The Woods, page 20
“So why are you out here? Why aren’t you upstairs?”
He puts the cigarette out, reaches for the packet, and lights another one. He offers the packet to me and I shake my head.
“She doesn’t want the curtains or the window open. The sun’s out but her room is like a crypt.”
“The daylight hurts her eyes.” She told me this last night. She sleeps most of the day. Like me, she’s awake most of the night. For the first time, my growing insomnia is a good thing because I’m awake to spend time with her when the demons come, whispering their death messages to her.
“All the clocks are wrong, have you noticed?” he says out of the blue.
I blink, wondering if I’ve missed half a conversation. He’s smiling at me again and I think I did zone out.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your dad has so many clocks—one in every room—but they all tell different times.”
I shake my head. “So?”
“I don’t mean a few minutes out. I mean hours out. It’s a different time in each room of your house. Don’t you think that’s strange? Midnight in the kitchen, four o’clock on the landing.”
I frown. Dad used to be religious about winding and synchronizing all the clocks he’s collected over the years. I got used to the ticking; it was like a heartbeat underlying everything. After a while, you stop hearing it. Have I noticed a slip in the rhythm since I’ve been back? Clocks ticking and chiming out of sync, adding to the loss of equilibrium I’ve felt.
“Dad’s got more important things to do than wind clocks.”
“Maybe the clocks and times are for each of us. Julia’s is the one closest to midnight, seconds ticking by too slowly.”
“Was it you who sent those texts?” I blurt out.
Jack leans forward and I can see myself reflected in his sunglasses. “What are you talking about?”
I wish he’d take the damned sunglasses off. His confusion sounds genuine, but if I could see his eyes would I see amusement instead? I can’t even show him the texts I’m accusing him of sending.
Jack tilts his head. “You look tired, Tess. Max was filling us in on the strain you’re under—losing your job and everything. You really should get some sleep.”
I stiffen. Max told him? He told the others as well?
“I remember last time you were this stressed. It wasn’t long before the wedding, was it? Poor Sean. I suppose he was lucky not to lose an eye.”
“Oh, fuck off,” I shout, and march off into the house. He’s right—every clock is telling a different time. I get my phone out to check the correct time, but the battery has died. Without it, I’m lost. It’s midnight and four a.m. and noon and eleven thirty all at once. Jack follows me in and laughs when he sees me holding the clock in the living room. I put it down and flip him the bird.
“You’re back,” I say, rushing over to Dad as he walks in the door. He looks exhausted, gray and haggard.
“Is Julia okay?” he asks.
“She’s fine. I’ve been sitting with her. I didn’t tell her where you were.”
“Thank you,” he says. “I was going to come straight back but I needed some time alone before I came home to Julia. God, I need a drink.”
I follow him to the kitchen. He gets a beer from the fridge. He sits down and pours it with a shaking hand.
“How was it? Did you tell them…?”
“I didn’t lie, if that’s what you’re asking. I told them the truth—that he came around looking for trouble. That I hit him and he left and I didn’t see him again. They kept asking the same things over and over.”
“But they let you go. That’s good, right?”
“They don’t have any reason to arrest me yet, but I don’t think I’m off their list.” He looks up at me. “They asked me about you also—how well you knew him. I told them I don’t think you knew him at all. That’s the truth, isn’t it, Tess?”
I take his empty bottle and turn away to put it in the recycling bin. “That’s right. I barely knew him.”
“They were insinuating that you and Bella both knew him, that both of you spent time with him that I didn’t know about.”
I wonder what Lena has told them. “They were probably just trying to needle you,” I say.
“There were other questions too…” He pauses, takes a long swallow of his beer.
I get a bottle of wine and a glass, sit at the table with him and pour it.
“They asked about Nicole Wallace and the other girl who was murdered.”
“They asked you about them?”
He shakes his head. “They were asking about the murdered girls and Greg.”
I stare into my glass. I don’t even want to think about it. That would make my insane teenage infatuation even more twisted than it was. I feel the same childish surge of frustration I felt back then: if only Max had liked me back, if only Bella hadn’t flirted with him, making him blind to anyone but her, if only…then I never would have felt so stupidly lonely that hanging out with a man my father’s age turned into something that never should have been.
“But what’s the connection? He’s dead. He was murdered himself, wasn’t he?”
“It’s the timing, I think. Of course there was never anything to suggest it was him back then, but he disappeared and the murders stopped. And now he’s turned up dead.”
