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

by S J Bolton

  The teacup in Megan’s hand tilted, as though she’d forgotten she was holding it. Pale brown liquid splashed into the saucer and then out, onto the carpet. She paid no attention to it at all and he thought, She’s not normal any more. Something essential inside has gone.

  ‘Megan?’ he said.

  With a start, she saw what had happened, and put the cup and saucer down. The carpet was marked, but she ignored it.

  ‘You’ve all done so well,’ she said.

  ‘Well, our old friends did very well, of course,’ he said. ‘I’m just a humble schoolteacher.’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘Beats where I ended up.’

  Daniel picked up his cup to break eye contact. It was coming. She was going to tell him what she wanted from him. A job? Money? Whatever it was, it would be a big ask, because she was going to punish him for neglecting her all these years, for not being the friend he’d promised to be. He almost wanted her to get on with it. At the very worst, he’d know where he stood. When he looked up though, her eyes had lost focus and were staring at something over his shoulder.

  ‘Megan, what are your plans?’ he said. ‘Are you staying in Oxford?’

  ‘Where else would I go?’

  ‘So what – I mean – are you looking for a job? I’d offer to see if there’s anything here, you know, in the kitchens, or maybe with the cleaning contractors, but – you know – DBS checks. I don’t think it would work.’

  What the hell was he doing? Megan Macdonald had once got through to the international stage of the Physics Olympiad and he was telling her she wasn’t good enough to clean the lavatories in her old school.

  Megan didn’t notice, or ignored, his lack of tact. ‘Yes, I’ll need a job,’ she said. ‘There are schemes to help with that, although they’ll be fairly entry level. I’m also planning a course in September, when they all start up again.’

  ‘Do you have somewhere to live?’

  She pulled her face into an empty smile and gave him a hard stare. ‘Actually, I was hoping you might have a spare room.’

  Something clutched at his stomach. ‘Megan, I live in a religious house. Only men are allowed.’

  The smile stayed as cold and brittle as single-glazing in the north-east. ‘I’m kidding. I have a bedsit on the Iffley Road,’ she told him. ‘Until the neighbours find out I’m there, of course. I’ve been told I may have to move a few times.’

  She was miserable, wretched; she needed pity, not fear. And yet . . .

  ‘Have you thought you might be better off outside Oxford?’ he asked.

  ‘Oxford is my home. My friends are here.’

  Her eyes drifted from him again, as though she’d retreated into some internal private space. This time, he left her there. The hour he’d allocated to Megan was slipping away, and he could not let the governors arrive and find her here. After a minute or more, she leaned forward.

  ‘Dan, did you come and see me?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You and the others. Did you come and see me in prison?’

  He had no idea what to say. They hadn’t, of course. Their parents had insisted they cut all ties with Megan Macdonald and while they were eighteen, officially adults, they were all still financially dependent. Their parents could still tell them what to do and know they’d obey. In all fairness, though, he doubted a single one of them had pushed back. Even Xav, despite his promises, hadn’t been near her.

  But why was she asking? She would know the answer already.

  ‘I had a head injury,’ she answered his unspoken question. ‘When I’d been there about five years. Someone threw me down the stairs. I spent days in a coma.’

  His eyes went to the scar on her forehead, barely visible now that her hair had fallen forward again. A head injury would explain a lot, her vagueness, her habit of drifting off. He said, ‘I had no idea. I’m so sorry to hear that.’

  Even as he spoke, a memory churned inside him. He remembered Tal, years ago, telling them all that Megan had had an accident in prison. Tal had played it down, implied that Megan had needed nothing more than a sticking plaster and some aspirin, and none of the others had even tried to learn more. They’d fallen into the habit of never talking, or even thinking, about Megan when they could help it. It had been easier that way.

  Megan shrugged. ‘It happens. But it means I can’t remember very much at all about those early years.’

  And at that, the feeling in his gut became a small twist of excitement. He hated it, even as he allowed it space to grow.

