Dreaming Of The Bones

Nathan dives, opening his eyes in the velvet blackness. Tendrils brush against him, then something more solid, a hand. He follows it, pulls her easily, unresisting into his arms. A push to the surface, “I’ve got her!” A kick-stroke, cradling her head above the water, then Lydia helps him pull her weight up the slippery bank. “She’s not breathing. Oh, Christ, she’s not breathing.”

Adam kneels beside him, holding his fingers to her throat. “No pulse, I can’t find a pulse—”

Darcy wails, “I only meant to stop her crying out! She didn’t want—I never meant to hurt her—”

“Shut up!” Lydia screams, and Nathan hears a slap. She tugs on Nathan’s arm. “Get help, we’ve got to get help.”

“No time.” He tries to remember a sixth form first aid course. Clear the airway. Compress. Breathe. Compress. Breathe. Her lips are cold, her skin flaccid beneath his fingers. No breath resists the invasion of his own. Breath blurs into compression, compression into breath Sweat pours from his body, drips onto her still breast, until he feels Adam pulling him away.

“It’s no use, Nathan. You can’t help her.” Adam holds him in his arms. Lydia is crying, little frightened, hiccupping sobs.

Darcy drops to his knees beside them. “It wasn’t my fault. I never meant to hurt her. She shouldn’t have—”

“Shut up! You bastard!” Lydia is on him in a fury of kicks and pummeling fists. “You stupid fuck. You drowned her, you bastard. We’ve got to ring the police, tell someone—”

Panting, Darcy managed to twist her arms behind her back. “You won’t. You won’t tell anyone. Because you’re responsible, too.”

Nathan pulled away from Adam’s restraint. “That’s crap, Darcy. You know we didn’t—”

“But no one else will, will they?” Darcy is cold and urgent now. “Tell them just what happened, why don’t you? You brought her here, undressed her, gave her wine and drugs, but you didn’t touch her after that, oh, no. And even if they believe you, you’ll be sent down, you know that, don’t you? Your parents will have to know, of course, and yours are ill, isn’t that right, Adam? It might even kill them, but I don’t suppose that matters as long as you’re doing the right thing.”

“Fuck you, you son of a bitch,” said Adam, but Nathan heard the uncertainty in his voice. He thought of his own parents’ pride in him, the first child in his family to go to university, and of Lydia’s mother … A look at Lydia’s stricken face told him the shaft had hit home.