The Memory Game (17 page)

‘Come on…’ I hold
out my hand.  As she reaches for it I step back and back, Beth grabbing
for me until she’s on her feet again.

‘You can walk?’
I ask.

‘I think so.’

We have to pass
by Matt’s house to get to Raven’s.  As we round the corner of his street,
I see him having a snowball fight with
Paulie
. 
Ingrid sits on his garden wall hugging
herself
.
 She has a woolly hat pulled tight over her head but she looks freezing.
Matt and
Paulie
are laughing their heads off as they
mess around but she’s just watching them with a frown.  She looks up as
she sees Bethany approach but
doesn’t say anything.  Matt and
Paulie
see her
too.  They stand and say nothing, but as soon as she passes them, a
snowball hits her in the back and then they break into laughter, another volley
of snowballs following quickly after. Some of them hit Bethany,
and some just sail past her to disappear in the snow ahead.

‘Don’t look
round,’ I say to Bethany. ‘Just
keep walking.’

Bethany
keeps her face fixed forwards and concentrates on putting one foot in front of
the other.

‘Let’s give her
the white death!’ Matt shouts.

‘Leave it,’
Ingrid says.

‘What?’ Matt
says.

‘I said leave
her alone.’

Matt doesn’t
reply. I look back to see what they’re doing, but he and
Paulie
just look at each other, and then laugh. Not at Beth, though, but at Ingrid.

 ‘Shut it,
Matt,’ Ingrid says in a bored voice. She leaps from the wall and trudges
after Bethany.

‘Hey, are you
ok?’ Ingrid asks as she catches up, glancing at Bethany’s
bare feet.

Bethany
looks up at her. ‘Hey.’

‘Are you ok?’
Ingrid asks her again.

‘Yeah,’ Bethany
says. ‘I’m going to Raven’s house.’

‘But… you have
no shoes on.’

‘Oh,’ Bethany
looks confused. ‘I left them at home.  David told me to.’

‘David?’

‘You know, David
Cottle
. He’s at our school.’

‘I know who he
is,’ Ingrid says, frowning, ‘you know he’s dead, right? You went to the
funeral.’

‘I know,’ says Bethany,
still walking.

Ingrid throws an
uncertain glance back at Matt and
Paulie
, who are
watching her talk to Bethany with
smirks on their stupid faces.  ‘Don’t you think you should wear some
shoes?’ she asks Bethany.

‘I left them at
home,’ Bethany says.

‘Come on,
Ingrid,’ I say, ‘open your eyes!  You can see she’s not right!’

Ingrid suddenly
stops and shivers. She stares all around her.

‘You can hear
me!’ I shout at Ingrid. ‘You can hear me!  You have to help!’

Ingrid shakes
herself and catches up with Bethany.
‘Hey, are you sure you’re ok? Do you want me to take you home?’

‘I’m not going
home,’ Bethany says, ‘I’m going to
Raven’s.  She has green tea and blankets.’

Ingrid looks as
though she might argue, just for a moment. Then she stops following Bethany
and turns to walk back. 

‘Ingrid, you stupid cow!’
I yell at her. ‘Please…’

But Ingrid
carries on walking back to Matt.

‘
Oooooh
,’ Matt says in a mocking voice, ‘is that your new
best mate?’

‘Don’t be
stupid.  I just wondered why she didn’t have any shoes on.’

‘Because she’s a
total freak,’
Paulie
cuts in. ‘Everyone knows that.’

‘Ingrid likes
her,’ Matt says.

Ingrid stares
hard at him. ‘You’re such a loser, do you know that?’

 ‘Come on,
I was only joking,’ Matt says.

‘I’m sick of this, I’m going home.’ I see her turn back the way me and
Beth have come, towards her house. 
Paulie
looks
at Matt, who shrugs, and then jogs after Ingrid, leaving
Paulie
to stand on his own in the middle of the snowy street.

Bethany
reaches for Raven’s doorbell.  It takes her a few seconds to get a finger
to it, like she’s drunk and can’t see it properly.  Then she presses and
waits, leaning her head against the door.  Her legs are deep in the drift
that has collected at Raven’s door and I can’t see her feet.

When nobody
answers, I tell her to ring again.

‘I don’t think
she’s in,’ Bethany says.  Her
voice is small, like she’s completely exhausted.

