Free The Drowning River by Christobel Kent Page B

and mercifully asleep.
    Now, though, she could feel the beat of her heart accelerate as the anxieties clamoured to be heard. The first problem was marshalling all the facts. Iris had always been good at that, good at homework and revision and sorting out the essential from the insignificant, but hereand now she felt as if her head was stuffed with cotton wool, her eyes swollen with crying. What else had the police said? They’d asked which other students on the course had known Ronnie. Traude and Hiroko had hardly even spoken to Ronnie since she’d been there; Sophia had twittered nervously to the policemen in her British Council Italian for twenty minutes.
    ‘What did you say?’ Iris had asked her.
    ‘Well, I told them she enjoyed going out, you know, she had hundreds of friends, but I hadn’t seen her with any – any special friend.’ Sophia pushed out her lower lip, like a baby. ‘Maybe I should have told them about Jackson? But they weren’t – you know.’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘You don’t think? Jackson?’
    ‘No,’ said Iris frowning ‘I don’t think so.’ She hesitated, unwilling to decipher why she was resistant to the idea. ‘Jackson was here yesterday, wasn’t he? But there must have been someone. She wouldn’t plan to disappear for days on her own.’
    ‘Do you think so?’ said Sophia. ‘But at the party – if she had a boyfriend you’d think she’d have invited him to the party. Gosh, I would.’ She looked pensive.
    Sophia was living with an Italian family; even Iris had scorned the protectiveness of Sophia’s mother, the curfew arrangements and Alice bands and pastel jumpers, the packages of food her Italian family sent her to school with. It looked only sensible now, she reflected, with a twinge of envy.
    ‘And she can’t have – been – well, abducted,’ Sophia had said, as if it had only just occurred to her. ‘Do they really think that? I mean that would be just – it would be – no! Don’t you think maybe she’s sitting in a swanky hotel with whoever he is and he’s bought her a new bag and a new phone and she’ll turn up tomorrow or something and she’ll wonder what all the fuss was about?’ Then she’d let out a hysterical sound, half giggle, half shriek.
    For a second, Iris had let herself believe it. Why not? She imagined this boyfriend, with unlimited money for honeymoon suites and new handbags. Why wouldn’t Ronnie have phoned, though? Maybe she wouldn’t have; not just to let them know she’d lost her bag.
    ‘Maybe,’ she’d said.
    Sophia had been at the Halloween party, hadn’t she? But she hadn’t stayed long; she’d been collected by the father of her Italian family, from the door, at ten. She’d been funny at the party, gazing round-eyed as Ronnie had strung some boy along; secretly, Iris knew, Sophia idolized her. ‘She’s so good at everything,’ Sophia had said, watching Ronnie blow smoke out of the side of her mouth. ‘Don’t you think they think she’s the best of us at drawing? I’m sure she’ll get more into the end-of-term show, more than any of us.’ And Iris had stared at her, wondering how anyone could be so deluded, even if Ronnie had developed a belated interest in doing well. Maybe it was because Sophia was so hopeless at it herself.
    As she lay in the dim grey light, just remembering the conversation made Iris blush. What a bitch I am, she thought. It doesn’t mean anything, just because Antonella put my drawing up on the wall. What makes me think I’m so great? Maybe Ronnie was good after all.
    She heard sounds elsewhere in the flat and Iris’s mind raced. She’d have to make that list. The name of the bar owner. She needed to talk to Jackson. To Sophia. To the police. Would she have to talk to the American boy who’d called her fat? And she needed to talk to Ronnie’s mum, before she left for the airport, before she got on the plane that would bring her here, hysterical, furious, terrified. Unable to deal with