  ‘For a long time,’ Megan went on, ‘I couldn’t remember the trial, or being sentenced, or the first few years inside. After a while, memories started to come back, but they were vague and really confusing. I’m still not sure whether they’re real or things I made up to fill the gap.’

  ‘That must have been very disturbing.’

  ‘I had no idea what I’d done. Think of that, Daniel. I’d gone from waiting for my A level results that last summer to being an inmate in one of the worst prisons in Britain, and I had no idea why.’

  She was lying to him, she had to be. And yet he could see no hint of deceit in her eyes.

  ‘But, I mean, someone told you, surely?’

  There were tears shining in her eyes now. ‘They told me I’d killed a mother and two young children,’ she said. ‘That I’d deliberately driven my car onto the wrong carriageway of the M40 and that I’d done it lots of times before. That I was convicted of murder and given a life sentence.’

  He wanted to hate himself at that moment for how he was feeling; instead, he hated her for giving him hope that could be snatched away at any time. She could, still, be messing with him.

  ‘But it sounded so unlike me, Dan. Did I do that? Did I really kill those people?’

  Daniel honestly thought he would have given anything at that moment to tell her the truth and yet, to his shame, he didn’t even try. The one thing he could say in his favour was that he couldn’t look at her when he spoke next.

  He said, ‘You did, I’m afraid, Megan.’

  When he looked up, the tears were rolling down her cheeks.

  ‘I was hoping there’d been some mistake,’ she said. ‘I felt sure once I saw you again, you’d explain it all to me.’

  ‘Meg,’ he used the old diminutive without thinking. ‘I can’t explain it, I never could.’

  And that, at least, was the truth; he would never be able to understand what mad, self-destructive force took hold of them that summer.

  ‘So, tell me, please,’ she said. ‘Tell me what I did. I know you were with me that night, at least for the early part of the evening. Tell me how it happened.’

  All this should be provoking some sort of emotional reaction in him. He should want to be sick, or to break down and admit the truth. Instead, Daniel could feel everything inside him freezing over. He wasn’t sure he’d feel anything again.

  ‘Megan, there’s no point.’

  Her voice rose. ‘There’s every point. I couldn’t believe what they were telling me. It seemed impossible. I’ll believe you.’

  Her faith should have moved him; it didn’t.

  ‘We were at Tal’s,’ he said. ‘We were drinking. I think you were in the pool for a lot of the time. We mostly fell asleep, in the pool house. When we woke up, you were gone.’ He got to his feet, determined to end the charade the meeting had become. ‘That’s all I know, Megan, I’m sorry.’

  She stared back at him, her eyes big and frightened, the scar on her forehead reddened and ugly. ‘But why, Dan? Why would I do something so stupid, so reckless? Was that like me?’

  ‘No.’ He felt no shock at how hard his voice had become. ‘It took us all by surprise. No one could believe it. Megan, I’m sorry, but I have a governors’ meeting and I have to get ready. I have to see you out.’

  She made no move to
get up. ‘Oh. I thought, maybe, we could have a drink, or something.’

  ‘Not tonight, I’m afraid.’

  Never. Never again would he be in this woman’s company. He took a step closer to the door and outside, in the car park, recognised the car of one of the governors.

  ‘Soon then,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with the others but it’s hard to get phone numbers. I’ve called Amber’s office, but she hasn’t got back to me, and I wasn’t sure what Talitha’s firm is called.’

  ‘I imagine Amber’s very busy. They all will be.’ Daniel forced a smile. ‘At least you got me. I’m a bit tied up for the next few weeks, but maybe in the summer we could have coffee or something? Is there a number I can get you on?’

  He had no intention of meeting her; he just wanted her out of there.

  ‘Can you give me any numbers?’ she said. ‘You must be in touch with them.’

  He was at the door to his office now. ‘Not really. Not any more. Different circles, Megan. I’m just a humble schoolteacher.’

