You looked really panicked when I found you in the conservatoryshe taps into her phone.Did you have a sense then that something was really wrong?
It’s a minute or two before his reply arrives, and she’s expecting something long and detailed, but it’s only one line:
I don’t remember that.
Talking to me or being worried?
Both.
Odd. She expected that his memories, like hers, would be sharper for the parts of the evening when the adrenaline kicked in hard, chasing the effects of the drink from their systems.
I asked you if you’d seen her, and you said no.
I didn’t. I do remember … I think I remember suggesting we looked in the park.
Yes. That’s right. I think I remember that too.
Those sober enough had split into groups to look in different places. She, Gil and Simon had searched the garden, then Simon had suggested crossing the road and heading into the small park on the other side. Full of fear, she’d grabbed onto Simon’s hand as they walked. They did a circuit of the main path calling out Megan’s name, checking nearby bushes in case she’d passed out. And then they’d come across the children’s playground.
When did you first spot her?she asks.
The surrounding atmosphere seems to darken as she waits for his answer, even though it’s a bright day in the Caribbean and there isn’t a cloud in the sky.
When we opened the gate to go into the fenced-off area. I saw something pale slumped on the merry-go-round. I didn’t know what it was, but I got weird vibes, like a sense of foreboding.
He had better eyes than she did then. She hadn’t realized there was a person lying there, let alone anything else, until they’d been much closer. For some reason, she’d been looking at the swings, hoping she’d find Megan sitting on one, legs dangling, or swinging high, a smile of pure childish joy on her face, but she’d been lying half on, half off the tiny merry-go-round, face down with her hair splayed all around her.
Just thinking about it makes her feel sick. She presses one hand to her stomach and taps at her phone screen with the other.
Was it you who rushed to her? Who turned her over?
The three dots appear and she thinks another message is coming, but then they disappear, then reappear again. Did he just type something and then delete it?
No.
It must have been Gil, then. Funny, she could have sworn it was Simon. But the facts must have been swept away by what she saw next.
I’ll never forget her face.
White. Eyes staring up at the hollow moon. Yellow vomit trailing from her mouth. A puddle of it on the flaking painted surface of the merry-go-round. She’d choked on it, apparently. That’s what the coroner had said, anyway. She had a bad reaction to the combination of ket and alcohol, and it slowed her heart rate to the point of no return.Another person taking a similar dose might have pulled through, but she hadn’t.
Did you know she was dead?she asks.
Not for sure. But I suspected it, even though she was still warm when I touched her.
Simon and Gil had rolled her into the recovery position while she’d dialled 999 and then run to the entrance of the park to direct the ambulance crew when they arrived.
The last time I touched hershe types with a tear rolling down her cheeks,is when we were laughing on the pile of coats. How can she have been so alive in that moment and then not long after …
She doesn’t write the rest of the sentence. Can’t. But she doesn’t need to, because he replies:
I know.
He understands.
Thank youshe types.
What for?
