Goose (13 page)

I've done loads of stuff I'm ashamed of, but I think walking away from Flo when she was being bullied might be the worst ever. What kind of person am I? I can go on as much as I like about why I think religion is a load of bullshit, but at least all she is doing is trying to be a better person. What am I doing?

I just couldn't bring myself to go over and stick up for her. I couldn't back Flo up this time, I wouldn't have known what to say. I couldn't think of a single way to stick up for what she believes in. But I feel like total crap and really hate myself right now. I am a shit friend, Dean thinks I'm a slut and I have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life. Good one, Renée. Good one.

Over in the lay-by it's just me, Pete and Marcus. They're being their usual pervy selves.

‘Been getting any lately then, Renée?'

‘Oh fuck off, Pete. Is that seriously all you think about?' I snap.

‘All right, Period Face, calm down. It was you who told us once that you think about sex eighty-five per cent of the time, so don't get all narky because we believed you.'

Pete's right. I did say that. WHY did I say that? I ask for all the shit that comes my way.

‘Cheer up, Renée,' Pete says. ‘Let's play chicken. Come on, I want to see that little Fiat of yours racing towards me at – how fast does it go? Ten miles an hour?' They fall into stitches. Apparently the fact that I have a car that comfortably trots along at the Guernsey speed limit of thirty-five miles an hour is hilarious.

‘I'm not playing chicken, you idiots. It's such a stupid game,' I say, feeling like I don't really want to do anything but smoke hundreds of cigarettes and mope around being sad about Flo.

‘I'll play it,' says a voice behind me. It's Matt Richardson, in his school uniform.

My instinct is to tell him to bugger off, but then I think of Flo, and how I just abandoned her, and that Matt is her friend, and I think maybe, if I make friends with Matt, then that would be a respectful thing to do for Flo. It would make my apology, which she probably won't even want to hear, much easier and more sincere. So I turn to him and hope he isn't one of those religious types who doesn't shut up about Jesus.

‘Hi Matt, how are you?' I say.

He looks stunned.

‘Me? I'm fine  …  ' He hesitates, presumably stumped for any kind of conversation that doesn't involve Jesus or cars. ‘So, shall we play chicken? I drive my uncle's car around his field at the weekends, I can drive a manual fine. If I don't go on the road and we just stick to the car park then we're not breaking the law. Can I?'

‘You're not old enough to drive though,' I say. ‘And my car doesn't have any brakes.'

Pete sneaks up behind me and whispers in my ear. ‘Don't worry, it's all for show. Just make sure he keeps driving straight, I will turn off.'

So there IS a system? It's basically wrestling for cars. It's all planned beforehand.

‘Please?' asks Matt again.

Oh God. Chicken really is my worst nightmare. I get so scared when other people are driving, I scream all the time thinking they are too close to the kerb. But I'm still thinking that if I bond with Matt, I might stand a chance of winning back Flo. And that's all that matters.

‘OK. But I have to come in the car with you to teach you how to stop.' I throw him the keys.

He drives me around the corner to the big empty car park of the sports field. To be fair, he does know how to drive a car. ‘OK, Matt,' I say, ‘shall we go to Flo's house after this? We could pick her up? Go have a cup of tea and some chips at the Vazon caff?'

‘Sounds great,' he says vaguely, more focused on driving than he is on me. I am happy. This was a good idea. Flo will forgive me, she forgives everybody.

He drives all the way to the end of the car park and turns around. Pete and Marcus are facing us about a hundred feet away.

‘Pete
always
turns off, OK? So you just keep going straight, no matter how close they get, just keep going straight. They will think you are really tough and cool if you have the balls to keep going straight, but Pete will turn. I know he will. When they have passed, take your foot off the accelerator and I will talk you through slowing down using the gears. My brakes don't work, OK?

‘OK.'

I have a horrible feeling about this. But Pete knows what he is doing, he has done this a thousand times. And as long as Matt keeps driving straight then everything will be fine. Deep breath. I am playing chicken to save my friendship. This is good. I stick my arm out of the window and give a thumbs-up, and Pete does the same. We're off.

‘Remember, just keep going straight,' I remind Matt. Then I roll my eyes, this is so stupid. ‘Oh, and don't bother putting your foot to the floor straight away. You pick up more speed if you do it slowly. My car has its own rules.'

He does what I say and we start creeping forward. Before long we are at 15mph, which feels fast in a car park. Pete and Marcus are racing much quicker towards us, both their faces like melons with teeth. They're so excited. This, for them, is living. The speed feels frightening now, I don't like it. I want to shut my eyes until they have turned off and Matt has driven past them, but then Matt panics. It's like he doesn't trust the game. His right hand pulls down the steering wheel.

