The Other Tenant, page 23
My breath judders in my throat. ‘And then they took the registers.’
Tears are streaming down my face now. ‘I had no idea anyone was upstairs in the art pods.’
‘But someone was,’ Rob says. His voice is calmer now, and so are his eyes. He is still and focused, and I remind myself why I’m doing this, why I’m sitting in a cold, damp changing room with him, Harry Kiernan trussed up on the floor beside us. I’m doing it to make him understand what it’s like to live with a dark secret. How it ruins your entire life.
I take a deep breath. ‘Yes. My best friend was up there.’ My voice falters, but I force myself to go on, because I can’t stop now. ‘My best friend, who never did anything she wasn’t supposed to. The awful thing was, I was the one who told her how easy it was to get in, and how Ms Thompson didn’t always lock the door. I used to do it all the time instead of hanging about in the cold.’
I sniff back the tears. ‘I remember her face when I first told her. She said, “You’re crazy. Ms Thompson will give you detention if she catches you.”’
I close my eyes and shake my head. ‘She actually worried about things like that.’
‘Because she understood the importance of rules,’ Rob says.
‘Yes, yes, exactly. Which is why I never for one second thought she’d try it herself. And I never for one second thought the fire was still burning when I left the studio.’
I hear the long, slow sound of Rob’s exhaled breath as he absorbs what I’m telling him.
‘I’ve kept this dreadful secret for so long, I’ve almost convinced myself it didn’t happen, and that it’s some peculiar form of survivor’s guilt. Because how could it have happened? How could I have done something so unutterably wrong? It’s not who I am. It’s inconceivable.’
A muscle is twitching in Rob’s left cheek. Listening to my confession is having an effect on him. It’s making him realize that he’s not the only one to have done something bad, something that has resulted in another person’s death.
‘So they were right, when they said it could have been deliberate,’ he says, his voice measured and low.
I feel a spike of unease at this strange reaction. But then, Rob’s brain works in a different way to other people’s. He finds it hard to gauge emotions, so of course he’s focusing on the facts. I’m going to have to try a little harder.
‘Yes, but they were only half right, weren’t they? Because I changed my mind. I put the fire out. At least, I thought I did. So it wasn’t really deliberate.’
Rob frowns. ‘But it was to start with. Your intention was to start a fire. So in that sense, it was deliberate.’
He’s leaning back on the bench now, looking at me through narrowed eyes. Harry starts thrashing about again, but he might as well not be there for all the attention Rob is giving him. Why isn’t he worried about Harry any more? Why is he looking at me in that peculiar way? And why is he arguing with me over semantics, for Christ’s sake?
Because that’s the kind of person he is. You know this. Don’t worry about it. Keep going.
I moisten my lips with my tongue and take a deep breath before continuing. ‘My intention, at first, was to start a fire. But then I changed my mind. I didn’t intend to burn the whole studio down. That was the last thing I wanted to happen. And I certainly didn’t intend to—’
‘To kill Lottie,’ Rob says.
‘No! No, of course not. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m trying to tell you how terrible it is living with guilt because of a stupid, stupid mistake. I’m trying to explain what—’
‘But you did kill her,’ he says. ‘Your actions resulted in her death. Your actions resulted in an innocent girl dying.’
I stare at him, open-mouthed. I knew he’d be shocked. Horrified, even. But this cold, analytical summary of my heartfelt confession is something else.
I try again. ‘Ye-es. Just like your actions have contributed to …’ I glance at Harry, who appears to have given up struggling to free himself and is looking unusually calm for someone trussed up on the floor.
Rob gets to his feet, and there is something about the controlled way he does this that scares me. The colour is rising in his cheeks.
‘You killed the most precious, beautiful girl in the world,’ he says, his hands balled into fists at his side.
I stand up too, dread coiling in my gut like a snake. This isn’t working. Why is he reacting like this?
‘You killed my girlfriend,’ he says. ‘You killed the girl I loved.’
55
Marlow
No. No, no, no. This isn’t happening. Lottie didn’t have a boyfriend.
