Forget Me Not. Claire Allan
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floor of the assembly hall in St Catherine’s College, our too-big green pinafores and coats swamping us as we nervously waited to be divided into our form groups.
We’d clicked over a mutual dislike of geography and Kylie Minogue, and we’d stayed friends since. We didn’t live in each other’s pockets, but we were there for each other through everything life threw at us. When Julie had postnatal depression, when Clare’s marriage had crumbled just days before her third wedding anniversary and when I’d fallen to pieces after the death of my mother. The girls had held me up, literally at one stage, as grief took the legs out from under me and I’d fainted. They’d welcomed the steady stream of mourners to our home, directed them to where my mother’s body lay so that they could pay their respects and then offered a cup of tea afterwards. They’d made sure everything ran smoothly, while I’d sat, ashen-faced and bowed with grief, by the side of the coffin, unwilling to move – struggling to let go of my beloved mother.
How could it be that Clare was gone now? That her body had been found by the side of a road? The police weren’t saying murder yet and I hoped, perhaps naively, that it wasn’t murder. That it was an accident. Although I couldn’t think of any possible excuse for her being on that road, alone in the early hours of the morning.
I didn’t know how she’d died. Didn’t know when she’d died. All manner of horrors kept dancing through my head until I couldn’t hold in my pain and my fear any more. I simply lifted my bag, left my Year 12s open-mouthed and walked out of the classroom midway through a discussion on the book Of Mice and Men.
I walked to the head’s office, my legs shaking – the grief hitting me from the ground upwards, weakening me, diminishing me.
‘You’ll have to send someone to deal with my Year 12s,’ I muttered. ‘I’ve got to go home. I’ve had bad news.’
Sheila, my deputy head, looked me up and down. ‘Are you okay, Rachel?’
I didn’t trust myself to speak. I didn’t want to say the words. It was so completely, utterly, surreal. You never expect to have to say those words to anyone. Those are words for TV shows and movies, not for school offices on sunny June days as the school secretary eats an ice cream and talks about her forthcoming holiday.
I just shook my head as a surge of something powerful, painful and overwhelming rose up inside me. She was dead. My friend. I’d be sitting by her coffin next. And if Mr McCallion was right, it was a ‘gruesome murder’.
The shock rose up inside me until I had to run from the room to the staff toilets and throw up until I could barely breathe.
I was aware of someone, Sheila most probably, behind me. I was embarrassed she’d hear me retching, sobbing and trying not to scream. She sat down beside me, put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me into a hug. It should have been awkward. It certainly wasn’t professional. But it was just what I needed in that moment. It gave me time to find my breath again, to slow the shaking.
‘That body,’ I told her. ‘The one found this morning? It’s a friend of mine. One of my oldest friends.’ I stumbled over my words. My tongue felt too big in my mouth. The sentences too alien. ‘People are saying it’s a murder, Sheila.’
She hugged me a little closer, told me that of course I could go, but she wasn’t happy about letting me drive given that I’d had such a shock.
‘Do you want to call Paul?’ she asked.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to call my husband. I wanted, no, needed to go and see Julie. She was the only other person who could possibly understand.
‘I need to see my friend. Our friend. Julie. She works with Clare. Worked. I suppose. We all went to school together.’
I knew I was rambling and talking too much, but I couldn’t seem to stop. Nor could I stop shaking. Once it had started, it became severe. Teeth chattering, legs jiggling. As if I had no control.
‘Maybe we should get you a cup of hot, sweet tea or pilfer a bottle of whisky from the summer fair tombola – for the shock,’ Sheila said.
I shook my head. I knew she meant well, but I couldn’t stomach it and I just wanted to go. It was the adrenaline, I imagined. The shaking and the sickness and the pounding of my heart.
‘Well, let’s get you to your friend, then,’ she said and helped me to my feet. ‘I’m so, so sorry you’re going through this,’ she offered. ‘It’s awful.’
I nodded because I didn’t know what to say, and despite the sickness and the pain in my chest, it still didn’t feel real. I didn’t know just how awful it was to become. Once I knew how she died, I knew it would only be worse. But for that moment I just kept thinking of my friend, hair tied back in a ponytail. Embracing life again in a way she hadn’t through her thirties. My friend smiling from her Facebook page. My friend who had the most contagious laugh in the world.
My friend who was dead.
Julie was perched on the edge of her sofa, her knees tight together, her body stiff with shock. She lit one cigarette off the end of another and continued smoking. Her hand shook as she brought the cigarette to her lips. Her eyes closed on the inhalation and as they did, a tear escaped, running down her already streaked face.
She looked wretched. Old. I’d never looked at one of my old school pals and thought we looked our age before, but Julie did in that moment, in that room. Her usually neatly preened hair was messy, strands of copper escaping from her ponytail, frizzy and unkempt. Her make-up was mostly gone, washed away by her tears and the rough way she pulled the sleeve of her cardigan across her cheeks to dry her face. Her skin would be red and sore later, I thought, as if that would matter. As if that was important in the grand scheme of things.
I’m not sure what I expected. Perhaps that we’d run into each other’s arms and cling on, sobbing like lost souls. That didn’t happen. Julie looked at me through glazed eyes and just shook her head while I sat down at the opposite end of the sofa, my adrenaline gone and a weariness washing over me.
‘Do you want a cup of tea or coffee, or something stronger?’ Julie’s husband, Brendan, asked me.
It had been him who’d let me in, who’d hugged me awkwardly at the door and who’d warned me that Julie was ‘in a bad way’.
‘I’m on the vodka,’ Julie spoke, her voice hoarse.
I noticed the tall glass, half full of a clear liquid and ice cubes, on the floor by her feet.
‘I’ll stick with tea,’ I said, knowing I’d have to deal with the girls later.
How would I tell them? Tell Molly her godmother was gone? I felt something in my stomach contract.
‘Probably the wise choice, I just … I just needed to block it out. Or something,’ Julie said. ‘Oh, Rachel, I can’t believe it. I can’t get my head around it.’
‘How much do you know?’ I asked her.
She took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Ronan called me. He was in bits, Rachel. Could barely talk. He said the police had just called to their parents’ house, asked about distinctive marks, hair colour, clothes, that kind of thing. They’d found a bank card or something stuffed into her trouser pocket.’ Her voice broke as she spoke. ‘They’ve got to go for a formal identification. Can you imagine that?’
A sliver of hope surged inside me. ‘So the body hasn’t been identified yet? They could be wrong, Julie. Someone could have stolen her card or something. It doesn’t mean it’s her.’
Julie sighed, dragged on her cigarette again. ‘It’s her, Rachel. They had jewellery – that bracelet she always wears. They described the tattoo on her wrist. The identification is just a formality. It’s definitely her.’
The feeling of that sliver of hope disintegrating almost broke me in two. ‘But maybe …’ I offered to no one in particular, the sentence dying on my lips as I realised how futile it was.
Julie