As
Martha followed Matron into her office-cum-surgery, she thought the woman’s steps were beginning to drag almost like her own. Her brisk, puffing efficiency had all but evaporated.
‘
Alice was sick, you say?’ Matron frowned. ‘She actually vomited?’
Martha
nodded, easing her aching bones into a chair. ‘Halfway through lunch.’
‘
Hm. Could be a tummy upset from the heat, I suppose.’ She stood with her back to the window, chewing her lower lip. ‘Where is she now?’
Where
indeed? Martha thought. When she drove into the forecourt, Daisy was leaning against the ornamental wall, smirking like an evil pixie. Without a word to her mother, Alice dived out of the car and hastened away with her and, as they reached the trees, Grace Blackwell, the other side of their triangle, came to meet them. The three of them moved as if joined by an invisible bond and, watching them, Martha wondered, somewhat fearfully, if they had persuaded themselves that life was a riddle whose solution they could only find together.
Dragging
her attention back to Matron, she said, ‘She went off with Daisy and that other girl they knock about with.’
‘
Well, she’ll be all right, then,’ Matron said, in a rush of relief. ‘Daisy would tell me
immediately
if Alice were poorly. She looks after her like a sister.’ She offered Martha one of her tight-lipped, uncertain smiles. ‘Daisy’s such a nice girl, isn’t she?’
‘
Is she?’
‘
She is indeed! Always happy, always smiling! If there were more like her my job wouldn’t be half the trial it is.’ Squeezing behind her desk to sit down, she added, ‘She doesn’t even get upset when she’s teased about her lisp.’
‘
Perhaps you only see one side of her,’ suggested Martha, to whom Daisy’s ever ready smile was not a meaningless social gesture nor a true smile, but more a baring of teeth.
‘
Oh, I don’t think so.’ Matron was adamant. ‘Everybody likes her. I’ve never heard a bad word said about her.’
‘
But wasn’t she involved in the fracas at breakfast?’
Matron
shook her head. ‘Dear me, no. That was between Alice and Nancy Holmes, and I must say you could have knocked me down with a feather when I heard. Alice
swearing
, of all things!’
‘
I suppose the tension’s getting to her. It must be hard on everyone.’
Matron
kneaded her hands. ‘It’s dreadful,’ she admitted. ‘One thing on top of another! I shudder to think where it might all end.’
‘
At least Torrance wasn’t badly hurt.’
‘
Not this time, but who knows what’ll happen next?’ Fear deadened Matron’s voice. ‘First poor Sukie, then Torrance. Who’s next? I ask myself. Who’s next?’
Vivienne
used cannabis because other people had told her it numbed the capacity to feel and although they were yet to be proved entirely right, until today she had believed it took the edge off her pain. Now, utterly wretched after the emotional Armageddon of an hour with Imogen, she knew better, but perversely, the only hope of respite still lay in her addiction and so, as soon as lunch was over, she sidled out of the refectory.
She
was about to set foot on the staircase when Jack Tuttle almost pounced on her. ‘Superintendent McKenna asked me to see you,’ he said.
She
swallowed hard. ‘Why?’
‘
You all have to be interviewed. Had you forgotten?’ He began herding her up the stairs, chatting amiably. ‘If you don’t mind, we’ll go to your common room. Somebody’s using the visitors’ room. Would you like to have a woman officer with you?’
‘
What?’ She half turned.
‘
Shall I ask a woman officer to be present?’
‘
No.’ Taking the second flight of stairs two at a time, she hurried along the corridor towards the smokers’ den, with his footsteps thumping determinedly in her wake. The room stank of stale tobacco. She threw open the window, perched on the ledge, pulled cigarettes and lighter from her pocket, and started to speak even before he had found himself a seat. ‘You know I smoke dope. My parents did too, but they grew up and took to drink instead.’ Fingers shaking, she cupped her hands round the lighter flame. ‘I don’t know if they ever got busted because we’re not hot on communication, but they won’t be surprised when I do. I doubt if they’ll even care.’
The
bluish tinge to her skin made Jack think of the undead in a horror film. She was just as pitiful, too, he realised and probably just as doomed. He smiled gently at her. ‘From our perspective, nailing the suppliers is more important than prosecuting users.’
‘
Dream on!’ She grinned fleetingly, with the mirth of a death’s head. ‘I don’t fancy being crippled by a baseball bat.’ Then her mind’s eye was filled with a picture of Imogen’s terrifying stump, with its glistening scars and raw calluses, and her hands remembered the feel of taut, angry flesh and knotted muscle. She was afraid the touch of that mutilated limb would stay with her until the day she died.
