Sudden Death (18 page)

‘You must be Erasmus?’

Erasmus stuck out his hand, which she took straight away, shaking it with enthusiasm.

‘Catherine Snow? Rebecca’s mother, Karen, called you?’

‘Yes, come in.’

Erasmus walked into the classroom. Apart from the computer terminals that lined three walls of the classroom it was the same as the ones he remembered: a desk for the teacher and then a series of desks that filled the rest of the classroom. He shuddered involuntarily.

Catherine eyed him curiously. She sat down on top of one of the kid’s desks and invited Erasmus to sit on one opposite.

‘It’s Cat, by the way, not Catherine. Only my sis ever calls me Catherine.’

Erasmus looked at the desk. His immediate instinct was to sit behind it on one of the chairs. But that was just too weird. On the other hand the informality of sitting on the desk reminded him a little too much of that slightly forced breaking down of barriers so favoured by drama teachers in his day. He decided to remain standing.

‘Thanks for seeing me after school Mi– Cat.’ He caught himself just before he said ‘Miss’.

Her wide mouth opened slightly and then the corners of her lips turned up, causing little dimples to appear in each cheek.

‘Not at all. I had a pile of marking to do anyway and I take the well being of my students very seriously.’

Erasmus noticed the battered looking textbook on her desk:
The Collected Works of T.S. Eliot
. He smiled.

‘That takes me back. Are the kids studying it?’

Cat leant back, resting her palms on the desk.

‘No actually. Modern poetry is Simon Armitage. He’s good but Eliot has always spoken to me.’

Erasmus nodded.

‘So it’s a personal thing?’

She laughed.

‘Indeed it is. So you wanted to talk about Rebecca. I have to admit this is the first time that I have spoken with a child’s lawyer before. Things are getting like the States. I guess it was only a matter of time. I thought I would at least get the chance to hit one of the little buggers first!’

She was smiling again and her pale blue eyes sparkled with amusement. She was testing him.

Erasmus couldn’t help but smile back.

‘I know Karen from way back and she has asked me to speak to you because she is concerned about Rebecca.’ He held his hands up. ‘I’m not here in any official capacity and having been one of the little buggers I feel your pain.’

Cat’s smile disappeared and her elfin features became serious.

‘We are all concerned about Rebecca. She’s having a tough adolescence. Her father left her a couple of years ago, as I’m sure you know. It’s a difficult time for a young girl.’

‘Yes. It must be tough on a kid when that happens.’

Cat nodded.

‘It can be but I think the teenage years are like the beginning of the obstacle course: that first hurdle can be the hardest of all to overcome.’ She bit her lip and then pulled a mock guilty expression. ‘Do you smoke, Erasmus?

‘I do, well I sort of do, I’m trying – ’

‘ – To give up,’ she finished the sentence for him. ‘Aren’t we all?’ She hopped off the desk and opened a window.

‘A teacher smoking in the classroom? I always suspected you all did.’

‘Oh, I’m not smoking. I just like to be around smokers. It’s like an antidote to this eternal life fantasy the kids have all swallowed from their parents. You won’t believe what puritans they have all become. Very different from my time. I could smell the tobacco on you. Go on, light up.’

Erasmus instantly warmed to her. Karen had told her that she was one of highest rated teachers in the school and yet here she was encouraging him to smoke. In any event, Erasmus did want a cigarette and he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to smoke in school. Even if he had given up he would be having one now.

‘Thanks.’

‘It’s strictly against the rules but the kids have gone home and trying to be an example all day leaves you with a rebellion deficit.’ She chuckled and hopped back on the desk.

‘Karen has told you that Rebecca is cutting herself. Do you have any idea why?’ he asked.

‘Straight to business, eh? Why does anybody cut? Teenage angst, and the pointlessness of it all. You know how strong your feelings are at that age. I’ve seen it happen a few times unfortunately. Adolescence is full of hidden traps and dangers.’

Erasmus let out a stream of smoke, it writhed for a second and then the cold winter air took it away.

‘Karen thinks that Rebecca is having some sort of relationship, probably just virtual, with a boy. I know you weren’t aware of any relationship but if you could think of who that could be it may be helpful. Karen thinks that he may be influencing her to cut.’

