The Sleeping and the Dead

Hannah couldn’t leave her like that, though more than anything she wanted to ignore the tears, step over the body and force her way out of the door. She took Audrey’s arm and coaxed her to her feet, settled her on the sofa and made her tea. She switched on the television. Immediately Audrey became absorbed in one of her favourite programmes.

‘I’ll go now, Mum, shall I?’

Audrey turned, waved briefly and returned her attention to the set.

They’d hired a minibus to take party-goers to the lake. Courtesy again of some anxious parents. A disabled lad had gone missing a couple of years before and for a while there’d been a fuss about youngsters out on their own. Hannah was too late to catch it. She began to walk, sticking out her thumb for a lift every time a car went past. She’d never hitched on her own before but now she was too desperate to think of all the adult warnings. It was still light and the road was busier than she’d expected – mostly families on their way back to the site. They didn’t seem to see her. Each time a car sailed past she stared after it with loathing. Her sandals were new and a strip of leather cut into her toes.

Then, when she was thinking she’d have to walk the whole way, someone stopped. A young bloke in a rusting estate car. He was chatty and in the few minutes it took to drive the rest of the way she found out he was visiting his girlfriend. She worked on reception in the site office and had been given a free caravan for the season. He was obviously smitten.

She heard the music as soon as she got out of the car.

‘Some party, that,’ he said, before driving off through the maze of caravans to find his love.

The party wasn’t in the bar, but in a room next to it, which sometimes held bingo for the older visitors and talent competitions for the kids. In natural light it would be gloomy, but Chris had rigged up some coloured spots and someone had decorated it with balloons and streamers. It was full. The dancers jostled for space. The first person she saw was Mr Spence, who was dancing with the fifth former who’d played Hecate. Some of the cast had dressed up in their costumes and hers was black, floaty and long. Ribbons of frayed black cloth trailed from her cuffs. Mr Spence danced with his eyes half shut, his body twisting and swaying to the music. Hannah saw at once that Michael wasn’t there.

She didn’t ask any of her friends if Michael had been with them on the minibus. The music was so loud that her ears were already singing and the room was full of people she didn’t know well. Boyfriends and girlfriends and stray hangers-on had gatecrashed. Sally was there, though her only contribution to the play had been to hand out programmes at one of the performances. She was beside Chris, dancing on her own. She already seemed drunk. Hannah didn’t want to ask her about Michael. Chris would have made some sarcastic comment. He always did.

She went outside, walked down towards the lake where the noise of the music wasn’t quite so loud. She told herself that Michael might have gone for a walk on the shore, that he might be waiting for her there. The sky was a crazy mix of colours. Violet streaked in the west with gold and grey. Soon it would be completely dark but now it was light enough for birds still to be singing and she could make out the paler strip of sand and the reflection of the last light on the water.

They were lying on the spiky grass between the road and the lake. Jenny Graves, otherwise known as Lady Macbeth, was sprawled naked on the grass with Michael Grey, otherwise known as Theo Randle. The picture had the quality of a photographic negative. The background was grey, their bodies milky. Michael’s hair was startling white, her black braid lost in the shadow. It wasn’t a shock. She’d looked out for Jenny in the dancing crowd too and registered that she wasn’t there. Hadn’t even expected her to be. Throughout the rehearsals she’d watched Michael and Jenny, his charm, her flirting. But Hannah hadn’t felt able to demand an explanation, because then he’d have told her, not using the exact words of course, that he wanted her as a friend and an audience, not a lover. That is was Jenny Graves he’d write his poems for. Hannah stood for a moment staring, fascinated despite herself by the entwined limbs, the panting, the moans, thinking in a dispassionate way – So that’s what happens, that’s what it’s all about.