‘Matt, NO! What are you doing! They will turn. They
always
turn!'

But he doesn't trust me. He turns sharply to the right at exactly the moment Pete turns to his left. I reach for the steering wheel and try to push it back, but it's too late. He looks at me, I look at him. There's a loud screech. I don't know if it's Matt, or the brakes, or me. Then a slam, so loud it feels like a punch in my head. More screeching, a creak of a door. I feel like I'm under water. The red of Pete's car is too close – is that what is on my hands too? I'm too trapped to move. My head is too heavy and I can't find my voice.

I have to sleep.

‘Dear God, I'm lost again. I thought I was working myself out, but I haven't. I have no idea what kind of person I am. Those feelings I had for Gordon weren't real, even though I tried to tell myself they were. As soon as he was out of my life I forgot about him. What are those short bursts of infatuation about? Renée has them all the time with boys. How are you supposed to know which ones to sleep with and which ones not to sleep with? I don't want to sleep with the ones I don't care about a week later, but how do you know that you'll go off them? Sorry, can I talk to you about this stuff? I am feeling like the only person I have is you, which I guess is what I wanted in the first place, but I didn't think I would lose Renée completely. I just don't know what her and I are any more. She doesn't accept me at all. I think she's using the whole university thing as an excuse to get out of our friendship, and it's making me so sad. But I am who I am. I used to think I could change for people, but I'm not so sure I'm easy with that any more. God, please send me a sign that will show me what to do. Do I fight for my friendship, or do I just let her go? I –'

The doorbell rings loudly three times in a row and snaps me out of my moment with God. It's annoying, like being woken from a really deep sleep. But whoever it is seems desperate.

‘OK, OK,' I say, walking to the door as they persistently bang on it. ‘I'm coming, calm down.'

I open the door. It's Kerry. She's crying. Really crying. I thought we had established that I wasn't gay?

‘Flo,' she says, hardly able to get her words out. ‘There's been an accident. Matt, he's  …  ' She hiccups and struggles to catch her words.

‘It's OK. Breathe, breathe. Matt what?' I push, trying not to presume anything until she has said it.

‘He's  …  dead.'

For a moment nothing comes to me. My head goes white, thoughtless, like I've never thought of anything before. Then Kerry falls onto me like a rag doll, and I realise that what I have to do is take care of her.

‘Come in. Come on, I will make you some tea. It's OK, you'll be OK. Everything will be OK,' I say like clockwork.

But of course it won't.

I sit her on a chair in the kitchen and put the kettle on. That's what you do, isn't it? When someone is having a nightmare and you need a moment to work out what to say? You put the kettle on. My own shock. My own feelings. They have to be contained. I have to make sure Kerry is all right. Matt has been her friend for years, mine only for a matter of months. I'm sad but I can control it, she needs me to control it. I have to make her tea, and let her cry, and hold back my own tears and tell her that I am here for her and that everything will be OK. Even though it won't be. I make the tea as quickly as I can and pull up a chair to sit next to her.

‘Kerry, Kerry,' I say, trying to urge her to stop crying and talk to me. ‘Kerry, tell me what happened.'

‘Chicken  …  ' she says.

She must be so confused.

‘Chicken?'

‘He was playing chicken, in the lay-by. They crashed,' she tells me, through her tears.

I can't believe it. Poor Matt. Renée always told me how the boys played chicken and how dangerous it was.

‘He was in Renée's car,' she finishes, managing to look me in the eye.

This time my thoughts don't stop; they speed up. I see my best friend smashed up on the bonnet of her car. The horror must show on my face.

‘No. Renée is OK, no, no, she's OK,' Kerry says, seeing instantly where my imagination had taken me. I breathe the kind of breath you can only breathe when your entire body wanted to stop forever.

Thank God, thank you, God. Thank you.

‘Matt was driving,' she continues, managing to control herself a little better. ‘He was killed on impact. Renée has a broken arm, but she's OK.'

Every answer I ever needed comes to me at once. The thought of losing Renée, I mean really losing Renée, nearly killed me on the spot.

‘Come on, I'll drive you home.' I help Kerry up. I need to get to Renée as quickly as I can.

I keep playing it back in slow motion. Up until it all went black. I keep seeing it happen over and over again. How I knew Pete's car was going to hit us before it even did. A split second before, Matt and I looked at each other and I knew then he was going to die. He did too – we knew. I've never seen that fear in someone's face before. There was me so worried about my brakes not working when they couldn't have saved us anyway.

I should never have let him drive my car.