Erasmus caught himself just before he told her that they had been monitoring Rebecca’s computer. He had a feeling that ethically she might be obliged to go to the police if she was aware they were breaching Rebecca’s right to privacy.

Cat nodded and then noticed that the ash on Erasmus’s cigarette was about to fall on the floor. She leapt down off the desk and grabbed a pencil organiser from her desk and offered it to him. Gratefully, he tapped the end of his cigarette into the bright blue receptacle.

‘Thanks.’

She remained standing close to him. He could smell her perfume, a delicate fragrance mixed with a deeper, sexier, feminine smell all of her own.

‘When I was at school, and it seems another lifetime away but it was only, what, nine years ago, there was a story about a group called The Black Rose at another local school. It was never clear where the other school was, and I suspect the story isn’t true but we all believed it when we were kids. The story goes that there was a girl, fourteen or fifteen, and she was very much in love with this guy – let’s call him Romeo for our story. Anyway this girl – let’s call her Juliet – loved him very much and she thought that Romeo loved her. She was a grade A student, attractive but no beauty. She had always said no to having sex but her plan was to give herself to him on their prom night. It’s coming up to the prom and, of course, she expects that they will go together. She receives her invitation from him, or so she thinks, but when she opens it all that is inside is a pressed black rose with a note telling her she is dumped for being “not fit enough”. He had only gone out with her as a bet or other such charming words to that effect. His first love letter to her had contained a pressed red rose, a sign of his love. Well, you don’t need to be a genius to work out the symbolism of the black rose. Her world ends. She was in love and it was everything. She withdraws completely, she won’t see her friends, she stops eating; the usual teenage girl reaction to the first time your heart is broken.’

Cat had come closer now, inside his personal space and she was almost whispering.

‘No one sees her for weeks. She doesn’t go to school and after a while even her friends start to forget about her. And then the evening of the prom arrives and everyone goes, all dressed up in their finery. Romeo takes his new girlfriend – let’s call her Lady Macbeth. Romeo and Lady Macbeth make the prettiest, most attractive couple at the dance and even Juliet’s friends can’t help gasping at their beauty and voting for them as the dance’s king and queen. Sure enough they win the competition and are presented with their crowns. But can you guess who shows up just before they are placed on their pretty heads?’

‘Juliet.’

Cat was looking directly into Erasmus’s eyes now, holding his gaze.

‘Juliet. Dressed in her prom gown, one that she had bought six months earlier, a beautiful sleeveless silk dress in emerald green. And as she walks in, the room falls silent as one by one people recognise her. And I say recognise because it is not easy. It’s not the scars that trace, vivid, white, lumpy lines across her arms like the trail of some malevolent, cutting snail that obscure her identity. Now all that remains of her face are the eyes and the remnants of her lips. Where her nose used to be is a black hole, and only when they stare in horror from their vantage point on the stage do Romeo and Lady Macbeth see that the absent centre of her face forms the heart of a black rose, the petals etched into her face with a craft knife, the scars so new that are black, bloody and sticky. The petals of the rose.’

Erasmus found that he was tightly gripping the desk behind him, a mixture of horror at the story and arousal at Cat’s proximity.

Cat laughed a laugh without mirth and then wheeled around and jumped back on the desk.

‘Of course, that never happened. It’s an urban myth, a mixture of
Carrie
and
Great Expectations
. But when you’re at that age myths are often indistinguishable from truth. It’s solace for the geeks, the nerds, the unpopular, the heartbroken, and, of course, for the lonely, which we all are at that age.’

Erasmus stared into her pale blue eyes that twinkled like arctic summer ice.

‘The point I am making is that at that age we are vulnerable to stories, to myths, to being led. The kids at this school for instance, they think that every year at exam time some poor kid throws themself off Thor’s Rock at Helsby Hill.’

‘And do they?’

‘Not while I’ve been here. Kids will always cut themselves, obsess about suicide. I am not downplaying it, but I’m just saying it comes with the territory.’

‘How can we stop her, can the school, I don’t know, can social services, help?’

Cat shrugged.

‘“To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; there will be time to murder and create.”’