‘
People worry about you,’ Jack said.
Vivienne
knew it was important to concentrate, in case he trapped her into a dangerous admission, but she felt dreadfully dislocated; part here, part still with Imogen, part elsewhere and, as ever, out of reach. ‘Yeah, I know,’ she said at last. ‘And look what happens to them.’
‘
Are you referring to Torrance?’
‘
Who else?’
‘
If there’s a connection between your drug taking and what happened to her, there must be a pusher in the school.’
‘
You’re twisting my words. I just meant that bad things happen when people bother about me. I kept telling her to leave me alone, but she wouldn’t. She’s a stubborn cow.’
Jack
regarded her hungry eyes and jittery limbs. ‘You’ve got youth, looks and brains, and you must have money or you wouldn’t be here. So why take drugs?’
The
death’s-head grin flickered once more. ‘
Because
I’m here.’
‘
Most girls would give an arm and a leg for an education like this. I know my own daughters would.’
‘
Stop talking about missing limbs, will you?’ she pleaded.
Baffled
by the surreal turn of the conversation, he stared at her.
‘
I smoke dope because it helps pass the time,’ she went on tonelessly. ‘There’s an awful lot of it.’
‘
You subscribe to the view that life is pointless, do you?’
‘
Isn’t it?’ Shifting uneasily on the window ledge, she dragged hard on the cigarette. ‘What was the point of Imogen losing her leg? What was the point of Sukie being born?’ She turned to blow smoke through the window. ‘And please don’t tell me they’re being punished for something they did in another incarnation.’
Somewhere,
Jack remembered, he had read that the pain and grief of youth were pleasurable, because they were no more than a rehearsal for the real thing, but this girl’s grief and pain would be her dark escort to the grave. ‘That would be very crass,’ he said. ‘But the fact that apparently pointless things occur doesn’t make
life
futile.’ In an effort to reach her, he added, ‘Even if you feel you’re just filling in time between being born and dying.’
The
smoke from her cigarette wriggled in the draught. ‘You must be a good father. You take the trouble to think.’
‘
I’m not sure my girls would agree with you.’
‘
They wouldn’t be normal if they did. You always think your parents are the world’s worst.’
‘
Are yours?’
She
shrugged. Dunno. They’re so laid-back their heads bump on the floor.’ She ground out the cigarette in an ashtray overflowing with stubs, knotted sweet wrappers and balls of tinfoil. ‘Anything goes, as far as they’re concerned.’
‘
Taking drugs probably destroyed their capacity to care.’
‘
I wonder why they don’t do the same for me?’
‘
Perhaps they never will. You could save yourself a lot of money and no end of unhappiness by giving them up as a lost cause.’ He met her wary eyes. ‘I can’t condone lawbreaking, but you need help rather than punishment and some constructive occupation.’ He paused then, hoping for comment on the school’s much-vaunted pastoral care and its impact on her own welfare, but she said nothing. ‘So,’ he asked eventually, ‘what will you do when you leave here?’
‘
I’ve no idea.’
‘
No plans to follow in Ainsley Chapman’s footsteps?’
‘
Don’t be funny! I flunked two A level papers. I won’t get into the reddest redbrick, never mind Oxbridge.’
‘
What’s to stop you doing resits?’
‘
Where? Scott can’t wait to see my rear view.’
‘
You could find a crammer.’
‘
Maybe,’ Vivienne agreed, sliding off the window ledge and into a chair in one liquid movement. ‘How old are your kids?’
‘
They’re twins, the same age as you. They’ve both got places at Bangor University.’
‘
So you’re stuck with them for another few years.’ When she smiled, her face lit up. ‘But I don’t expect you mind, do you?’
‘
If anything, I’m glad.’
Elbows
on knees, she leaned forward, staring at the floor. The cheap hair-cord carpet was spotted with coffee stains and holed with cigarette burns. ‘I went to prep school at seven, like my brothers, then came here. We see our parents during the holidays, but we hardly know each other. The people at school are really your family.’ She grimaced. ‘Tough if you don’t get on.’
‘
You must have
some
friends.’
She
shook her head. ‘I wasn’t allowed to have them. I arrived here with a reputation, so Scott was afraid I’d be a bad influence.’ She groped for another cigarette. ‘Torrance is the nearest I’ve got to a friend, but that’s only because she won’t let Scott push her about.’
‘
Surely you weren’t on drugs when you came here?’
