Chapter 2
Two
I CAN’T TELL YOU how many times I’ve started writing this story only to place my pen down, shut my notebook and slide the whole wretched thing back inside my desk.
Honestly, you’d think the next part would be easy, now that the fall, the difficult part is over.
But it isn’t. The life I’d led before that day had – I see now – a sort of simplicity to it.
There were facts I knew to be true about myself, certain tastes and predilections I could count on with confidence, a history of moments trailing behind me like streamers and a pattern of arrows on the floor pointing me vaguely in the direction of my future.
Although I felt myself to be floating half the time in the years leading up to Victoria’s death, really I was quite wedded to the ground.
But then, one January morning, she was gone, quite suddenly, and everything I thought I knew about myself seemed to go with her, to split like the loose clods of soil that had slid from the ravine’s edge that terrible day.
Perhaps I’m finding this retelling difficult because my memory of the weeks that followed are hazy.
There was, of course, a search; there was a dead girl; there were grieving relatives; there were short blocks of text in the local press and Harry Gration standing beneath an umbrella on BBC Look North; but really, it’s hard to remember any of these details with much clarity.
They appear in my mind’s eye as stills from a dark room, a cabinet of scratched photographs.
I seem to remember that once the emergency services were informed, and due to the intensity of the storm, search and rescue were deployed fairly quickly.
When the skies calmed, I remember Jolly and I standing, watching from my grandmother’s garden as a red-and-white helicopter circled the hills.
It wasn’t long before a body was discovered and brought down from the moor.
Poor Jolly was beside himself. He was screaming and telling them there had to be some sort of mistake, that they needed to check it was her.
Check it’s her! he kept shouting, like that meant anything.
Just check it’s really her before you make any decisions.
But there were no decisions left to make. She was dead.
They took her to the morgue of the nearest hospital, the one where my sister and I were born. I remember that.
Her parents were informed, her brothers.
Terrence drove across the country to retrieve Jolly, and all the problems, all the reasons for their turbulent, protracted near-breakup seemed to disappear for a while.
I, meanwhile, went home to my parents’ to wait out the final fortnight before my return to school.
That period, I’m afraid, is mostly a blank.
I was in shock. That’s what Mum said, anyway.
Honestly, I couldn’t believe she was gone.
I woke up every morning bone-tired and crusty-eyed, convinced I’d played witness to some terrible dream.
Every day I had to tell myself anew that yes, it was true, Victoria was never coming back.
No one accused me of anything. Everyone was very careful to tiptoe around the fact I had been the last person to see her alive.
Accidental death. There were enquiries from the police.
Drugs found in her system. Some routine questions.
Suspected suicide. I remember staring at the wall above the detective’s thinning hair.
She insisted we go for a walk. At a silver thumbtack glinting in my eyeline.
But she stormed ahead. Dad, sitting beside me.
I saw her take a wrong turn. My hand held tightly within his own.
We don’t usually go that way. They questioned Jolly, too.
But she was off. He didn’t have much more to add.
I tried to catch up with her. I told them Victoria and I were best friends.
But I couldn’t see her. That everyone said so.
I searched for a bit. I told them she was unlucky.
But I was exhausted. Made myself believe it.
I was so hungry. That she was troubled. The wind picked up.
That storm. So I went home. It came in from nowhere.
WE WEREN’T TOLD ABOUT the funeral until it was too late.
Jolly received a curt email the day after proceedings from her brother, Lawrence, saying that as per Helena’s wishes it had been a private funeral, that it was thought that as Victoria had had so many friends from so many walks of life, it would be too difficult and overwhelming for the family to notify and accommodate everyone without missing individuals from the list or causing offence.
For this reason, she had thought it best that only close family and friends attend, and she hoped Jolly understood.
Lawrence stated that his mother wanted to share her thanks with Jolly and all of Victoria’s peers for their friendship and support during her lifetime.
When Jolly told me down the phone, I felt a hard knot I hadn’t realized was there loosen slightly.
Jolly was torn up, but I didn’t want to see Helena again; I didn’t want to meet the other Parkers or Tilleys; I didn’t want to see Victoria’s finely wrought features repeated a hundred times over in the faces of strangers; I didn’t want to meet the occasional bit-players of Victoria’s anecdotes, her boarding-school chums, her agent, Dexter; I didn’t want to nibble on unbearably dainty sandwiches and hear the whispers of guests when they thought my back was turned – SHE was there; SHE lived; I didn’t want to rake over the dramatic events of her death, or worse, lie about the blameless martyr she’d been in life.