by Jane Casey
I turned round. ‘Well? What did you want to talk about?’
Her face was grave; there was no hint of the airhead who had sat behind me in Dan Henderson’s car and talked-talked-talked all the way home. She looked different somehow – older and more serious. She had opted for elaborate eyeliner and a fifties-with-a-twist pompadour hairdo that night, and her general look seemed more like a costume than ever.
‘I wanted to apologize.’
‘What do you have to apologize for?’
‘I didn’t tell you the truth about me and Freya. I want to tell you what happened. And I wanted to give you this.’
She reached into her bag and pulled out a sketchbook, and I couldn’t quite believe it until I was actually holding it in my hand – a hardback book only a little bigger than a notebook, with an elaborate hand-drawn monogram on the cover, an F and an L intertwined.
‘Is this—?’
‘Freya’s.’ Darcy couldn’t look me in the eye, I realized. ‘Her last one.’
‘You had it all along.’
‘I hid it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I didn’t want anyone to know what was in it.’
‘So why are you giving it to me now?’
She looked straight at me and her eyes were swimming in unshed tears. ‘Because I don’t want to lie any more.’
13
BEFORE I HEARD any more from Darcy I made us both some really strong tea. I had my priorities in order. Freya was dead, I was in shock and Darcy was cold. Our need was greater than my poor cousin’s. So, tea first. Then talk.
‘Sorry, no biscuits.’ I handed Darcy her mug and curled up at the other end of the sofa. She was sitting on the very edge, shredding a tissue all over the floor and sniffing every ten seconds or so, but she had pretty much stopped crying.
‘Why are you being so nice to me?’ she asked.
‘Because you obviously feel terrible about whatever happened last year and I want to know why. If you don’t calm down I won’t be able to understand what you’re telling me. It’s self-interest, really.’
‘That’s not true. You’re just a good person.’
‘It’s at least half true.’ I extended one leg and poked her in the thigh with my toe. ‘Come on. Drink up, sit back and tell me all about it. But not too loudly. I don’t want to wake Mum.’
Mum who was upstairs, safely tucked up in bed, and fast asleep when I’d checked on her. There was no way to tell when she’d got back or what she’d been doing, but I would find out. I would tell her, I thought, that Dan had given me a lift home, but I wouldn’t say what had happened afterwards. It was the sort of thing he could laugh off, if I made a fuss. I wasn’t even sure what had happened myself, and I couldn’t allow myself to dwell on it when Darcy was sitting in front of me, ready to tell all.
‘Where do you want me to start?’
‘The beginning, obviously.’ I laughed at the look on Darcy’s face: pure disgust. ‘Right. You and Freya were really close until something happened, a few weeks before she died. Petra said you had a row. Was it about Ryan?’
‘It was about Freya wanting him to leave her alone. She wasn’t interested and I couldn’t persuade her to fake it.’ Darcy peeked at me through the wreckage of her eye make-up – falsies were not made for crying fits and hers were peeling off. ‘I tried to explain to her that it was a golden opportunity. I’ve spent years watching Ryan and his friends have fun. It was our turn to join in and she just couldn’t see it.’
‘You blamed Will for that the last time we spoke.’
‘Well, it was his fault really. Freya was obsessed with him. She wouldn’t even consider seeing Ryan because he didn’t measure up to Will.’ Darcy snorted. ‘I don’t know what planet she was on. Will is so boring compared to Ryan. He doesn’t go out. He barely talks. He works obsessively – even in the holidays he’s always busy doing jobs. He’s like a machine or something.’
‘He’s not your type. We know that.’
‘We sure do. But he was Freya’s type even if he wasn’t interested in her.’ Darcy cupped her mug in both hands, shivering. ‘That was a help – knowing what she liked. I’d heard about him often enough.’
‘A help with what? What did you do?’
Darcy stared into her tea as if she were trying to read fortunes, mainly so she didn’t have to look at me.
