacting her? There can’t have been that many possible candidates, and everyone seems to know everyone else in this place so you could have narrowed it down quite easily.’
‘No.’ He was looking uneasy again. ‘It was none of my business, as Freya made very clear. Besides, I know this is going to sound mean, but I couldn’t shake the idea that she was making it all up as a way of making me jealous.’
I sat back, surprised. ‘Was she like that?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe not. Don’t say anything about it to Tilly. Or Hugo. They’d hate to think she’d have done anything like that. Especially given how it turned out.’
‘So what makes you say that she might have?’
‘Because whoever he was, the guy never made an appearance. Not before she died, and not after. If he existed, he kept his grief to himself.’
‘Didn’t Freya meet him?’
‘I wouldn’t know. You could ask Darcy, I suppose.’ Will sounded deeply unenthusiastic.
‘I might do that. If she knows, she’ll tell me.’
‘You sound very confident about that.’
‘She’s incapable of keeping a secret. The girl talks and talks.’
‘Doesn’t mean she’s telling you the truth.’
‘Honestly, you should really get to know her better. She’s not as bad as you seem to think she is.’
‘She’s a herd animal. Everything she does is motivated by the desire to fit in. Even if she was willing to get to know me, I wouldn’t bother.’ Will got up and walked a few paces away, suddenly restless. Over his shoulder he said, ‘You know she wouldn’t talk to me anyway. Not in public, like this.’
‘Because there are so many people to see us sitting here.’
‘You wait. You’ll be surprised. Everyone down there will know about it by sunset.’
‘Know about what? We’re just talking.’
‘Yeah. That’ll do.’
‘God. Not enough happens around here if that counts as news.’
Will turned round to face me, his hands buried in his pockets. ‘Well, first of all, you’re involved and you’re interesting on two counts: your mum is a local but you’re new in town. Then there’s the fact that you’re talking to me. No one talks to me.’ He said it without self-pity but the sadness of it cut me to the bone.
‘Because of your dad’s job.’
‘Who told you that? Darcy?’
I nodded.
‘It’s a bit because of that. And a bit because of other things.’
‘Darcy was vague on the details too.’
‘You were asking for the details and you’re being rude about what passes for news around here?’
‘I was interested,’ I said, willing myself not to look embarrassed. ‘And I still am. What did you do?’
‘Originally?’ He sighed. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘But no one’s willing to forget about it so it must have been a big deal.’
‘Yeah. You’re going to be disappointed.’ Will stretched, then came back to sit down again. This time he sat on the back of the bench with his feet on the seat. I turned round and tucked my legs under me, looking up at him. Yes, he was incredibly handsome from that angle too. What a surprise. I made myself focus on what he
was saying. ‘It’s one of those things that’s been turned into a big scandal but it wasn’t, really. And now it’s just a rule. Don’t talk to Will Henderson because he can’t be trusted. I bet no one remembers the details, not just Darcy.’
‘You obviously do.’
‘You’re not going to give up until I tell you, are you?’ I didn’t have to answer; the look on my face was enough. ‘Right. Well, it goes back a while, like I said. I was ten. Just a little kid.’
I tried and failed to imagine Will as a skinny ten-year-old.
‘I had plenty of mates, but my best friend had moved away at the end of the school year and I missed him. There was a new boy in my class in September and we got on straight away. He was good at sport too and we started hanging around together, messing about. Kid stuff. The only thing he took seriously was tennis – he was properly good, a lot better than me. He spent hours practising. I’d get bored but he’d keep going, hitting against the back wall of his house.’
‘That’s how the top players get to be the best.’
‘He was shaping up that way, definitely.’ Will stared into the distance for a few moments. ‘Then this gang of older boys started to pick on us. Small things at first – pushing us off the pavement, or taking over the football pitch at the recreation ground even if we were there first. Something we did had pissed them off. Or we hadn’t done anything, but they were bored and we made life more interesting.’
‘How much older were they?’
‘Two years, maybe three. There was this one lad, Stevie, and he was obsessed with dogging us. He hated my dad with a passion. And he hated us too. He used to hang around smoking dope, making a nuisance of himself, trying to pick a fight. Petty things, mostly. Nothing we couldn’t manage. Until Ryan lost his temper with him and shoved him off the harbour wall.’
‘Ryan? That’s who your friend was?’
‘Didn’t I say?’ Will looked amused. ‘Hard to believe, isn’t it? Mr Popular and me, hanging around together. Anyway, Stevie was on the large side and fat floats so he wasn’t in any danger, but it was November and the sea was cold. Besides, it was a hell of a loss of face. Everyone in his gang saw it and they didn’t rush to throw him a lifebelt – they were too busy laughing. The only way he was going to get his rep back was if he paid us back. He told Ryan he had to meet him after school one day so he could fight him. If Stevie won, he was going to break his arm.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘The worst thing was, Ryan was prepared to go through with it. He thought he had a chance at winning, which was laughable because Stevie was twice his weight and height. He knew he’d have to have the fight sooner or later because there was no way he’d keep out of Stevie’s way long enough for the dust to settle. And he definitely didn’t want to tell any grown-ups about it.’
‘But you did.’
‘I was having nightmares about it – waking up screaming. It was going to be the end of Ryan playing tennis, apart from anything else. And just the thought of Stevie breaking his bones deliberately.’ Will pulled a face. ‘It was the middle of the night before the fight was supposed to happen and I was crying in my sleep. My dad came to see what was wrong. He woke me and I told him. I was half asleep – I didn’t even know what I was saying – but no one cares about that. I told on Stevie and his parents got told about what he was planning and he got excluded from school, permanently. In the end they sent him to boarding school to keep him away from the other kids who were a bad influence on him. Actually, he was the bad influence on them, but you couldn’t expect his own parents to see that.’
