I dried my eyes before I reached home. I didn’t want Angus asking me what was the matter. What had happened was my fault, I knew that, but I didn't want him to think that everyone thought it was his fault, too. I walked slowly towards the driveway. I didn't feel safe here anymore; I felt watched. The wind carried an undertone of whispers.
I stopped going into the village after that. I knew that, after the holidays ended, I would still have to go to school, but it would be big school, a senior school. Not junior school, where everyone would whisper about me and stare, and refuse to play with me. In so much as I was capable of looking forward to anything, I was looking forward to senior school - I'd assumed it would be the one in the nearest town. I was wrong. Angus sat me down one day in the study, and asked me whether I'd thought about going to boarding school.
I stared at him. Although it was the end of August, it was a cold, white-skied day; I looked at the empty fireplace and felt the goosebumps rise up on my arms.
"Why?" was the only thing I could think to say.
"Well," he said, "I just thought you might like to consider it. Perhaps you might feel happier amongst some new friends?"
Jessica's name hung in the silence between us. I blinked and looked again at the blackened space of the fireplace.
"I don't mind," I said, in a small voice. In a blinding flash it had occurred to me; my father wanted me to go, because he was ashamed of me. He didn't want to be around me anymore.
"If you don't like it, you can always come home again," said Angus. He smiled one of his rare smiles. "I'm sure you'll have a great time. Better than being here."
I nodded, unable to speak.
After that, things moved quickly. Perhaps Angus pulled some strings to get me into the new school in time for the start of term. I drifted through my few remaining days at Caernaven in a daze, staring out of windows at the distant mountains, watching the clouds blow in over the fields, listening to the distant, mournful cries of the sheep. I thought of all the people in the village and at my old school who would be talking about me and about Jessica. Her parents were still in Cornwall, still searching, still hoping. I wondered whether they would ever come back.
The morning of my departure came. I ate breakfast silently, sitting by Angus’s side in the dining room. My toast was cold by the time I reached for the last piece; it felt as if I were swallowing cardboard. I said goodbye to Mrs. Green and then we walked out to the Land Rover, Angus carrying my suitcases in both hands. Mrs. Green had packed away my clothes but she hadn’t seen Jessica slipping in beside them, wisp thin, visible only to me. Angus didn’t know he carried her in my suitcase, which rode in the back, sliding from one side of the car to the other as we drove around corners. Only I knew she was there. I carried her away with me as I stood waving goodbye to my father on the steps on my new school. I carried her up the steps with me to the room that would be my bedroom for the next eight years. Only I saw her accompanying me that night to the dining room, to the study hall, squeezing in beside me as I lay in that strange bed. I carried her with me from then on.
PART THREE
Chapter Twenty
The music thudded about us. I stood for a minute, frozen, looking at Jessica’s eyes, this woman’s eyes, this woman who called herself Jessica, searching her face for confirmation. I stared so hard it felt as if my eyes would fall out of my face. She had Jessica’s blue eyes, cobalt blue, edged with a fan of brown lashes.
The music was a wall of sound, a thick pulsating force in itself. I could feel it in every part of my body; a tiny beat pulsing through every cell.
"What are you saying?" I said. I think I shrieked it. Dimly, I was aware of people around me looking at me oddly.
Jessica - if it was Jessica - put her hand on my arm. I flinched. I don't know why but I was expecting her to feel cold. Because I'd been thinking of her as dead for so long, I couldn't grasp the fact that she was standing her before me. Real. Alive. Her hand was warm. How could it be her? I put my hands up to my head again and closed my eyes. To anyone watching I must have looked crazed but I was far, far beyond caring about that by now.
"Maudie-"
Still with my eyes closed, I shook my head. I think a small part of me was thinking, hoping, that when I opened my eyes again, she'd be gone. I opened them and she was still standing in front of me. I felt the world begin to recede slowly, my vision narrowing until there was just the woman who called herself Jessica standing in front of me. There was a rushing noise in my ears, even over the thud of the music from the dance floor.
"Maudie-"
She was pulling me. Supporting me. I felt my legs bow beneath me and the floor suddenly got much closer. For one horrible second, I believed again that she was dead; dead and intent on dragging me to wherever the dead go. The rushing noise got louder and for a long, confused moment, I wasn't able to see or think anything.
Then the air became clearer and the noise lessened. I blinked, aware of the cold. We'd come outside to the back alley Becca and I had visited earlier. I wondered briefly where Becca was and whether she was looking for me.
Jessica let go of my arm and stepped back. She was smiling in a strained sort of way.
"Are you alright?" Jessica asked. I realised I was calling her that now, without the caveat I'd used before. Somewhere inside me, it was starting to sink in.
"I'm alright," I said. I wasn't; it was meaningless gabble, just a way of filling up the silence between us.
There was a flurry of movement and noise as a group of smokers came out into the street. I saw Jessica look over at them and shrink, moving back against the wall. Then she saw me looking and her frown became a smile, of sorts.
"Well..." she said.
Her blonde hair glimmered in the light from the open doorway. She was as tall as I was, almost as thin. I dredged up my memories of ten year old Jessica's face and tried to compare them with the face before me now. It struck me that she looked exhausted. There were plum coloured rings beneath her eyes and the flesh fell away beneath her cheekbones. She looked older than her thirty-three years.
The group of smokers finished their cigarettes and stampeded back indoors. For the first time, we had the area to ourselves.
I took a deep breath. "Is it really you?" I said.
She smiled again. "It's really me."
"I can't believe it." My voice slipped and I looked away, blinking. There weren't enough words in my vocabulary to start asking her all the questions I wanted to. I put a hand out to her and then drew it back. That odd, light-headed feeling threatened to swamp me again; I wanted to touch her, to see if she was real. Would she feel warm or cold? Was she really there?
She took my hand and I flinched. She kept hold of my fingers, looking at me steadily. Her hand was cold but it felt solid, the flesh of her fingers like something unnatural, plastic or rubber, against mine.
"Maudie-"
"Where do we start?" I said. My voice was ragged. "What can you possibly say? What can I say?"
"You don't have to think about it now," she said, gently. "We don't have to say anything."
The tears were threatening in earnest now. I felt one escape and make its slow way down my cheek.
"Oh Maudie-"
I held up a hand again. I couldn't have any sympathy, any softness; I wouldn’t be able to stand it, I would dissolve. I think she realised this. She stepped back against the wall again, hugging her elbows.