Dead Girl Walking (28 page)

‘In time, they may forgive you.’

‘
I
won’t forgive me.’

‘That’s what I’m here to help with,’ she says.

‘I know,’ I say.

‘Do you think moving house can help you move on, make a fresh start?’

‘I don’t know.’ I tug a hand through my wind-tangled hair and look to the window where a fat, grey canopy of cloud billows across the sky. ‘But the house is becoming too difficult to manage. That’s without all the whispers from the neighbours.’

‘I can understand that.’ She pauses. ‘What about other plans? Have you thought about resuming your studies?’

‘Not yet.’

‘What are you waiting for?’

‘I don’t know. I just can’t think about it now. How can I think about that when I’ve ruined someone else’s chances of it?’

‘There’s no reason why Dante can’t resume his own studies once he’s up and about.’ She measures me with a thoughtful gaze. ‘Do you miss him?’

‘Yes,’ I say, more honestly than I wanted to. ‘I think about him every minute of every day.’

‘Did you get the kitten you talked about?’ she asks with a smile.

All at once I feel that little chink of light in my soul start to widen. I looked everywhere for Marmalade, but I never saw her again. Karl pointed out to me that if the killer had taken my cat he would have left the body for me to find, like he did the other things. I’m pretty sure he’s right about that. Which leads me to conclude that Marmalade ran away again. There was blood on the windowsill and scratches on the killer’s hands. Maybe he tried to get her but clever, tough, resourceful Marmalade managed to escape his clutches and do him an injury to boot. A strike back for all the people he has destroyed, even if it is only a small one. I like to think that’s what happened. I hope she’s happier and safer, wherever she is now. But the house felt big and lonely without her.

‘I did,’ I say. ‘There was a grey tabby in the paper. Someone found him in a bag on waste ground. He was lost, just like me; it seemed like a good thing to do to give him a home. I called him Benedict.’

She laughs lightly. ‘That’s a very grand name for a little grey tabby found on waste ground.’

‘I know. I hope that his grand name means he’ll do grand things in the cat world.’

She laughs again and scribbles in her notebook.

‘He’s adorable,’ I say. ‘I think he’s going to help me a lot, and I hope to help him too.’

‘I’m sure you will,’ she says.

Outside the clinic building the wind rises, dragging up dust and litter from the streets and swirling it around my feet as I begin to walk. I pull my scarf up high around my neck and plunge my hands into my coat pockets. The traffic is busier than when I went in but night is further away now that spring is coming and everything seems almost normal.

My phone bleeps in my jeans and I fish it out to read the message. I freeze as I see that it’s not from Karl or Gail, as it usually is now, but Dante. I stare at the display for a whole minute before opening the text.

How r u?

My legs feel like someone snatched the bones from them. I stand in the middle of the pavement with the wind whipping my face, looking at the words of the text like they’re some ancient script, until they begin to make no sense at all and each word is just a meaningless sequence of curves and lines.
How r u?

He’s asking me how I am. A range of feelings that I can’t even begin to comprehend course through me. I want to laugh and cry, to shout and curl up in a humiliated ball of guilt, all at the same time. After all that’s happened, after all that I did to him, he’s asking how I am. How do I reply to a question like that?

I reach the hospital panting and dripping with sweat. I take the stairs to Dante’s ward at a run, but when I buzz for entry, I show my face to the security camera and the answer is the same as always.

‘I’m sorry, but we’ve been asked not to admit you.’

‘I have to see him, he wants me.’

There’s no reply. I buzz again.

‘We can’t let you in.’

‘Please…’

‘You have to leave.’

‘I can’t leave! I have to see him, I have to explain!’

There is silence again. I push my finger on the buzzer and hold it in.

No reply this time. I buzz again and again. There is nothing but the echoes of voices from a distant corridor and the clanging of trolleys.

I pull my phone from my pocket and stare at Dante’s message. I want to reply but I don’t know how, at least, not by text. My eyes burn with tears of sheer frustration as I stand helplessly staring around the corridor wondering what to do next. Ten minutes is all I want. Ten minutes to tell him I’m sorry.

Karl sets another drink down on the desk in front of me.

‘Are you sure the court case will be ok?’ I ask.

