The Friendship Pact

by Alison James

  Nine

  July 1996

  Of course, Felicity Gibson’s ban is not the end of the matter.

  The appeal of Blackwater Pond is too great. When Adele calls round again two days later, only to be told firmly by Felicity Gibson that they will have to find something else to do with their time, she appears to take it well. However, after mooching round the Redgate shopping precinct for an hour, she changes her tune and starts to wheedle.

  ‘C’mon,’ she says, hooking her arm round Lucy’s neck. ‘Let’s go to the Pond. We don’t have to swim; we can just hang around. See who’s there.’

  ‘See if Gary Emsworth’s there, you mean,’ Lucy says with a grin. Gary is a big, brutally handsome sixteen-year-old on the receiving end of Adele’s most recent infatuation.

  ‘Fuck off,’ says Adele hotly. ‘Well, Miss Goody-Goody, if you’re not going to come, I’ll just have to go down there on my own, won’t I? I don’t bloody care either way.’ She retracts her arm so forcefully that Lucy is spun round, then flounces off in the direction of the precinct exit. It’s the nearest the two of them have ever come to an argument.

  ‘I think I’ll go to the library,’ she tells her mother the next morning, as she spoons muesli into her mouth. ‘I’ll take my bike.’

  ‘Not today,’ Felicity shakes her head. ‘I’ve got a dental appointment up in London.’

  ‘So? I can still go.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you alone here all day. Not with…’ She changes tack and smiles suddenly. ‘I’ve asked Sally Beckett if you can spend the day with them, and she said that’s fine. Joanne would like the company, apparently.’

  ‘But I’m not even friends with Joanne,’ Lucy protests.

  ‘She’s a nice enough girl, and they’re only just down the road. You can cycle over after you’ve finished your breakfast.’

  It’s hot and sultry again, only today the sky is obscured by a layer of thin, yellowish-grey cloud and the warmth is oppressive rather than benign as Lucy makes her way reluctantly to the Becketts’.

  ‘Joanne’s upstairs,’ Sally Beckett says with a smile, as she admits Lucy to the house. ‘Go on up, sweetheart.’ She’s wearing a sleeveless dress in fuchsia pink linen, and a pair of high-heeled sandals, a huge pair of sunglasses like insect eyes push her blonde hair back from her face. ‘I’m just popping out for a bit,’ she says, reading Lucy’s expression and surmising correctly that Felicity Gibson would have thought twice about taking up Sally’s offer if she’d known Sally wasn’t going to be in residence. ‘The new computer system at work has crashed and I’ve got to pop in and sort things out. But I won’t be gone long. Joanne’s brother’s Jamie is around the place somewhere, and my mum’s just down the road if she’s needed. And her Auntie Sandra will look in on you later, if I’m not back.’

  The Becketts have lived in the Redgate area for generations and make up an extended clan of siblings, cousins and aunties. Their family contrasts starkly with the Gibsons, with their only child and complete lack of relatives within a fifty-mile radius.

  Loud music from one of the bedrooms is the only evidence of the older brother Jamie’s presence, but Joanne is in her room, as promised. She sits hunched on the edge of her bed, as though waiting for a dental appointment of her own, her skin clammy with sweat and her glasses faintly steamed over. The room itself is stuffy and has a sickly smell of foot odour mingled with cheap perfume.

  ‘Hullo,’ she mouths at Lucy, without enthusiasm. When she fails to move, Lucy reaches past her and opens the window.

  ‘It’s hot,’ she explains. ‘Why don’t you have your window open.’

  Joanne mumbles something through the thudding of the bass woofer from the next bedroom. It sounds like ‘Allergies.’

  ‘What shall we do?’ Lucy asks.

  Joanne shrugs.

  Lucy, who has positioned herself near the windowsill to try and capitalise on the feeble breeze, looks outside desperately for some inspiration. A few small children are circling the cul-de-sac on trikes and scooters. Below the window, her own bike lies propped against the raised flower bed where she left it.

  ‘Do you have a bike?’ she asks Joanne. ‘We could go for a bike ride.’

  Joanne nods. ‘In the garage.’