‘It wasn’t my idea in the first place. It was Natasha who came up with the plan.’ She swirled the mug so the liquid in it spun around, threatening to slop over the side. ‘You know she thinks Ryan is irresistible. She was panicking in case Freya suddenly realized she’d been wrong about him, because obviously Freya had to be crazy if she was turning him down. Natasha wanted to distract Freya – find someone else for her to fall in love with. There just wasn’t anyone obvious around.’
‘So?’
‘So she invented someone.’
‘The mystery boyfriend? The one no one knew about?’
‘He never existed. Except in Freya’s head.’ Darcy blew her nose again. ‘She was completely taken in.’
‘Because you were helping to make him into her perfect man,’ I said, suddenly getting why Darcy was finding it hard to confess. ‘They couldn’t have done it without you, could they? They didn’t know Freya well enough to create someone she would find appealing. But you did. And that was how you got into the gang.’
‘I betrayed her trust. You didn’t put it like that, but it’s true.’ Darcy’s voice was hollow, a world away from the high-velocity chatter that was her usual way of talking. I was starting to realize that it was all an act. She was fake to the ends of her fingernails and I wasn’t even sure the woebegone figure on the end of the sofa was the real her.
‘How did you do it? Invent him, I mean?’
‘It was easy. It was just an email at first. He told her she was looking beautiful and sent her a picture that reminded him of her – The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse.’
‘I don’t know it.’
‘You’d recognize it,’ Darcy said. ‘It’s a Pre-Raphaelite painting of the Lady of Shalott floating down the river to Camelot – very atmospheric, very beautiful and a little bit fey, so it was perfect for Freya. There’s a print of it in the art room at school so it wasn’t a massive stretch to think that one of the boys might have seen it and thought of her. They call it “the bird in the boat”.’
‘That was clever,’ I commented. ‘To choose an image anyone might have known, I mean.’
‘Don’t. I feel terrible about it.’ Darcy did look uncomfortable. ‘Anyway, she wrote back and asked who he was.’
‘And you said?’
‘That he just wanted to be known as “Pale Knight”.’
I snorted. ‘That sounds like a kind of beer.’
‘It’s a reference to a Keats poem, actually. “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”. He said that Freya was the Belle Dame and he was enchanted by her.’ Darcy sounded defensive and I guessed that had been her idea too.
‘I know the poem and it’s not very nice about the Belle Dame, if I remember it correctly. She turns out to be a vicious life-sucking hag.’
‘At the end. Before that she’s a beautiful girl with wild, wild eyes,’ Darcy said dreamily, back to her old self for a second. Then she snapped out of it. ‘We wanted Freya to think that he was too shy to tell her how he felt, to explain why he was hiding behind his secret identity. Otherwise there was nothing to stop him from telling her who he was. Port Sentinel’s a small place. There weren’t too many guys who the mystery man could be, so we needed to keep her guessing.’
‘I see. So the boy was supposed to be interested in Romantic poetry and Pre-Raphaelite art.’ It sounded like the kind of thing that would make me roll my eyes until I fell over from chronic dizziness, but it had been said before and would probably be said again: I looked like Freya but I wasn’t anything like her really. ‘Presumably this was exactly what Freya liked.’
‘Exactly. And the messages we wrote we
re the same – very romantic, very poetic. They had a lot in common.’
‘Is Will interested in that kind of thing?’
‘No, but he would have known that Freya was. And we put in some references to things that he does like.’
‘As in?’
‘Fixing up old cars. Photography . . .’ Darcy hesitated. ‘Did you know he took pictures of her for a series of nudes she did?’
‘I saw the paintings in the studio at Sandhayes.’ Though Will hadn’t mentioned that he’d taken the photographs, I was pretty sure. Just imagining it made me feel as if I’d been kicked in the chest. I hoped my face didn’t show it.
‘He took them with her camera,’ Darcy continued. ‘In one of the emails I asked her to send me those pictures. That really convinced her that it was Will who was writing the messages because hardly anyone knew about the paintings or that there were photographs to go with them.’
‘Please tell me Freya wasn’t stupid enough to send the pictures.’ Darcy’s expression told me the answer. ‘Oh my God. That’s basic. It’s rule one. Never send nude pictures to anyone, ever, no matter who they are. Even if you trust them completely. And Freya didn’t even know who she was emailing.’
