Losing Nicola (12 page)

‘No,' I said. ‘No. Honestly.'

She smiled apologetically. ‘I should have listened to you. Not insisted on inviting that frightful girl.'

There was a surge of movement as people crowded towards the dining room, I looked back. Nicola was still standing by the hedge, staring from the darkened garden. For a moment, she looked baffled and lonely. Behind her someone must have called her name because she turned, looked mildly surprised, pasted a smile onto her mouth and nodded.

‘Just a minute,' she said.

T
he morning after the party, the house was peaceful. The rest of the evening had passed so uneventfully – apart from some kind of skirmish at the side door I was too busy to investigate – that by morning I had almost forgotten Nicola. Perhaps it was easier to do so; otherwise I should have been forced to accept that she had deliberately attempted to sabotage my birthday party. Knowing I wouldn't need to see her again, I felt nothing but relief. Very soon we'd be returning to school, and after that, I would never come back to Glenfield House.

Now Orlando leaned across the breakfast table and with a solemn nod, indicated that today was Blackberry Day. Swelled with importance, I nodded back. Gravely we gathered our kit together: Wellington boots, long-sleeved tops, gloves, walking stick, paper bags, punnets, bowls. Only Ava, keeper of preserving pans and Kilner jars, knew that we would be returning later, laden down with fruit and made preparations accordingly: cooking apples to be purchased, two picnic lunches to be prepared and packed into our father's khaki canvas army knapsack, along with a bottle of water, some sandwiches and four digestive biscuits. As formal as though we were about to undergo an initiation ceremony or an ordination, we got onto our bikes and cycled down the drive.

We trawled our sites, desultorily picking only the very biggest and ripest. We had perfected our technique over the past few years. Grasping our walking sticks, we used the curved handle to pull branches into reach. Carefully, we plucked the shiny black fruit and dropped them into our paper bags. Once they were full, we transferred them to our punnets. By midday, we had already filled our bike baskets and cycled back to Glenfield to unload our haul into Ava's waiting pans.

The house was still quiet, which was unusual. My brothers and their guests weren't up yet. The PGs and my parents had gone about their various businesses.
We took two more biscuits from the tin in the larder and cycled back again, anticipation sparkling through our veins. The morning's crop had been merely the prelude to the main event. Dumb with expectation, we laid down our bikes on the edge of the road, picked up our equipment and began the easy clamber up to the top of the cliff where the Secret Glade waited for us, a bountiful treasure trove, a dazzling hoard of berried wealth. We started to pick from the outside, saving the inner part with its circle of grass as the crowning achievement of our day's endeavour.

I'd kept faithfully to my promise not to tell Nicola about the Secret Glade, but was nonetheless apprehensive. I'd mentioned it to Charles, and he could have passed the information on to Julian, who might possibly have told her. The thorns were thick and vicious; the bushes, as far as I could see and to my great relief, were untrampled. We settled into our picking rhythm.

Reach, pull, pick, drop.

Reach. Pull. Pick. Drop.

The world contracted from sea, sky, sun, horizon, to a narrow prospect of thorn, stem, leaf, berry. The boughs were heavy with fruit, but we knew that on the inner side of the circle of bushes lay the real treasure. We could see the untouched strands waiting for us, fleshy with fruit, lushly black, glisteningly ripe. Our bowls were filled and refilled with nature's bounty.

‘Looks like a bumper crop this year,' Orlando said.

I nodded in agreement. ‘Fiona will be pleased.'

Reach. Pull. Pick. Drop.

I scratched my inner arm on a hidden bramble spray, and stopped to suck out the soft bramble pins. Reach. Pull. Pick. Drop.

Orlando finally decreed that it was time to enter the virgin heart of the Secret Glade. Shoulders hunched against the bramble barbs, oblivious to the scratches and the nettle stings, we pushed our way through into the little patch of dandelioned grass.

Reach, pull, pick, drop.

Reach. Pull. Pick — Oh . . . God!

Both of us stopped, mouths open, flushing with fear. Something lay there on the grass. Impossible as it seemed on this normal, ordinary sunny day, we were staring in horror at a body.

