Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

me. Maybe all of us at Hailsham had little secrets like that—little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone with our fears and longings. But the very fact that we had such needs would have felt wrong to us at the time—like somehow we were letting the side down.
    Anyway, once I was quite sure the tape was gone, I asked each of the others in the dorm, very casually, if they’d seen it. I wasn’t yet completely distraught because there was just the chance I’d left it in the billiards room; otherwise my hope was that someone had borrowed it and would give it back in the morning.
    Well, the tape didn’t turn up the next day and I’ve still no idea what happened to it. The truth is, I suppose, there was far more thieving going on at Hailsham than we—or the guardians—ever wanted to admit. But the reason I’m going into all this now is to explain about Ruth and how she reacted. What you have to remember is that I lost my tape less than a month after that time Midge had quizzed Ruth in the Art Room about her pencil case and I’d come to the rescue. Ever since, as I told you, Ruth had been looking out for something nice to do for me in return, and the tape disappearing gave her a real opportunity. You could even say it wasn’t until after my tape vanished that things got back to normal with us—maybe for the first time since that rainy morning I’d mentioned the Sales Register to her under the eaves of the main house.
    The night I first noticed the tape had gone, I’d made sure to ask everyone about it, and that of course had included Ruth. Looking back, I can see how she must have realised, then and there, exactly what losing the tape meant to me, and at the same time, how important it was for me there was no fuss. So she’d replied that night with a distracted shrug and gone on with what she was doing. But the next morning, when I was coming back from the bathroom, I could hear her—in a casual voice like it wasn’t anything much—asking Hannah if she was sure she hadn’t seen my tape.
    Then maybe a fortnight later, when I’d long reconciled myself to having truly lost my tape, she came and found me during the lunch break. It was one of the first really good days of spring that year, and I’d been sitting on the grass talking with a couple of the older girls. When Ruth came up and asked if I wanted to go for a little stroll, it was obvious she had something particular on her mind. So I left the older girls and followed her to the edge of the North Playing Field, then up the north hill, until we were standing there by the wooden fence looking down on the sweep of green dotted with clusters of students. There was a strong breeze at the top of the hill, and I remember being surprised by it because I hadn’t noticed it down on the grass. We stood there looking over the grounds for a while, then she held out a little bag to me. When I took it, I could tell there was a cassette tape inside and my heart leapt. But Ruth said immediately:
    “Kathy, it’s not your one. The one you lost. I tried to find it for you, but it’s really gone.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “Gone to Norfolk.”
    We both laughed. Then I took the tape out of the bag with a disappointed air, and I’m not sure the disappointment wasn’t still there on my face while I examined it.
    I was holding something called Twenty Classic Dance Tunes. When I played it later, I discovered it was orchestra stuff for ballroom dancing. Of course, the moment she was giving it to me, I didn’t know what sort of music it was, but I did know it wasn’t anything like Judy Bridgewater. Then again, almost immediately, I saw how Ruth wasn’t to know that—how to Ruth, who didn’t know the first thing about music, this tape might easily make up for the one I’d lost. And suddenly I felt the disappointment ebbing away and being replaced by a real happiness. We didn’t do things like hug each other much at Hailsham. But I squeezed one of