The Apple Tart of Hope (10 page)

“Meg,” I said inside my head, “Meg, do you remember how you and I often dangled our legs at the end of it as the light wilted in the winter evenings and how we wondered what would happen if either of us had fallen?”

And I remember her saying, “We wouldn't last long in that water, not in the wintertime.”

I was thinking about that and the pounding in my head was practically unbearable—except for the fact that I'd decided I was going to make it stop.

It only took four minutes and twenty seconds to get from my
house to the bollard at the pier—as long as I cycled fast, making sure to keep my hands off the brakes. Plus there's no traffic in the middle of the night.

I wanted to be emptied of the things that I was full of. I didn't want to be here anymore. A massive knot tightened inside me that was never going to be untied. It was complicated and tangled and I kept telling myself I was sorry, but I couldn't see any other way.

My feet whirled on the pedals and the noise of the chain was calming, like a quiet tune or a reassuring whisper.

“Get out of here,” is what it kept repeating, and I kept listening to it because it was extremely convincing, strengthening my decision.

I barreled over Hallow Bridge with its lights that never work properly—always flashing on and off at unpredictable intervals. I kept going until I made it to the top of the lane that led to the pier.

“Good-bye Hallow Bridge,” I said stupidly, and then louder—“Good-bye Dad, and good-bye to your agonizing silence and your grief, which I can't
stand
anymore. Good-bye, Meg, not that you'll probably care, seeing as you've moved on and seeing as our friendship doesn't actually matter to you. Good-bye Stevie, I'm really sorry for leaving you, but when you find out about me, as you definitely will one day, then you'll be glad I'm gone too.

“And good-bye Paloma, thanks for being the only one who was brave enough to tell me the truth. Thanks for that. I would say I'll never forget it, but, I'll probably be forgetting everything very shortly— so that will be it.”

I couldn't wait for the thudding in my head to stop. I was looking forward to that.

I was looking forward to falling into the black nothing that seemed to be pulling me toward it.

Meg. Meg Molony—I let her name turn around inside my
mouth a few last times. Meg, I'm sorry everything turned out so wrong. It was fairly foolish making a farewell statement that no one could hear, but there wasn't time for a note.

I could hear a strange buzz getting closer and closer and a whistling in the air. I might have lost my hope, but I still had my pride. And I remember thinking, at least that's something—to have pride still. It was a small consolation in the middle of this.

I think I might have even said good-bye to myself as if two people were inside me, which goes to show how mad I had become.

I pushed off the ground and I started to freewheel down. It's a steep lane and I picked up massive speed, which I thought at the time must have explained the almost tuneful whistling that rose above the other noises, piercing through the air. Clattering now and bumping along the uneven ground, I emerged onto the pier, always a kind of startling sight after the walled lane, but this time I could not get pleasure from the twinkle of the stars and the glisten of the water and the slapping of the sea against the rocks, because of my desperation and because these were going to be my final moments, and in situations like that, you don't have time to stop and appreciate your surroundings.

I steered myself as evenly as I could, and it was easier than I thought. My bike and I went shooting off the end, and together we fell into the sea that's cold and huge and doesn't care whether living boys launch themselves into it or not.

A feeling of slow motion came upon me then, and parts of my bike scratched against bits of my body. Slimy seaweed tangled around my ankles and my shoes slipped off my feet. My arms and legs were dragged in different directions as if there was an underwater force making me dance to a morbid tune.

I felt light. I felt heavy. I felt slow. I felt fast—all in quick succession, but I couldn't think of anything except the quite relaxing idea that soon everything was going to be over.

I was alone. All around the wet rocks were silent and slimy. I couldn't feel any pleasure or any purpose. My decision seemed to make a terrible kind of sense.

My panic had gone. I was finished making decisions. I didn't think I'd ever have any more to make.

I'm not sure exactly what I'd been hoping for next. Brightness and song possibly. Beautiful music perhaps, say a harp or something playing in the distance and warmth to soothe my numb, frozen, sopping, scraped body.

I definitely wasn't expecting what happened next.

I heard a voice and this time it wasn't coming from inside my head. I felt hands, hands that were not mine—trying to grapple with me—trying clumsily to lift me up.

“So this is what it's like,” I said to myself, shivering pretty violently, but not feeling scared anymore. “It feels as if someone is carrying me and bringing me somewhere safe. That's not so bad.”

The hands laid me down on uncomfortable, bumpy ground, and a voice of velvet and sand spoke to me soft and low.

It was Barney. Barney Brittle. Naturally I asked him what on earth he was doing and he asked what did it look like he was doing, which was rescuing me from a watery end. He said that not so long ago, I'd saved him and he explained that what goes around comes around—now it was his turn to save me, so here he was, soaking wet because of how he'd jumped in to get me out. He may have been dripping and he may have looked kind of grim and desperate but he was stubborn too and there was something strong about
the way he looked at me. I was weak and freezing. I thought I had known what I was doing but I had not.

He reminded me that he himself had been very frightened on this same spot, once, not so long ago. He told me he knew exactly what it was like to feel what I was feeling, and he didn't envy me. But now he said that I didn't have to think about another thing for the moment, because he was calling the shots. He was the one who was going to decide what happened next, which suddenly was okay with me. At that particular moment I would have followed him anywhere.