“So what do they think happened?”
He looks at me and there’s a question in his eyes. “I think they’re wondering if another girl fought back and won.”
I breathe in and hold on to the breath until I’m dizzy. I close my eyes and Bella is there, leaves in her hair, blood on her face.
Tell him, she whispers, and I shake my head, black spots appearing before my eyes.
Tell him? Tell him what? That I did go there, alone, at night? That he might have been a serial killer and I tried to kiss him and how, even now, with this new knowledge, I feel not relief that I got away unscathed, but the same sting of humiliation at his rejection? That’s what made me say all those things to Bella. She was so mad, so angry. Oh God, he could have been a serial killer and I gave her a reason to go after him.
THEN
Chapter 24
October 2007
It’s raining and I pull my hood up, hunch my shoulders, and walk faster. It’s that drizzling, clinging rain and it creeps under my hood and soaks my face. I slow down when I get to the village. There’s a man with a microphone, another man with a camera behind him, and they’re talking to Bella and her friend Caitlin. I stop a few feet away and try to listen in but the man with the microphone spots me and turns around.
“Would you like to be interviewed about the missing girl?”
“What?”
“Another teenage girl has gone missing. Does it worry you that there may be a serial killer in the county?”
What? I look at Bella. Her face is set and still, fists clenched at her side. She hasn’t mentioned Nicole’s murder in weeks, but right now she looks like she’s going to be sick.
“Do you feel safe walking home alone knowing a killer is on the loose?” the reporter asks, stepping closer with his stupid microphone.
“Leave her alone,” Bella calls in a low, fierce voice.
“I don’t want to be interviewed,” I mutter, marching past Bella and Caitlin.
There’s another news van parked by the post office and I can see a camera crew inside, interviewing Mrs. Wilson. Christ knows what she’ll tell them—probably all about Bella and her gang marauding around the village. We’ll have more journalists banging on our door next.
I’m trying to think if there’s been anyone else missing from school recently. But we would have heard if anyone local had gone missing, wouldn’t we? After Nicole’s death, there were assemblies and memorials and endless counseling sessions offered to all the girls. And when no one was arrested, the same message was drummed in over and over again. Stay safe. Make sure someone is with you if you’re out at night. Make sure someone always knows where you are. It made the village, this tiny, sleepy village where no one locks their doors, dangerous. It made every stranger a figure of suspicion. And it made me so mad at Bella that she carried on like nothing had happened, still going out and walking back through the bloody woods in the middle of the night. God, Nicole was her friend. Why wasn’t she worried that the person who murdered her was still out there?
I hear footsteps behind me as I leave the village and walk up the lane that skirts the woods. I feel a squeeze of panic and my heart pounds. I huddle deeper into my coat and speed up, my walk now a half run.
“Tess—wait up.”
I stop to catch my breath, shaky with relief to hear Bella’s voice. She jogs to catch up to me.
“Finished your interview? Did you enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame?”
She shakes her head. She isn’t wearing a coat and her hair clings to her face in wet tendrils. Despite the drowned-rat look, she’s still stupidly beautiful. “I didn’t do an interview. I couldn’t, not after Nic. It was Caitlin who was talking to them.”
“Who is it? Is it someone else from our school?”
“No. It’s some girl from the next county. No one we know.”
I shudder. “You don’t think it’s the same person, do you? A serial killer like that journalist said?”
She shrugs. “No idea—she could have just run away or something. Fuck—I don’t think we’ve ever had any murders around here before.” She frowns and wraps her arms around herself. “You shouldn’t keep walking home from school by yourself.”
“And you shouldn’t still go out at night.”
“I don’t go out alone.”
“That doesn’t matter—you should stay home until whoever’s doing this is caught.”
She shakes her head and walks on ahead. “Leave it, Tess.”
“I’ll tell Dad if you don’t stop,” I call after her.
“Tell him,” she says. “It won’t make a difference.”
“Have you got a death wish or something? What is wrong with you lately?”
She spins round, stands in front of me. “You don’t have a bloody clue, do you?”
“A clue about what?”
“Oh, forget it, little sister. And if you tell Dad about me going out, I’ll tell him about your little secret.”
“What secret?”
“Your lovely friendship with Julia’s ex. Your little gardening jaunts.”
I flinch. “I don’t think he’ll be worried about me doing some weeding for a neighbor.”
