Chapter 28
‘Are you all right?’
Matthew looks up, confused. He’s stumbled out of the museum and made his way back up to the High Court, not even checking the time. He could be late, for all he knows. All he cares, either.
‘You look a bit out of it.’
Now Matthew focuses on who is speaking to him. It’s the blonde woman, standing behind him in the queue for security. He opens his mouth to reply. Closes it. Opens it again.
‘Yes, sorry. In a bit of a daze.’
‘Has something happened?’ The woman’s voice is warm. She sounds genuinely concerned.
‘I’m fine. I just had a bit of a shock about something, that’s all.
Nothing serious.’ As he says it, he wants to believe it.
The further he’s got from the museum the more sense has imposed itself on him, the reminder that this is not true.
A random selection of cards is all. However bleak their premise.
‘I’m glad you’re OK,’ she says. They move forward in the queue. A quick empty of his pockets and Matthew is through, looking behind him. He wants to keep talking to her. He can smell that floral scent of hers again and it’s lessening the dread by the second, an incense to banish dark spirits.
She’s through fast enough and they walk together up the stairs.
‘It’s quite the case, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘Don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like this in a courtroom before.’
‘Do you come to court often?’ Matthew says before stopping, scarlet. Such a hammy line . . . Fortunately she just laughs, rolls her eyes at him.
‘Not for a long time,’ she says. ‘But this one looked interesting. I thought I could use it for something. It’s all good research.’
At that moment the jury officer comes through the door next to the courtroom. When he sees Matthew he gestures at him, his movements brisk.
‘We thought we’d lost you,’ the man says. ‘It’s time.’
Matthew turns to say goodbye, but the blonde has vanished, probably gone into court herself.
He follows the jury officer meekly, less shaky than he was when he got back to the main door.
The encounter may have been brief, but it’s restored him, a little.
It’s good to know she’ll be there in court this afternoon, too.
Sasha’s back in the witness box. She’s looking tired, her face drawn. It’s clear that telling this strange story is taking it out of her. Her head turns this way and that, as if she’s looking for an escape. The relief Matthew felt has gone, a feeling of dread heavy on him, in his gut.
She continues her account. The girls were kicked off the estate the day after their escapade in the chapel.
All hell had broken loose on the discovery of the desecrated space, the blood and guts all over the floor.
Christian had tried to hold it together, telling her dad it was harmless, that things had just got a bit out of control.
He wasn’t buying it though, furious at the destruction of his property.
Besides, Christian couldn’t fully hide the effect that the situation had had on her.
There was a point in the early morning that Sasha overheard her speaking to Isobel, begging her to say everything was all right, that the discovery of the hare foetus could have another meaning than that Christian was going to die.
Isobel had refused.
The school had got involved on their return in disgrace, putting them in two weeks of detention and moving the dormitories round so that the girls weren’t in the same room any more.
That had been the end of the night-time escapades, at least for a while.
But it hadn’t stopped the supernatural activity.
Every now and again, Sasha saw Isobel or Eliza go up to Christian and tell her that they’d had another dream, or that they had done a tarot reading, and that it was still looking as if she was going to die sometime soon.
They always said how sorry they were, but Sasha didn’t think they seemed particularly sad to be passing on the bad news.
The Christmas holidays had provided a welcome escape.
Sasha didn’t talk to any of them, even though Isobel messaged her a couple of times.
She just wanted a break from it. It was all a bit too real, still.
But she was getting bored, so when she got back in January, she wasn’t unhappy that it all kicked off again.
The dormitories had been rearranged over the holidays and the four girls were back together again (albeit under strict instructions to behave themselves).
The Ouija board had thus come back out, and the tarot cards, though the messages from the spirit world were pretty harmless for the first part of the year.
‘Did the messages become more harmful at any point?’ Mr Alexander asks. Matthew sits up. He’s been drifting off a bit through the last part of the evidence, nothing dramatic to catch his attention.
‘Yes,’ Sasha says. ‘It was the Ouija board again. It went off one night saying DIEDIEDIE again. Then it went a bit further. I really thought we weren’t going to get anywhere that night.
But suddenly the words appeared.’ A deep breath.
Her chin up. ‘It said HELPHERDIE. It was in the middle of a muddle of letters. Isobel took this really seriously. She said we had to obey the spirits if they were telling us to help Christian. She did a lot of tarot readings on her own, carried out some divinations. I don’t know exactly what as she was very private about it.
She only talked to Eliza. But I thought she was trying to find out what would be best to do.
Finally she said we needed to do a funeral. ’
Mr Alexander makes a noise of surprise. ‘A funeral? But no one was dead?’
‘Yes, that’s right. The idea was that it would help Christian come to terms with what was going to happen to her, Isobel said. We needed to help her cross over to the other side.’
‘Did you get the impression that Isobel genuinely wanted to help Christian?’
A long pause. Sasha’s face is lost in thought.
‘At the time, I thought she did. She wasn’t being nasty.
She wasn’t being nice, either. She was just acting on the instructions that were given by the spirits, she said.
She believed it all implicitly, I’m sure of it.
And Eliza believed everything Isobel said. ’
‘Given everything that’s happened, do you still think she was trying to help?’
A long, blank stare at the prosecutor. Sasha glances at the accused girls, turning her head quickly towards them, back again. There’s a light shimmering across her, ripples in the air around her, seeping into her face.
Matthew blinks. It’s still there, Sasha’s face is rippling now, too, the edges of her features blurred, melting into each other. The dread that suffused him at the tarot reading is back, a cold presence that demands his attention.
‘I don’t know,’ Sasha says. ‘I just don’t know. But I do know that it was very unkind.’