The Pact: A dark and compulsive thriller about secrets, privilege and revenge

by S J Bolton

  Around the table, something shifted. More than one body tensed, and Felix heard the whispered intake of breath. Xav, with his brilliance and physical beauty, was gold, of course: rare, fascinating, with a hundred different uses, but ultimately rather soft and unreliable. People had lusted after gold since the dawn of time, but no one had ever built a house from it.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Talitha said. ‘And keep your voice down.’

  Xav ran his hands over his face. ‘It’s on my mind, every second of the day, from the moment I wake up.’ He looked up. ‘I barely sleep. I’m at risk of being thrown off the course. I can’t focus on anything I’m being taught, and I’ve no interest in socialising or getting involved in any of the college stuff. I’m turning into a zombie. It’s eating me away.’

  Amber reached out towards him. Xav looked coldly at her hand and tucked both his own into his armpits.

  ‘I know what you mean.’ Amber’s eyes had darkened at Xav’s snub. ‘Every morning, for a split second when I wake up, I think everything’s all right, and then I remember, and it’s like someone’s dropped a massive weight on my chest.’

  ‘I’m frightened of fire,’ Daniel said. ‘I can’t be in a room with a real fire, even a small one. I can’t stand the sound of the crackling and the spitting. It makes me want to scream.’

  Felix gave a heavy and audible sigh. Across the table, he caught Talitha’s eye. They’d expected this, not necessarily so soon.

  ‘I walk round college at night after everyone’s gone to bed,’ Daniel went on. ‘I’m checking for anything that could start a fire. People think I’m mental, hardly anyone talks to me any more, but I can’t stop it. My tutor said I need to see a counsellor but what good would that do when he’s going to want to get to the root of what’s causing my problem and that’s the one thing I can never tell him?’

  Felix said, ‘This is getting us nowhere.’

  ‘I’ve requested a change of rooms to one on the ground floor,’ Daniel didn’t seem able to stop. ‘I’ve got a rope under my bed for when the fire breaks out. I’m a mess.’

  ‘We’re all paying the price,’ Talitha said. ‘Not just Megan.’

  ‘Well, I think she might swap with any one of us right now,’ Xav said.

  ‘You have to get a grip, mate,’ Felix said to Dan. ‘We all do, or we’ll all end up exactly where Megan is now. They won’t release her just because we confess. She’ll still be serving twenty years and the only difference is we will be too.’

  He met Talitha’s eyes again and gave her a small nod. Taking it as permission to speak up, she said, ‘If we’re on the outside, we can help her. Felix and I have been talking that we can help her financially.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Amber’s head lifted. ‘She can’t spend money in prison.’

  ‘In a few years, we’ll be earning money,’ Talitha explained. ‘Quite a lot, if we all pull ourselves together. We can set up a trust fund and pay a percentage of our income into it every year. When Megan gets out, it can help get her started.’

  ‘And that’s doing something real to help her,’ Felix argued. ‘Throwing ourselves under the bus because we can’t cope with the guilt won’t achieve a thing.’

  The mood was shifting, he could sense it. Daniel’s eyes were gleaming, Amber was definitely listening.

  ‘I like that idea,’ Amber said. ‘If we each set aside twenty per cent, it will give her an equal share, won’t it?’

  ‘Twenty per cent might be pushing it,’ Felix said. ‘Especially at first. But ten will be good. Ten per cent will add up.’

  Even Xav seemed to be thinking about it.

  ‘And we should tell her we’re doing it,’ Talitha said. ‘So she knows we haven’t abandoned her.’

  ‘How? Are we going to write?’ Amber asked.

  ‘God no.’ Talitha looked shocked. ‘We never, ever, put anything about what happened in writing. Someone has to go and see her as soon as possible. It can’t be me – Dad will hear about it.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Xav said. ‘As soon as we know where she is. But we all need to visit, not just once, but regularly, as long as she’s inside.’

