“Carl – “

There was no answer. He heard his brother begin to walk back up the stairs, slowly, moving like an old man. Hot tears began to burn the back of his eyelids.

“Carl – “

He was beyond shame but he heard his voice break. Nothing mattered but to have his brother come and make it all better, like he always had before. Jake began to cry.

“Carl – “

Out of the darkness, he felt his brother’s warm hand on his shoulder, pulling him up into the light. Jake opened his eyes. Carl had both hands on his shoulders.

“Jake, come on. V, come on. Come with me. We’ll go into V’s room.”

Veronica gave a gasping sob.

“What about – what about her?”

“Just come with me for the moment. We need to talk. Come on.”

The three of them sat on Veronica’s bed. It would be more accurate to say that two of them collapsed on Veronica’s bed. Jake rolled onto his side, burying his face in one of the cushions that littered the headboard. It smelt delicately of some flowery scent and it made him want to cry again, it smelt so innocent. Veronica sagged back against the headboard. She was so pale she was almost grey, dark shadows smudging her eyes, her lips bruised and sore looking. Carl sat at the end of the bed. His face was blank. Jake thought he looked like a man who was dreaming awake.

Veronica gave one small sob.

“Is she really dead?”

Carl shut his eyes and then opened them again. He was staring straight ahead, at nothing.

“Yes, she’s really dead. She must have cracked her skull on the floor.”

“Oh – “ Veronica gave a little moan.

Jake put one hand up to his face to cover his eyes.

“What are we going to do?” he said, from behind the slitted mask of his fingers.

Carl brought his gaze back from the middle distance to look at his brother.

“I don’t know. You’ve got to let me think.”

“We should…”

Veronica’s voice petered out in a whisper. Carl looked at her.

“Should do what?”

She swallowed. “Should call the police,” she said, in a tiny voice.

“Fuck, no.”

“Carl – “

She began to cry again. Carl shook his head.

“Carl, we must – “

“No.”

“Oh – “

“Why not, Carl?” said Jake, still half covering his eyes. He was growing steadily sicker with every minute that passed. He kept hearing the thud of Candice’s head hitting the hallway floor. He kept seeing the expression on her face as she went over backwards.

Carl was silent for a long moment. Then he spoke and his voice sounded like he was suffering from a bad cold.

“If the police come – if they come – they’ll find the drugs. They’ll test us all for drugs. We’ve gone through four grams tonight, there’s no way we’d get away with it. They’ll be able to see what we’ve been doing.” He cleared his throat. “She’s got your spunk all over her, Jake. Mine too. Inside her. What will they think? They’ll think we drugged her and raped her and then pushed her down the stairs.”

“You pushed her down the stairs,” said Jake dully. He heard Veronica gasp. Carl was silent for a moment. Then he sighed.

“We won’t mention that again.”

Veronica was still crying.

“Carl – they won’t – we have to – they won’t – “

Carl cut across Veronica’s moans.

“V, they will. What are we going to say? At the very least, they’ll do us all for possession. For supply, even. Of Class As. What’s that, ten years? And then a dead girl on top of that? A dead girl who’s probably not even sixteen yet? Fuck – “

Jake took his hand down from his face.

“Excuse me a second,” he said, and bolted for the bathroom for the second time in an hour.

The bedroom was silent when he walked back in. He fell back onto the same side of the bed, pushed his face back into the same sweet-smelling cushion.

“You alright?”

Jake nodded without speaking. He heard Carl take a deep breath.

“We need to think about what we’re going to do.”

“What if someone heard us?”

Veronica’s voice was thick with tears.

“No one heard. We’re in the middle of a detached house, V. No one’s ever complained about the noise before, have they?”

Veronica began to cry again, quietly.

“We can’t just leave her there, on the floor. Oh God – “

“It’s all right.” Jake had never heard his brother speak in such a low, comforting tone. It almost made him feel better.

“It’s alright,” said Carl, again. “We’ll deal with it. It’s not as bad you think.”

Jake laughed. He actually laughed. He could feel himself teetering on hysteria, could feel it surfacing inside him like vomit. He pushed his face deeper into the pillow, snorting laughter into the padding.

“Jake – “

He couldn’t stop laughing, he was gasping with it. Then he was crying. He felt Carl, or perhaps it was Veronica, put a warm hand on his back. Slowly, his laughter tailed off. He rolled onto his back, dislodging the hand – it was Carl. His face felt raw, his nose felt as if it had been flayed. His breath caught in occasional little hitches.

“What are we going to do?”

Veronica opened her mouth and then closed it again. The two of them looked at Carl, funny how they both looked at Carl, knowing immediately that he’d know what had to be done. Jake was suddenly, violently glad of the presence of the other two, of the warmth and closeness of the dark bedroom. He wanted to stay in there forever. He would have been quite happy for time to have stopped right there, freezing the three of them on the top of the bed, forever held in the room, like something from Pompeii. Anything to put off what was coming next. He listened with dread and soon it came. Carl spoke.

“You know what we have to do.”

The two of them were silent. Then Veronica spoke up, just about – her voice was a whisper.

“Where?”

“I think here. In the back garden somewhere.”

“No,” said Jake. It was almost a sob.

Carl looked annoyed. “Come on, Jake. It’s the only chance we’ve got. If we dump her somewhere, the police’ll find her – our DNA’s all over her. They’ll find us in two seconds.”

“They’ll find us anyway.”

“They won’t. No one knows she’s here. We don’t even know who she is – just some little squat chick, she’s probably homeless. No one saw us leave. The fucking taxi driver was some illegal immigrant. She’s a nobody. Who’s going to be looking for her in our back garden?”

Jake took a deep breath.

“Are you sure?”

“What am I - psychic? I’m as sure as I need to be. I’m not going to prison, Jake, that’s for damn sure. I’m not saying goodbye to the career I’ve worked fucking years for, worked fifteen hour days for, three six five, twenty-four seven, not for one little fucked-up junkie slag, that’s for sure. Not for one little chav that no one is going to miss. Not me. No way.“

There was a moment’s silence. Then Veronica spoke up.

“Now?”

Jake felt like crying.

“Not tonight, I can’t do anything tonight. I’m fucking exhausted – Carl, please – “

Carl put a steadying hand on his shoulder.

“We can’t do it tonight. It’s getting light for one thing. We’ll wait until tomorrow night. We all need to get some sleep.”

“But we can’t just leave her there – “

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.”

Candice was suddenly an ‘it’. Jake noticed but he was too exhausted to care. He wanted to bury himself in sleep, wrap unconsciousness around him for as long as he possibly could. Dimly, he felt a welling pulse of gratitude for Carl, who was going to take care of things, who had taken charge. He said nothing but he put his hand out to his brother, who took it wordlessly. Veronica gave a little sob and put her arms around them both. The three of them stayed like that for a long moment.

“Come on,” said Carl, releasing Jake’s hand. “Go to bed.”

*

Jake slept for eleven hours. When he finally awoke, it was the first morning of all the awakenings that were yet to follow, the first morning where he had a second of blissful unconsciousness before the awful weight of reality came crashing down, almost obliterating him beneath it. He rolled over onto his side and buried his face in the pillow, gasping with the sickening truth of it. Then he sat up slowly, tears rolling down his face. For a moment, the room swam and he had the weirdest feeling of dislocation, as if he wasn’t in his actual body, but removed from it and hovering somewhere in the air, watching himself from afar. He blinked and shook his head, a mistake as pain thudded through him.