‘She is,’ I say,
‘she has to be. Last time she didn’t answer straight away.  Perhaps the
doorbell doesn’t work properly. Press it again.’

Bethany
doesn’t reach for the bell, she just thuds a fist against the glass.  It
hardly makes a sound though. 

‘You have to knock
louder than that, she’ll never hear you.’

Bethany
slumps against the door and then grabs at her head again.

‘Your headache’s
back?’ I ask.

She doesn’t
reply
,
she just crams her head between her knees and
whimpers.  If ever I needed to make Raven hear me, it’s now. I squeeze
through the door and into the house. 

The hallway is
in darkness.  I make my way to the living room and the fireguard is up,
ashes smouldering in the grate.  I run upstairs. Two bedrooms, both
empty.  Not in the bathroom either.

I push myself
back out to Beth.  ‘She’s not in!  The stupid cow never goes anywhere
but the one night we need her she’s not here!’ I grab at my hair and look
around.  There’s not a soul around but me and Bethany, who is still
slumped up against Raven’s door. 
My mind races,
thinking about where Raven could be.

‘Maybe she’s
gone to see my mum.
 
Maybe she heard me
after all and she’s going to try and help her somehow. We need to go there.’

Bethany
closes her eyes and doesn’t answer.

‘Please, Beth, just
one more little
walk
, I promise.’

She staggers to
her feet.  Then her legs collapse and she falls back against Raven’s front
door again.

It doesn’t seem like Bethany
can walk anywhere now. I wonder whether there’s a way I can get Raven home if I
can find her. ‘Ok,’ I tell Bethany,
‘stay here, I’ll go and find out where Raven is, then I’ll come back for you.’

Raven is at my house sitting in the
living room with Mum; Roger doesn’t seem to be anywhere around.  They’re
drinking tea and Mum looks as though she’s been crying again.  But there’s
no time to listen to what they’re talking about.

‘Raven!
  It’s me!  You need to see me!’ I shout as
loud as I can.  Raven doesn’t even look my way. I close my eyes and
concentrate hard, trying to focus on her hearing me or feeling my
presence.  When I look up, she’s still talking to Mum in a low voice.

‘JUST
LISTEN TO ME!’ I grab at photos on the mantelpiece, prints on the walls, the
curtains, desperately trying to move something.  I smash my hand along the
bookshelf, but it goes through every book, hardly stirring the dust from their
spines.  ‘MUM!’

Nothing.

‘Mum, Bethany needs you…. I
need you…’ I can’t cry, I won’t cry. ‘Please… one of you… I can’t lose her, not
now.’

When I get
back to Raven’s front door, Bethany
isn’t there.  I search around the outside of the house for her, and then I
look inside in case she’s managed to find a way in, but everywhere is as
deserted as it was before.  Maybe she went home.  If she went home,
then perhaps she feels better. Or if she doesn’t, then surely her dad would get
an ambulance for her.  But then I think back to what happened earlier on,
and the rage in her dad’s eyes, and I’m not so sure he would.  I have to
go and find her.  The only thing to do now is get her back to my house
before Roger returns and Raven leaves.  If Raven is there and Roger is
not, Mum will help Bethany for
sure.

Bethany
is not at her house either.  Her dad is still sitting on the floor of the
kitchen staring into space, broken pots and bloody handprints all around
him.  He has an open bottle of something clutched in his hand.  He
has that look again, like when I saw him the first time, like someone who has
forgotten what he’s for.  I don’t know if he’d be any use to Bethany
now, even if I did get her home.  No, the only thing I can do for Bethany
is get her to my mum.  And that means I have to find her, and find her
fast.

The next best bet seems like the
churchyard and that’s where I find Bethany.
Not at her mum’s grave where I expected to find her, or even at mine. Instead,
she’s huddled in the doorway of the church again and her eyes are closed. 

‘Beth?’

She slowly opens
her eyes and looks up at me.

‘One more
walk
, Beth,’ I say, the relief flooding through me. ‘One
more, can you do it?’

But Bethany
just stares, her eyes not really seeing me at all. 

‘We have to get
to my Mum’s.  Raven is there and Roger is out.  Mum and Raven can
help you.’

‘Later,’ she
says groggily, closing her eyes again.

‘Now!
Get up!’

‘I’m tired,
Dad,’ she whispers. ‘Can’t I have a piggy back?’