When I came around all I could see was red. My legs, my hands, all red and wet. It took me a few seconds to realise it was blood. When I did, I thought I was dying. I tried to lift my head, but it hurt too much, and my arm too. I couldn't move it. I felt the pressure of something against my left side, like I was wedged against something. I tried to shift my body but it hurt to move, and then I noticed a hand on my leg. It wasn't my hand. And then I realised that the thing pressing against me was Matt. He was limp and heavy. He was squashed against me, because the bonnet of Pete's car was pushing through the driver's door of mine. I knew instantly he was dead. So, so dead. I was covered in blood, and none of it was mine.

‘Renée, here, drink this.' Aunty Jo puts a cup of tea onto the kitchen table next to me.

‘Where is Nana?' I ask her, worried she can see me.

‘Don't worry, she's watching TV in bed. She doesn't know.'

Relieved, I drink some tea.

‘Aunty Jo, did I kill someone today? Matt's dead because of me, isn't he?' I cry more. I feel like I will cry forever.

She kneels down and takes my right hand in hers. My left one is hanging pathetically out of the end of a sling.

‘You listen to me. Matt chose to drive your car, OK? Those boys wanted to play that game, OK? If he hadn't been in your car he would have done it in someone else's. This is not your fault.'

‘OK,' I say, not convinced.

The doorbell rings. Aunty Jo goes to answer it. Two minutes later, Mr Frankel is standing in our kitchen. It's very strange to see him at home, but I'm too wrecked to question it.

‘Hello, Renée,' he says.

I can't say anything.

‘How's she doing?' I hear him say to Aunty Jo, as they realise I am not capable of being involved in a conversation. Their voices sound like they're under water. The room feels so hot, so clammy.

‘Not good, understandably. I don't know what to say to her.'

‘The school wanted to send someone over. I have spent more time with her over the last few years than anyone else, as we realised pretty quickly that English was the only class she really came to. I am so fond of Renée. I hope you don't mind the visit?' says Mr Frankel to Aunty Jo.

‘Not at all. Thank you for coming. Tea?'

Their pleasantries make me want to scream. I want them to shut up so much. How does anyone think they can make this better? Matt is dead because of me. I shouldn't be alive either.

‘I need air,' I say, finding it harder and harder to breathe.

Aunty Jo goes to open a window and Mr Frankel comes over to me and kneels down. I can't handle another person kneeling down telling me I will be OK. Or that it isn't my fault. Neither of those things are true. I need to get out.

‘I need the sea,' I blurt as I run for the door. Mr Frankel tries to stop me, but I break free of him and I run, and run, and run, and I will keep running until I get to a place where I can breathe.

After seeing Kerry into her house I make my way straight over to Renée's. She must be so hurt, so frightened. She is strong, but not for this kind of stuff. Who is? I just want to make sure she is all right. It's a force so powerful in me that even if I wanted to ignore it, I couldn't.

‘You don't send messages in halves, do you, God?' I say, looking up.

I feel him more than ever. This is the moment I have been waiting for. The feeling that he is guiding me, that I know who I am, what my purpose is. My purpose is to help my friend, to be the best friend I can be. I pull up at the house and run in through the open front door.

‘Renée?' I shout, looking around downstairs. I start to run up to her room, but it's empty. ‘Renée?' I shout, coming back down. ‘Jo? Oh, Mr Frankel. What are you doing here?'

‘I came to check in on Renée.'

‘How is she? Where is she?'

‘She isn't here. She ran off about an hour ago, saying she needed to be at the sea. Jo went looking for her and I said I would stay here in case she came back.'

‘Where's her nana?'

‘She's fine, watching TV. She doesn't know anything. I have taken her tea.'

‘I will find her,' I say, running back to my car. ‘I'll drive around the entire coast of Guernsey until I do.'

‘I'll stay here for as long as I have to,' Mr Frankel shouts after me.

Driving past town the moon is so bright that the sky looks dark blue. I have driven along every coast road and screamed her name on every beach and I still haven't found Renée. Maybe she's gone home. I decide to head back. If she isn't there I will come back out. I will drive all night if I have to.

And then it strikes me.

The place that she would go to at a time like this, the place I know makes her think about living life, and dealing with death.

Our wall.

I turn left at Havelet Bay and look along the top of the long wall that goes from the edge of town all the way out to sea. And there I see the silhouette of my broken friend. Sitting on the very spot where I should have known she would be.

A few years ago, when Renée and I first became friends, she brought me here and persuaded me to jump off the wall and into the sea. I hadn't wanted to, but her insistence that we should be fearless, and that taking that plunge would mean we were living our lives to the full, is what eventually made me do it. So I took off my shoes and we jumped in holding hands. She was right, I had never felt so alive as when we crawled out of that cold water, our school uniforms waiting for us on the wall. Then, months later, she brought me here again, this time to throw my dad's ashes into the sea. With Abi in between us, we watched the box containing them drift away from us in the moonlight.

