Chapter 8
Through my peephole I see the white-cloaked sign for Tarnmore.
The gateposts are heaped in snow, trees on either side bowed down with it.
‘This is me,’ I call, pressing the bell, and the bus groans to a halt.
I grab my bag and stagger down the aisle, emerging through the bus doors into an alien landscape.
Mist drifts and the cold creeps around my calves. Everything is unrecognisable.
The bus disappears into the murk and I am alone.
The blizzard is mesmerising. I peer into the snow-veiled forest, steeling myself for an arduous walk.
I’m glad of my boots, my warm coat and hat.
My tights do little to repel the wind that whips around my legs and my cheeks are shredded by cold, but I’m well enough wrapped up that I don’t think I’ll succumb to hypothermia before I make it to Tarnmore.
I start up the track. The path is obscured by knee-deep drifts – I can’t believe how much has fallen here already. The forest is eerie, the mauve-yellow light of a burdened sky doing little to brighten the gloom.
I grip the handle of my suitcase and push on.
It’s only a few minutes before I need to take a break.
The going is even harder than I expected.
With the snow drifting and uneven, the ferocious blizzard and the weight of my bags, it’s exhausting.
I like to keep fit – kickboxing classes every week, plus I walk everywhere – but this is brutal, every step sapping my energy.
I used to keep fit by swimming of course.
When I started uni I joined the university swim team, rather to Gen’s chagrin – competitive sport was not her thing, and she didn’t like how much of my time training took up.
Swimming is how Jameson and I connected, away from the group.
Emerging from the pool at the end of our respective lengths, our eyes collided as we pulled off our goggles to sneak a better look.
Water streamed down the ridges of his abs. He stole my breath, he was so beautiful. And when he smiled – that bashful grin – I was done for.
We trained together every day of the Martinmas semester, pushing each other in the pool and building a fellowship that existed beyond the new-minted gang Gen had engineered.
I used to love the water so much, and it pains me that I haven’t been able to swim since that night.
I remember the sense of peace and power I used to feel in the pool, but it isn’t enough to drive me back into the water. I can’t do it. I tried, in the early days, but the panic that overtook me each time I slipped into water was too much, seizing my limbs and crippling my lungs.
As I press on up the track, a wave of anticipation for the upcoming house party gives me fresh energy. The track snakes steeply through tall trees, snow slanting down. It’s beautiful. Ethereal. A dark fairy-tale world.
It’s silent too – so different to the city which never fully quiets.
I think about Alex’s words again:
That night was so messed up …
I have questions, of course I do. Because I can only remember fragments, I have never been able to piece it all together. I have no idea how the night descended into chaos when it started so perfectly. I don’t know where I was when Gen went into the water alone, or why no one noticed her go.
Becca told the police the rest of us were together at the bonfire and Gen must have wandered off.
I can clearly hear her words, unconnected to any visual, any sense of truth.
She took charge of the narrative when police swarmed the beach.
But I have a different memory that seems to contradict it.
Might be false of course. That’s the trouble when you don’t fully remember; your brain tries to fill in the gaps.
The memory – real or fabricated – is of waking alone in the dunes, staring up at a star-scattered sky, hearing Leo’s scream echo in the still salt air.
Did Becca lie?
And if so, why did we let her?
I think I agreed with her in my police statement – I assume we all did because we were never questioned again.
Gen was a tragic accident waiting to happen, a statistic – just another drug-addled student who thought she was invincible.
All I can really remember from the police interview is clutching a polystyrene cup of tea like my life depended on it, and the feel of Jameson’s hoodie round my shoulders over my wet clothes.
I know that the party dwindled – it was only our gang left by the time Gen entered the water.
It seemed like at least half of our year had turned out earlier to play volleyball, drink beer and eat charred burgers off disposable barbecues.
Jameson had brought his guitar – swoon – and we were definitely all together at one point, singing along and staring into the dusty flames of the driftwood fire.
There was a feverish quality to the evening – like we were already trying to cling to something that was slipping through our fingers.
Leo and Gen were at odds, Jameson and I teetering on the edge of getting back together.
Alex was worrying about his appointment at the university, no matter how hard he tried to pretend he didn’t care.
There’s no way they know about the essay, Leo said confidently. It can’t be that.
We’d discovered a new camaraderie at Tarnmore, six weeks earlier, and I wanted more of it. Taking the pills together was meant to compound our closeness.
After that, the night stretched and warped, and that’s where my memories first begin to fail me.
Of course, my confusion was compounded by the trauma of watching another person I loved drown.
When we gathered on the shore and saw what Leo was screaming about – Gen bobbing face down in the estuary – it seemed like we all came from different directions, but who knows?
I can’t trust myself where that night is concerned.
I definitely dived into the waves, Jameson right behind me.
Alex did too, despite the fact he can’t even swim, and had to be fished out by Leo and Becca.
We pulled Gen from the sea and Jameson laid her on her back on the sand, started CPR. Blue lights lit up the sky.
But she was already gone.
*
The forest seems to close around me as the trees thicken. The snow is smothering, creating a distorted bubble of solitude. I might be alone in the universe as I trek through the drifts.
I’m anxious, stomach churning now. It’s thinking about West Sands that does it, rehashing everything – that curious, confused night. That’s why it’s been easier not to think about it all these years.
I wonder if my friends have forgiven me for abandoning them when we needed each other most. After I was interviewed, I stepped into an incongruously bright summer’s morning, the streets coming to life as though nothing had happened.
I had already called my dad and he drove through the night to get to me.
I don’t remember the journey back to the farm.
I only know I was still wearing Jameson’s hoodie because weeks later Dad prised it from me to wash, and I cried for hours because it no longer smelled like him.
I didn’t say goodbye – not even to Jameson. I had a complete breakdown that summer, didn’t leave my room for weeks.
The trees converge as the track narrows.
It’s hard to see where I’m going with the blizzard surging around me.
I’m exhausted from hauling myself and my luggage through the drifts, and from these thoughts too.
It’s unsettling, the darkness on all sides, the seclusion of the storm.
The temptation to rest is strong, to let the snow settle around my shoulders like a blanket.
I give myself a mental kick; that would be madness.
Everyone knows if you lie down in a snowstorm you die.
Once, Mitch asked me if Gen could have drowned herself. He was sixteen and morbidly curious. I freaked out. Flew at him, hitting him repeatedly. Dad had to drag me away.
No one who knew Gen could think that.
Gen loved life. She’d never do that.
That’s one thing I’m sure of.
I pause on the track and stare around. Trees and snow still converge on all sides, the forest stretching into darkness.
It’s so disorientating. Tarnmore might only be a couple of miles from the road, but it feels far from civilisation.
Another finger of fear plucks at the strings of my nerves and I shiver.
Logically, I know I can’t get lost if I just follow the track, but logic doesn’t seem to play much part in this weird landscape, where it’s all too easy for the fear to take over.
The path is becoming increasingly hard to follow in all this.
Then a figure lunges at me out of the trees, and I scream.