Sam thinks for a moment. “No. We need to find out more before we do that. Plus, we don’t want Denver to know we’re on to him.” Sam blows on her tea before taking a scalding sip. “Copy me in on everything and let me know if you want help. Right now, I need to read the next chapter ofHow to Get Away with Murderbefore this migraine gets me.”
How Do You Solve a Problem like Marry Her?
I first noticedSarah over the convent walls, playing rounders. Her curly auburn hair looked to be on fire as she ran from base to base and the other girls scrambled to bowl her out. They all wore A-line skirts below the knee, brown with yellow trim. It was truly disgusting garb. Yet, somehow, Sarah looked wonderful in it.
One day, Sarah hit the ball so hard that it flew out of the school grounds and into the undergrowth on the other side of the convent walls. She dropped her bat and came to lean over the wall to see if she could spot the ball. I was sitting reading with my friends on a grassy bank opposite—our usual vantage point from which to watch the girls, who rolled their skirts up high during games in order to be able to run unhindered, making excellent viewing. The ball had vanished. Being an empath, I immediately perceived the need for help in locating it and got up to volunteer my assistance.
“It’s there!” Sarah called. Other girls had joined her now, peering over the convent wall at me as I rummaged for the ball. They giggled and whispered to each other. Brambles tore at my jeans.
“What’s your name?” one of them shouted.
“Bobby,” I said, giving my cousin’s name, which for some reason set them tittering.
“I’m not out,” Sarah said to her friends. “I’m still batting once Bobby’s found the ball.”
“You got MSN, Bobs?” another girl shouted. For younger readers who can’t remember the nineties, MSN was kind of like WhatsApp, but on a computer as we didn’t have mobile phones yet.
“I don’t use MSN,” I said, kicking my way through a fern to try to find the elusive ball. In truth, I didn’t have a computer at all. My family was, I confess, on the breadline. I had always received free school meals and endured the shame of sitting still while classmates handed in packets of money each Monday morning.
“It’s over there,” Sarah called, “just there. Behind that ash tree. You’re miles away.”
I moseyed slowly toward the ash, pretending not to see the ball. Soon I was so close to it that Sarah would think I was blind if I didn’t pick it up. So I did, and I turned, looking up at her. Even from where I stood, below the convent wall, in the cold shade, I could see the warm freckles on her skin. Green eyes. Her flaming mane, wild and free.
“Pass,” she instructed, cupping her hands for the ball. I nursed it a little longer, giving her what I hoped was a cheeky grin.
“What’ll you give me for it?” I said, in a rare moment of flirtation.
“Nowt!” she said. “Pass it!”
“Sometimes the lads leave us notes under that rock there,” her friend shouted to me, then received an elbow from a fat girl who hadn’t spoken at all.
“What? He’s all right,” the first girl said, rubbing her arm.
“He’s minging,” said the fat girl, and I’d have flayed her on the spot if the high walls hadn’t been dividing us.
“Pass the ball,” said Sarah, and I threw it to her. She turned away and went back to the game. Several other girls stayed, leaning over the walland chatting to my friends, but I lost interest and withdrew. The girls stayed well beyond their lunch break, until a tiny nun came along and yelled that the bell had gone.
I was desirous of seeing Sarah again, but I did not like the idea of a shared location for leaving notes. I resolved to leave one brief snippet under the rock, instructing Sarah to write to me by way of a near by statue with a loose foot. I waited two weeks but then, one fine day, I tugged the Mother Mary’s ankle and there it was. A riveting correspondence ensued. Very romantic, I know. Risky, too, although I did beseech Sarah to burn my notes after reading, and I believe she complied for fear of her God-bothering father. After many months of wooing in this way, and at significant cost to the Virgin’s limb, Sarah finally agreed to meet me after school. She’d tell her parents she had rounders practice and tell the nuns she had a dental appointment. That gave her about an hour and a half to spend with yours truly.
I hid in the bushes by the river and waited for her. Then we wandered a route I knew well, up toward the reservoir, through the farmer’s fields with pink hawthorn hedges. We sat beneath an oak tree and I promised her I’d carve her name into it next time. As it turned out, there wasn’t to be a next time. It was my first kiss and it was full of orange flames as her hair shone through my closed eyelids. It was as terrible as everyone’s first kiss, I suppose. She climbed on to my lap and we practiced until she was making sweet little moans. Things turned a little sour when her fingers moved toward my special place and I had to calm her down. She assured me that she would not pressure me and that she didn’t believe in carnal sin. Had I ever thought about my wedding?
I desired a subject change, so I gently pulled her beside me and began asking about her interests, and sharing mine. I don’t know at what point things took a turn for the worse, but suddenly Sarah was on her feet and, would you believe it, called me afreak.Me. It’s possible that she simply hadn’t understood my disappointment about the innocence of Mary Ann Cotton, but Sarah began to back away from me.
I took hold of her wrist, pulling her on to my lap with my arms tightlyaround her. I held her close as I tried to make her understand that we were simply chatting and my interests were purely theoretical. She writhed and squirmed. Then she turned hateful—biting down on my arm, drawing blood! I yelled and released her, and she proceeded to try to run away from me as if I’d attacked her, and not the other way around. I ran after her and as I tried to stop her, we both fell, landing heavily.
As soon as I was astride her, my weight forcing the air from her lungs and my knees pinning her wrists, I knew that I wouldn’t fight it. I let my fingers find her delicate white neck and I gave a little squeeze. A thrill ran through me, far stronger than anything I’d felt during the kissing. We spent some time together until she could take no more and, as the sun fell low, I closed her beautiful green eyes forever. Before she stiffened, I lifted her carefully and positioned her snuggly beneath our oak, as if she’d curled up and fallen asleep.
I rinsed my face and hands in the river and walked back to college, sneaking into the study hall, which was open until 8 p.m. each school night. When the janitor kicked me out to lock up, I chatted to him, ensuring I described the essay I was working on and how I’d been there all evening, trying to get it done.
The police visited our college a week later. We were all briefed in assembly and then many of the boys who hung around the convent were interviewed individually, including me. The detective was a fat man with a bald head, who had a young female PC with him to take notes.
“Now then, son,” he said to me. “Did you know the girl? Sarah…” I forget her surname.
“No,” I said.
“But you’ve seen her? When you and your friends hang around down there by the convent?”
“Do you have a picture?” I asked and he produced one. Not a complimentary photo of Sarah, I must say. She looked more like Geri Halliwell than herself. “Yes, I’ve seen her at the convent. But that’s all.”