I haven't been back up here since.

‘Renée?'

She looks up at me. Her face is so puffy, so sad and bruised.

‘Have you come to tell me you hate me?'

‘Of course I haven't,' I say, sitting down next to her. Our legs dangle over the edge of the wall. The sea is not very high and quite rough. It doesn't feel very safe.

‘I let you down and then killed your friend. How can you not hate me?'

A small knife twists in my stomach as I think of Matt. I try to ignore it for now.

‘Nothing that happened before matters, OK?'

‘It does, though, doesn't it? Because it all adds up on the list of things that I have done wrong to you. We were going to come and see you, me and Matt. That's why I let him in the car, that's why I said he could play chicken. So that afterwards he would come with me to get you and we would go to Vazon caff and have chips. That was all I wanted.'

‘I would have loved that,' I say, putting my arm around her. She shrugs me off because her shoulder is so sore.

‘How are you feeling?' I ask, knowing it's a stupid question, but hoping it urges her to talk more. She stares out to sea like something is going to appear on the horizon and help her. I wish she would just look to her right and realise that it's me.

I close my eyes and ask God for the strength to help me do this.

‘You can get through this, Renée. It's just going to take a bit of time.'

‘What do you know about time? We're eighteen. We think we have lived, but we haven't even started. I thought I had suffered all the pain I had to suffer when my mother died, but life has got harder, not easier. Time means nothing, all it does is give more chance for things to go wrong.' She cries and I can see it hurts. Hurts in the way it does when you have cried so much that your eyes can't make any more tears. I know that feeling. I take her good hand and we sit in silence looking out to sea. I tell myself not to speak until I know what to say.

‘Can I pray for you?' is what eventually feels right.

‘Oh Flo, why don't you rub it in?'

‘Rub it in, how?'

‘With God. Good for you, having God. Good for you. I'm glad you have someone up there to talk to that you believe is there. Some of us aren't so lucky. I've talked to Mum every day for the last eleven years and she has never answered me. I don't believe she's anywhere really, I just talk. Talk to the ceiling, talk to the walls, talk to the bath. But I know she can't hear me. I don't have faith and I can't make myself have it. I just picture her and throw words out there, knowing they fall to the ground. Then you just get it, like it's the easiest thing. You just connect with God and make it sound so easy.'

‘How do you know she can't hear you?'

‘Because when people die, they die. She's nowhere.'

‘I used to think that too, but then I realised that heaven makes me happy. That if Dad is there then one day I will see him again. That if I talk to him, he is somewhere, and he can hear me. It's nice.'

She suddenly seems very angry. She stands up.

‘Well, if Mum is somewhere, then your dad is there too, and Matt, and Pop, and everyone else who has died. They're somewhere, are they? Waiting for us? Well, let's go and see them.'

She starts to undo her laces with her right hand.

‘Renée, what are you doing?'

‘I'm going to jump.'

‘But you could drown. It's rough, and your arm?'

‘If I drown, won't that be the work of God? Maybe he will save me. Maybe not. If he doesn't, I'll see Mum, right? You say she is in heaven? Well, I want to see her.'

I get down onto the path, hoping she will follow me.

‘Renée, come down, please. This is silly. Let's go home, get some tea and talk.'

‘What's talking going to do? Who is that going to bring back? This is the spot, Flo. It's made us feel alive and it's helped us deal with death. So let's see which one it's to be tonight.'

She launches herself forward and I try to catch her but can't. The splash of her body hitting the water seems freakishly loud.

God? What are you trying to do?

I kick off my shoes and pull myself back onto the wall. Looking down I can't see her. Where did she go? A bright light flashes from the beach and with that I see her, face down, bobbing and lifeless. Without thinking twice, I tear off my coat and jump in after her.

The water is so cold, and without the adrenaline of excitement it feels dangerous and scary. Breathing is hard, but I'm so focused on finding Renée that I can cope, somehow. The light from the beach is shining directly onto her now, and I can see her bobbing just a few feet from me. I swallow a huge glug of salty water that makes me cough and choke, but I don't stop. I reach her and flip her over. She's breathing but her eyes are closed. Looping my elbow under her chin, I swim to the shore. It feels like a lifetime away but I finally make it. Behind the light I see Aunty Jo. She runs into the sea, picks Renée up and runs with her towards the road. I stay for a second, on all fours, my lungs tight from the cold, the waves lapping at my feet, and I let my tears come.