Killing Rachel (10 page)

‘Her clothes pulled her down. She was wearing coat, boots, the lot.’

‘It was the middle of the night. Freezing cold!’

‘I heard they found a bottle of vodka in the water.’

Rose listened to them. Girls she’d known for three and a half years. They talked in a shocked way but there was also an undertone of excitement. Something dramatic had happened. It was something to talk about, to chew over, to interpret.

‘If it turns out that Rachel was drunk it will be bad publicity for the school.’

‘Don’t say that! What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘I liked Rachel.’

‘You were one of the few.’

‘That’s not true. She was Rose’s friend for a while.’

‘Rose saw through her. Everyone did eventually.’

‘Apart from Molly.’

Rose pushed her plate away and stood up.
Rachel was drunk?

‘Good to see you, Rose. Great tattoo. I’m having one after my exams . . .’

Amanda followed her as she walked through the diners towards the exit.

‘You’re not upset, are you, Rose?’ Amanda said.

‘No. Though I didn’t know the details before so I didn’t have any pictures in my head. Now I do.’

‘No one knows what really happened. It’s all just gossip.’

‘I’ll see Martha and put my things in my room.’

Just then Molly appeared at the door. She gave a half-smile when she saw Rose and walked towards them.

‘I heard you’d come back. You look great, Rose, doesn’t she, Amanda?’

‘We’re just going to my room to get Rose’s things. Are you feeling a bit better?’

Molly nodded.

‘She’s been really upset about Rachel. They’ve been quite friendly this term.’

Rose was surprised. She never would have thought of
Molly
as a friend of Rachel’s.

‘We spent some time together. I liked her . . .’ Molly’s voice broke and she dragged a large handkerchief out of her sleeve.

‘Oh, Molly,’ Amanda said.

‘I’m all right,’ she said, blowing her nose. ‘I’ll see you later.’

Molly walked off towards the tables.

‘Come to my room after dinner if you want!’ Amanda called after her.

‘Will she be all right?’ Rose said.

‘She’s been like this ever since it happened. Inconsolable.’

They walked across the grass. Over to the left was the lake. Rose paused and so did Amanda. The lake took up a huge chunk of the grounds and some years before some of it had been reclaimed to make the playing fields bigger. At the same time the lake and the boathouse were renovated. Rose remembered the diggers and the pipes and the workmen who had been around for months when she first came to Mary Linton. Then one day the lake was smaller but deeper and with several ornamental features, a small island and a number of inlets at the periphery. The boathouse had been rebuilt with a jetty branching out from it into the water. It was long enough to moor a dozen or more rowing boats and canoes which the girls used in the spring and summer months. On one side of the jetty was a slate wall which meant that girls could queue up and wait for the boats without any fear of falling off.

Rose had a sudden memory. Rachel and her sitting on the jetty on a summer’s evening, their legs dangling, their toes touching the surface of the water. Rachel taking out a can of insect repellent and spraying it over both of them.

‘Do they know
when
she went into the water?’ Rose said, frowning.

‘In the night sometime? Or early morning? No one’s told us. I didn’t see her get pulled out. Only a handful of girls saw and as soon as the staff knew they marched them back to the building.’

‘Why would she go out to the lake? At night?’

‘People did. They do. It’s forbidden to go out of the building after lights out but people do it.’

‘OK in June. But November?’

Amanda shrugged.

‘The girls are right about one thing. It’ll be terrible publicity for the school. First Juliet Baker. Now this.’

Rose nodded. As they walked back in the direction of the main school she thought of Juliet Baker and remembered the things that Rachel had said in her letter about seeing her
ghost
. It made her feel uncomfortable for a moment because she herself had thought she’d seen her mother three times after she vanished. Twice in the school car park and once in the sickbay. At the time she had never said the word
ghost
to herself but maybe it had been there, in her consciousness. Now, since she’d found out that her mother was still alive, she wondered whether those sightings had in fact been real. Her mother checking up on her; making sure, from a distance, that she was all right. Rose liked this thought.

They walked up the stairs back to Eliot House.

‘How come Molly was friends with Rachel?’

‘They just began to hang round together.’

‘But I thought you and she were best friends.’

‘Not for a long time, Rose. Not since the beginning of Year Eleven. We sort of drifted apart.’

‘I didn’t know. I never noticed.’

‘No, you were always too hung up with Rachel to notice anyone else.’

Rose felt the rebuke. She tried to think of an answer but couldn’t. She walked on in silence until they got to Amanda’s room. She picked up her coat and bag.

‘I’m going into Holt in the morning. I thought I’d take Molly. Try and cheer her up a bit. Why not come along?’

‘I might. I’ll let you know.’

She heard Amanda’s footsteps fading down the stairwell.

Too hung up with Rachel to notice anyone else
.

The words stung her and she wondered if perhaps Amanda was right. Another girl, a few weeks before, had said that Rose was aloof, not interested in other people. She had been a student at her new college in London. Had it been true at Mary Linton as well?

She walked in the direction of Martha Harewood’s rooms. She knocked on the door as she had done so many times. In the past there had always been a couple of seconds, wait and then she would hear Martha’s voice singing out the words,
Come in!
But this time there was just silence so she knocked again and then moments later the door was open and Martha appeared.

‘Rose,’ she said, with a shaky smile. ‘Come in.’

She followed Martha into her sitting room. Martha went across to her desk. It was packed full of things and she seemed to be shuffling from one sheet of paper to the next in a distracted way. Her shoulders were rounded and her voice a little indistinct.

