Out of My Depth (38 page)

We started the evening at Amanda’s house, because she lived closer to the centre. We had a taxi booked for half past eight so that we could totter in at nine, fashionably late.

Her bedroom was big and girlish, with a soft pink carpet, a double bed which she occasionally shared with Dai if her parents were away, and a huge white dressing table with a mirror which, if correctly angled, could display myriad reflections stretching away into the distance. She had a wardrobe full of ironed shirts, and dresses, and little skirts. There was something extraordinarily innocent about Amanda’s room, even when we were in it, in our tartiest dresses, drinking shots of neat vodka and smoking out of the window.

By the time the taxi arrived, we could hardly stagger downstairs. Even Amanda’s vacant mother noticed the state we were in. She frowned as she stood at the door.

‘You two look the worse for wear already,’ she commented, pushing a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. And you haven’t even got there yet. Do be careful.’

We burst out laughing. ‘We’ll be fine, Mummy,’ Amanda said, going back and kissing her. ‘Don’t wait up.’

‘You say that,’ her mother complained, almost to herself, ‘but you know I have to.’

At the ball, we found Izzy and Tamsin sitting on the sidelines, being, to be honest, a little bit boring. They had the wrong attitude. We could barely walk straight, and we started sizing up the talent at once. The willing talent made itself known by following us around the room in a small group, and this struck us as hysterically funny. The room was spinning, and I was not sure if I could keep drinking at this pace, but I needed to keep up with Amanda. For some reason it seemed important.

I danced. I remember throwing myself around the dance floor to the strains of the Shamen. I remember being caught by the arms of some boy I couldn’t focus on. I remember blacking out for a few minutes and waking up on his lap, as floppy as a rag doll. He was pawing me, and I tried to take his hands away, but he kept putting them back, until I managed to stand up and lurch away to find Amanda.

The hours passed by in the sort of drunken haze that, as an adult, would make me scared and sick and terrified at my loss of control, but which as an invincible teenager just meant a good night out. Amanda and I drank ourselves through to the other side of drunkenness, until we almost felt sober again. Then we kept drinking.

And then we ended up at the bar slurring at Mrs Grey and ordering ourselves double vodkas.

‘Suzanne,’ Mrs Grey said, putting a hand firmly on my arm. ‘No more alcohol.’

‘But I’m eighteeeeeen!’ I remembered telling her. ‘I’m allowed.’

‘You’ve had enough,’ she said, looking at us as if she were trying not to laugh. ‘You too, Amanda. You’ve had more than enough, both of you. Come on. Let’s get you some pints of water to try to stave off your hangovers a little bit. You two are going to feel shocking in the morning.’

We nodded, and she procured us the largest glasses of water we had ever seen. Then there was a call from the other end of the room, and a moment later, Izzy appeared.

‘Mrs Grey,’ she said, tugging on her sleeve. ‘Mrs Spencer wants you. Janie’s ill in the toilets and they need your help.’

Mrs Grey sighed. ‘Thanks, Isabelle,’ she said. She turned back to us. ‘Drink that water, you two,’ and she got up and disappeared into the crowd of sweaty bodies.

Amanda and I looked at each other and grinned.

‘Vodka, Izzy?’ Amanda asked.

Izzy shook her head. ‘Urgh, no way,’ she said. ‘I feel sick as it is and I don’t want to throw up on . . . where is he? I’ve lost Thomas.’

‘Four shots of vodka, please,’ Amanda said to the barman.. Mrs Grey’s orange juice was on the counter next to me.

‘And a new orange juice for Mrs Grey,’ I said, innocently.

Amanda handed me two drinks. ‘Here we go, then,’ she said. ‘A vodka each for us.’ We clinked glasses and downed them, smiling as the poison entered our systems.

‘And one for Mrs Grey,’ I said, pouring my spare drink into the juice.

‘Plus one for luck.’ Amanda added hers to Mrs G’s orange juice, and because we couldn’t imagine that she wouldn’t taste it, we poured her old juice in there too.