  At last, she got to her feet. ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ she said.

  ‘What question?’

  ‘Did you come to see me before I had my accident? I know you didn’t afterwards. I sent out so many visiting orders, but none of you came.’

  He turned from her. ‘We’d have been at university, starting jobs.’

  ‘I was in Durham, Dan. Like you.’

  He jumped when he felt her breath on the back of his neck. She’d moved very close, was touching his shoulder.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I was a monster, I understand that. You had to distance yourselves. Is that how you still feel?’

  Yes, more than she knew. He said, ‘No, of course not. But lives have moved on, Meg, you must understand that.’ He pulled away, gently, but she held on.

  ‘Will you tell them that I’d like to see them? Will you let them know I’m back?’

  ‘Of course. But I’m hardly in touch with them myself. I’m not sure when I’ll see any of them again.’

  She nodded, slowly and sadly, and didn’t speak again as he led her down the stairs. At the front door, she reached for the handle and seemed to lack the strength to pull it towards her. He reached round and opened it.

  ‘You don’t look well,’ he said. ‘Are you registered with a GP? I can help you with that.’

  ‘I have kidney disease,’ she told him. ‘I caught a virus a few years ago. It affects my liver too, but the kidneys are the worst affected. Prisons are not healthy places.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He was running out of other things to say and a few yards away, the chairman of the governors was getting out of his car. ‘Is it treatable?’

  ‘No. It will deteriorate over the next few years. Faster if I drink heavily, which I probably will, because most ex-cons do. I really need a donor, but convicted killers are way, way down on the approved list of organ recipients.’

  The room seemed to tilt. For a moment, Daniel thought he was falling. He even reached out and caught hold of the wall. There was absolutely nothing he could say to her.

  She stood, on the threshold of his school, looking up at him and he knew, almost word for word, what she was going to say next.

  ‘My one chance,’ she began, ‘and it’s a slim one, is to find someone the same blood group as me.’ She smiled then, and he caught a glimpse of the old Megan.

  ‘Someone who owes me a favour.’

  17

  The governors’ meeting ran over time and Daniel had to excuse himself. He left quickly, even rudely, cutting more than one conversation short. Outside, the evening was mild, plenty of light left in the sky, but he pulled his coat closed and raised the collar all the same as he left the school premises. He was halfway down the road when it occurred to him that he was hiding. He even stopped and looked around, in case Megan was lurking somewhere nearby.

  A hundred yards further, he slipped into a narrow, cobbled cul-de-sac, darker than the evening he’d left behind. At its end, he pressed a four-digit key code to open a tall iron gate to let him into the grounds of Old School, the oldest of the school buildings, built when Victoria was on the throne. His footsteps crunched over the gravel as he made his way to the portcullis at the entrance to the choristers’ tunnel.

  One of the biggest excitements for new pupils at All Souls’ – he could still remember his own glee all those years ago – was the discovery of the secret passage, a stone tunnel that ran beneath the main road. All pupils, up to but not including the sixth form, were expected to use it to cross the road.

  At its opposite end, fifty yards away, Daniel could see a dark silhouette. Talitha had let herself into the tunnel with the key code he’d texted her and was walking quickly towards him, her heels rapping on the stone.

  Years ago, Talitha had sacrificed her fabulous hair on the altar of looking serious in court. She couldn’t do anything about the curls though, and it still spread out around her head like a glossy brown halo. In better light, Daniel would have been able to see the gold highlights that picked up the flecks in her brown eyes. Still thin, with that creamy southern European skin that didn’t seem to age, he never saw her without thinking how striking she was. And yet, there was something about Talitha’s looks that seemed to repel rather than attract. As teenagers, it had been the softly pretty Amber who’d gained all the male attention. And Megan, of course, but most boys had been in awe of Megan.

  ‘How was it?’