  Amber nodded quickly, followed a few seconds later by Dan. Once more holding eye contact with Talitha, Felix let his own head fall and rise. He had no plans to visit Megan, and he was pretty certain Tal would go nowhere near either, but for now, the weaker members of the group had to be kept on side.

  ‘People don’t serve their whole terms though, do they?’ Dan asked. ‘She won’t actually be in prison for twenty years. It’s not like she’s a serial killer.’

  ‘Dad thinks she’ll serve at least ten years,’ Talitha said. ‘Possibly more. Michael Robinson’s legal team will oppose any attempt at early release.’

  ‘Ten years?’ Xav said. ‘I can’t get my head round the next ten days.’

  ‘There’s something else we need to think about,’ Felix said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Megan could change her mind at any time. We really need to find that letter she made us all sign. And the film.’

  ‘I agree,’ Talitha said. ‘But where do we look? We can’t go round to her house again.’

  ‘Well, we have to keep looking because even if she’s as good as her word, there’ll come a time when she gets out. And we owe her, remember, we all agreed. She could ask us for absolutely anything.’

  Part Two

  TWENTY YEARS LATER

  16

  The summer had barely begun when Megan came back into the world. At All Souls’ School, Trinity term had been underway for exactly a week and the various sports teams had already made an impact on the league tables. On the other hand, building work on the new science block was behind schedule and a potential new donor had pulled out. The governors were scheduled to meet at six, and Daniel wasn’t looking forward to giving them the bad news, especially as he suspected Megan’s recent, much publicised, release from prison had been a factor in the wealthy businessman taking his cash elsewhere. He could only hope they wouldn’t find out she’d been on the premises immediately before their arrival.

  ‘She’s in reception.’

  He could offer them Pope’s proverb, he supposed: ‘to err is human; to forgive, divine’, but had a feeling it might fall on deaf ears. Megan Macdonald was not an alumnus that All Souls’ was ever going to view with pride. In fact, long before Daniel’s appointment as master, every removable trace of her had been wiped from school records. And now she was back, in the flesh, less than an hour before the governors were due. He might have laughed, but sometime, over the years, he’d forgotten how.

  Ellen, the school secretary, was standing in the doorway and, fair play, making a passable attempt at disapproval. Daniel had known Ellen for years, though; he could see the glee in her eyes.

  ‘Who is?’ he asked.

  He’d said nothing to Ellen about Megan’s visit, but she knew exactly who Ms M. Macdonald was; the Oxford Mail had covered her release – front page no less – as had BBC Oxford, and the school had been buzzing with rumours. Half the juniors had claimed to see her in School Field, gazing at them from across the river like the ghost of forgotten scandals.

  ‘Your old friend,’ the secretary said.

  Daniel had never discussed his past with Ellen.

  ‘Do the governors know she’s here?’ she went on.

  ‘Thanks, Ellen.’ He opened another document on his computer screen, an attempt to look busy that probably wouldn’t fool her. ‘I’ll get her in a few minutes. See you tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t mind fetching her.’

  Daniel didn’t look up. ‘I’m not quite ready. And you’ll miss your bus.’

  Ellen left, but it was a safe bet she’d be exiting the building via reception to get a glimpse of the bogeywoman. Daniel gave her five minutes head start; then a few more for
luck.

  How was he feeling? Cornered, would be the only way he could describe it. Since Megan had made her appointment the previous week, after repeated attempts and refusing to be put off, he’d barely slept more than a couple of hours at a time, and when he did drop off, he was plagued by nightmares. In each of them, he was running through the Oxford of his teenage years, chased by a formless shadow that he knew to be Megan.

  All Souls’ might have been educating the gifted young of Oxford since the fifteenth century, but the original buildings had long since gone. The school that had appointed Daniel as master was an eclectic collection of structures arranged around an open space, known as The Yard, that the governors wouldn’t allow him to turn into a car park. Heart thumping, he crossed into the main building via the covered bridge, scuttled through the art department and down the back stairs past the staff room to reception.

