But then I look down at Freya, at the cherubic peacefulness of her expression, and I think again of her red-faced fear and fury as Luc held her out to me. Was that really the act of a rational person, to snatch my child, drag her screaming across the marshes?
Christ, I don’t know, I don’t know any more. I have lost sight a long time ago of what rationality was. Perhaps I lost it that night, in the Mill, with Ambrose’s body.
‘Will he tell anyone?’ I manage. The words stick in my throat. ‘He threatened … he said about calling the police …?’
Kate sighs. Her face in the lamplight looks gaunt and shadowed.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I don’t think so. I think if he were going to do anything, he would have done it already.’
‘But the sheep?’ I say. ‘The note? Was that him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kate repeats. Her voice is level, but her tone is brittle, as if she might break beneath the strain one day. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been getting things like that for –’ She swallows. ‘For a while.’
‘Are we talking weeks? Months?’ Fatima says. Kate’s lips tighten, her sensitive mouth betraying her before she answers.
‘Months, yes. Even … years.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ Thea shuts her eyes, passes a hand over her face. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘What would be the point? So you could be as scared as me? You did this for me, it’s my burden.’
‘How did you cope, Kate?’ Fatima says softly. She picks up Kate’s thin, paint-spattered hand, holding it between hers, the jewels on her wedding and engagement rings flashing in the candlelight. ‘After we left I mean. You were here, all alone, how did you manage?’
‘You know how I managed,’ Kate says, but I see the muscles of her jaw clench and relax as she swallows. ‘I sold Dad’s paintings, and then when I ran out I painted more under his name. Luc could add forgery to the list of things he thinks I’ve done, if he really wanted.’
‘That’s not what I meant. I meant how did you not go mad, living alone like this, no one to talk to? Weren’t you scared?’
‘I wasn’t scared …’ Kate says, her voice very low. ‘I was never scared, but the rest … I don’t know. Perhaps I was mad. Perhaps I still am.’
‘We were mad,’ I say abruptly, and their heads turn. ‘All of us. What we did – what we did –’
‘We had no choice,’ Thea says. Her face is tight, the skin drawn over her cheekbones.
‘Of course we had a choice!’ I cry. And suddenly the reality of it hits me afresh, and I feel the panic boiling up inside me, the way it does sometimes when I wake in the middle of the night from a dream of wet sand and shovels, or when I come across a headline of someone charged with concealing a death and the shock makes my hands go weak for a moment. ‘Christ, don’t you understand? If this comes out – I’ll be struck off. It’s an indictable offence, you can’t practise law with something like this on your record. So will Fatima – you think people want a doctor who’s concealed a death? We are all completely screwed. We could go to prison. I could lose –’ My throat is closing, choking me, as if someone has their hands around my windpipe. ‘I could lose F-Fre—’
I can’t finish, I can’t say it.
I stand up, pace to the window, still holding my baby, as if the strength of my grip could stop the police forcing their way in and snatching her from my arms.
‘Isa, calm down,’ Fatima says. She rises from the sofa to come over to where I’m standing, but her face doesn’t comfort me, there is fear in her eyes as she says, ‘We were minors. That has to make a difference, right? You’re the lawyer.’
‘I don’t know.’ I feel my fingers tightening on Freya. ‘The age of criminal responsibility is ten. We were well over that.’
‘What about the statute of limitations, then?’
‘It’s mainly for civil matters. I don’t think it would apply.’
‘You think? But you don’t know?’
‘No, I don’t know,’ I say again, desperately. ‘I work in the Civil Service, Fatima. There’s not much call for this kind of thing.’ Freya gives a sleepy little wail, and I realise I am hurting her and force myself to loosen my grip.
‘Does it matter?’ Thea says from across the room. She has been picking at the dead skin around her nails, and they are raw and bleeding, and I watch as she puts one finger in her mouth, sucking the blood. ‘I mean, if it comes out, we’re fucked, right? It doesn’t matter about charges. It’s the rumours and the publicity that’ll screw us. The tabloids would fucking love something like this.’
‘Shit.’ Fatima puts her hands over her face. Then she looks up, at the clock, and her face changes. ‘It’s 2 a.m.? How can it be two? I have to go up.’
‘Are you going in the morning?’ Kate asks. Fatima nods.
‘I have to. I have to get back for work.’
Work. It seems impossible, and I find myself giving a bubbling, hysterical laugh. And Owen. I can’t even picture his face, somehow. He has no connection to this world, to what we’ve done. How can I go back and face him? I can’t even bring myself to text him right now.
‘Of course you should go,’ Kate says. She smiles, or tries to. ‘It’s been lovely having you here, but anyway, regardless of anything else, the dinner’s over. It will look more … more natural. And yes, we should all get some sleep.’
She stands, and as Fatima makes her way up the creaking stairs, Kate begins to blow out the candles, put out the lamps.
I stand in between the windows, watching her gather up glasses, holding Freya.
I can’t imagine sleeping, but I will have to, to cope with Freya and the journey back tomorrow.
‘Goodnight,’ Thea says. She stands too, and I see her tuck a bottle beneath her arm, quite casually, as if taking a demijohn of wine to bed were the normal thing to do.
‘Goodnight,’ Kate says. She blows out the last candle, and we are in darkness.
I put Freya, still heavy with sleep, in the middle of the big double bed – Luc’s bed – and then I make my way to the empty bathroom and brush my teeth, wearily, feeling the bitter fur of too much wine coating my tongue.
As I wipe off the mascara and the eyeliner in the mirror, I see the way the fine skin around my eyes stretches beneath the cotton-wool pad, its elasticity slowly giving way. Whatever I thought, whatever I felt tonight, walking through the doors of my old school, I am not the girl I once was, and nor are Kate, Fatima and Thea. We are almost two decades older, all of us, and we have carried the weight of what we did for too long.
When my face is clean and bare, I make my way down the corridor to my room, treading quietly, so as not to wake Freya and the others, who are probably asleep by now. But there is a light showing through the crack in Fatima’s bedroom door, and when I pause, I can hear an almost imperceptible murmur of words.
For a moment I think she’s talking to Ali on the phone, and I feel a twinge of guilt about Owen, but then I see her rise, roll up a mat on the floor, and with a rush of comprehension, I realise – she was praying.
My gaze suddenly feels like an intrusion, and I begin to walk again, but the movement, or perhaps the sound, catches Fatima’s attention and she calls out softly, ‘Isa, is that you?’
‘Yes.’ I stop, push the door to her room a few inches. ‘I was just going to bed. I didn’t mean … I wasn’t watching.’
‘It’s fine,’ Fatima says. She puts the prayer mat carefully on her bed, and there’s a kind of peace in her face that was not there before, downstairs. ‘It’s not like I’m doing something I’m ashamed of.’
‘Do you pray every day?’
‘Yes, five times a day in fact. Well, five times when I’m at home. It’s different when you’re travelling.’
‘Five times?’ I am suddenly aware of how ignorant I am about her faith, and I feel a wash of shame. ‘I – I guess I did know that. I mean, I know Muslims at work …’ But I stop, feeling hot prickles at the clumsiness of my words. Fatima is my friend, one of my best and oldest friends, and I am only now realising how little I know about this central pillar of her life, how much about her I have to relearn.