Burning Secrets (18 page)

Chapter 42

D
ANIEL AND
L
OUIE
followed the procession of flickering lights up the hill towards Filey Point. It was a freezing cloudless night and the moon was a chip of ice in the sky above them. They hadn't seen a crowd like this since the 4th of October fireworks, which seemed a lifetime ago. Then the atmosphere had been festive, the air filled with piped music and barbecue smoke; now it was sombre and the only sound was the crunch of feet on the stony path.

Daniel didn't have much appetite for this cliff-top vigil. And besides, until Mrs Ivory's body was found he would always harbour a faint suspicion that she wasn't dead at all, but out there somewhere, watching. It was the thought that he might see Ramsay there that persuaded him to make the trek. Louie seemed eager to attend for reasons of her own.

Unbelievable turnout
, Daniel thought as he and Louie came to the bottom of Filey Hill. Considering what Mrs Ivory had actually done. Most of those milling around with candles in jam jars were teenagers, students from Stape High.
It must be the drug that's making them so forgiving
, he decided.
When it finally wears off they'll start to feel angry
.

The front of the procession had reached the top of Filey Point, and stood in a loose semi-circle waiting for the tail to catch up. No one was quite sure whether they were supposed to be staring out to sea, or watching the column of lights snaking up the hill towards them. Once the last stragglers had arrived, there was an awkward moment as it became clear that the student organisers hadn't really planned what to do next. People waited placidly for something to happen. They looked to Daniel more like a group of carol singers than a group of mourners standing around with their lanterns, but no one led the singing, so nobody sang.

At last, somebody stepped forward and placed their jam-jar candle on the ground in the spot where the car had been found, and stepped back again. There was a general murmur of approval and gradually, one and two at a time, the rest of the congregation did the same until there was a blazing circle of light at their feet. Those furthest from the circle began to break away and move back down the hill, but then stopped, realising that it was now impossible to see the path. People started to go back to fetch their candles, hesitating over whether it was correct protocol to take the nearest one, or to try to locate the one they had originally brought. They got in each other's way, singeing coat cuffs and kicking over jam jars in the confusion. Daniel scanned the faces, trying to pick out Ramsay, and noticed that nobody had shed so much as a tear. Which, he supposed, was precisely what Mrs Ivory would have wanted.

 * 

Ramsay had stopped to retie her shoelace and when she stood up he was there. The memory of their last meeting, when he'd climbed in her bedroom window, hovered between them.

“I hoped I'd find you here,” he said. “Are you OK?”

Of all the shocks and revelations that had landed one after another since the evacuation of the school, Daniel leaving had hit her harder than any. The betrayal by Mrs Ivory, the drugging, the suicide, were disasters shared by the whole community; the departure of Daniel she would bear alone.

“Have you come to say goodbye?” Her eyes shone in the candlelight.

“How do you know we're going?” They began to walk down the path together, using her candle as a guide.

“Someone saw your mum in the post office filling in a form to have the mail re-directed. They mentioned it to someone, who mentioned it to someone else . . . ”

“Right,” said Daniel. “Of course.”

“You'll be glad to get away from this crazy place,” she said, lightly. “Back to civilisation.”

“No I won't,” he insisted. “I even rang up the freezing works and the furniture warehouse to see if they had any jobs so I could stay.”

“Uh-huh. So did you get a job?”

“I wasn't being very realistic.”

“So what are you actually going to do?”

“Sixth form, in London. I've got loads to catch up. And then university if anywhere'll have me.”

“You've got it all planned.” She could see his future unrolling without her somewhere far away.

“Not really. I don't even know what subjects I'm going to do. The only bit I'm sure about is going to university. You could go too. We could go to the same one.” Ramsay laughed at this preposterous idea. “I mean it. Then we could see each other every day if we wanted.”

“That's ages away. We won't even know each other by then.”

There was a silence as they both considered what they had been doing two years ago. “OK it is ages,” he conceded. “But we can email and phone and stuff. I wouldn't forget you in two years. I won't forget you in ten.”

She smiled, flattered. Somehow his arm had got around her shoulders, and they walked on like this until they reached the village. A number of cars were parked in the square, waiting to give lifts. Ramsay pointed out her parents standing beside their Land Rover deep in conversation with Fay and Louie, who seemed to be doing most of the talking.

