You Had It Coming by B.M. Carroll (snow like ashes series .txt) 📗

‘You can’t avoid me for ever, you know.’

True. And there is a part of her that wants to get this over with. Blurt out the full story in all its ugly, mortifying detail. It has been so long since she has spoken about it to anyone.

He senses that she’s torn. ‘Come on. Just one. Daniella’s expecting me home by nine, anyway.’

Daniella is his long-term girlfriend. She’s a dentist, very precise in everything she does. Lucas deviating from an agreed plan would annoy her intensely.

‘Okay, okay. The usual?’

‘The usual’ is a wine bar in Pymble.

‘Yeah, I’ll see you there.’

It’s a ten-minute drive. On the way, Megan passes the stretch of road where today’s car accident occurred. Some left-over debris is scattered near the traffic island: shards of broken glass and part of a wheel arch. Dear old Shirley, all that vulnerability and bravado. Hopefully, she has family and friends who can visit her in hospital. It’s quite shocking, the number of elderly people who are truly on their own. Some of them never married or had children. Others have kids who are interstate or overseas or can’t be bothered. At Shirley’s age she’s likely to have outlived her siblings and most of her friends. Perhaps even her children. It’s one of Megan’s biggest fears. Getting to that age and being on her own.

Lucas – probably due to some lucky guesswork regarding routes and off-peak traffic lights – gets to the bar first and even has a glass of red wine waiting for her. The place is only half-full: plenty of free bar stools. Megan dumps her bag and jacket on one, sits on another. They clink glasses, wordlessly toasting to another day survived.

He doesn’t make small talk. He’s waiting. There’s nothing but kindness in his brown eyes. His body is angled towards hers. Tell me. It’s okay. Tell me.

A gulp of red wine. A ragged breath.

‘We were seventeen, in our last year of school. Two stupid girls who thought they knew everything. It was a house party, there was a lot of alcohol …’

Her gaze slides away from his, towards the entrance, where a group of women are in the process of coming in. It’s easier not to look at him.

‘To tell the truth, I can’t remember much. I got very drunk very quickly. I remember wanting to go home but Jess wanted to stay. I remember staggering into one of the bedrooms, craving sleep. Then I have vague memories of someone kissing me, lying on top of me. I must have passed out after that.’

What a silly young girl! Drinking so much, inviting trouble, laying herself open to all sorts of risks. Less painful to pretend that the ‘silly young girl’ is someone else, a stranger.

‘It was light when I woke up, about six a.m. My head felt like it was going to crack open. I was shivering, I had no clothes on, neither did Jess … She was asleep next to me on the bed. We weren’t the kind of girls to sleep naked next to each other. Like most teenagers, we were horribly self-conscious about our bodies …’

Confusion. Acute embarrassment. Where were their clothes? What had happened? Megan couldn’t get her thoughts to gel. Her head was weighted to the pillow. Her throat was raw and swollen; it hurt to swallow. In the pit of her stomach was a weird sensation, something she would later identify as foreboding. For years afterwards, she would wake up with that sensation: something terribly bad – but as yet unidentified – had happened.

‘My clothes were strewn on the floor. When I stood up, I saw bloodstains on the sheets. And I realised that it wasn’t just my head and throat that were sore …’

Shame. Horror. Dressing clumsily before shaking Jess awake. Seeing her face as the truth hit home. Nothing would ever be the same again. Least of all their friendship.

Lucas has put his arms around her. His embrace is warm, solid, dangerously addictive. It would be nice to stay here. It would be nice to pretend that they’re more than friends and colleagues. To forget about Daniella. Megan remembers an instant spark of liking and attraction on their first job together, before being devastated to learn that he had a girlfriend. The irony was that he’d met Daniella only a month earlier. A month!

He pulls back, chocolate eyes brimming with sympathy. ‘So, William Newson got them off?’

Megan blinks, unable to hold his stare. ‘He twisted the facts so that Jess and I looked like criminals instead of victims. We were liars. We were risk-takers. We had been excessively and illegally drinking. He was so good at his job even I believed it was all our fault by the end of the trial.’

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Jessica Foster’s school reports had comments of a different kind to her friend’s. Mrs Goulding, her school principal, read some of the following excerpts to the court. Semester 1, 2006: ‘Jessica is extremely disruptive in class and fails to show respect for her teachers or for the learning environment of other students.’ Semester 2, 2006: ‘Jessica’s behaviour has deteriorated this year. She has failed to meet uniform standards, attendance standards and behaviour standards. We hope to see a significant improvement in her final year.’ Unfortunately, there wasn’t an improvement: there were numerous detentions and a suspension for drinking alcohol on school premises. Mrs Goulding confirmed that Jessica was pushing boundaries for a girl her age. We all have friends like that, don’t we? The reckless ones. The ones who talk us into stuff we know we shouldn’t do. The ones who look for excitement, for trouble, and can’t comply with the rules, no matter how many times they’re punished. We all know people like that, and I’m not saying a girl like Jessica is unusual. What I’m saying is, don’t go breaking rules and then look for someone