“Oh, don’t you? Really? It’s all entirely innocent, is it? Is that why you wash your hair and put makeup on every time you go weeding?” She laughs. “I don’t think it’s me with the death wish.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighs and shakes her head. “Just…be careful, okay? Maybe we should both stay home a bit more.”
A thorn pierces my palm through the gardening glove and I suck in my breath.
“Are you okay? Let me look,” Greg says, pulling off my glove. There’s a drop of blood on my palm. He wipes it away. “I don’t think you’ll die from blood loss,” he says, smiling, still with my hand in his.
No, there is no more blood because it’s all gone to my face. Bella’s stupid words have spoiled this. All I can think about is what if Dad walked into the garden now and saw Greg holding my hand. Saw me with my freshly washed curls and lip gloss, alone with Julia’s ex? It makes this feel sordid and wrong, but it doesn’t make me want to snatch my hand away.
“Have you heard about the other girl who’s gone missing?”
Greg lets my hand go and I watch another drop of blood well up. “Impossible not to hear about it around here.”
“She wasn’t from our school, but she was close enough that everyone thinks the killer might have taken her.”
“The local gossips are loving it, aren’t they? No thoughts for the poor girl’s family. Although I hear she’s a troublemaker—wild,” Greg says.
That’s what the tabloids are saying: a “wild” girl, just like Nicole. Doesn’t mean they deserved to be killed, though.
“It’s got everyone talking about Nicole again. You met her, didn’t you? At the first party you had?”
He turns away, starts scooping up weeds and putting them in a green garden bag. “I don’t remember her. The kids were there for the boys, none of them spoke to me.”
That’s not entirely true, though. I’m sure I remember a very drunk Nicole dragging a laughing Greg onto the dance floor at their New Year’s party. Nicole, with her arms draped around his shoulders, watched from various points round the room by me, Julia, Jack, Sean, and Bella.
November 2007
“Where are you going?”
Bella’s stuffing things into a small rucksack. She looks up and grins. “On an adventure. Want to come?”
It’s been so long since we did anything together. Ellie dying, Julia moving in, Jack, Sean, Max…so many things driving a wedge between us. I only ever go to the woods alone now.
“Where?” I ask again.
I want to go, I do, I do. But I want it to be just me and her—Tess and Bella on a big adventure, not trailing round some shopping center after her and her sniggering mates.
“It wouldn’t be an adventure if I told you. Go on, come with me. Please.”
I never could resist when she gives me puppy-dog eyes.
We walk to the bus stop and it is, for those ten minutes, just like old times. Bella walks next to me, swinging her rucksack, rattling on and on about nothing at all and I’m happy to walk next to her listening. It’s such a gorgeous day, I can’t believe it’s November, cold but bright, the ground crunchy with fallen leaves, red and orange and yellow, speckled with frost.
“So, come on—are you ever going to tell me where we’re going?” I say as I see the bus approaching in the distance.
“Okay,” she says, laughing. “We’re going to meet Jack and Sean.”
“What?”
“Sean’s going to sneak out of school and Jack’s off work—we’re going on a picnic.”
“A picnic? In November? With Jack and Sean? After everything you said about Jack after Nic died?”
She shrugs and holds up a hand to flag the bus down. “Yeah, I was upset about how Jack was over Nic. But I saw…it was a defense mechanism, the way he was. We talked and…I was wrong. They’re actually…” She turns to me and a smile grows huge on her face. “Oh, Tess, he—they are actually pretty amazing.”
Which one, I wonder as I take a step back. Which one of the brothers has put the smile back on my sister’s face?
“Come on then,” she says, stepping onto the bus.
I shake my head and take another step back. “No way. I’m not going anywhere with them. You shouldn’t either—they’re…they’re dangerous.”
She laughs. “Dangerous? Oh Tess, don’t be daft!”
I watch her climb onto the bus, that massive smile still on her face, and I waver, rising onto the balls of my feet. If I run, I could make it, jump onto the bus with my sister, off on an adventure with the “amazing” brothers, the Insanely-Hots. Or I could wait while the bus pulls away, taking my sister on an adventure while I stay at home. Safe. Alone. No massive smile anywhere near my face.
I’m still wavering when she turns back to me, two tickets in her hand. “Max and Lena might be there,” she says, and it breaks my trance. I jump onto the bus after her, snatching my ticket out of her hand as she laughs.