  Megan, who knew the school almost as well as he did, had positioned herself so that she was facing the door. They saw each other at the same moment.

  His first thought was that the youngsters who’d claimed to have seen her watching the school had been talking rot. The woman on the other side of the glass door looked nothing like the photograph that had appeared in the Oxford Mail, nothing like his memory of an eighteen-year-old girl. Her amazing silver hair had grown long and dark brown, dull as mud; her lovely face had turned skeletal and corpse pale. She’d always been thin, but her limbs had become angular and hung from her torso as though stuck to her body with pins. She was like a marionette, discarded after years of use. She looked ill, and to his shame he felt a surge of hope; this wreck of a human being couldn’t possibly be a threat.

  Meanwhile, he’d stopped moving, and they were looking at each other through the glass. He was trying to read her expression and wondering how soon after he pulled open the door would the accusations start. Why didn’t you visit me? Why didn’t you write? How come you’ve been nowhere near me in twenty years? Maybe she’d cut straight to the chase and tell him what she wanted, what he had to do for her now in return for everything she’d sacrificed. He’d been a fool to agree to meet her here, in front of witnesses, and yet she’d been so insistent.

  ‘You all right, Dan?’

  Daniel started. Without his noticing, one of the PE staff had followed him down and couldn’t get past. Pulling himself together, he opened the door and stepped out into reception.

  ‘Megan.’ He held out his hand, praying she wouldn’t expect a hug. She seemed to sway as she got to her feet, as though her legs weren’t steady, and when she put up a hand to brush hair from her face, he saw an ugly scar on her right temple. A deep cut, not properly stitched up, had left reddened and puckered skin behind.

  ‘Master.’

  She smiled, and he couldn’t tell whether she was congratulating or mocking him. Her hand felt cold and damp, and he let it go as soon as he decently could.

  ‘Are you signed in? You’ve got a badge, I see.’

  The receptionist gave Daniel a pointed stare, and he knew before the week was out that every member of the school community from the youngest junior to the usher would have heard of Megan’s visit. The receptionist and Ellen between them had the board of governors, the parents’ association, the various catering and cleaning supply companies and the staffroom covered.

  ‘Right then, I’ll lead the way. You OK with the stairs?’

  It was a stupid thing to say, but she looked so frail, as though a strong wind would blow her over. He wasn’t surprised that she fell behind before they reached the second floor. At the top, Daniel watched her struggle up the last few steps, breathing heavily, with a fine sheen of sweat on skin that, he saw now, had a yellow tinge.

  ‘How long have you been—’ he began.

  ‘Out?’ she offered.

  He’d meant that. ‘In Oxford,’ he corrected.

  ‘A couple of weeks. I’ve been ill, or I’d have come before.’

  ‘Well, it’s good to see you,’ he said.

  She recoiled and her eyes gleamed like steel. This is it, he told himself, this is when it comes. ‘This way,’ he told her, although, of course, she knew the way to the master’s office. She walked behind him so quietly that halfway along the corridor he looked back to check she was still there, only to find her disturbingly close on his heels. Leaving her in the study, he made tea in Ellen’s room. When he got back, Megan was at the window.

  ‘I’d forgotten how lovely the view is,’ she said.

  ‘I never tire of it.’

  It was, he realised, the first honest thing he’d said to her. The master’s study looked out over Christ Church Meadow with the famous dreaming spires in the background. The sun was low in the sky and the buildings were turning their twilight shade of warm honey. There were evenings when Daniel sat for hours at his window, when the school had fallen quiet around him, and watched the sunset glow grow cold, the spires vanish into night, and the twinkling lights of the city appear like stars. Looking out at Oxford, alone at the end of the day, Daniel came closest to remembering a time when he’d been happy.

  It didn’t seem the moment to tell Megan that, and so he poured and tried to remember how she took her tea.

  She said, ‘Last time I was in this room, I was drinking champagne.’

