Page 65 of Pictures of Him

We walk back to the house and you allow me to hold your hand beneath your blanket. I cannot find the right thing to say. I want to help you, to lessen your guilt, but my own is lacerating, for I am convinced that both of us, all three of us, are culpable, that this was an accident that didn’t need to happen.

‘I can’t believe it,’ I say eventually, and you nod, a sharp little incline of your head.

My brain is crammed with a ceaseless sequence of regrets. If only we’d gone to the nightclub or the pool instead of the lake. If only I’d gone home, as I planned, then maybe Harry and Ling wouldn’t have taken a boat out. If only we’d stopped her when she jumped in, if only we’d pulled her to safety straight away. If only, if only we hadn’t been drinking. Another drunken night with your friends; another devastating mistake. This time, fatal.

Back at the house, a few remaining partygoers are clustered around the bar in the hall, waiting for taxis or perhaps just rubbernecking. We walk into a buzz of conversation, which drops off in gradients, fading to nothing as people catch sight of us. You walk towards the staircase oblivious to all. I follow you up the first flight of stairs, around the corner and halfway up the second, just out of earshot of the hall when you begin to cry. I know this from the stoop of your shoulders and a half-gasp, almost undetectable, and I am taken back to that night, long ago, when you stood at the window, turned away from me, telling me about your father dying.

Your room, both of us shaking as we take off our wet clothes. My hands aren’t working properly and I can’t undo the zip of my dress. We watch each other, both crying now, but quietly. You stop unbuttoning your shirt and reach out to jerk my zip undone, pulling the wet dress down to my waist. Closer now, you kiss each of my eyes in turn, you wipe the tears from my cheeks with the palms of your hands.

‘She was so young,’ you say. ‘And he was so happy.’

‘I know.’

You start babbling, sentences running into each other, but all I hear is your guilt and it is exactly the same as mine.

‘It’s my fault. I should never have allowed the lake to be used. I know how dangerous it can be, I know how cold it gets out there.’

‘It was an accident,’ I say. ‘Of course it wasn’t your fault.’

But you say, ‘We didn’t look after her,’ which is the truth.

We shower, holding each other beneath the warm jets of water, your arms around my waist, my face pressed against your chest. While you dress, still shivering, in jeans and the old blue jumper I wore on the hill – only three days ago, the same day I first met Ling – I retrieve my bag from Liv’s room and dress myself in jeans and a grey hoody, clothes that also seem from another life.

Ling is dead and nothing matters any more. I think of her comprehension at dinner, the way she said, quietly, ‘No one has the right to judge you,’ and I wonder, in this moment, why I have ever cared. What could it matter that you find out what I am really like, or if everyone knows it?I am a person who makes mistakes. First Jack, now Ling.

I know as I walk back to your room that there is no more time.

‘I need to get back to the lake,’ you say as soon as I walk through the door.

And I tell you, ‘I slept with Jack.’

‘What?’ You step backwards. ‘What did you say?’ Staccato words, like coughing up blood.

‘I slept with Jack. The night we drank tequila. The night you went off to see your uncle.’

‘Fuck. Jesus, Catherine.’

Your hands are covering your face. I don’t know if you’re crying, but your voice comes out as a wail.

‘Not Jack. You wouldn’t have done that. I know you wouldn’t.’

But now, having told this truth, I can’t speak, I can’t defend myself. I just stand in the middle of your bedroom saying nothing, immobilised by shame. When you look at me again, just a moment before you slide your eyes away, it’s as if you’re looking at a stranger.

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because nothing matters now. And everything matters. Because I needed you to know.’

‘All right, so you’ve told me. Now I know.’

I hate the way your voice sounds: not angry, just cold.

‘I was so drunk,’ I say. ‘We both were. I didn’t know what I was doing.’

And still this isn’t what I want to tell you. I want to tell you that I loved you so much, that the sex with Jack was the very last thing I’d ever wanted. That this stupid drunken mistake destroyed my life.

‘For Christ’s sake, I can’t deal with this now. You should go, Catherine. Go home to your family. They need you and Harry needs me.’

I’m so wrung out I can’t even cry. I nod my head, praying you’ll say something that I can hold onto, just the smallest glimmer of hope that it isn’t as I always feared and I did the one thing you could never forgive.

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