I know it’s a mistake the moment we get off the bus and I see Jack and Sean already waiting. Jack’s eyes are hidden behind sunglasses but he’s grinning that hateful grin of his. Sean is leaning against the bus stop, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, looking down at the ground rather than at us. Bella said they were taking us for a picnic, but neither of them is carrying anything.
“Where are Max and Lena?” I say as I follow Bella off the bus.
Jack cocks his head. “Is that the only reason you came? To see the lovely Maxie-boy?”
“Shut up, Jack,” Bella says, rolling her eyes. “Stop winding her up. Where are they? And where’s this picnic you promised?”
“They couldn’t sneak out of school. Not as practiced as us. And the picnic was a bit of a red herring to get you here.”
“To get us where?” Bella says, looking round at the dead-end street. We’re in a town half an hour’s bus ride from our village, nothing about it standing out as worth a visit—a few tired-looking cheap shops, some ugly houses.
“Come on,” Jack says. “You’ll see.”
He leads us away from the town center, Bella and Sean flanking him, me trailing behind, wishing I’d never come. It’s a two-hour wait until the next bus home, so I’m stuck with them until then. And I swear it’s colder here—my toes are going numb in my sneakers. Some bloody adventure.
We’ve been walking for fifteen minutes when Jack stops. We’re well out of the town center, surrounded by trees and fields. Jack stands by a fence bordering a scrubby field surrounded by woods.
“This is it,” he says, looking back at the rest of us.
“This is what?” Bella says, a note of irritation in her voice.
“This is where the other girl—Annie Weston’s body was found.”
I take an involuntary step back from the fence. Next to me, I hear Sean take a sharp breath in. He didn’t know where Jack was bringing us either, then.
“What the fuck, Jack?” Bella almost shouts. “Why the hell would you bring us here?”
“Relax, we’re not about to be jumped by a serial killer. They’ve arrested someone, didn’t you hear? They tracked down Annie Weston’s ex, some twenty-year-old druggie. Bet they’ll find a connection to Nic.” He sounds fierce as he says it. “They still haven’t found that other girl, either. I tell you, if I could get hold of that bastard…”
I haven’t heard. Wouldn’t it be all over the local news if they’ve caught the killer? How come Jack found out first? Maybe the police told him. He was Nicole’s boyfriend, after all. Bella says his indifference was pretend, a defense mechanism. For the first time, I can see it. The fierce anger in his voice…and something else. There’s relief in his voice as well. If they’ve arrested someone, he’s off the hook.
He puts the cigarette out, reaches for the packet, and lights another one. He offers the packet to me and I shake my head.
“She doesn’t want the curtains or the window open. The sun’s out but her room is like a crypt.”
“The daylight hurts her eyes.” She told me this last night. She sleeps most of the day. Like me, she’s awake most of the night. For the first time, my growing insomnia is a good thing because I’m awake to spend time with her when the demons come, whispering their death messages to her.
“All the clocks are wrong, have you noticed?” he says out of the blue.
I blink, wondering if I’ve missed half a conversation. He’s smiling at me again and I think I did zone out.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your dad has so many clocks—one in every room—but they all tell different times.”
I shake my head. “So?”
“I don’t mean a few minutes out. I mean hours out. It’s a different time in each room of your house. Don’t you think that’s strange? Midnight in the kitchen, four o’clock on the landing.”
I frown. Dad used to be religious about winding and synchronizing all the clocks he’s collected over the years. I got used to the ticking; it was like a heartbeat underlying everything. After a while, you stop hearing it. Have I noticed a slip in the rhythm since I’ve been back? Clocks ticking and chiming out of sync, adding to the loss of equilibrium I’ve felt.
“Dad’s got more important things to do than wind clocks.”
“Maybe the clocks and times are for each of us. Julia’s is the one closest to midnight, seconds ticking by too slowly.”
“Was it you who sent those texts?” I blurt out.
Jack leans forward and I can see myself reflected in his sunglasses. “What are you talking about?”
I wish he’d take the damned sunglasses off. His confusion sounds genuine, but if I could see his eyes would I see amusement instead? I can’t even show him the texts I’m accusing him of sending.
Jack tilts his head. “You look tired, Tess. Max was filling us in on the strain you’re under—losing your job and everything. You really should get some sleep.”
I stiffen. Max told him? He told the others as well?