  And just like that, the memory was alive and shining in his head: the day of his last exam, a Thursday in June; the others had all finished before him but had come back into school at the master’s invitation. She’d served them cake and champagne and thanked them for a sterling job as the senior prefect team. There’d been a professional photographer present, and the customary group shot had been taken for the yearbook.

  He remembered admiring how confident Felix, Talitha and Xav were with the master, as though they knew all authority had slipped from her with their last exams; that they were her equals now and might one day outgrow her. She still made him nervous, Amber too, he could tell. Megan though? Now he came to think of it, there had been something wrong with Megan that day; she’d withdrawn into herself, barely speaking. He’d wondered if he’d done something to offend her.

  ‘I don’t have any chilled, I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘but I did stop at Sainsbury’s for some chocolate digestives.’

  It was a poor joke. Megan gave him a half-smile, took the tea, tasted it, and added three spoons of sugar.

  ‘So, tell me everything,’ she said, as she eased herself carefully into one of his armchairs. ‘I would not have predicted you’d end up here.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  When Daniel had seen the master’s job advertised, he’d thought he’d rather cut off his own arm than be back in that same environment every day. But as the days had gone on, he’d been unable to get it out of his head and, when the nightmares started, he’d wondered whether confronting his horror head on might help. On the last day that applications were open, he’d submitted his CV, almost as a dare to himself. When he’d been offered the job, he’d seen it as fate stepping in. He’d been right though; being back did help in some way he couldn’t begin to explain.

  ‘Well, the full story would take a long time and send you to sleep,’ he said. ‘But in my last year at Durham, I started coaching some of the first years and learned I had a bit of a gift for it. I did my year’s teacher training and haven’t looked back. I’m also not bad at raising money, which is probably how I landed the job here. Did you see the plans downstairs for the new sixth-form centre?’

  ‘I did. Looks a big improvement on what we had.’

  ‘It will be. And it’ll cost us upward of ten million.’

  She inclined her head in a small acknowledgement, and he wondered if she was toying with him. Sooner or later, she was going to say it. Twenty bloody years! Where the hell were you?

  ‘Any family?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Something else I learned at Durham was that I had an
affinity with the religious life. I joined an order in my early twenties.’

  He had to stop mentioning Durham. Megan, too, had been in Durham for most of the last twenty years, a matter of miles from him in a high-security prison.

  Megan’s eyes, that he remembered being wide and such a dark brown as to be almost black, seemed smaller, bloodshot, even when she opened them wide in surprise. ‘An order? What are you, a monk?’

  He forced a smile. ‘Yes, in a way. A lay monk. I live in a religious house off the Cowley Road with a dozen other brothers. We all work in the community, but we dedicate our personal lives to study and prayer.’

  She blinked, twice, three times. ‘Blimey. What do the others think about that?’

  ‘The others?’

  He knew exactly who she meant.

  Megan’s mouth lost its amused twist. ‘Xav, Amber, Tal and Felix.’ She spoke the names as though reading them from a card. ‘You know, the others. Our friends. The gang.’

  Daniel realised he was twisting a button on the cuff of his jacket, something he’d never done in his life before. ‘Oh them,’ he said. ‘To be honest, I haven’t seen much of them for years.’

  Megan’s stare hardened.

  ‘Xav works in London, although I think he and his wife still live in Oxford. Felix travels overseas a lot, Talitha’s law practice keeps her nose to the grindstone, and as for Amber, well, you must have seen her on TV. She and I don’t move in the same circles any—’ Daniel stopped talking. Something had happened; something indefinable in the room had shifted.

  ‘Xav’s married?’ Megan said.

  ‘They all are. Apart from me, of course. Xav was the last. The summer before last I think it was. In Wiltshire. Nice country wedding.’

  As he spoke, Daniel had a sense of a fragile structure crumbling, as though he’d pulled a supporting card from a stack and they were in that split second before the whole lot tumbled. Something was happening, and he didn’t have a clue what it was.