‘I’ve put you in your old room. It’s not been used since you left. Actually, quite a few beds have not been used what with the financial downturn. Not so many people sending their daughters to a private boarding school these days!’

She turned round.

‘Do sit down, Rose.’

Rose sat down.

‘We’ve had a most terrible time here. To lose a young girl, like this. It’s just dreadful,’ Martha said.

‘You know Rachel wrote to me?’ Rose said after a few moments.

Martha nodded. ‘Your grandmother mentioned something when she rang.’

‘I’ve brought the letters with me. I thought the police might want to see them. Would
you
like to see them? They’re here in my bag.’

Martha Harewood shook her head.

‘Best to pass them on to the police. Mrs Abbott is liaising with them. I believe they’re due into school again tomorrow.’

‘How was Rachel? How was she since . . .’

‘Since you left? She seemed a bit lost. Her behaviour improved for a while but then I found alcohol in her room a couple of times and I had to write home. That was difficult.’

‘I heard she was friends with Molly Larkin.’

‘Yes. An odd combination. I think it probably wasn’t the first choice for either of them. On the other hand I’ve seen all sorts of girls make good long friendships in unpromising circumstances. I had my hopes . . .’

‘In the letters she seemed very depressed. She kept mentioning Juliet Baker.’

‘Poor Juliet.’

Martha shook her head. She started to speak but the bell for the end of lunchtime went and she looked away from Rose, towards the sound.

‘Afternoon classes,’ she said.

‘I’ll go,’ Rose said.

‘You know where your room is,’ Martha said, with a half-smile.

Rose nodded. At the door she heard Martha’s voice from behind her.

‘You know, Rose, Rachel was a difficult girl but I still cared for her as much as I cared for any of you.’

Rose turned back and was startled to see that Martha’s eyes were glittering with tears. Rose’s hand moved out as though to offer comfort but Martha shooed it away. She pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and folded it in half and then pressed it to her eyelids.

‘I’ll see you later,’ Rose said.

She walked along the corridor feeling unhappy, her footsteps heavy. Coming up to the room, Daisy, she paused. Adjacent to it was Bluebell, Rachel’s room. She dragged her eyes away and opened her own door. The room was exactly the same as it had been on the day she left. The bed against the wall, the desk and chest of drawers opposite. Above the headboard was a cork notice board. It had been the place to pin pictures of bands or movie stars that she liked. Somewhere to put notes and flyers, articles cut out of magazines. Other girls had photographs of their family there, pinned haphazardly, one image overlapping another, some photos literally covering others, a kind of pictorial palimpsest. Rose had had no photos. The pictures she had of her mother she had kept in a drawer.

Now the cork board was blank save for a rash of pin-holes.

She put her rucksack on the bed and sat down beside it.

Everything was the same.

It was as if she had gone back in time.

ELEVEN

After handing Rachel’s letters to Mrs Abbott, the head teacher, Rose went outside for a walk in the school grounds. She chose a path that was out of view of the main building. She headed away from the lake towards Ravenswood. The small wood was on the periphery of the Mary Linton grounds. She quickened her step. Five minutes later she was surrounded by trees and bushes.

It was a place much used by girls in their free time. There were signs of them everywhere. Names and initials had been carved into trees even though it was frowned upon. There were rope swings and dens that had been made and discarded. There were clearings where the ground was trodden down and logs had been dragged together for makeshift seats. The wood was big enough to have quiet shaded places where it was possible to find some privacy.

Rose walked for a few minutes and headed for the north end of the wood where there was a clump of birch trees and a giant oak. Beyond this were hedges and fields. On the ground was the husk of an old tree trunk. The first summer she and Rachel became friends they went there. They would sit on the trunk and talk quietly, their voices soft, church-like. They no longer read the vampire books but the wood, even in the daytime, seemed an eerie place. Sometimes the quiet would explode into sound as black crows cawed and croaked. Startled, they’d burst into frightened giggles. Mostly, though, the quiet was disturbed by younger students playing loud games and they’d shoo them off back to their own part of the wood until they were alone again.

During these times they talked. Rachel told Rose about her life.

‘Mum and Dad split up a couple of years ago. Dad’s got a new wife, Melanie, who’s, like, only a few years older than me! She’s always giving me stuff and then I have to lie about it. Dad’s got this new flat by the Thames. Him and Melanie are always having dinner parties. I help Melanie with the food and she gives me a fifty-pound note. No kidding. A fifty-pound note. When I get home I have to pretend I’ve had a horrible time and the worse thing is – and this is really bad – my mum’s started seeing this guy, Robert? And he’s always around and he’s got this way of looking at me, as if he’s, like, more interested in me than my mum.’

‘You should tell her!’

‘Trouble is she’s so pleased with herself. You don’t how much she cried when my dad left. Like, I’d ring up every night and she couldn’t speak because she was crying so much. Week after week. I gave up phoning her in the end. I’m
glad
she’s got Robert. And it’s not like I’m there a lot. In the holidays I just make sure my door’s locked at night and the bathroom.’

‘Poor Rachel,’ Rose said.

Another day Rachel told her about Juliet Baker.

‘We were friends. Me and Juliet and Tania. We hung around together. It was really great having her as a friend. She didn’t board so, me and Tania, we used to go to her house at weekends. Her mum would make us tea and we’d hang out in her room. She made these cupcakes. They were awesome, with silver balls and decorations on them. And Juliet had a brother. And Tania totally fell for him. She was just in love and every time he came into the room she went scarlet. It was really funny.’