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I kept it hidden at the back of my wardrobe,
occasionally taking it out to write about what had
been happening in my life. Most of it was dull –
Sonia irritating me, or Cassie having a crush on
my older brother Joe – but lately there had been
more space given to Nicky Blackwell, his name
appearing with greater regularity since the time
he had stepped back to let me in the school gate
before him, winking at me as he did so.
In the past I had only ever written on the
evenings when I was bored. But in the weeks
following Amanda Clarke’s death, that changed.
I took that book out most nights and it seemed
she occupied nearly all of the pages I filled.
‘Dead’ and ‘drowned’. I underlined both those
words and then scribbled out the line that lay
beneath the second. She was dead, that was a fact,
but whether she had drowned was not so certain.
Sitting at my desk, I chewed the plastic end of my
biro and looked out the window to the darkness
of the night sky.
The first I heard of her death was that morning
at school. The sun was glaringly hot as we stood
in our assembly lines. We shuffled our feet, the
bitumen burning through the thin soles of our
sandals as we waited for the principal to come to
the microphone. Behind me, the boys started their
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