  It turns out that the bike hasn’t been ridden for so long that both tyres are flat. There are two other bikes in the garage, boys’ bikes with dropped handlebars.

  ‘Whose are those?’ Lucy demands.

  ‘That one’s Jamie’s. And that one’s my cousin’s. He’s been staying with us for a bit. ’Cause he’s fallen out with my auntie and uncle.’

  Lucy vaguely remembers a whispered conversation between her parents about Sally having a tearaway nephew who had got himself into trouble with the police, but all she’s interested in at this particular moment is securing a mode of transport. ‘Can’t you borrow one of them?’ she wheedles.

  Joanne is reluctant, but eventually Lucy persuades her to use Jamie’s. It’s too big, and Joanne perches awkwardly on the seat like a shapeless marshmallow on a toasting stick.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asks Lucy nervously. ‘I’m supposed to tell my auntie or my gran where I am if I go out somewhere.’

  ‘Just around,’ says Lucy airily, turning round to smile at Joanne. ‘You know, nowhere in particular.’

  But she does know exactly where they’re going. They’re going to Blackwater Pond.

  The first person Lucy sees is Gary Emsworth. He’s in the midst of a gaggle of older boys, their newly acquired tans and the sheen of reservoir water combining to emphasise the developing muscles on their chest and abdomens.

  She knows then that there is a good chance that Adele will be there, and, sure enough, she spots her sitting on the edge of the rocky promontory, smoking a Marlboro as though she’s had a twenty-a-day habit for years. Her face lights up when she sees her friend but instantly darkens when she spots Joanne at her side, clinging to the handlebars of her brother’s bike as though her life depends on it. As though she’s in danger.

  ‘Come on,’ Lucy says to her encouragingly, and they both drop their bikes on the grass verge next to the path and walk to the edge of the reservoir.

  Adele stubs out her cigarette with a frown and climbs off the rock.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ she demands, as though Joanne isn’t standing right there in front of her.

  Dropping her gaze and shrinking into her body, Joanne goes to the water’s edge and pretends to be absorbed in throwing in small stones. Her pale shoulders are already scorching in the sun.

  ‘Why the fuck did you bring her?’ Adele asks, her voice dripping with disdain. ‘I thought you said you weren’t friends with her.’

  ‘I’m not,’ says Lucy, folding her arms across her chest as though challenging Adele not to believe her. ‘It wasn’t my idea. I mean, it was my idea to come down here, because I had to do something with her, but it wasn’t my idea to spend the day with her. My mum arranged it. With Sally Beckett.’

  Adele shrugs, but Lucy can tell she’s mollified. ‘Well, let’s just leave her here and go and play on the rope swing.’

  ‘I don’t know…’ Lucy is still afraid of the rope swing, of its jerky, unpredictable arc.

  ‘Don’t be a baby, Luce. Come on,’ Adele catches her by the wrist and drags her over to the rock, where Gary Emsworth is dangling from the rope, curling his hand into his armpit with his free hand and making chimpanzee noises.

  When he has let go of the rope and splashed into the water, Adele grabs at the rope and pushes it into Lucy’s hand. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Virgin!’ shouts one of the boys.

  Prompted by the teasing to prove a point, Lucy takes off her glasses and leaves them in a clump of grass. Then she lets the rope take her weight, knotting her ankles around it as if she was in gym class, but before she has had a chance to swing herself, Adele gives her a shove and the rope flies out over the surface of the reservoir. It’s not blue and sparkling today, but murky an
d greenish-grey. As the trajectory of the rope goes into reverse, heading back towards the rock, Adele screams, ‘Jump, for Christ’s sake!’ and Lucy lets go, simultaneously closing her eyes. Her foot catches on something as she descends into the water, but she launches herself back to the surface and starts swimming back to the rock. Despite her slight build she’s a strong swimmer: the product of several years of private lessons and foreign holidays with outdoor pools.

  ‘Not a virgin now!’ crows one of the larger and more intimidating boys. He wears his hair shaved short and has a tattoo across his tanned shoulder blades.

  Lucy ignores him. She’s decided she loves the rope swing and goes back time and time again, queuing for her turn with the burly teenage boys. She has no idea how much time has gone past but eventually becomes aware of Joanne hovering near her shoulder. Despite the cloud cover, Joanne’s flesh has turned from palest baby pink to cerise.

