We fell together in a mess of limbs, hair, and blood. I screamed as I pushed down on the smooth bottom of the bottle I held with its vicious teeth embedded in Jemma’s neck. The other girl stood back, her high-pitched shriek loud enough to stop all movement within the playground. It attracted the attention of the monitors who immediately looked about, meerkat-like, to identify the source of the noise. Precious minutes wasted as blood gushed from the artery in Jemma’s neck. Oddly, she never screamed. In fact, as I pushed up from her dying body, she never as much as whimpered. What she did do, was to lock her eyes on mine, and I couldn’t break away, not even when I was on my feet and staring down on her. Not even when the monitors arrived to see what was going on.
The older of the two arrived first, her face squeezed into lines of irritation at having had her chinwag interrupted. ‘What’s g—’
I’ve never seen anyone’s face pale as quickly as hers did. She held a hand over her mouth and turned to her slower partner who was ambling across as if she had all day. ‘Call an ambulance, quick!’
My eyes were still locked on Jemma’s as I watched the monitor kneel in the puddle of blood that surrounded her. If she was wondering whether to remove the glass from Jemma’s neck or not, I could have told her it was already too late. I’d seen the pumping blood slow to a sluggish ooze as her heart made a pathetic useless attempt to send what remained around her body.
Only when the second monitor returned, followed by as many members of staff as her screams had alerted, was I taken away. Only then, did I break eye contact with Jemma. And suddenly I felt bereft.
‘Is she going to be okay?’ I asked a teacher. The tremble in my voice wasn’t forced. Of course, I knew she wasn’t going to be. I’d done my job well. I was ten, the age of criminal responsibility, but I suddenly realised I hadn’t been old enough to know that sometimes the things we want aren’t necessarily the things we should get.
I was old enough to know that Jemma’s eyes would haunt me forever.
5
I was taken to the head teacher’s office where a first aider, who introduced herself as Miss Jeffries, cleaned and dressed my arm. She kept a soothing monologue going as she wiped the shallow jagged wound with something cold and wet that made me wince despite her reassuring words that it wouldn’t hurt a bit. ‘It’s only a scratch, really,’ she said, ‘it’ll heal up easily.’ She dabbed my arm with dry gauze, tore open a bandage and applied it, pressing the edges down gently. ‘I hope it doesn’t hurt too much. Maybe your mum can give you something when you get home if it does.’
Miss Jeffries waited with me, chatting about nothing until the door opened and my mother hurried through, eyes wide, mouth trembling. ‘Lissa!’ She gathered me into her arms and squeezed me painfully. I didn’t complain, she needed the reassurance of holding me.
‘I’m okay,’ I said into her hair.
She finally released me but kept her hands on my shoulders as she stepped back, her eyes raking me, stopping when they saw the bandage. ‘You’re hurt.’
I had the story rehearsed in my head, but I was careful it didn’t sound that way, stuttering and stumbling over the words as I spoke. ‘I found a p-pretty b-bottle; I was holding it when I t-tripped and fell.’ I held up my bandaged arm. ‘It broke and a p-piece cut me. When I s-stood up and saw the b-blood, I felt d-dizzy. N-next thing I remember is b-being on the g-ground on t-top of Jemma.’ I looked from my mother’s questioning blue eyes to the face of the first aider. ‘She got c-cut too. I hope she’s going to be okay.’
Miss Jeffries sucked her lips in before releasing them with a wet smacking sound. ‘Don’t worry about that for the minute.’
To my surprise, my mother nodded. ‘I’m sure she’s fine.’
The tight worried expression had lifted as soon as my mother saw I was all right. She was a woman who found it impossible to dissemble; had she known about Jemma, she wouldn’t have been able to hide her shock from me as I was able to hide my thoughts from her. They hadn’t told her about Jemma. It was possible they were still trying to save her. I’d read enough to have been able to tell them it was a lost cause.
I hoped we’d be allowed to leave. After all, I was injured. A child. My mother should insist. The execution of my plan had taken a lot out of me. Annoyingly too, I couldn’t shake off the memory of Jemma’s eyes fixed on mine. But when the door opened, and the head teacher, Mrs Mangan, came in accompanied by a man I didn’t know, I knew it wasn’t going to be that simple to escape. My uneasiness was obvious to my mother, but I guessed she saw it as a reaction to my injury when she put her arms about me again and held me close. I would have pulled away, I wasn’t a baby, but it seemed the safer place to be.
Mrs Mangan, her normally pristine appearance marred by smudged mascara, glanced around. Her eyes landed on Miss Jeffries who, with the merest tilt of a head, was dismissed from the room.
After a lingering inspection of me, Mrs Mangan addressed my mother. ‘Mrs McColl,’ she said, ‘this is Detective Inspector Hynes. He’d like to have a word with Lissa about what happened.’
Still wrapped in my mother’s arms, I peered at the man. He didn’t look remotely like any detective I’d seen during afternoons spent watching TV with my mother. She had a fondness for the older series though and it was mostly Columbo or Kojak we watched. The detective who was looking at me with sharp eyes was neither scruffily dressed nor was he sucking on a lollipop.
‘Why don’t we all sit down?’ Mrs Mangan said, walking around the desk with quick determination and taking her seat as if she was afraid the detective would usurp her position.
My mother shepherded me to one of the two chairs on the other side of the desk, taking the one beside me without once releasing her hold. It wasn’t comfortable. It did, however, allow me to hide my face in her shoulder, a position I thought might come in handy should any of the questions become difficult. Not that I expected them to. There would have been little expectation that I could murder a classmate. I was finding it hard to believe myself.
Only by reminding myself that the end… freedom from Jemma’s malign influence on my classmates and from their bullying… allowed me to justify what I had done.
From the shelter of my mother’s arms, I watched the detective cross to where spare chairs were stacked one on top of the other in a corner of the office. He struggled to loosen the top one, the stack rattling noisily as he eventually yanked it free. I half-expected him to swing it around, straddle the seat, and rest his arms along the back of it. It’s what Kojak would have done. Columbo would have stayed on his feet, shuffling, looking as if he hadn’t a clue. But that was on TV, this was real life… and I don’t think any of them had a clue.
Hynes drew the chair closer to where I sat. Almost within touching distance. He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and fixed his eyes on what he could see of my face.
‘Hi, Lissa, my name is Aaron, I’m a policeman.’
It was my mother who answered, her face knotted in anxiety as it always was when faced with things she didn’t understand. ‘Why are the police involved?’ Her eyes flicked from the officer to the head teacher as her arms tightened painfully around me. ‘Can someone please explain?’