In the Woods

"Christina is mad at me on Tuesday she came over + Rosalind told her I said she wont be good enough for me once I go to ballet school + Christina wont beleive me I didnt. Now Christina and Beth wont talk to me Marianne still does though. I hate Rosalind I HATE HER I HATE HER."

"Yesterday this diary was under my bed like always then I couldnt find it. I didnt say anything but then Mum took Rosalind + Jess to Auntie Veras I stayed home + looked all over in Rosalinds room it was inside her shoe box in her wardrobe. I was scared to take it because now shell know and shell be really mad but I dont care. Im going to keep it here at Simones I can write in it when I practice by myself."

The last entry in the diary was dated three days before Katy died. "Rosalind is sorry she was so horrible about me going away she was only worried about Jess + upset about me being so far away shell miss me too. To make up for it shes going to get me a lucky charm to bring me luck dancing."

Her voice rang small and bright through the rounded Biro letters, swirled in the sunlight with the dust-motes. Katy, a year dead; bones in the gray geometric churchyard at Knocknaree. I had thought of her very little since the trial ended. Even during the investigation, to be frank, she had occupied a less prominent place in my mind than you might expect. The victim is the one person you never know; she had been only a cluster of translucent, conflicting images refracted through other people's words, crucial not in herself but for her death and the urgent firework trail of consequences it left behind. One moment on the Knocknaree dig had eclipsed everything else she had ever been. I thought of her lying on her stomach on this blond wooden floor, the frail wings of her shoulder blades moving as she wrote, music spiraling around her.

"Would it have made some difference if we'd found this earlier?" Simone asked. Her voice made me start and set my heart pounding; I had almost forgotten she was there.

"Probably not," I said. I had no idea whether this was true, but she needed to hear it. "There's nothing here that ties Rosalind directly to any crime. There's the mention of her making Katy drink something, but she would have explained that away-claimed it was a vitamin drink, maybe; Lucozade. The same for the lucky charm: it doesn't prove anything."

"But if we had found it before she died," Simone said quietly, "then," and of course there was nothing I could say to that, nothing at all.

I put the diary and the little paper pouch into an evidence bag and sent them over to Sam, at Dublin Castle. They would go into a box in the basement, somewhere near my old clothes; the case was closed, there was nothing he could do with them unless, or until, Rosalind did the same thing to someone else. I would have liked to send the diary to Cassie, as some kind of wordless and useless apology, but it wasn't her case any more either, and anyway I could no longer be sure she would understand how I meant it.

* * *

A few weeks later I heard that Cassie and Sam were engaged; Bernadette sent round an e-mail, looking for contributions towards a present. That evening I told Heather someone's kid had scarlet fever, locked myself in my room and drank vodka, slowly but purposefully, until four in the morning. Then I rang Cassie's mobile.

On the third ring she said blurrily, "Maddox."

"Cassie," I said. "Cassie, you're not actually going to marry that boring little yokel. Are you?"

I heard her catch her breath, ready to say something. After a while she let it out again.

"I'm sorry," I said. "For everything. I'm so, so sorry. I love you, Cass. Please."

I waited again. After a long time I heard a clunk. Then Sam, somewhere in the background, said, "Who was that?"

"Wrong number," Cassie said, farther away now. "Some drunk guy."

"What were you on so long for, then?" There was a grin in his voice: teasing. A rustle of sheets.

"He told me he loved me, so I wanted to see who it was," said Cassie. "But he turned out to be looking for Britney."

"Aren't we all," said Sam; then, "Ow!" and Cassie giggled. "You bit my nose."

"Serves you right," said Cassie. More low laughter, a rustle, a kiss; a long contented sigh. Sam said, soft and happy, "Baby." Then nothing but their breathing, easing into tandem and slowing gradually back into sleep.

I sat there for a very long time, watching the sky lighten outside my window and realizing that my name hadn't come up on Cassie's mobile. I could feel the vodka working its way out of my blood; the headache was starting to kick in. Sam snored, very gently. I never knew, not then, not now, whether Cassie thought she had hung up, or whether she wanted to hurt me, or whether she wanted to give me one last gift, one last night listening to her breathe.

* * *