‘What?’ said Erasmus.

‘It’s Eliot. I mean that these kids wear a thousand different faces a day. They are working out who they are. Sure it may seem like they are egging each other on, maybe Rebecca and some others are cutting themselves but it’s something they will grow out of, when they decide who they are.’

‘How can you be so certain?’

Cat held his gaze and without hesitation rolled up the right sleeve of her blouse. She turned her forearm towards Erasmus. There he could see the white spidery lines of old scars.

‘It’s part of life, realising that one pain doesn’t take away another. They will come through it. Rebecca will come through it but if makes you feel better I will have a word with Rebecca but my advice is to ride with it, give her love and hope for the best.’

Erasmus didn’t know what to say. That this bright, confident, sexy woman would have once taken a knife to herself in torment seemed almost impossible. He realised his lips were moving but no words were coming out. He recovered himself.

‘That would be really great, thank you. Karen is very worried.’

Cat looked at him quizzically.

‘I hope you don’t mind me asking but are you and Karen, romantically linked, as the lower order of tabloids like to say? This doesn’t really seem like a job for a lawyer?’

This question floored Erasmus. He started to give an answer and then stopped.

Cat laughed.

‘Don’t sweat it, Erasmus. I see how it is.’

He was saved further embarrassment by the door of the classroom suddenly swinging open. A tall, balding man wearing a jumper a size too small and corduroy slacks walked into the room. He brought to mind the stick insects his sister had kept when she was a kid. He looked surprised to see Erasmus.

‘Hi,’ said Erasmus.

The man ignored him and sniffed the air.

‘Catherine, have you been smoking?’

She rolled her eyes and winked at Erasmus.

‘Busted,’ she whispered as she passed Erasmus and walked over to the man. She embraced him and kissed him on his cheek.

Erasmus’s eyes widened in surprise as the man gripped Cat tightly.

‘This is Ben Bridge; he’s our physics teacher. Ben, this is Erasmus he is Rebecca Kelly’s lawyer.’ She laughed as she said this and pulled Ben closer to her.

He held out his hand for Ben to shake but he ignored it, and instead nodded his head ever so slightly in the only acknowledgement he seemed willing to give Erasmus.

‘And her boyfriend.’ Ben turned to Cat. ‘We’ve got reservations at seven remember,’ said Ben. Even though he was standing a few yards away Erasmus caught the unmistakable stench of halitosis.

Cat kissed him again.
She must be very much in love or have no sense of smell
, thought Erasmus, and then instantly mentally reprimanded himself.
Maybe Ben had hidden, very well hidden, qualities?

‘Of course, I was just coming. Erasmus was leaving now as well, weren’t you, Erasmus?’

‘I was, and thanks for all your help. Here’s my card. If you could let me know how the talk goes that would be great.’

He handed her the card.

Ben was all but scowling at him now. Erasmus nodded an unreturned goodbye to him and left the classroom. He didn’t need to turn around to know that Ben’s eyes were fixed on his back like laser sights.

CHAPTER 24

Hands were reaching out to him but there was something wrong with these hands. It took him a moment to work out what it was and then, with a lurching, vertiginous sense of horror, he realised what it was. These hands were children’s hands but they weren’t attached to bodies. The hands, sticky with blood, moved slowly out of the darkness and held onto him, stopping him from moving. They wanted something from him, something he couldn’t give: they wanted him to save them. Bloody hands covered his body now, hands in his mouth, stopping him from breathing properly, he began to choke, to suffocate and from somewhere far away a loud knocking heralded new terrors.

Erasmus awoke in a twisted pile of sheets and duvet. There was a bang from downstairs on the communal front door. Erasmus checked his alarm clock: 3.25 a.m. Another bang. Why didn’t whoever it was just ring the flat they wanted? He lay there for a second, maybe one of the other residents would go and see who it was. He knew that was unlikely. Ali in the apartment above had moved out weeks ago to go and work with his brother in Iraq and Mark and Sue were ‘travelling’ at the moment for a few months – they had looked a bit peeved when Erasmus had referred to it as ‘going on holiday’. In any case, the other two apartments were empty so who the hell would be knocking for him at this hour?