  ‘We need to go,’ she says in an urgent whisper. ‘My auntie’s coming over this afternoon and she won’t know where we are.’

  ‘“My auntie’s coming”,’ Adele mimics Joanne’s slight lisp. ‘Jesus, what are you, Beckett? Five years old?’

  Joanne’s face flushes, and when she turns to Lucy in silent appeal, Lucy sees her eyes tear up behind the thick lenses. Their ugliness stirs empathy in Lucy, even though the Gibsons have made a point of buying their daughter stylish spectacle frames and have promised she can wear contact lenses once she’s in Year 9.

  ‘We’ll go in a minute,’ she says, attempting to appease both girls.

  ‘Tell you what Joanne,’ Adele grins, thrusting the rope at her. ‘One go on the rope swing, then you can leave.’

  Joanne shakes her head. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Go on,’ Adele wheedles. ‘There’s nothing to it. Everyone else has done it.’

  Joanne shoots Lucy a desperate look.

  ‘Just one go,’ says Lucy encouragingly. They’re the only ones on the rocky platform now that the older boys have slunk off under the tree cover to drink cans of beer and smoke. And the truth is she’s hungry, and sweaty and a little dehydrated, and just wants to sit indoors with a cold drink. Life will be easier if she just backs up Adele. ‘It is easy, honestly. You just hang on till the rope’s gone as far as it can, then let go, really quickly. Like this.’ She mimes the action.

  ‘Okay.’ Joanne positions her feet on the edge of the rock, pushes her glasses up her nose and reaches towards the rope.

  As she does so, Lucy’s brain leaps forward in time so that she knows exactly what is going to happen even before it takes place. Adele pushes the knot of the rope in Joanne’s direction, then, with a fast, whipping motion, snatches the rope away just as her fingers are about to close round it. Joanne’s right arm flails in space, reaching for something that’s no longer there. The disorientation makes her clumsy, her glasses fly off and her right foot folds over her left. Both heels skid on the wet surface of the rock. Still grabbing wildly for the rope that isn’t there, Joanne bounces onto her right hip before plunging off the edge of the stony platform. There’s a horrible hollow smacking sound as the side of her skull hits rock. Then silence.

  Lucy’s first thought, bizarrely, is about the bikes.

  Her own bike lies abandoned on the grass. Next to it is Jamie Beckett’s bike. How is she going to get both bikes back to the Becketts’ house on her own? The anxiety about this detail overwhelms her.

  The silence is suddenly punctuated by loud screams from somewhere, and then there are voices shouting, people running, a commotion.

  Lucy waits for Joanne to emerge from the surface of the water – surely she’s about to do that? – but she doesn’t. She keeps looking over desperately at the bikes, as though the very presence of her older brother’s bike will somehow make Joanne okay. She’s aware of someone running up the path to fetch help, though she doesn’t notice who it is, and then a man out walking his dog comes and jumps into the water. He pulls out what looks like a bundle of wet washing to the sound of his dog’s frantic barking. Then an ambulance pulls up in the lane, and two paramedics scurry towards the rock with a stretcher. They bend over the heap of washing, and between their feet Lucy glimpses a thin, watery trail of blood.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ Lucy says out loud, to no one in particular. She looks around wildly for Adele, calls her name, but Adele is no longer there.

  Lucy’s memory of what happened next remained hazy in the years that followed.

  Someone – she still has no idea who – must have phoned her father’s office, because he appears in the doorway of the second ambulance, where she’s sitting with a cotton blanket draped round her shoulders. He embraces her silently, then leads her to where his car is parked.

  ‘Come on; let’s get you home.’

  ‘What about the bikes?’

  ‘Don’t worry about the bloody bikes.’ Jeffrey seems stressed, but he does not reprimand his daughter for being at the reservoir after she has been told not to go. This in itself is concerning.

  Felicity has not yet returned from London, so when they get back to the house it’s her father who attempts to make her something to eat; her father who never cooks. He burns the toast and the scrambled egg is full of gristly white lumps. Lucy takes one look at it and runs to the bathroom to be sick.