“I wonder what she's saying,” said Daniel uneasily.

“She looks very pale,” said Ramsay, as Louie approached.

“I just did it,” said Louie quietly. “And it wasn't so difficult really.”

Daniel was staring at his sister in disbelief. “You didn't say anything about—”

“I told them the truth. I should have told the truth from the start. But I was too weak and scared.”

“Louie, don't. It's done and forgotten. Don't drag it up.”

“It's not forgotten. And it never will be all the time we keep it a secret.” She turned to Ramsay. “Daniel never lit the fire that killed that man. I did. It was an accident, but he took the blame because he thought I wouldn't be able to cope with police and questions and court, and I might get put in care.”

“It doesn't matter now,” Daniel protested, but she was unstoppable.

“And he was right. I wouldn't have coped; I would have killed myself. So he went to that place, Lissmore, instead and pretended that it was OK, even though we knew it wasn't. We knew it was awful, but we never talked about it, even after he came out, because I was so ashamed that I'd let him lie to everyone, and Mum was so ashamed that she'd let Daniel sacrifice himself. If she'd been stronger, she'd have stopped him. But once he'd told the police, it was like an express train – there was no way of getting off.”

“I wish you'd told me,” said Ramsay.

“I couldn't say what really happened, but I didn't want to lie to you either. So it was best to say nothing. The very first time we met you told me that you can't have a secret on Wragge.”

“That's what I always thought. But it took an outsider to uncover the biggest secret of all,” said Ramsay.

Chapter 43

T
WO WEEKS LATER
the dented estate car sat on the quayside at Port Julian waiting for the incoming ferry to unload.

As before, Daniel was in the back seat, being trampled and breathed on and slobbered over by Chet, while Louie sat in front, with squashable luggage tucked around her feet. There was slightly more space this time, as they had left some boxes of belongings behind at The Brow as a sort of guarantee that they would return. Easter was mentioned by Mum in that non-committal way that was supposed to offer hope without being a promise. Daniel had it fixed in his mind as a firm date.

Louie had accepted the decision to leave quite calmly when it was first discussed, but on the morning of their departure she had cried a storm of tears, and raged against the unfairness of things – just like the old Louie.

At last the ramp was lowered and cars rolled down on to the dockside, a long queue forming at the barrier. Without waiting for clearance, the occupants of a silver van began to unload camera and sound equipment, preparing for an outside broadcast. Other drivers and passengers abandoned their vehicles and strolled around, chatting, smoking and complaining about their dead mobile phones. They all seemed to know each other, as members of the same profession often do. One of them, a man with a leathery complexion tracked by purple veins, driven to fury by the lack of signal, gave up and chucked his phone into the harbour, to general laughter and applause.

Ramsay paid her pound and pushed past the turnstile into the lighthouse at the eastern tip of Port Julian. She climbed up the narrow spiral staircase until she emerged on to the platform in a buffeting gale. The noise was tremendous after the quiet interior of the tower – wind, stinging spray and the scream of gulls, and far below the sea like a sheet of crumpled metal.

The ferry had left the calm waters of the harbour and was riding the whitecaps in the bay. She and Daniel had said their goodbyes the day before, but when she'd woken up this morning she felt that she had to watch the boat until it was out of sight.

“Don't think of it as two years,” he'd said. “I'll come back and see you at Easter. That's only . . . ” he screwed up his face as he did the sum, and then his face stretched into a stunned smile, “ . . . 119 days!”

She could see the cars on the deck, tiny coloured bricks, neatly spaced. Somewhere in one of them Chet would be chewing the upholstery, or forcing his snout through a gap in the windows, while in the passenger lounge Daniel would be sleeping or playing cards or maybe thinking of her.

She watched the ferry's creeping progress towards the horizon, until it was swallowed up by the milky haze, and then, putting her hands up to her face, she found it was wet with tears. Instead of trying to blink them away, she let them fall from a vast reservoir deep inside her. She put her hand in her pocket for a tissue and pulled out instead a paper bag of Leaf. For a moment she looked at the limp withered shreds in surprise, before scattering them over the balcony to stream away into the wind.

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