‘Wasn’t Ryan grateful to you?’
‘For what? Two weeks later, Stevie’s mates caught up with Ryan. He didn’t put up a fight but they broke his arm anyway.’
‘Oh no.’
Will nodded. ‘It wasn’t nice. But Ryan wouldn’t tell my dad who did it. He kept his mouth shut and got a lot of respect for it. He gave up playing tennis and he never spoke to me again.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I said hotly. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘I told. You don’t tell.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s not worth worrying about.’
But I could imagine years of loneliness – years of having to pretend he didn’t mind that no one talked to him or sat with him at lunch time or picked him for their team – and the bleakness of it took my breath away.
‘Don’t you hate them?’
‘Who?’
‘Everyone else. It’s a stupid reason to pick on you.’
‘You’re telling me.’ Will glanced in my direction. ‘Don’t get too worked up about it. I realized early on that I had a choice. I could mind a lot and run the risk of going a bit mental thinking about it, or I could make the most of people like the Leonards who didn’t care about that sort of thing and forget about the idiots. I went for Option B.’
‘Easier said than done.’
‘Not really. I keep my head down at school and work instead of messing around, which is probably what I’d choose to do anyway. The only thing I missed out on was playing football and rugby. So I did cross-country and climbing instead.’
The don’t-care attitude was like armour plating and I wasn’t going to be able to put a dent in it even if I didn’t believe he was as laid-back about it as he pretended. The whole story made it a lot easier to understand Will’s self-contained quality, and his loyalty to the Leonards. ‘I suppose I get why you’re not too bothered about Darcy. But she’s not a bad person.’
‘She’s the definition of a bad friend.’
‘I thought that was you.’ I said it to tease him but he looked grim.
‘Yeah. You could say that.’
‘Come off it, Will. It doesn’t sound to me as if you have anything to be guilty about. Not about Ryan or Freya.’
He didn’t look at me and I had to lean forward to hear him. ‘What if she killed herself because I kept turning her down and making me jealous didn’t work?’
‘Unlikely.’
‘You didn’t know her. She was emotional. Impulsive. She loved the idea of love and she read too many stories about it that ended badly.’
I shook my head. ‘It wasn’t dramatic enough for that. It wasn’t a beautiful event. She pitched over the cliff on a summer night without leaving any kind of note, without showing any sign of being anything other than happy in the run-up to her death. There are only three possibilities: suicide, accident and murder. I’m inclined to rule out the first one, so you’re off the hook.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You said accident. It might have been.’
‘Well, that wouldn’t be your fault either.’ I was genuinely puzzled.
Will stood up and jumped off the bench, then held out his hand to me. ‘Do you trust me?’
‘What?’
‘Do you trust me enough to come to the edge with me? There’s something I want to show you.’
I put my hand in his, though strictly speaking I didn’t need to hold it for the ten or so paces that took me to the edge of the cliff. His hand was warm and he held onto mine firmly but not too tightly. I could have wished the cliff were a lot further away. Not least because being back at the edge was an unwelcome reminder of what had happened with Natasha. I couldn’t suppress a shudder as the ground sloped away and I caught a glimpse of the sea spray far below.
‘Don’t panic. I’ve got you.’ Will had been peering over the edge, moving along slowly. Now he braced his foot against a knot of rock hardly bigger than my fist, kicking at it first to make sure it was firmly bedded in the ground.
‘Is that safe?’
‘I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.’ He leaned out much as Natasha had done, but looking for something, not showing off. ‘There. See that ledge?’
Don’t think about how high up you are. Look at the cliff, not the water. I copied him, craning over to see what he was looking at.
‘Bit further. Here, let me help.’ H
is arm went around my waist and I nerved myself to inch a little bit further towards the edge. ‘See the little patch of green? About four metres down.’
All at once I saw what he was talking about – a narrow step in the rock where grass and tiny pink flowers had seeded themselves. It was about a metre wide and rather more than double that in length.
‘Lovely. Can I step back now?’
‘If you like.’
I scuttled backwards, feeling my heart rate drop with every step I took away from danger. Wild horses wouldn’t drag me back to look again. ‘What’s so exciting about the ledge?’
‘It’s somewhere to stand. You can drop down off the edge and be perfectly safe.’
‘How on earth did you find that out?’
Will shrugged. ‘I’ve climbed up and down most of these cliffs. I used to like sitting there for a rest. You get the view and there’s no chance of anyone turning up to spoil the peace and quiet.’
‘So what?’
His forehead creased. ‘So I told Freya about it. I played a trick on her and Hugo once – pretended I’d fallen over the edge.’
‘Funny.’
‘I thought so at the time. I told them how to find it. Ten paces from the bench, then eight to the left. You just have to jump straight. And overbalance towards the cliff if you don’t get the landing right, or you’re screwed.’
I looked at him doubtfully. ‘You think Freya might have been aiming for the ledge?’
‘I’ve wondered about it.’
‘It was her choice, if she did. I still don’t see where the guilt comes in.’
‘Don’t you? She’d never have thought of it if it weren’t for me.’ Will’s eyes had gone very dark – the sky before a storm. ‘She wouldn’t have died if I hadn’t taught her how to fall.’
We argued it out for another half-hour, going round in circles. Will was determined to believe he was responsible for Freya’s actions, and I was equally determined to convince him he was wrong, that it belittled Freya to suggest he was in control of what she did. Neither of us was willing to back down.
‘We’ll have to agree to disagree,’ Will said at last. ‘Unless you find proof of why she did it.’
