‘Anyway, the upshot was that Patrick jumped in the lake the next evening while we were all supposed to be on a night walk. He slipped away while the teachers weren’t looking and the only reason he didn’t drown was that my friend Shazzie caught sight of him leaving the group and followed him without telling us. She was a great swimmer, she’d done life-saving lessons, and so on. Shazzie went in after him and saved his life.’
‘Jeez! That must have been a huge scandal! Did the teachers get the sack?’
Rick shook his head. ‘It was all hushed up. Patrick didn’t want anyone to know he’d tried to top himself and Shazzie was scared that if it all came out, her foster family would disown her.’
‘But why would they? She behaved like a hero, surely?’
‘I know, but she was neurotic about rocking the boat. She loved being with that family. It was the first time she’d stayed anywhere for more than a few months. She was… difficult.’
Rick thought back to that dark, wet night. It had seemed crazy to go on a torch-lit walk in the rain, but the teachers had insisted because they said it would be character-building. With hindsight, Rick suspected that this was also due to the fact that they had no contingency plan for such awful weather and they were too far from a town to do anything else. Half the torch batteries had failed which was why nobody had noticed Patrick slipping away on his own. Everyone except Shazzie had been too busy fussing with spare batteries to be bothered about what he was up to. They’d all been stumbling around in the dark and the teachers had been more worried about the swearing that was going on than doing their customary head counts.
By the time Patrick and Shazzie’s absence had been discovered and everyone was running around in a panic, the two were on their way back to join the group, both soaking wet and shivering so much that the whole lot of them had to go back to the campsite and have hot chocolate while the teachers tried to get to the bottom of what had happened. Shazzie and Patrick had been in for a big telling off for being out on their own but Patrick had told the teachers that Rhonda and her gang had dared him to try out the stepping stones at the edge of the lake. He said he’d decided to do it and fallen in accidentally.
‘The true story never came out,’ Rick told Sam, who was still gazing at him in disbelief. ‘I guess these days it couldn’t happen, with all the safeguarding checks and so on – there should have been more staff there and a walk like that would never go ahead on such a filthy night. Patrick didn’t want his parents to know what he’d tried to do, Shazzie felt the same about her foster family and the teachers… well, they were obviously scared shitless that they’d be suspended. Brad and me only knew about it because Shazzie was one of our best friends. We kept shtum for her sake.’
‘And what happened to Patrick afterwards? Did he get over that bloody awful trip?’
‘Well, that wasn’t the only bad thing that happened on the camping holiday… but I don’t want to talk about the rest. It’s all water under the bridge now.’
Rick looked at the floor. He couldn’t bear to meet Sam’s eyes. The shame was still there. It hadn’t faded at all over the years. ‘And no, Patrick never really got over it. He was even more of a loner after that. He’s… he’s dead now, as you know.’
Tears pricked Rick’s eyelids, and he sniffed hard. Patrick hadn’t really had much of a life.
‘He didn’t try to kill himself again though, did he?’ Sam’s voice brought Rick back to the present.
‘Not that I know of. He got sick while he was at uni. It was nothing to do with him being…’
‘Suicidal?’ Sam filled in the missing words and there was no mistaking the disapproval in his tone.
‘I don’t think he was suicidal by then,’ said Rick, hoping against hope that this was true. ‘I’m not even sure he meant to go through with it the first time. He loved his university course, by all accounts. It was just bad luck that he got so ill. And, Sam…’
‘Yes?’
‘Beryl knows nothing about what happened on the camping trip. So please, please don’t let on. I don’t think she could handle it.’
Sam didn’t reply. His face said it all.
‘Are you okay with that? To keep it to yourself? I shouldn’t have told you, but you did ask.’
Sam shrugged. Rick guessed that would just have to do.
15
The next morning, both Vee and Rick avoided mentioning how they’d spent the previous evening. Vee thought Rick was unusually quiet over breakfast and she was still feeling guilty for delving into his photograph albums, so it was a relief to get the table cleared and clamber back into the van for the day’s work.
‘I’ve packed us up enough food for the day,’ Rick said. ‘We can’t keep hoping Beryl will turn up with cake and it’s going to cost us a fortune if we do a supermarket sweep every day for lunch. I hope you like tuna and mayo? I should have asked first but it was either that or cheese and I know you had toasties last night.’
Vee said she liked most things, although she did draw the line at squid, and Rick promised never to give her squid sandwiches. She asked him to make sure he added extra to her rent bill to cover food, and he agreed. It was a stilted conversation and neither of them smiled. After that, the rest of the short journey passed in silence.
When they reached Dragonfly Cottage, Vee helped Rick to unload the van and decided that she really needed to focus on one room this time because there was a distinct danger of getting overwhelmed by the volume of work to do.
‘Can I leave you to it downstairs and start decorating the main bedroom?’ she asked Rick. ‘I think we did enough prep in there yesterday for me to give it one more clean and then give all the walls a coat of white emulsion.’
‘But I thought you wanted the floor sanding?’ said Rick. ‘That’s a big job and you shouldn’t start painting until I’ve done it. And anyway, don’t you want a colour? It’s going to be a bit bland if you do the whole room in white. I’m happy to take you back to the DIY place later.’
‘No, I just want a peaceful, fresh look in there. I sleep better with white walls and ceiling around me,’ said Vee. ‘I can gradually get pictures to put up and a rug from a charity shop, maybe. So long as the floor’s clean, it can wait.’
Rick’s look said he would much rather get a few colour blocks and feature walls into this sad little cottage, but he left Vee to her own devices after helping her to carry everything she needed upstairs and move the bed base to the centre of the floor. Vee heard the sound of the radio as Rick began his day’s work with a complete scrubbing down of the kitchen. She opened the door a crack so that she could enjoy theGreasemedley pounding up the stairs and then looked around the almost empty room, trying to imagine what it would look like simply furnished. The one good thing about this house reconstruction was that the walls had never been papered so there was no messy stripping to do. Vee’s parents had favoured plain plaster which was given a regular coat of magnolia gloss emulsion by her dad. Bland, but easy.