‘She believed in him. She wanted to believe in him.’
‘You knew that and you totally took advantage of her. There were only a few people who knew about the photographs, so it was your idea to get her to send them. You must have thought it would really impress Natasha.’
Darcy reddened. ‘I know you think this is awful. It is awful. But I didn’t think it would do any harm. It was cute, you know – we thought of little presents he could send her. Gifts that showed he’d been thinking of her. They were small things, mostly. Jewellery, flowers – that sort of thing. I thought it would make Freya happy for a bit to have someone in love with her, and then, when he disappeared, she’d find someone in real life who would do the same. You have to believe me, I didn’t know what Natasha was going to do.’
Uh-oh. ‘What was that, exactly?’
‘She let it go too far,’ Darcy said softly. ‘She couldn’t believe how easy it was to convince Freya that this boy existed and was in love with her. She wanted to find out more about Freya – “know your enemy” was what she said – so she started sending messages asking Freya personal questions.’
‘How personal?’
‘Very. Like who she fancied – Natasha wanted to get her to admit she was mad about Ryan. Like her fantasies. Like whether she was a virgin or not.’
And poor innocent Freya, who seemed completely deficient in common sense, had answered them all in detail.
‘What a bitch,’ I said softly. ‘And you helped her?’
‘I told you – I didn’t know what was going to happen.’
‘You mean it got worse?’
Darcy stood up and started to pace back and forth, but since the sitting room was tiny and full of furniture she only managed a couple of steps in each direction. ‘She started telling people about what Freya had written – gossiping about her. She sent the pictures around to everyone she knew. She made it seem like Freya was being a huge slut by emailing the pictures in the first place. Everyone was talking about her.’
‘Did Freya know that?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think she knew the extent of it but she knew people were talking behind her back and she knew Natasha hated her.’
‘She probably got a clue that might be the case when Natasha cut her hair.’
Darcy looked sick. ‘That was horrible. It was in the locker room after school one day. A whole group of girls cornered Freya and held her down so Natasha could cut off her ponytail. Up here.’ She indicated the nape of her neck. ‘I didn’t know about it beforehand and I didn’t join in – I mean, I wouldn’t have. I couldn’t do something like that.’
‘Didn’t Freya tell anyone? A teacher? Didn’t anyone notice that she’d lost about a metre of hair?’
‘She decided not to complain. She thought it would make them worse.’ Darcy managed a lukewarm smile. ‘She told me it was a relief not to have so much hair to wash and she was glad they’d done it because she wouldn’t have had the nerve.’
‘What was she, Pollyanna? There’s looking for the silver lining and then there’s being completely out of touch with reality.’ I was almost getting angry with Freya for not helping herself. ‘Freya had a chance to get rid of Natasha and she didn’t take it. No school would have kept a student who did something like that.’
‘She would have been expelled,’ Darcy agreed. ‘But she would still have been around. As I said, this is a small place. You can’t get away from people easily. Even in the holidays, Freya kept bumping into Natasha and her friends. Nothing stopped, just because they weren’t in school, and it would have been the same if Natasha had been permanently excluded.’
‘So what was Freya thinking? If she waited long enough Natasha would get tired of tormenting her and move on to someone else?’
‘Basically.’
‘But that was never going to happen. Natasha’s like one of those yappy miniature dogs. She’s got a gift for bearing grudges.’
‘I know.’ Darcy hugged herself. ‘She took it too far and she wouldn’t listen to anyone who tried to tell her to stop.’
‘Did you?’
She looked exceedingly uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know her well enough for that.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘Nothing, and I know that makes me a failure as a human being.’ She brightened. ‘Except that I stopped helping her with the emails. I told her I wasn’t going to do it any more and she’d have to come up with her own ideas. I backed out of it completely. I don’t know what she was planning and I don’t know what she did. I don’t even know if she was there the night Freya died. I wasn’t. I’d walked away.’
