Say You're Sorry(72)

I pick up the walkie-talkie and press the button.

“Hello? Can anyone hear me?”

Nothing.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

I jump when he answers. “Are you ready to be nice to me?”

I drop the walkie-talkie and it bounces off the cement floor. A small piece of plastic breaks off, but it’s still working. George is talking, but I don’t answer. Instead, I curl up on the bunk and put a pillow over my head. Eventually, he goes away.

I understand why Tash went up the ladder to be with George. She did it to protect me. She knew I was a virgin. Inexperienced. Naive. But each time she came back to the basement, a little less of her climbed down the ladder. It’s as though George took a piece of her as a souvenir or she left it upstairs.

Tash loved me. Not in the same way I loved her, but I don’t care. I know what it’s like to love someone and not be able to tell her because it will screw up the friendship; and having that person as a friend is better than losing her completely.

That’s what it was like with Tash. At first I thought it was just a schoolgirl crush, a girl thing, you know, but then I realized it was something more. Tash was always trying to line me up with boys, but none of them interested me. I wanted to spend time with her.

Everybody fancied Tash: men and boys and grandfathers. The ones who asked Tash to babysit and offered to drive her home afterwards; the shopkeepers who hired her and the teachers who let her flirt with them. I caught my father sneaking glances at her. I used to stare at her too.

It was just a game for Tash. She flirted, preened and teased, raising expectations and crushing them, inadvertently and on purpose. Expecting Tash to change was like telling the Pope to stop praying. She was full of contradictions—old before her time, young at heart, living on the edge.

She used to tell me that she’d stop when she reached the point of no return, which didn’t make any sense to me. There’s no stopping at the point of no return. You’re over the edge. You’re falling through the air. Gravity can’t change its mind. Although I did once hear a story about a woman who jumped off the Clifton Suspension Bridge and her long skirt blew up and acted like a parachute. I remember thinking, Lucky cow, but she probably didn’t see it the same way.

I’ve thought about suicide. Not so much killing myself but picturing everyone at my funeral—all the people who made my life so terrible. That seems childish now. My life wasn’t so bad back then. Things are pretty relative when you’re locked in a basement.

There are worse things than dying. I saw Callum Loach come home from the hospital in his wheelchair. I have lived in this dark hole. I have watched my best friend wither and give up hope.

When Callum came home the ambulance had a little ramp at the back and his folks built more little ramps all over his house and changed the dining room into a bedroom so he didn’t have to climb the stairs.

A whole lot of people were there to welcome him, but he looked embarrassed rather than happy. He wanted to be left alone.

He was home in time to give evidence against Aiden Foster at the trial. Photographers took pictures of him arriving at the courthouse, dressed in a suit, being pushed by his father. He didn’t have his prosthetic legs by then and his trouser legs flapped pointlessly where his legs used to be.

His father sat stony-faced in the public gallery. They could have invented that description for Mr. Loach: “stony-faced”—he could have been chiseled out of rock. He could have been on Mount Rushmore.

Aiden arrived wearing a suit and a haircut that made him look like a choirboy. He even had a side-parting. Instead of swaggering, he kept his head down and walked between his mum and dad.

Emily had to give evidence first. She was used to going to court because her parents were fighting for custody. I waited outside in the foyer, sitting next to my dad, who kept squeezing my hand, saying, “Just tell the truth. That’s all they want.”

They called me. The big door creaked open. I walked between the benches and the tables. Aiden was sitting in a box. I had to raise my right hand and swear on a Bible. Then one of the lawyers began asking me about that night and what I saw. I told them what happened.

Then Aiden Foster’s lawyer asked me more questions. He wanted to know how much Tash had been drinking and what drugs she took. He made her sound like some drug kingpin; and whenever I tried to say something nice about her, his eyebrows were riding high like he didn’t believe a word of it.

“Do you have a problem with telling the truth?” he asked.

“No.”

“Well, just answer my question—yes or no.”

“Not every answer is that simple,” I said. “What about multiple choices?”