‘It’s me,
David…’

Her eyes open
slightly and she tries hard to focus on me. ‘David
Cottle
…
aren’t
you dead?’

‘What’s wrong
with you?  We’ve been hanging out for weeks.’

She frowns. ‘Oh
yes, I know now. You’re from my school.’

‘You’re freaking
me out.  Get up; we’re going to my mum’s.’

‘Where?’

‘My house.
Raven is there.’

‘Do you think
she’ll have green tea?’

‘Yes.’ I stand
up. ‘She’ll have lots of it. And headache tablets and warm blankets.’

‘That does sound
nice.’

‘Then you have to
get up,’ I say in the sternest voice I can muster.

She grabs for my
leg and her hand goes clean through. 

‘You have to do
it on your own,’ I say.

‘I can’t,’ she
breathes.

‘You
can. You just have to concentrate.’

She rolls
forward onto all fours, then takes a deep breath and pushes herself up
slowly.  Grabbing for the stones of the archway, she staggers outside.

‘Come on, Beth,
you’re up now.  All we have to do is
keep
walking, it’s not that far.’  I know that it is, and I don’t think she can
make it, but I have to try.

But we only get
to the stone wall at the edge of the churchyard and she pitches sideways and
falls into the snow behind it. 

‘Beth, come on,
get up.’

She doesn’t
reply and her eyes are closed.

‘Bethany,
please…’

Nothing.

‘You can’t go to
sleep!’ I shout, almost scream at her.  I have to get her up no matter
what.  But she doesn’t move. ‘Beth, please!’ I cast around for something,
anything to keep her with me. I drop to my knees beside her. ‘Tell me what snow
feels like, Beth.  Tell me what this feels like now.’ The sky is still
full of fat snowflakes which are starting to cover her already. ‘Please, I need
to remember
snow,
I need to know how it feels!’

Her voice is a
tiny whisper. ‘It feels… it feels like…’

‘How, Beth, how
does it feel?’

‘Like a soft
blanket to die under,’ she murmurs.

‘No!’

I glance up and
see a figure coming from the direction of

‘Bert!’ I run
towards him waving my arms. ‘Bert, come quickly.’  I jump up and down in
front of him but he carries on walking. ‘Please, you have to come she’s going
to die.’  If I can just get him to look behind the wall he could save
her.  I will him with all my strength. 
Stupid
old
git
, just look behind the wall
.
But he
carries on down the lane, huddled in his great big duffle coat, his boots
crunching through the snow.

I run back to Bethany.

‘Beth,’ I shout.
‘There’s help nearby.  You have to make a noise, something, or he won’t
know you’re here.’

She’s still and
silent and disappearing beneath the snow. I can feel tears burning my eyes but
I can’t cry.

‘Just one tiny
noise, Beth, that’s all you have to do.’

But Bert’s already on his way past the churchyard in the direction of the
pub and I know it’s too late.

It stopped snowing a couple of
hours ago.  The sun has risen; a blinding white disc in a pink sky behind
the bare trees.  Bethany is
where she fell last night. She’s covered in snow, melted in places, but it
still hides her from sight.  I lay next to her and kept talking, but she
never answered. I wonder if the vicar will be here soon to open up the church
and maybe he’ll see her. I stand up and look over the wall for him. After last
night I know that I won’t be able to make him see Bethany
but I feel like I should at least try.

Something warm
slips into my hand and takes hold.  For a second, I don’t realise what it
means.  But then I think about it. 
I can feel something.

I daren’t look
around.

‘David,’ she
says.

I shake my
head.  I don’t want it to be true but the warmth of her hand in mine is too
good to ignore.

‘Look at me,’
she says.

Slowly, I turn
to face her. She’s still barefooted, in the same clothes that she ran out of
her house in last night, but there’s not a mark on her skin and she looks… she
looks
really
pretty.

‘You’re dead?’

She looks down
at her hand in mine and gives it a squeeze, like she’s testing it out.  ‘I
think I must be.  I don’t feel sad, though.’

‘It’s my fault.’

She smiles, that
smile that she saves for me. ‘It’s not,’ she says. ‘You did what you were meant
to.’

‘I didn’t do
anything. I was supposed to protect you.’

She shakes her
head and there is such tenderness in her look that I feel like I could burst.
‘You were here for me,’ she says, ‘but not to save me.  You were here to
wait for me.’