  The gate clanged shut as Daniel led Talitha away from the tunnel. All Souls’, being a city-centre establishment, had little in the way of grounds, but did boast one piece of Oxford real estate that was completely its own – School Field, a large island, bound on all sides by the River Cherwell. It was possible that one or two people on the upper floors of the school or the nearby colleges might see Daniel and Talitha on the island, but they couldn’t possibly overhear.

  From the rose garden in front of Old School they followed a gravel path, via two ornate wooden structures known simply as The White Bridges. The land beyond was slipping into darkness.

  He said, ‘She doesn’t remember.’

  Speaking too quickly, probably too loudly, but desperate to get Tal’s take on it all, he repeated what Megan had told him about her head injury and subsequent memory loss. He couldn’t have been making much sense because more than once Talitha made him stop and repeat himself or clarify something. Eventually, even she seemed to accept that a miracle had happened.

  ‘Wow,’ she said softly. ‘We didn’t see that coming.’

  By this time they were on the island, following an indented path formed by generations of children trooping around the pitches to the pavilion. It was flat and firm enough for even Tal to cope with in her heels.

  ‘She asked me to tell her what happened,’ he said. ‘What she did that night.’

  ‘Well, I guess you were in as good a position as anyone to do that.’

  There were times when Daniel could cope with the darkness of Talitha’s humour, times when he even found it funny. This wasn’t one of them.

  ‘I told her it was true,’ he said. ‘That she really had killed those people. I heard the words coming out of my mouth and I didn’t believe what I was doing, and I kept on doing it. I think I broke her.’

  Tal squeezed his arm. ‘She’s been in prison for nearly twenty years. She was broken long before tonight.’

  ‘I could have changed everything. I could have told her she didn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘No, you did. Is that what you should have told her?’

  Daniel stopped walking. After a second, Talitha did too.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dan, I shouldn’t have said that. We were all responsible for what happened. But if Megan really doesn’t remember that night, then it’s over. Finally.’

  Knowing exactly what Talitha mea
nt, Dan still couldn’t allow himself to feel it. Not yet. If anything, he felt worse than he had before. He’d been given a chance at redemption that evening and hadn’t taken it. So many years, and he was still a coward at heart.

  ‘We can help her,’ Talitha said. ‘At a distance, obviously. There’s the fund, for one thing. I’m not sure how much—’

  ‘A little over a million,’ he told her. ‘I asked Xav last night.’

  The trust fund, born from guilt and desperation, had become a meaningful reality over the years. Felix had contacted them all in their first year in employment to nudge them into setting it up. Xav, already a rising star in investment banking, had managed the fund and it had grown well. Amber and Daniel, on more modest salaries, hadn’t been major contributors, but they’d done their bit.

  Talitha gave a soft whistle. ‘Well, that’s great,’ she said. ‘That’s a huge deal for someone in Megan’s position. She can buy a flat, maybe move abroad. That’s what we should encourage her to do. Did you tell her about the money?’

  ‘She asked me if we’d visited her before she had her accident,’ Daniel said. ‘I had to tell her no, that we’d abandoned her.’

  ‘And she really has no memory of what happened that night? Did she actually say that? We need to be sure.’

  ‘She begged me to tell her there’d been a mistake, that she wasn’t the monster the world had labelled her.’

  They’d reached the sports pavilion, a picturesque white-washed folly built in the 1930s. Climbing onto the veranda, they sat on damp wooden chairs.

  ‘We knew this was coming,’ Talitha said. ‘We knew she wouldn’t stay in prison for ever.’

  ‘No, even you couldn’t manage that.’

  Talitha’s breath whistled. Glancing sideways, he saw her face tense.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘It was Dad.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, your dad retired years ago.’

  Daniel had never challenged her about this before, but the five of them had talked, in the beginning, about the possibility that their parents might suspect the truth. Not a single mum or dad had said anything, but there’d been a subtle shift in how they behaved around their children. Amber had explained it best; she’d said, ‘It’s like they love me a little less.’