God
. . .

Simultaneously, our throats acid with bile, we retched, then gave another horror-struck look. Our baskets fell from our fingers, the berries spilling over the ground like tiny nuggets of coke.

‘Holy
God
!' whispered Orlando.

My mind erupted in a cacophony of sensations: screams stifled, throat gripped, blows falling onto resistless flesh. And fear, purple-bright and poison-green, black as pain. The air of this secret place was thick with terror. I gave another wincing glance, my stomach heaving, and looked directly at violent death.

As I clutched at the sleeve of Orlando's rough fisherman's sweater, there was no doubt in my mind. I knew about blood, and murder. My parents' bookshelves were filled with green-backed detective novels. Looking at the crumpled heap lying to one side of the grass, I realized how antiseptic words were, how completely inadequate to convey the essence of this heart-stopping reality.

Woodpigeons clattered in a nearby copse of sycamore trees. Gulls shrieked. Further away, I could clearly hear the chewing sound of the sea on the pebble beach. The bitter odour of crushed dandelions filled the air; blood smeared the grass. A faint sweetish odour lingered among the leaves. The scent of death, I thought.

The body lay half on its side, like a piece of garbage thrown carelessly away. Had the killer carried it here, tossed it between the brambles before fleeing? Is that all she had been to him, a piece of garbage to be discarded when done with? Or had she arranged to meet someone here? Someone who was at the party?

I cleared my throat. ‘Or- Orlando . . .'

‘What?' His voice was as tentative as mine.

‘She's dead, isn't she?'

‘I think she must be.'

‘Do you think it . . . it happened here?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Somebody must have seen whoever it was. There'd be blood on them. There'd must have been, blood and . . .'

‘Shut
up
!'

The face was battered beyond recognition. Teeth showed through the torn cheek, white bone under the blood. The mouth had been split by blows from a fist. We could see that the body was that of a young girl. The skirt, short, navy-blue, was torn, raised to the waist, revealing thin bruised thighs. There was no underwear. The fleshy triangle at the base of the stomach was flecked with fine brown fuzz, where the pubic hair had begun to grow. The white blouse was ripped; one small breast was visible.

In those years after the war, there was little money about for clothes. One or two outfits for every day, one for Sunday best, one's school uniform. I knew that the navy-blue skirt had been run up on the sewing machine by the victim's mother, that the blouse was purchased last week from the general clothing store in the little town. I'd seen them both only the night before.

‘It's . . .' I tried to get the word out but couldn't.

‘It can't be.' The expression on Orlando's face was hard to read. Horror and disgust, shock, fear.

I forced my fist against my mouth. Nicola. Oh God . . . Don't throw up.
Don't
. My lips trembled.

With sudden clarity, I noticed details which, afterwards, I realized I could not possibly have seen. The blue veins leading from Nicola's tiny wrists up towards her arms. The roughened skin near her right-hand thumbnail. A mole at the back of her neck. A pulled thread at the third buttonhole of her blouse.

Was it because I had observed Nicola so minutely over the previous weeks that I could see them now? Or was it simply that shock had sharpened my vision?

‘Nicola,' Orlando said loudly, as though hoping she was asleep. ‘Nicola . . .' His voice faded away

And to my surprise, I found that, once given identity, the thing lying on the ground was less potent. Young though we were, death had been a constant in our lives, either through absence or from effect. The dead were never going to come back. The war had left gaps, forever marking those left behind. Standing fearfully on the rough, sun-streaked grass, I understood that those gaps were abstract.

This was real. This was not death, but Death. This was how it might have happened to father, brother, husband, cousin, this tearing of flesh, this pounding, this blood, this hideous non-existence.

‘Do you think she could possibly be still alive?' Normally the more dominant of the two of us, Orlando seemed to have shrunk inside himself.

‘No.' I bit my lip. ‘At least, I don't see how she could be. Not like that . . .' I gestured at the torn face, the blood.

‘We ought to check whether . . .'

‘I can't.'

‘We should, we must . . .'