Izzy had started to turn away. She looked back at us.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘You’re not actually going to give that to her, are you?’

Amanda and I looked at each other, and then at Izzy, who was nowhere close to as incapacitated and impervious to reason as we were.

‘No,’ we said, in exaggeratedly innocent voices.

‘Why would we waste good vodka?’ Amanda added.

‘She’ll notice,’ Izzy said, walking away. ‘She’s not drunk. She’ll taste it if you try to give her vodka.’ And then she spotted Thomas, and she vanished.

Afterwards, Isabelle had no idea how she got through those weeks and months. She had been torn apart by an urge to confess which was countered by abject terror of the consequences. She had no idea whether she would be in legal trouble for failing to stop Amanda and Suzii pouring the vodka, but even if she wasn’t, everybody would know. She could not bear the thought. She was bitterly disappointed in herself, but no matter how many times she decided to tell Tamsin, she said nothing.

Nobody at school spoke about anything else. Izzy stood in assembly staring at the ground as Miss Higgins broke the news to the school that Monday morning. She circumvented the groups of red-eyed girls, even though every group opened up to let her in, in deference to her status as Tamsin’s best friend. ‘How’s Tamsin?’ people would ask her, with a mixture of genuine concern and the thrill of tragedy. Rumours of spiked drinks swirled unstoppably.

On Monday afternoon, Izzy went home from school and shut herself in her bedroom with the telephone.

As she closed the door, she knew the moment had arrived. Tamsin was home from the hospital, and Izzy faced a stark choice. She could pick up the phone and call Tamsin, could try to say the right things in the face of unimaginable grief, and offer to go over and see her. If she did this, she knew she would tell her about Amanda and Suzii and the shots of vodka. Or she could sit on her bed for three hours, staring at the telephone, picking up the receiver from time to time and beginning to dial Tamsin’s number, then hanging up. She could leave her best friend alone at the only moment when she really needed her. Isabelle saw her true colours that evening, and what she learned stayed with her for ever.

When her mother called her down for dinner, she called, ‘Hang on!’ That, she felt, was her last chance, her final opportunity. She looked at the phone again, and slowly she stood up, and she walked away from it. She was dirty with guilt and complicity.

She endured the funeral, and did her best to be supportive of her friend. But because she hadn’t called her on that Monday night, both she and Tamsin knew that their friendship was over. Izzy, Suzii and Amanda stumbled through their last few months at school. They never spoke about what they had done. They barely spoke at all. They all did well in their exams, because studying was the only distraction they had. Then they parted.

I tried to look at Tamsin. I looked away. I forced myself to meet her eyes. She was watching me. I couldn’t get any more words out.

‘There was a moment.’ I made myself say it. A moment when we handed her the drink. She was distracted. We thought she would taste it and tell us off. But she didn’t. She just gulped it down. I’m . . .’ I could not even say ‘sorry’. It was a ridiculous word to use. People were sorry for spilling drinks in other people’s laps. Sorry for letting a door go before the other person was through it. Sorry for standing on somebody’s foot.

I pictured them again. Tamsin and her mother, trapped in the wreckage of a red Vauxhall Astra. Tamsin reaching for her mother’s cold hand. Amanda and me pouring two shots of vodka into her juice.

I stared at the window. The rain was getting heavier by the minute. I could hear it slapping down onto the terrace; washing the dust away.

I looked back at Tamsin. Her face was expressionless.

‘I’m sorry, too,’ Izzy said. She looked shattered. ‘I knew they were going to do it. They were too drunk to be responsible. I wasn’t. I never imagined your mum would drink it. If I could go back . . .’

Still Tamsin said nothing.

‘Amanda’s desperate for you not to know,’ I added. I needed Tamsin to say something. I knew she had to hate me. Now that I had told her, I wanted her to hate me. I had expected to feel cleansed in some way for unburdening myself. I thought that telling the truth was meant to make you feel better.