I’d have known if she had a boyfriend. She’d have told me. I’d have seen him. We were close. Always at each other’s houses, always confiding in each other. She didn’t have a boyfriend. Neither of us did.
My stomach churns as the memory seeps into my mind. The Valentine’s card. The one we laughed at in the park. We both got one that year. Hers was really soppy, with a pressed flower inside. It was from the creepy son of one of her mother’s friends, who kept loitering on the street outside her house and looking up at her bedroom. She told her dad eventually, and he went out and had a word with him. Sent him packing.
Robin. Oh my God. His name was Robin. She said he made her shudder.
I look at Rob’s face, and it’s as much as I can do not to shudder right now. He seems to have forgotten all about Harry lying on the floor behind us and the mess he’s in. It’s only me he’s concerned with now. I can see it in his eyes. Those small, pink-rimmed eyes blinking at me furiously.
He takes a step towards me, and I instinctively take a step back. ‘It was an accident,’ I say. ‘You’ve heard what I just said. I was Lottie’s friend. I would never have hurt her. Never in a million years.’
He comes closer. ‘But you did hurt her. You burnt her to death.’
He’s right in my face now, forcing me to walk backwards, past the toilets and the showers and towards the little footbath that leads to the pool.
He grabs my wrist. ‘Why didn’t you admit what you’d done?’
‘Because I was a wreck, don’t you see? I was frightened, terrified of what might happen. Not just to me, but my parents too. It would have ruined their lives as well as mine. They’d have forever been known as the parents of the girl who set fire to her school and killed a pupil. I’d have had a criminal record – I might even have ended up in prison.’
I stumble back into the footbath and almost fall. He trips too, and I take the opportunity to wrench my hand away from his and break free. We’re in the main pool area now, and my voice echoes in the void.
‘I’m telling you all this for a reason, Rob. To make you understand you’re not the only one who’s done bad things.’
He rounds on me in an instant, grabbing both of my forearms, his fingers digging sharply into them. ‘I haven’t done bad things. I’ve stood by and let them happen, yes, but it isn’t the same. It isn’t the same at all. I didn’t kill Hayley.’
‘No, but you didn’t try to save her either.’
No sooner are the words out of my mouth than I realize my mistake.
His voice, when it comes, is menacingly low. ‘How dare you compare my situation to yours. You deliberately started a fire for your own selfish ends and killed my girlfriend in the process, and you’ve kept that secret for eighteen years!’
‘But I’ve told you now, and I’ll tell the police too. It’s been hell trying to live with the guilt all this time. That’s what I’m saying, Rob: we need to call the police now, before Harry’s associates realize he’s missing and come looking for him. He can’t be working on his own.’
But it’s as if Rob can’t hear a single word I’m saying. His face is puce, and I’m acutely aware that in his rage he keeps forcing me to walk backwards and that we are now perilously close to the edge of the deep end of the pool.
It’s in this precise moment that we hear the sound of running footsteps, followed by a sharp ripping sound. Oh my God! One of Harry’s accomplices must have turned up and untied him. Now Harry is barking instructions. ‘Get the fucking gear and get the hell out of here. Tell J there’s been a last-minute change of plan. You, stay here with me. There’ll be some cleaning up to do.’
My stomach plummets at this last sentence. ‘Please, Rob, let me go. I know another way out. We can get into the corridor through the other set of changing rooms and into the store cupboard. Come on.’
But Rob won’t let go of my arms. He won’t move. He’s rooted to the side of the pool in fear and indecision. What’s wrong with him? Can’t he see what’s going to happen if we don’t get out of here?
And now it’s too late. Harry is at the poolside in an instant. Rob drops my arms in shock, and I stagger back. Harry’s eyes are small black bullets drilling into Rob’s terror-stricken face. I watch, horrified, as he draws his shoulder back and delivers a punch so swift and savage, so unnervingly precise, that Rob doesn’t stand a chance. Harry’s knuckles smash into his cheekbone and Rob folds like a deckchair, teetering at the edge of the pool, arms flailing, eyes wide in panic. It’s as if time has slowed, and though my instinct is to rush forward and pull him to safety, I’m unable to move. Unable to breathe.