‘At a pretty late stage. And even then you didn’t do anything useful, like telling Freya what had been going on.’
‘No. I didn’t.’ Darcy sighed. ‘I don’t expect you to understand, but I hope you can forgive me.’
‘It’s not really about whether I forgive you, though, is it? I didn’t even know Freya. You should be apologizing to her family and her friends. You should be apologizing to her.’
‘She shouldn’t be dead,’ Darcy said with a sob that seemed to take her by surprise. Genuine emotion at last, I thought. ‘She should have realized what was happening. She shouldn’t have fallen for Natasha’s schemes.’
‘That’s right. Blame her. It’s all Freya’s fault.’ I was rubbing my eyes. I wanted to go to bed. I wanted to stop thinking about this horrible situation, and stop talking to Darcy, who was spending way too much time blaming other people instead of owning up to what she’d done. I wanted to stop imagining how Freya must have felt, but I couldn’t. It was taking me to a very dark and scary place. ‘You know, this whole thing makes me wonder if she did kill herself after all. That kind of bullying can make you insane. There’s something so sick about it. Natasha set Freya up, and the more she did to her, the more Freya depended on this person who didn’t even exist. Once she found out the truth, don’t you think Freya would have fallen apart on the spot?’
‘I suppose.’
‘And she might have found out the truth the night she died.’
‘I’m fairly sure she did.’
‘What do you mean?’
Darcy picked up the sketchbook from the coffee table. ‘You know Freya used these books as her diary . . .’ She was flicking through it, looking for something. I leaned over, seeing page after page of doodles, lists, reminders and heavily shaded drawings flash by. A wide border of birds, lilies, hearts and briars surrounded one page, very stylized and effective, and I put my hand out to stop Darcy from skipping past it.
‘What’s that?’
‘A bit from “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”.’ She turned it round so I could read the elaborate calligraphy that Freya had used for the central panel.
‘And there I shut her wild w
ild eyes with kisses four. How long do you think it took her to do that?’
‘Ages. Days.’ Darcy took it back to look at it. ‘That was how she was. Obsessive about things. The Pale Knight took over her mind, basically. She was preoccupied with him, with finding out about him and imagining what he might be like in real life. This whole book is all about him.’
‘She was happy, wasn’t she, in spite of the bullying. That’s why you couldn’t let anyone see the sketchbook. She wasn’t suicidal. Then they might have started looking for the Pale Knight and found you.’
‘I said I’m not proud of what I did,’ Darcy snapped. ‘At least I’m telling you now.’
‘Yeah, it’s a real help a year later.’
She slammed the book down on the table and pointed. ‘There. That date is the day she died. PK, ten p.m., Angel Bridge. She was going to meet him.’ Freya had drawn clouds of hearts on the page, and little cherubs holding up a banner with the words written in the centre. They had round cheeks and mischievous expressions; she had managed to give them personality with a couple of pencil strokes.
‘Where’s Angel Bridge?’
‘In the woods. It’s just a small wooden bridge over a stream that comes down off the headland, but it’s very pretty there. People call it Angel Bridge because there’s a hollow tree trunk near it that looks like a woman with soaring wings, if you stand in the right place.’
‘And if you don’t stand in the right place it’s just a rotting tree.’
‘Freya loved it there,’ Darcy said and there was a hint of a reproof in her tone.
‘I’m sure she did. So how did she end up falling off the cliff if she was supposed to be on the bridge?’
‘I don’t know.’
I leafed through the sketchbook, recognizing bits and pieces I’d seen on the wall of her room, like the bushes from the Dartmoor painting crammed in at the bottom of a page, under a shopping list. The next page was a bit of verse that I recognized – the lyrics to a song that had been everywhere the previous year. The band had sunk without trace since then and I struggled to remember their name. The lead singer had sky-high cheekbones and a tortured expression. Through excessive cynicism I had not been able to take them seriously. Conrad – and I’m not joking – had a T-shirt with their logo on it that he’d barely taken off. It was a shame he’d never met Freya. He’d have loved a chance to be her Pale Knight.
