Free Precious Thing by Colette McBeth Page B

believe it, not unless I saw it with my own eyes. All I had seen so far was the two of you together. No one knew what had happened. The police were making assumptions that had no basis in reality.
    You see Clara, I trusted Jonny. I would have trusted him with my life. But you? I began to wonder if I even knew you. When you came back after all that time away I thought we could pick up where we left off. Naively, I thought I could recreate that closeness again through sheer force of will. God knows I put the effort in. I wanted to be there to look after you, support you. And I thought it was working. The memory of us all on the skiing trip came back to me: you and me and Jonny and his friend Luke, the four of us together at Christmas. It was only a month ago but it felt like it belonged to a different age, when I was someone else and so were you. All day long we had been carving down slopes under a cloudless sky, floating on powder at the top of a mountain, thinking we’d gone to heaven. When we reached the bottom our smiles lit up our whole faces. We were full of life, bursting with it.
    ‘My round,’ you shouted as you removed your sunglasses. Your face was tanned and red and glowing. The skin around your eyes was white.
    ‘Panda eyes,’ I teased.
    ‘You’re just jealous because I beat you on the slopes, although …’ and you nudged me so I fell over in the snow, ‘you’ve been getting some practice in my absence.’
    You disappeared into the bar and emerged with four large beers in frosted glasses.
    We sat on the terrace overlooking the piste and the mountains in the late winter sun and all agreed beer had never tasted so good.
    ‘So Clara, come on, what else can you beat Rachel at?’ It was Luke, Jonny’s friend who obviously fancied you.
    ‘Swimming, tennis …’
    ‘All right, sport wasn’t my thing at school. But I do have some skills.’ I stood up and held the beer out in front of me.
    ‘Don’t tell me you can still do that?’ you asked incredulously.
    ‘Some things never leave you,’ I laughed, wondering if I could still pull it off, and then I took the beer, threw my head back and downed it. I heard the cheers from Luke and Jonny and you.
    ‘Bloody hell.’ Jonny was sitting mouth wide open, eyes laughing. ‘I didn’t realise my girlfriend had such hidden talents.’
    ‘From my ladette days,’ I said, planting a kiss on his lips. ‘Now I am a ladee on TV I don’t do it so much. And to mark my achievement I think we should have a group photo now.’ I handed my camera to a snowboarder next to us. ‘
Vous pouvez prendre un photo, s’il vous plaît?
’ I asked.
    ‘Yeah, no problems mate,’ he replied in a thick Essex accent which made us collapse with laughter.
    We huddled together, sunglasses on our heads, squinting in the sun. I remember wanting to preserve the memory of that moment forever, to stop it fading in time.
    When I got home I printed the photograph out and put it in my wallet. Now I found myself looking for it as I walked away from the police station. It was still there, the shot of the four of us, under a sinking Alpine sun. Then my tears fell on the paper – finally, tears – and the colours leaked into each other so our faces became blotchy and smudged. I could hardly see Jonny any more, I couldn’t see myself, but the smile on your face remained.
    Heading back to the hotel I called him, ten times over. Each time I listened to his voice, willing it to come alive. But it was only a recording, trapped in time on his answerphone. I had heard it so often I knew where the pause would come, which words he stressed, even the slam of the door in the background.
    ‘Hi, it’s Jonny, sorry I can’t pick up, leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.’
    As soon as I can
. When would he call me? I had never wanted to talk to someone so much, to spill out my fears and have them dismissed, gently:
Rach, it’s OK, I can explain everything.
    The not-knowing, the