Rob falls backwards into the empty pool, the thud of his body landing at the bottom immediately followed by an ominously loud crack as his skull connects with the unforgiving tiles. The noise galvanizes me into action. I turn to run away, but Harry grabs hold of my shoulders and pulls me back. It takes all my body strength to brace my legs and keep both of my feet on the floor. I don’t think I can withstand it any longer, yet I know what’s going to happen. He’s going to swing me over the edge too. My socked feet slip and slide on the cold tiles in my desperation to get away from him, but there’s no way I can. He’s too strong for me.
Suddenly, there’s a noise so loud and unexpected, so booming and reverberant, that for a second I think there’s been an explosion. It’s the sound of doors being hoofed in and boots – what sounds like hundreds of them, an army of boots – pounding down on the tiled floor outside. For one frozen second, Harry and I lock eyes in shock, and then a swarm of armed police officers in riot gear charge through both sets of changing rooms at the same time, an eruption of noise and movement that makes Harry drop my hands and stagger back.
Resounding shouts of, ‘Police! Get your hands in the air! Get your hands in the fucking air!’ bounce around the cavernous space like pinballs ricocheting in a giant pinball machine. With nothing to absorb the sound but the hard, reflective surfaces of the pool, the noise is deafening. It’s pandemonium. Waves of sensory chaos. Acoustics so disorienting and harsh, I can hardly stand up.
‘Move away from the edge of the pool. Look at me!’ shouts one of the officers. ‘Walk towards me. Hands in the air!’
I do as he says, but as I step forward Harry lunges towards me, and in that instant I know exactly what he’s going to do. He’s going to try to hold me hostage as some kind of bargaining tool. I skitter sideways and hear a loud, crackling sound. Harry’s within a hair’s breadth of me when he drops like a stone. Three police officers surge forward as one, and as they crouch over Harry’s body, I realize they’ve tasered him.
I sink to my knees. A wave of nausea engulfs me and I’m pouring with sweat. Now I’m heaving, vomit splashing on to the tiles at the side of the pool. More shouts and arrest warnings reach my ears from the staff changing room, and police officers are climbing down the metal ladders to the pool floor, like beetles scuttling into a pit.
One of them is squatting at my side talking to me, but I don’t hear a word he’s saying, and my voice doesn’t seem to be working. I’m cold and clammy and shaking all over. I wipe my mouth with my hand and peer down into the gaping pool. Rob is lying inert at the bottom. He’s on his back and blood has spread around his head, the bright redness of it vivid against the white of the tiles.
More police officers crouch next to him. ‘Dead,’ one of them says, his lone voice a sinister echo.
What happens next is a whirlwind. Paramedics. Police. People in crime-scene suits climbing in and out of the pool. Echoing voices drifting through from the corridor. More paramedics join the police still huddled with Harry at the side of the pool. Something is wrong. He should have come round by now. He must have cracked his head as he went down.
I can hardly bear to look as Rob’s body is lifted out of the pool on a stretcher. I have been wrapped in one of those shiny silver blankets. Someone gets me a cup of water, but I can’t take more than a sip without retching. Now Harry is on a stretcher too. It’s hard to see him properly as there are so many people clustered round him, but it looks like his head is in some kind of helmet.
Later, in hospital, after I’ve been checked over and pronounced medically fit for discharge, I am driven to the police station to give a statement. As I’m ushered down a corridor to an interview room, I catch sight of Elle in another room, talking to one of the officers. Our eyes meet briefly before I pass. I guess they’re going to be talking to all of the guardians separately, to find out what each of us knew or witnessed.
As I sit down at a table and wait to be interviewed, it occurs to me that if Harry doesn’t recover, we might never find out what happened to Hayley.