“I remember last time you were this stressed. It wasn’t long before the wedding, was it? Poor Sean. I suppose he was lucky not to lose an eye.”
“Oh, fuck off,” I shout, and march off into the house. He’s right—every clock is telling a different time. I get my phone out to check the correct time, but the battery has died. Without it, I’m lost. It’s midnight and four a.m. and noon and eleven thirty all at once. Jack follows me in and laughs when he sees me holding the clock in the living room. I put it down and flip him the bird.
“You’re back,” I say, rushing over to Dad as he walks in the door. He looks exhausted, gray and haggard.
“Is Julia okay?” he asks.
“She’s fine. I’ve been sitting with her. I didn’t tell her where you were.”
“Thank you,” he says. “I was going to come straight back but I needed some time alone before I came home to Julia. God, I need a drink.”
I follow him to the kitchen. He gets a beer from the fridge. He sits down and pours it with a shaking hand.
“How was it? Did you tell them…?”
“I didn’t lie, if that’s what you’re asking. I told them the truth—that he came around looking for trouble. That I hit him and he left and I didn’t see him again. They kept asking the same things over and over.”
“But they let you go. That’s good, right?”
“They don’t have any reason to arrest me yet, but I don’t think I’m off their list.” He looks up at me. “They asked me about you also—how well you knew him. I told them I don’t think you knew him at all. That’s the truth, isn’t it, Tess?”
I take his empty bottle and turn away to put it in the recycling bin. “That’s right. I barely knew him.”
“They were insinuating that you and Bella both knew him, that both of you spent time with him that I didn’t know about.”
I wonder what Lena has told them. “They were probably just trying to needle you,” I say.
“There were other questions too…” He pauses, takes a long swallow of his beer.
I get a bottle of wine and a glass, sit at the table with him and pour it.
“They asked about Nicole Wallace and the other girl who was murdered.”
“They asked you about them?”
He shakes his head. “They were asking about the murdered girls and Greg.”
I stare into my glass. I don’t even want to think about it. That would make my insane teenage infatuation even more twisted than it was. I feel the same childish surge of frustration I felt back then: if only Max had liked me back, if only Bella hadn’t flirted with him, making him blind to anyone but her, if only…then I never would have felt so stupidly lonely that hanging out with a man my father’s age turned into something that never should have been.
“But what’s the connection? He’s dead. He was murdered himself, wasn’t he?”
“It’s the timing, I think. Of course there was never anything to suggest it was him back then, but he disappeared and the murders stopped. And now he’s turned up dead.”
“So what do they think happened?”
He looks at me and there’s a question in his eyes. “I think they’re wondering if another girl fought back and won.”
I breathe in and hold on to the breath until I’m dizzy. I close my eyes and Bella is there, leaves in her hair, blood on her face.
Tell him, she whispers, and I shake my head, black spots appearing before my eyes.
Tell him? Tell him what? That I did go there, alone, at night? That he might have been a serial killer and I tried to kiss him and how, even now, with this new knowledge, I feel not relief that I got away unscathed, but the same sting of humiliation at his rejection? That’s what made me say all those things to Bella. She was so mad, so angry. Oh God, he could have been a serial killer and I gave her a reason to go after him.
THEN
Chapter 24
October 2007
It’s raining and I pull my hood up, hunch my shoulders, and walk faster. It’s that drizzling, clinging rain and it creeps under my hood and soaks my face. I slow down when I get to the village. There’s a man with a microphone, another man with a camera behind him, and they’re talking to Bella and her friend Caitlin. I stop a few feet away and try to listen in but the man with the microphone spots me and turns around.
“Would you like to be interviewed about the missing girl?”
“What?”
“Another teenage girl has gone missing. Does it worry you that there may be a serial killer in the county?”
What? I look at Bella. Her face is set and still, fists clenched at her side. She hasn’t mentioned Nicole’s murder in weeks, but right now she looks like she’s going to be sick.
“Do you feel safe walking home alone knowing a killer is on the loose?” the reporter asks, stepping closer with his stupid microphone.
“Leave her alone,” Bella calls in a low, fierce voice.
“I don’t want to be interviewed,” I mutter, marching past Bella and Caitlin.
There’s another news van parked by the post office and I can see a camera crew inside, interviewing Mrs. Wilson. Christ knows what she’ll tell them—probably all about Bella and her gang marauding around the village. We’ll have more journalists banging on our door next.
