Free Dead Lovely by Helen Fitzgerald Page A

consciousness and remembered what had happened. Kyle held up his hand, which was fine, and dangled a bloodstained tissue in front of me with a huge smile.
    ‘It is SO your turn!’ I said to Kyle.
    Kyle had always been an arachnophobe. He cut his gap year in Australia short after an incident with a hairy huntsman, and jumped when a spider so much as showed itself on television. I always thought this girly attribute was rather fetching. I liked it when men were vulnerable, when the macho facade melted, which is probably why I liked it on top, and why I secretly had a fantasy about watching two men doing it together.
    Anyway, I set about finding the largest spider in the vicinity. It took a while, but eventually I spotted one about five centimetres across, sitting happily between two branches of a rowan tree. He turned to flee from me, but I managed to scoop him up. Kyle closed his eyes and held out his hand, but as soon as he felt a tickle on his palm, he catapulted backwards and squealed like a baby. I wonder if the spider madeit back to the rowan tree, or if he became some kind of spider refugee.
    Sarah was next. Her greatest fear was being confined in small spaces, so we put her in her sleeping bag, did up the zip, and told her to stay there for ten minutes.
    ‘Don’t forget!’ she said, as the zip closed in around her.
    That was when I rang Matt. He’d climbed his hill, and was just about asleep in his tent. ‘Get up and get over here,’ I said.
    As I hung up, I saw the photo I’d taken of Robbie in his buggy, sleeping soundly by the duck pond, and I rang Mum.
    Robbie was fine, they were all fine, Mum told me. I shouldn’t worry about a thing.
    Kyle poured me another wine, and we chatted for a while before realising that fifteen minutes had gone by and we had left Sarah in her sleeping bag.
    ‘Shit! Sarah!’ I said, and turned towards the sleeping bag. It was motionless.
    ‘Sarah!’ I said loudly.
    No movement or response at all. I slowly unzipped the bag, and opened it out. There, white as a ghost, eyes closed, and still as death itself, was Sarah.
    ‘Sarah?’
    Nothing.
    I shook her.

    ‘Sarah!’
    Not a breath, not one sign of life.
    ‘Kyle! She’s not … moving.’
    Kyle dropped his drink and moved closer. Our faces moved towards her until we were about one centimetre from her. What had we done? Had we killed her?
    Way worse than my fear of blood was my fear of doing something really bad, of hurting someone unintentionally. I would have my terrible actions on my conscience forever. I would have to go to jail, or worse, not go to jail because I’d not confessed or not been caught, and so I would have to just live with the guilt all by myself in a dark smoky room with eerily vacant eyes and bedraggled hair …
    ‘AAGGHH!’
    Sarah’s scream sent us both flying into the air. When we picked ourselves up from the ground, she laughed so hard that we could only stop her by tossing her into the loch. When she surfaced with an angry face we knew we’d overstepped the mark. Nervousness overcame Kyle and he held out his hand to help her out. Sarah took it, and then hauled him in with all her might.
    What the hell, I thought, and jumped in too for a splashy, giggly, freezing swim.
    We were still splashing about when Matt arrived. It was an unseasonably mild night, but not mild enough to wear next to nothing, which is what Mattwore. He’d taken off his yellow T-shirt that said I AM NOT GAY! in black italic lettering and walked along the jetty beside us, stood over me with a smile, and then dived in.
    I’d promised myself earlier that day that I must try to be respectable and that I must never again sleep with a man on the first date, but as Matt swam over and pushed my head under the water playfully, I decided that holidays and Matts must surely be an exception.
    We dried our clothes by the fire and drank beer. Sarah and Kyle snuggled up in the firelight and seemed so relaxed and in love that I hardly