As it happens, following him was more difficult than I might have imagined. He had a sort of fearsome way of walking. At first he'd suggested he could carry me on his shoulders, which I said wouldn't be necessary. He hurried at an improbably fast pace through the maze of back streets that weave through my town and reached a wall at the top of Primrose Hill.

I must have passed the same wall a million times and never noticed the thin little gate that was set into it, overgrown with brambles and creepers. He opened it and looked around as if he was worried someone might be following us. We squelched up a twisty, narrow path with walls on either side that kept getting higher and higher, and he kept talking to himself in a way that was definitely a bit weird.

“Where are we?” I asked him. He told me that we were on the way up to his house, and the couple of times I checked with him, he reassured me that I wasn't actually dead.

He told me it was a poor choice for a suicide if that's what I had been trying to commit. I told him I hadn't had a heck of a lot of time to think it through, that I'd planned it in a tremendously short space of time, under what you might call extreme pressure.

“I'm happy to say that you made an ineffective decision. You're most unlikely ever to have topped yourself using the strategy you'd selected.”

I was getting a bit out of breath trying to keep up with him.

“Somewhere he can shelter,” he said, whispering and wheezing a bit, but not slowing for a second. “Somewhere he can get warm, and where no one can find him. Don't mess it up, Barney. This boy is falling. You must catch him.”

Barney's house stood battered and gloomy, as if it was in a sulk from having gone to the elaborate trouble of being built and then having been neglected so badly that it looked as if nobody lived in it.

I'd been at the lake after school. It was the first Thursday in February, two minutes to six. My mum was holding a huge glass bowl full of salad. She answered the phone and as she listened, her wrist dropped and her hand slipped, and tons of balsamic vinegar started spilling over the edge of the bowl, making a massive black puddle on the floor.

And I was like, “Mum, watch out, you're pouring dressing all over the place,” but she wasn't listening, obviously, because not only did she not watch out, she then dropped the entire bowl. Lettuce was by my feet, and tomatoes rolled around, and there was the rumbling noise of the bowl, which trundled around the kitchen as if it had a mind of its own.

My mum did a strange small intake of breath that people sometimes do when they know something's terribly wrong, even before they know exactly what that something is.

It had been Mr. Dunleavy. He and my mum had spoken for a long time. Or should I say he'd spoken, and my mum had listened silently,
her face growing a blue kind of pale that I'd never seen before. After she'd said good-bye, she asked me to come and sit down at the table, and I said I wanted to have a shower first. But she wrapped a big towel around me and said the shower could wait.

She told me then about how Oscar's bike had been pulled out of the water and how they'd found his shoes.

“Okay,” I'd said, “let's not panic. Maybe he left the bike too close to the edge. He's very careless with that bike. And I can't tell you the number of times he goes off on his own without telling anyone. But he always comes back. Maybe he just lost the shoes because he went for a swim.”

“Darling? In February? No, he didn't go for a swim. Meggy, I'm really sorry to tell you but you see, there's a massive search underway, and, sweetheart, it's been a few days already and I'm afraid people have begun to think the worst.”

“The worst?” I said, looking up at her. “What does that mean?” Which was a stupid question because obviously I knew what it meant.

My hair was dripping. I wanted to walk back out of the house with my hands over my ears. I wanted to go back to the moment, not long before, when I was in the water myself, happy and clueless, and unaware of Oscar's sopping wet bicycle and the search party and the days that had already slipped by—days that didn't have Oscar in them. Suddenly I felt like a whole different person.

I ran up to my room and clicked frantically on my laptop.

There was a pile of unread email. Andy Fewer. Rob Delaney. Stevie. And there was one from Paloma. Paloma Killealy. Her email said how devastating the situation was and asked if I could do anything to shed light on what had happened to Oscar because if I could, I was to tell her straightaway, even though she explained this was unlikely
seeing as how I'd been so far away and seeing as me and him obviously weren't really as close as we'd been in the past.

Stevie's email said, “Meggy. Have you heard the news? Please come home. I need to talk to you. If I could talk to you, we'd be able to find him. Don't let anyone try to convince you he's dead. Because he's not, Meggy. He can't be. Come home. I really need to see you. Love Stevie.”

I checked the last email from Oscar. It had been two weeks before. How can it have been that long? I dragged up Facebook. Not a single post from him for over a month. And now this news. It felt as if a blunt object was repeatedly whacking me in the face. Oscar Dunleavy had disappeared. Nobody could find him. Nobody knew where he was. He was gone.

“Oscar, my mum says you've done a runner somewhere.” I clacked a frenzied message to him. “Tell me it's not true will you please, straightaway? Oscar, seriously, you've got to get in touch.”

The words began to tremble in front of my eyes. More messages popped up in my inbox. Mr. O'Leary. Stevie again.

Oscar's dad had sent a frightening list of questions:

When did he last write to you?

Did you notice any changes in him?

What had he talked about recently?

Did he mention going away, or maybe he told you about something he was planning to do?

Was he behaving out of character?

Is there somewhere that he goes that we might not know about?

Might he be staying in a place that you know about?

The questions went right to the bottom of the page, each as impossible to answer as the one before, each of them screaming a
message of growing panic. A fire was in my head when I ran back to the kitchen where both my parents were on their phones talking in serious, hushed tones and mumbling things that I could not hear.

“I never wanted to come to New Zealand!” I shouted. “I told you a thousand times but you wouldn't listen to me. I didn't want to leave my life behind. I didn't want to leave Oscar, and now,
now
look what's bloody well happened.”