Soul Beach

to Demi and spits the words into her face. ‘You killed Triti.’
    And then she turns around without waiting for Demi’s response, and walks back up the alleyway. Dopey hesitates as Demi’s eyes lock onto hers. Is the power still there?
    Dopey breaks the gaze.
    Demi calls after her, ‘Please,’ and that’s when we all know she’s lost everything.
    Lewis waits until the sound of the girls’ footsteps has receded as they turn back onto the high street. ‘Where were we, then, Demi?’
    She whimpers. She really believes he might hurt her, even though he hasn’t laid a finger on her. ‘I didn’t expect . . .’ Demi stops. Shakes her head.
    ‘Yes?’ I say.
    ‘It was a joke. She was a stupid little Daddy’s girl. Thought she could have anything – and anyone – she wanted. I just wanted to teach her a bit of a lesson. Never expected she’d take it so seriously.’
    ‘So it was you?’
    She nods.
    ‘Say it out loud, Demi. Say that you drove Triti to starve herself to death.’
    She swallows several times. We’re so close that I can smell stale coffee on her breath, and hear her throat rasping as she tries to clear it.
    ‘I drove Triti Pillai to starve herself to death.’

58
    In the distance, I hear a crash.
    Thunder.
    The sky has darkened so that what little light there was in the alleyway has gone. Fat raindrops fall thickly and loudly onto the cobbles and our heads.
    Within fifteen seconds, we’re soaked. But Lewis doesn’t move away from Demi, even as water runs down her face, and his. Her carefully styled hair lists like a ship, then clumps together in thick, gluey strands. Mascara runs down her slightly mottled cheeks like tears of regret, though I am pretty sure the only person she feels sorry for right now is herself.
    ‘Why did you do it?’ I ask her. ‘What did Triti ever do to you?’
    ‘She . . . she bloody loved herself, didn’t she?’
    ‘Not by the time you’d finished with her. I’d say that by then, she hated herself.’
    ‘I was only messing. I did it to some of the other girls who were full of themselves, but they never took it that seriously.’
    ‘Er, if you think that’s going to help justify what you did, Demi, then you’re even madder than I thought,’ Lewis says.
    ‘She floated round school like she was better than the rest of us. Her dad even bought her her own room, ahead of people on the waiting list. Well, she wasn’t better, was she? She was weak.’
    I look at her twisted face and I think of Triti in her family photographs, beaming at the camera and at life. ‘But why would that make you do what you did? Go to all that trouble because someone else was happy? Or over a room ?’ Demi stares back at me, like she doesn’t understand the question. But I have to keep asking, don’t I? I don’t know what resolution is, or whether it really will offer Triti her way out, but I have to try to get all the answers to questions I haven’t even thought of yet.
    I try to imagine what Danny would ask. He’d find out the truth.
    ‘Were you jealous of her?’
    I see contempt in her eyes. ‘No way.’
    ‘Was there a boy involved?’
    Demi looks away.
    ‘Tell me,’ I say.
    ‘All the boys loved Triti. But she wasn’t allowed boyfriends. Which made them love her even more.’
    I think about it. ‘Including a boy you liked, maybe, Demi?’
    She shrugs. ‘Can’t remember.’
    Lewis looks at me, shakes his head very slightly. ‘You know what, Alice. I think Demi’s too stupid to work out why she did it. She taunted a girl to death and she can’t remember . People like her make me sick.’
    Demi scowls. ‘I am here .’
    ‘Don’t worry, sweetie, we haven’t forgotten you,’ says Lewis, leaning in closer to her. ‘What shall we do with her, Alice?’
    ‘Are you going to tell school?’ Demi asks nervously.
    He laughs. ‘Not so brave now, are we? Brave enough to torture a girl anonymously but scared to face the music, eh, Demi? Worried you’re going to get into big twouble? Did-dums!’
    I ignore him, though it strikes me we’ve fallen into a weird good cop/bad cop routine. ‘Did you not realise it had gone too far?’ I ask. ‘Did you never see her fading away and think, this is wrong? I mean, she was dying in front of you . It took months and yet you kept going right until she went over the edge.’
    ‘She was mad. That’s not my fault.’ Demi’s eyes are defiant, but scarily blank. It’s as though she’s dead herself, or deadened to the