Killing Rachel by Anne Cassidy

Though I didn’t know the details before so I didn’t have any pictures in my head. Now I do.’
    ‘No one knows what really happened. It’s all just gossip.’
    ‘I’ll see Martha and put my things in my room.’
    Just then Molly appeared at the door. She gave a half-smile when she saw Rose and walked towards them.
    ‘I heard you’d come back. You look great, Rose, doesn’t she, Amanda?’
    ‘We’re just going to my room to get Rose’s things. Are you feeling a bit better?’
    Molly nodded.
    ‘She’s been really upset about Rachel. They’ve been quite friendly this term.’
    Rose was surprised. She never would have thought of Molly as a friend of Rachel’s.
    ‘We spent some time together. I liked her . . .’ Molly’s voice broke and she dragged a large handkerchief out of her sleeve.
    ‘Oh, Molly,’ Amanda said.
    ‘I’m all right,’ she said, blowing her nose. ‘I’ll see you later.’
    Molly walked off towards the tables.
    ‘Come to my room after dinner if you want!’ Amanda called after her.
    ‘Will she be all right?’ Rose said.
    ‘She’s been like this ever since it happened. Inconsolable.’
    They walked across the grass. Over to the left was the lake. Rose paused and so did Amanda. The lake took up a huge chunk of the grounds and some years before some of it had been reclaimed to make the playing fields bigger. At the same time the lake and the boathouse were renovated. Rose remembered the diggers and the pipes and the workmen who had been around for months when she first came to Mary Linton. Then one day the lake was smaller but deeper and with several ornamental features, a small island and a number of inlets at the periphery. The boathouse had been rebuilt with a jetty branching out from it into the water. It was long enough to moor a dozen or more rowing boats and canoes which the girls used in the spring and summer months. On one side of the jetty was a slate wall which meant that girls could queue up and wait for the boats without any fear of falling off.
    Rose had a sudden memory. Rachel and her sitting on the jetty on a summer’s evening, their legs dangling, their toes touching the surface of the water. Rachel taking out a can of insect repellent and spraying it over both of them.
    ‘Do they know when she went into the water?’ Rose said, frowning.
    ‘In the night sometime? Or early morning? No one’s told us. I didn’t see her get pulled out. Only a handful of girls saw and as soon as the staff knew they marched them back to the building.’
    ‘Why would she go out to the lake? At night?’
    ‘People did. They do. It’s forbidden to go out of the building after lights out but people do it.’
    ‘OK in June. But November?’
    Amanda shrugged.
    ‘The girls are right about one thing. It’ll be terrible publicity for the school. First Juliet Baker. Now this.’
    Rose nodded. As they walked back in the direction of the main school she thought of Juliet Baker and remembered the things that Rachel had said in her letter about seeing her ghost . It made her feel uncomfortable for a moment because she herself had thought she’d seen her mother three times after she vanished. Twice in the school car park and once in the sickbay. At the time she had never said the word ghost to herself but maybe it had been there, in her consciousness. Now, since she’d found out that her mother was still alive, she wondered whether those sightings had in fact been real. Her mother checking up on her; making sure, from a distance, that she was all right. Rose liked this thought.
    They walked up the stairs back to Eliot House.
    ‘How come Molly was friends with Rachel?’
    ‘They just began to hang round together.’
    ‘But I thought you and she were best friends.’
    ‘Not for a long time, Rose. Not since the beginning of Year Eleven. We sort of drifted apart.’
    ‘I didn’t know. I never noticed.’
    ‘No, you were always too hung up with Rachel to notice anyone else.’
    Rose felt