‘
Nah, but my brothers were. Their public school chucked them out in the end.’ She watched him through a haze of smoke. ‘I can almost hear your mind working. Do I do drugs because it’s in my genes and Scott knew that, or do I do them because she isolated me with her cruel little games? I don’t know the answer, so I can’t help.’ Crossing her legs, she draped her right arm over her left, the cigarette dangling from her long pale fingers. ‘I don’t want to sound more bitter and twisted than I actually am, but Scott marked me out from the start. I got excluded and ostracised in all sorts of ways, but you could never put your finger on
how
. She’s too subtle for that.’
‘
Does the same thing happen to others?’
‘
If Scott thinks you’re likely to ruffle her atmosphere, you get the treatment, and you keep on getting it until your spirit breaks.’ Rearranging herself into another unconsciously elegant pose, she added, ‘The teachers won’t interfere because they’re scared of her. They know if they side with the underdogs they’ll end up joining them. She doesn’t just victimise people, though. She has favourites, but the trouble is you’re never sure who’s in and who’s out of her good books, or why.’ With another smile she said, ‘You should talk to Torrance as soon as her head’s together. She’s got some really wild theories.’
‘
Like what?’
‘
Oh, nothing very startling.’ Her smile died and her body slumped, along with her mood. ‘Only that Scott’s emotionally retarded, sort of locked in her own adolescence. She’s very fickle, you see. She’ll be all over someone one week and dropping them like a hot brick the next. She
plays
with people. Unfortunately, no one but her knows the rules of the game.’
‘
Might Torrance know something that would help to explain Sukie’s death?’
When
she glanced at him, her eyes were narrowed, but perhaps only because of the smoke wreathing about her face. ‘I doubt it.’
‘
But they were close, weren’t they? Lady Melville said Sukie adored her.’
‘
Lady
Hester
,’ Vivienne corrected him politely. ‘There’s a protocol to be observed, you know, not that it makes the slightest difference. “Lady Hopeless” would suit her better.’ She puffed on the cigarette. ‘She was barely out of rompers when Sukie was born and she stayed that way because her own mother locked her in a time warp by constantly harking back to the upset she’d caused. And of course, none of them ever missed an opportunity to tell
Sukie
how much misery and disgrace she’d brought on the family.’ Jack’s face clearly betrayed his feelings, for she went on to say, ‘Yes, they are cruel and unreasonable, but so are lots of people. Sukie coped with it by kidding herself she was a changeling. She was always wishing her real mother would come and take her away.’
‘
Did she tell you that?’
‘
She told everybody, and people sympathised to her face and sniggered behind her back, as they do if you let your dreams be known, although Torrance didn’t, ever. She once gave me a hell of a slap when she overheard me giggling with Charlotte about it.’
‘
Did she slap her as well?’ Grappling with the dynamics of Sukie’s changing allegiances, he suddenly realised that Torrance’s casual gesture of support would be enough to provoke the lonely Sukie to shift her complete loyalty, particularly in the wake of her ruined friendship with Imogen.
‘
Dunno,’ Vivienne replied. ‘Probably not. She’d know it was a waste of energy.’
Gradually,
silence fell about them, and at first it seemed pleasant and agreeable. Lolling gracefully in her chair, Vivienne continued to puff at the cigarette. Absently, he rustled papers. Outside, birds twittered, leaves whispered in the breeze and the motor mower chugged as Sean O’Connor went about his business. But for all its tranquillity the atmosphere was lethargic, and Jack began to understand how it could so easily become stultifying and oppressive, as if becalmed in the middle of a huge ocean. The questions he wanted to ask jostled in his mind, but he sensed she was near the edge of a precipice and was afraid of pushing her over. Settling for something innocuous, he said at last, ‘Why did you take Imogen out of the refectory earlier?’
‘
Jesus!’ The cigarette fell from her hand and began burning another hole in the carpet. When she bent down, he saw shivers rippling down her skinny back.
‘
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’
Her
fingers shook as she picked up the butt and when she looked up at him she seemed to have grown old in the space of seconds. ‘I brought her upstairs because she wasn’t well and nobody else was bothering.’ The death’s-head grin returned. ‘My brief reunion with the human race.’
‘
Your bitterness is painful. If not to you, to others.’
‘
Not half as painful as Imogen’s stump.’
‘
Why?’ he wondered, almost talking to himself. ‘Why is her accident more important than Sukie’s death? Whenever we try to talk about Sukie, the conversation drags itself round to Imogen.’
‘
I don’t know. Maybe they’re one and the same.’ Her voice was weary. ‘Maybe because Imogen’s still here. Sukie’s pain is all over.’