He nods slowly. ‘As sure as I can be. The truth of the matter is that you were being chased by a killer and you were defending yourself. Dante followed and got in the way. You thought you were stabbing your attacker but it was him. I’ve spoken to Dante and he’s more than willing to testify for you.’

‘Were his parents there at the time?’

‘They were.’

I bet they loved that,’ I mutter.

Karl gives me a wry smile. ‘There were some choice swearwords peppered into that conversation and none of them from me. But the important thing is that you have the evidence on your side. The only thing that might be a bit sticky is how you came to be racing around a derelict bus station with a six inch carving knife in your bag. We need to be creative with that one.’

‘Perhaps I deserve to go to jail,’ I say, looking down at my drink.

‘Cassie, the prisons are full enough as it is. If you get put away, that’s one less spot for someone who actually deserves to be in there.’

‘Maybe the world would be safer that way, though.’

‘How are you in yourself?’ he asks. ‘About all the other things that have happened too?’

‘I’m better,’ I say. ‘I can’t say the flashbacks have gone, but they’re not as frequent and not as bad. I think I’m on the road out of this nightmare.’ I’ve said this before, so many times when it wasn’t true. But I think I mean it this time.

‘You might not think it, Cassie, but you’ve been incredibly lucky.’ I raise my eyebrows and he smiles. ‘Someone wants you to survive, for whatever reason. You came back from the car crash – however it happened nobody understands, but it did – and you were the only girl to survive the clutches of a very dangerous man. If that patrol car hadn’t already been in the area, you and Dante would very likely be dead. Our killer was injured, but someone that crazed wouldn’t have let a little thing like blood loss stop him from hunting you till he dropped.’ He puts down his cup. ‘The officers in the car have been commended for their actions. I was personally very proud of our force that night.’

I think about what he’s said. I survived for a reason. But Dante survived too, he came back from the dead like me. We’re the same, we both survived. There has to be more to it than coincidence.

Right now I’m in Tish’s room, surrounded by boxes. It’s hard going trying to pack with one good arm but there’s only me to do it so I make the best of things. Strangely, for every item that is packed away, the guilt lessens a little. Tish would be happier to see her stuff go to a worthy cause than for it to rot in the bottom of her wardrobe and I have to keep reminding myself of that. Maybe, by the time I get to Mum and Dad’s room, this task will be a simple chore instead of an emotional wringer.

I close the lid on a stack of flowery notebooks my phone bleeps a text.

I miss u
.

My heart stops. It’s a cliché, but it does, just like that. I stare at the message. My eyes burn hot and I suddenly need him near, I need to feel his warm embrace, the smell of him on my skin, I need to gaze into those dark eyes and lose myself. But I can’t ever see him again; his parents have made that perfectly clear. Despite this, I consider going to the hospital and trying one more time to get into the ward.

Before I know it I’m at the front door. I rip my jacket from the peg in the hallway and sling it around myself before unlocking.

I step out onto the street. The sun is warm on my face, for the first time this year. The air smells sweet and fresh and even the sounds of distant traffic can’t mask the chirruping of nest-building birds and the lazy hum of newly-hatched insects. There’s something vaguely fairytale about it. I look across at the fence of the park along the road. A small group of council gardeners are out, working in flowerbeds that are now shimmering green and bold spring colours. Spontaneous laughter and a raucous song suddenly erupt from them.

That’s when I see him sitting on the wall. Dante, like the painter, sloping script, high-crossed T. He looks at me and smiles as he pushes himself to stand awkwardly. I freeze at the door and watch as he crosses the road, still not quite believing he is here. His movements are slow and careful and he seems weak, his cheekbones painfully stark in his pale face. But his eyes are beautiful and dark and as he takes me into his arms we say nothing because we both know that this is all there is and all we need.

We’re the same.

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The Memory Game

The sky shows the first pink light of a freezing dawn. I should go somewhere, but I can’t seem to leave my corpse alone. It looks so… vulnerable. Stupid, I know – it’s just a body now, after all. And where am I supposed to go? In films they tell you there are tunnels of light and other dead people you loved waiting for you. It’s not like that. One minute you’re alive, lying under the mangled steel of your wrecked bike, the next you’re looking down at the mess trying to understand what happened.