Nobody said anything. Izzy drank her champagne. I drank mine. Tamsin pushed hers away. I caught Izzy’s eye. She shrugged slightly, a shrug that meant she had no idea what we should do or say next. I stood up to switch the light on. I thought about candles, because I knew the power was likely to go off if there was a storm, and I thought about closing the shutters, but I couldn’t do anything.

We both looked at Tamsin. After a while, she stood up. She didn’t look at either of us. She just walked to the door, opened it, and stepped out onto the terrace, into the storm.

Izzy and I looked at each other.

‘Fuck,’ I said. ‘Sorry, Izzy.’

‘Shall we go after her?’ asked Izzy.

I looked through the window. Tamsin had already disappeared from view. It was almost pitch black outside.

Nobody should be out in a storm like that. I knew that Roman was out in it, somewhere, but he knew about storms, and he knew what to do. Tamsin was probably barely noticing the weather. I found my wellies in the utility room, picked up a torch, and set off into the driving rain.

She was sitting on the edge of the swimming pool. Her hair was plastered to her head and water was running down her face. Every few seconds she would wipe the drops from the end of her nose, but apart from that she seemed barely aware of her surroundings. Her feet were dangling in the water. She did not look up as I came close. The wind was blowing fiercely, but it was a hot, sodden wind.

Rain lashed my face. My hair hung down in rat’s tails, and my dress clung tightly to my legs. I was instantly drenched. I started running. I suddenly wanted to get Tamsin’s legs out of the pool before the lightning started.

I ran through the pool gate. Tamsin did not look at me. She glared ahead. I tried to read her expression, but it was too dark. I knew she was furious.

‘Tamsin,’ I shouted. The wind carried my voice away. ‘I’m sorry,’ I yelled.

She looked me in the face. I shivered at the pain in her dark eyes. She looked different as an adult. Part of it, prosaically, was because she no longer wore glasses. Her eyes seemed bigger. Mostly, though, the difference was in Tamsin. She was different, and damaged. She was not, at all, the Tamsin I had once known. I trembled as I waited for her to say something.

She looked as if she were about to speak, and then there was a flicker in her eyes, and she looked away.

‘Take your legs out of the pool,’ I shouted. ‘There’s going to be lightning and it feels like it’s coming right this way.’

She shook her head.

‘Tamsin!’ I shouted. ‘You’re not safe!’

She was staring steadfastly away from me. I decided to say nothing for a while. I sat next to her and she didn’t seem to want me to go away. She didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with me either. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen, maybe. Twenty. No lightning.

Abruptly, she turned to me. Her face twisted as she looked at me, and I made myself keep eye contact.

‘How could you?’ she screamed. ‘How could you have done that?’

I tried to think of an answer. ‘I don’t know,’ I said quietly. ‘I don’t know how I could.’

And how could you invite me here? After what you did? You were meant to be my friend.’

I could not answer.

There was a crash of thunder. I shuddered. I saw Tamsin cringe a bit, but she stayed resolutely where she was. Her gaze stayed, accusing, on my face and I had to keep staring back at her. The wind picked up, and small lumps of hail stung my face.

‘Hail?’ Tamsin shouted, suddenly. Her expression did not change. ‘How is that possible?’

‘It happens,’ I yelled. ‘I’ve never understood.’

She nodded. I tried my luck and reached into the pool, and tried to guide her legs out of the water. She resisted, then pulled her legs away from me, twisted her body around, and put her dripping feet on the stone tiles that surrounded the pool.

I pointed towards the house. ‘We should go in.’

Tamsin stood up. She shook her head vehemently. ‘Not in,’ she shouted.

I wanted to get us to shelter. ‘To my studio,’ I yelled. To my relief, Tamsin nodded, and we ran together, through hailstones that were growing unfeasibly large, and up to the studio door. An enormous crash of electricity exploded directly over our heads. It was the loudest noise I had heard; it reverberated through my body like a bomb. The sky was bright purple, for a moment. The garden was lit up as if by daylight. I held my breath.

Everything went black again, and the rain poured down with renewed vigour. There was a creaking sound, and then a tearing crash, as a branch came off the oak tree. I opened the door of the studio, and pushed Tamsin inside.