‘What about it?’
‘They’re finally tearing it down next month.’
‘They’ve been saying that for years.’
She reaches to the side, digs into a plastic recycling tub and then pulls out the local free paper. ‘It’s in here,’ she says. ‘Sounds like it’s actually happening this time.’
As she finds the right page and shows me the headline and photo, there’s a moment in which I feel myself slipping through time. My fingertips tingle, my mouth watering at the memories. We were all kids together – well, teenagers. We’d traipse through the woods to the abandoned watermill. It’s a short distance out of town and was derelict twenty years ago. More importantly, no parents ever went there. Why would they? There was Ellie; her twin brother, Wayne; Jason, myself and – occasionally – the odd hanger-onner. Jason was a year younger than the rest of us and it was our own private play area. Ellie would climb the waterwheel while the rest of us would lay on the bank and smoke cigarettes. That was when Ellie was more active than now. Since she started doing freelance accounting from home, she rarely goes out.
We all grew out of it, of course – but there was a time when that creaky, wooden shack with a wheel on the side felt like the most important place on earth. It was certainly the centre of our worlds.
‘I can’t remember the last time I was there,’ I say.
‘Me either.’
There’s a moment where it feels as if Ellie’s going to say something, but she takes a breath instead – and then turns back to her puzzle.
Over the years, various companies or the council have announced plans to tear down the mill but it’s never happened.
‘Do you think they’ll really do it this time?’ I ask.
‘Sounds like it.’
‘I thought it would outlast all of us.’
There’s a forlorn silence and – for me at least – it feels as if I’ll be losing something personal. As if the memories will disappear along with the ramshackle building. I suspect Ellie feels it as well, even though we’ve long since moved on.
We grew up a couple of streets apart – and that’s still the case, even though it is in different houses on the opposite side of North Melbury. Ellie’s place is significantly bigger than the one in which Dan, Olivia and I live. She got a great deal from the children of an old couple who died. They wanted quick money and she wanted to move. There’s a massive basement and attic, along with three large bedrooms. She’s lived by herself for years, which is why it’s something of a surprise that Jason’s here now. She’s always seemed happier by herself.
As Ellie reaches for another puzzle piece, she gasps and rubs the back of her neck, wincing as she touches it.
‘Is that the whiplash?’ I ask.
She has one eye screwed closed as she peers up but then opens it as she stretches high. ‘I forget to take the painkillers,’ she croaks. ‘I only remember when it starts to hurt again.’
In the craziness of the past few hours, it’s only now that I remember my best friend had a car crash of her own ten days ago.
Ellie pushes herself up and crosses to the cupboard above the sink, removing a small grey box and taking out a slim white disc, which she holds up.
‘I couldn’t swallow the first pills they gave me, so the doctor rewrote the prescription for some soluble tablets. I’ve got weeks and weeks’ worth. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.’
‘Why would it be bad?’
‘He must think I’m going to be in pain for a long time.’
Ellie removes a filter jug of water from the fridge, pours herself a glass, and drops the tablet inside. She asks if I want a drink and, as I say no, the pill fizzes at the bottom of her glass, sending spirals of cloudy gas into the rest of the liquid.
‘I could probably kill myself ten times over,’ Ellie says, taking the first sip.
‘I hope you don’t.’
A smirk: ‘I’m joking.’
‘I know.’
I do know – but I wish she wouldn’t make light of it. Ellie’s had problems in the past and, though I’m clearly no doctor, there have been times I’d have called her depressed. If not clinically, then I suppose she seemed, well… sad. After everything with Wayne, with her twin, I guess it’s no surprise. This isolation of rarely leaving the house all feeds into that.
Ellie touches her ribs and then rubs her neck once more, before sitting back down. ‘I had to pay five hundred on the excess to get the car into the garage,’ she says. ‘I’ve still got a rental to get around. I think they’re going to write mine off.’
‘Have you heard anything from the police?’
She starts to shake her head – and then stops herself. ‘You’d think they’d have something. He was on the wrong side of the road but they keep going on about number plate cameras, lack of evidence and all that. I didn’t get the number plate – I was too busy trying not to get killed. I accidentally said I wasn’t even a hundred per cent sure of the colour, whether it was blue or black, so I think that’s working against me.’
‘Didn’t any witnesses come forward after it was in the paper?’
‘I’m not that lucky.’
Ellie’s crash was very different from mine, or I assume it was. I’m still not too clear what happened with me. Hers happened on the High Street. Someone veered onto the wrong side of the road, she swerved to avoid a collision, mounted a kerb and cannoned into a lamp post, narrowly avoiding a smash with the front of the hairdressers’ shop. The image of the street light bent horizontal was on the front page of the weekly local paper.
We’ve not seen one another for a week or so and talk for a while about what’s been going on. It’s all surface fluff, however. Even more than usual, it doesn’t sound like Ellie’s been out much since her accident. She got her groceries delivered this week.
As well as the accounting, she’s taught herself website design. Anything that means she can be in the house. She never had any interest in maths or technology when we were at school but she’s been doing these jobs for a while now. She learned much of the accounting from her father. I sometimes wonder what our teenage selves would think of us now. It was all music, ciggies and bunking off back then. Now it’s white-collar jobs and mortgages.
I don’t tell her about waking up in the field, or the blood. The more time passes – and I realise it’s not even a full twenty-four hours yet – the more it feels like something I imagined. I remember it through a blurry haze, not clear and crisp like real life.
‘We might have had a breakin,’ I say, finally remembering why I came here.
Ellie looks up, concerned: ‘A break-in?’
‘Someone put through the window of our back door. It was unlocked but the key was still in the drawer. We don’t know if anyone actually got inside.’
‘Did they take anything?’
‘Possibly fifty quid from the kitchen drawer but, other than that, nothing. I can’t be certain they took the money, either. It might have been Liv. She hadn’t got home from work when I left.’
Ellie scrunches up her face in confusion and then glances at her own back door. ‘What would be the point of all that if they didn’t take anything?’
‘No idea. Perhaps they were distracted by a noise from next door, something like that?’
‘What did the police say?’
‘Not much. Gave me a crime reference number. I think it’s because I said nothing had been taken. I didn’t notice the money then. Dan reckons it was kids with a ball. He says he always locks the back door but I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave it unlocked.’
Ellie raises her eyebrows, illustrating the scepticism that I had. We’ve talked about Dan a lot in the past few years. I wouldn’t say I tell her everything – but I share a lot. It’s that, or drive myself crazy.