I take a seat on the roots of a bare tree that overhangs the roadside. I’m not doing anything, of course. Or at least my body isn’t. There’s something strangely fascinating about it though. I must be cold by now, I suppose. The ground of the ditch is black with my blood and I can smell the metallic tang from here. My head is sort of cocked to one side at a funny angle and my leg is twisted backwards under the buckled wheel of my bike. I suppose it would have hurt pretty bad. I think it did at first, but time seems to be robbing the memory already. I don’t want to stop remembering. It feels like the minute I forget the pain I’ll be dead for real.

I hear a rustling coming from behind the tree. I listen for a moment, the sound intermittent but coming closer all the time. A fox emerges from the dewed grass and then stands perfectly still as it sniffs at the morning air. It sees the dead me. Then it picks its way over, slowly, nervously through the long grass and down into the ditch and pushes its black-tipped snout to my face.

‘Get away from me!’ I jump up and shout, trying to scare it away but it just looks startled and stands exactly where it is. After a while, it trots off. I watch it go and then sit again, head in my hands. I couldn’t even chase away a fox. I’m nothing, already in the past.

I look up and see that the sun is rising, a blinding white disc behind the bare trees. I can’t sit here for ever. Perhaps I could try to tell someone where I am. Mum must have done her nut when I didn’t go home last night. Roger probably threw a party though, he always hated me.

I stand and look up and down the lane. It’s still deserted, as it has been all night. ‘I have to go somewhere,’ I say. ‘I have to get help.’

I don’t even know why I’m talking as there’s no one here but me. My dead self just stares. I wish I could close my dead self’s eyes but I tried and my hand is made
of nothing. The films got that bit about ghosts right. I wonder how I’m not sinking into the earth beneath my feet.

So, where do I go now?

I suppose I’d better go home.

Mum is pacing up and down with the phone clamped to her ear. Her eyes are all puffy and she has an old cardigan pulled tight around her. ‘Yes, David Cottle. He’s fifteen… dark brown hair – sort of floppy fringe – brown eyes… um, how tall? Oh my God, I can’t remember… I can’t even remember how tall he is…’ Mum’s voice starts to crack. I want to hug her and tell her where I am but she can’t hear me. ‘Sorry…’ she squeaks out a sob and takes a deep breath to stop it. ‘I’m fine. He’s been missing since teatime yesterday. I thought he was at his friend’s house… we had an argument but I thought…’ The crying takes her again and she can’t speak.

Roger comes in from the kitchen. He hands her a mug and takes the phone from her. ‘Sorry, officer, it’s a difficult time, as you can imagine. Yes, we can sort out a photo… about five-foot-six… What was he wearing? I’m not sure, my wife might be able to tell if she goes to the wardrobe and sees what’s missing. Will you send someone round? Ok, thanks.’

Roger ends the call and gives Mum her phone back. She sticks it into her cardigan pocket and Roger puts an arm around her. Even though I could smack his big mono-browed face in every time I look at it, I’m glad he’s trying to make her feel better. I suppose things are going to get a whole lot worse for her when the police find me in that ditch and she’ll need someone to make her cups of tea and stuff because she’ll be crying too much. I hope it doesn’t take them a long time; that road is pretty out of the way and I might start decomposing before she has to come and identify me – that would be horrible. My mind goes back to the fox. What else is out there that might start eating me? What about bugs and microscopic stuff that no one can see, steadily devouring my body even as I sit here watching my mum and Roger discuss where I am? I shouldn’t have even been on that road but I thought it was a clever shortcut. Go me.

The thing is, hardly anyone uses that road because of some old story about it being haunted. They say the Black Death came to our village and Yarrow Lane, the road that I was on, was the border where nobody from the village could go beyond until the plague outbreak had ended. But this boy from another village nearby where they had no plague and this girl from ours used to meet there in secret. Eventually she caught the plague, then he caught the plague and gave it to his whole village, then they both died and people say their ghosts hang around on the lane at night. The irony of this story is not lost on me. Although it still amazes me that people are so freaked out
about it that, even now, they refuse to use that road. Except for the car that hit me, of course. Oh yeah, he used it alright.