Cautiously Orlando stepped towards the slight body on the grass, over the soft slime of crushed fruit. Gagging with fear, breathing as shallowly as a reptile, I tiptoed after him, stood with my knees against his back as he knelt beside her.

She lay on her side, almost tucked under the fountain of bramble sprays, invisible unless you entered the thorny barrier they made. It was nearly September and the bushes had already begun to turn autumnal, red-edged. Small long-legged spiders climbed among the leaves. I could see one on her hair, another on her leg.

Orlando reached out a shrinking, juice-stained finger and warily touched her shoulder.

Not warily enough.

The small body fell backwards so that it lay face up. An open, blood-glazed eye glinted between strands of hair. The legs seemed wider open now, spread. I could see more blood on her thighs, marked with purple bruises, and the mortifying display of her private parts, whorled like a rose. This moment settled into my mind like a stain, permanently inked, indelible.

Whatever doubts he might have had before, Orlando couldn't avoid seeing now that she was truly dead. ‘She's . . . she's cold,' he said huskily.

I reached out a hand but I couldn't touch her. She'd been my friend, my enchantress, my lack of ease. I envisaged my fingers denting her flesh, leaving themselves imprinted on her body. I would never be able to wash away the feel of it. Intimations of mortality enlaced me. Solemnity. Something which once had been so singularly vital, so full, it had seemed, of maleficent energy, was definitively absent and would be so forever.

Suddenly there was movement among the bushes. Twigs cracked, bent tendrils whipped back. Was someone there, was someone watching us, and if so, who? The murderer? The police?

Both of us whirled round but could see nothing. I thought of shoe prints among the crushed blackberries, of tell-tale fibres left at the scene of the crime, a dropped button. I thought of a madman come back to the scene of the crime, ready to murder again.

Panic gripped me. ‘We've got to get away!' I screamed. I pulled at Orlando's jersey, his hair, his arm. ‘Quick! Come on!'

We raced for the far side of the little green space, shoved ourselves onto the faint track between the bushes, heedless of the biting thorns. It seemed like an infinity of time before we were clear and standing on the low chalky cliff. I took a deep breath of salty air to steady the faintness which threatened me, then scrambled, stumbled, staggered down through the bushes and dead leaves, dropping at last into the green lane and running to the road.

Retrieving our bikes, we cycled away as fast as we could pedal. Without discussing it, we stopped at the nearest bench, dropped our bikes on the green, and sat down. ‘The police,' I panted. My head ached abominably. ‘We'll have to tell them.'

Orlando said nothing.

I could sense his resistance. ‘We have to, Orlando.' I had always assumed the world would stop, if only for a moment, when death occurred. But I could see how we were being forced to keep moving on, towards whatever came next, that time did not exist in the present but was always the past, just as what we had seen was only part of the current bearing us towards the future, that
now
was and always would be, uncapturable, unpossessable.

He leaned forward and rested his head in his hands. ‘I'll never, ever,
ever
. . .' He began to cry, his shoulders heaving. ‘. . . never forget . . . never, not as long as I live.'

It was the same for me. I knew the image of that slight body, foully done to death, would remain imprinted on my mind's retina, ineradicable. What made the moment especially terrifying were Orlando's tears. I had never seen him weep before, not ever, even when he had the utmost cause to do so.

‘The police . . .' There were tears in my own eyes, and in my throat.

‘Who could
possibly
have done something like . . .'

‘We need to tell someone, Orlando.'

‘Will they think we did it?'

‘Don't be silly.' I put an arm around his shaking shoulders. Usually happy to defer to his seniority, I took charge, feeling a calm confidence.

‘Why do we have to tell them anything?' he said. ‘They'll find her eventually. We're not the only people who go up there.'

‘But if we don't tell, and then they find evidence to show we
were
there, they'll wonder why we didn't report it. And all our blackberry picking stuff is up there. And Ava will wonder why we haven't brought any more berries back with us. We have to explain.'

‘There'll be hundreds of people asking questions. Wanting us to go over and over it again and again. I don't think I can stand it.'

‘What about an anonymous call?'