It makes me weep. I weep for the girl who took all those pictures of my old school and put them on Instagram, pretending it was her amazing renovation project. I weep for the girl who liked milky coffee and occasionally getting pissed with Bryony. I weep for the girl whose favourite ever book was Rebecca, and who took the time to polish the parquet floor in Mr Barker’s old classroom. The girl who painted the old radiator brilliant white and hung voile panels at the window. The girl who used to do drugs because her father abused her. The girl who was kind enough to want to give Nikhil feedback on his screenplay and who would, almost certainly, have paid Bryony back the seventy pounds she owed her. The girl who, like me, was drawn to a puzzle and who made it her business to investigate.
The door of the interview room opens, and a police officer walks in and sits down opposite me. She asks me to tell her what I was doing in the swimming pool.
I take a deep breath and start to speak.
56
Some Weeks Later
Marlow
The Montpellier Saint-Roch train is on time, and I’m one of the first in the queue – if you can call it that; it’s more of a free-for-all – at the platform barrier in Hall 1 of the Gare de Lyon. It’s a long journey and I’ve already been travelling all day, but I don’t like flying. Besides, I’ve got plenty to think about, and if my thoughts become too much for me, I have a book to read and a Rubik’s cube to solve.
My parents have told me I can stay with them as long as I like, and that I should think of their new apartment in France as my home. They also said that they were sorry for not understanding me when I was a teenager, for pushing me too hard. I was crying when they said that, and so were they. But they didn’t know the real reason I was crying.
Confessions are always hard. That’s why it took me so long to tell the truth. For a while, I thought that maybe I never would. Some people keep their secrets for ever. They don’t tell a living soul. If I hadn’t come back to McKinleys, maybe I would have done the same thing. Because when you keep a secret for as long as I have, it gets seared into you. It burrows deep and stays there, embeds itself like a malignant tumour, destroying you from the inside out.
I sabotaged what could have been the best years of my life because of it, and would have gone on doing so. But this was a secret burning to come out. And now that I’ve said the words aloud, now that I’ve released them into the world, the healing process can finally begin. I can learn to forgive myself.
Life can be snuffed out at any second. I’ve always known that, ever since the day Lottie died. But seeing Rob lying dead in the bottom of that pool, and knowing that poor Hayley is lying dead somewhere too, really brought it home to me, made me realize how precious life is and how much time I’ve wasted.
When I told Rob what happened that day, I had no idea what the repercussions were going to be, and I didn’t care. I was ready for them, whatever they turned out to be. Arson. Manslaughter. I just needed to tell someone. I needed to set the secret free and release its stranglehold on me. And as soon as I did, I felt purged. Expiated. For the first time in years, I felt free.
Until he exploded with rage, and then I felt scared. Terrified. I wanted to pluck the words I’d just spoken out of the air and swallow them whole. Put the secret back where it belonged. Deep, deep inside.
I didn’t kill him though. Harry Kiernan did that. And he’d have killed me too if the police hadn’t arrived when they did. They didn’t tell me much, at the station. Only that they’d been monitoring Kiernan’s activities for a long while, and that the investigation was ongoing.
The police saved my life. And although they don’t know it, they saved my secret too. Rob’s taken it to his grave and I’ll take it to mine. Because honestly, who would it benefit if the truth came out now? Nothing will change. The fire will still have happened, and Lottie will still be dead. I’m not a bad person. I’m not. I changed my mind, didn’t I? Realized the stupidity of my decision, the sheer recklessness of it. I was so, so sure I’d put it out.
But it didn’t go out, and I’ve paid the price for that one terrible mistake ever since. I’ll probably go on paying for it in one way or another, but at least I made that confession. For a short period of time, two other people besides myself knew the truth.
It troubles me, of course it does, that one of them is still alive. When I asked, the police couldn’t say what brain damage Harry might have sustained. But surely the longer he’s in a coma, the slimmer his chances of a full recovery. Besides, what good would spilling my secret do him? He’ll still be put away for trading in illegal drugs. That’s all the police are going to be interested in. That and finding out what happened to poor Hayley.