  Felicity appears in her bedroom as she’s getting ready for bed. ‘Lucy, sit down.’ She pats the bed and sits herself. Her face is distorted by a strange rictus, almost as if she’s trying to suppress a smile. But of course she’s not. ‘Darling. Joanne…’ She closes her eyes briefly, and when she opens them again, Lucy sees with alarm that there are tears there. ‘Joanne didn’t survive. She hit her head on a rock and her lungs filled up with water because she was unconscious.’

  ‘She’s dead?’ asks Lucy, trying out the unfamiliar word. A word that doesn’t fit with someone of her age.

  ‘Yes,’ Felicity nods, and brushes the tears away. ‘I’m afraid she is. She drowned. Her poor, poor family… The police need to speak to you, but they’ve agreed it can wait until tomorrow. Until you’re less shocked.’

  ‘But it was an accident,’ Lucy says, a jolt of panic making her insides tingle, her pulse quicken.

  ‘I know, darling, but they still need a statement from you. That’s how these things work.’

  Felicity fetches a mug of hot chocolate; which Lucy doesn’t want but drinks anyway so that her mother will leave her alone.

  She lies on her bed in the half-dark, staring at the ceiling, unable to banish the image of Joanne’s body from her mind. Where is she now, she wonders? In one of those metal freezer drawers like they have on Prime Suspect?

  There’s a sharp tapping noise, as something bounces off the windowpane. Lucy climbs off the bed and finds a piece of gravel on the carpet. Outside, Adele is just visible in the pale glow of the street light, her hand resting on the handlebar of her bike.

  ‘Luce, come down,’ she hisses. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  Lucy holds up a finger to her lips, then creeps out onto the landing. Her parents are watching television in the sitting room and don’t notice her coming down the stairs, but Kibble does, skittering across the hall floor to greet her. She picks him up and holds him hard against her chest so that he won’t bark while she opens the front door. Sensing an unscheduled outing, he wriggles with delight and follows Lucy down the drive with a dancing motion.

  ‘What did you tell them?’ Adele says, without preamble. Her face, half in shadow, is a chalky grey, and she hunches her shoulders.

  ‘Tell who?’

  ‘The police. Who else?’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to them yet. Tomorrow, I think.’

  ‘So what are you going to tell them?’

  It feels all wrong that she doesn’t mention Joanne by name. That she doesn’t even acknowledge that she’s dead.

  ‘That it was an accident. That… that she slipped.’ Lucy reaches down and grabs Kibble’s collar before he can disappear into their n
eighbour’s garden.

  Adele purses her lips, seemingly satisfied with this. ‘Make sure you do,’ she says ominously. ‘Promise.’ She holds out her hand, palm up, and indicates with a jut of her chin that Lucy should lay her own hand flat on top of it in a facsimile of a Freemason’s handshake. Lucy obeys the unspoken request. Adele then pulls her hand away and turns her bike around to wheel it in the opposite direction. Before she swings her leg over the saddle, she pauses and looks back at Lucy. ‘Best friends don’t betray each other: remember that.’

  Ten

  For the next few days, Lucy plays the perfect wife.

  She attends lectures and works on her academic assignments as usual while Marcus is at work, stocking the fridge and preparing food that she knows he likes. That is the outer Lucy. The inner Lucy is in turmoil. She knows with utter certainty that she has reached the point of no return and is simultaneously furious with herself that it took five years for her to get here. Marcus’s maturity had been so seductive, extending as it did the nurturing she had always enjoyed from her parents. It felt like manna from heaven to a shy, uncertain twenty-something. But that protection was only one side of a coin. And on the other side was the need to control. Of course, she had come to realise this intellectually some time ago, starting with the trip to Paris. But it has taken this long to accept the emotional truth of her situation: she is an abused wife. And having fully accepted it, there is to be no turning back.

  Marcus is exhausted when he returns home from work every day and lacks the energy to argue. Lucy capitalises on this by being blandly agreeable and sticking to neutral topics of conversation. Sensing that their marital crisis has passed, on Wednesday evening, he even makes suggestions about a summer holiday. An hour later, there is another surprise.