I’m trying to think if there’s been anyone else missing from school recently. But we would have heard if anyone local had gone missing, wouldn’t we? After Nicole’s death, there were assemblies and memorials and endless counseling sessions offered to all the girls. And when no one was arrested, the same message was drummed in over and over again. Stay safe. Make sure someone is with you if you’re out at night. Make sure someone always knows where you are. It made the village, this tiny, sleepy village where no one locks their doors, dangerous. It made every stranger a figure of suspicion. And it made me so mad at Bella that she carried on like nothing had happened, still going out and walking back through the bloody woods in the middle of the night. God, Nicole was her friend. Why wasn’t she worried that the person who murdered her was still out there?
I hear footsteps behind me as I leave the village and walk up the lane that skirts the woods. I feel a squeeze of panic and my heart pounds. I huddle deeper into my coat and speed up, my walk now a half run.
“Tess—wait up.”
I stop to catch my breath, shaky with relief to hear Bella’s voice. She jogs to catch up to me.
“Finished your interview? Did you enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame?”
She shakes her head. She isn’t wearing a coat and her hair clings to her face in wet tendrils. Despite the drowned-rat look, she’s still stupidly beautiful. “I didn’t do an interview. I couldn’t, not after Nic. It was Caitlin who was talking to them.”
“Who is it? Is it someone else from our school?”
“No. It’s some girl from the next county. No one we know.”
I shudder. “You don’t think it’s the same person, do you? A serial killer like that journalist said?”
She shrugs. “No idea—she could have just run away or something. Fuck—I don’t think we’ve ever had any murders around here before.” She frowns and wraps her arms around herself. “You shouldn’t keep walking home from school by yourself.”
“And you shouldn’t still go out at night.”
“I don’t go out alone.”
“That doesn’t matter—you should stay home until whoever’s doing this is caught.”
She shakes her head and walks on ahead. “Leave it, Tess.”
“I’ll tell Dad if you don’t stop,” I call after her.
“Tell him,” she says. “It won’t make a difference.”
“Have you got a death wish or something? What is wrong with you lately?”
She spins round, stands in front of me. “You don’t have a bloody clue, do you?”
“A clue about what?”
“Oh, forget it, little sister. And if you tell Dad about me going out, I’ll tell him about your little secret.”
“What secret?”
“Your lovely friendship with Julia’s ex. Your little gardening jaunts.”
I flinch. “I don’t think he’ll be worried about me doing some weeding for a neighbor.”
“Oh, don’t you? Really? It’s all entirely innocent, is it? Is that why you wash your hair and put makeup on every time you go weeding?” She laughs. “I don’t think it’s me with the death wish.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighs and shakes her head. “Just…be careful, okay? Maybe we should both stay home a bit more.”
A thorn pierces my palm through the gardening glove and I suck in my breath.
“Are you okay? Let me look,” Greg says, pulling off my glove. There’s a drop of blood on my palm. He wipes it away. “I don’t think you’ll die from blood loss,” he says, smiling, still with my hand in his.
No, there is no more blood because it’s all gone to my face. Bella’s stupid words have spoiled this. All I can think about is what if Dad walked into the garden now and saw Greg holding my hand. Saw me with my freshly washed curls and lip gloss, alone with Julia’s ex? It makes this feel sordid and wrong, but it doesn’t make me want to snatch my hand away.
“Have you heard about the other girl who’s gone missing?”
Greg lets my hand go and I watch another drop of blood well up. “Impossible not to hear about it around here.”
“She wasn’t from our school, but she was close enough that everyone thinks the killer might have taken her.”
“The local gossips are loving it, aren’t they? No thoughts for the poor girl’s family. Although I hear she’s a troublemaker—wild,” Greg says.
That’s what the tabloids are saying: a “wild” girl, just like Nicole. Doesn’t mean they deserved to be killed, though.
“It’s got everyone talking about Nicole again. You met her, didn’t you? At the first party you had?”
He turns away, starts scooping up weeds and putting them in a green garden bag. “I don’t remember her. The kids were there for the boys, none of them spoke to me.”
That’s not entirely true, though. I’m sure I remember a very drunk Nicole dragging a laughing Greg onto the dance floor at their New Year’s party. Nicole, with her arms draped around his shoulders, watched from various points round the room by me, Julia, Jack, Sean, and Bella.
November 2007
“Where are you going?”
Bella’s stuffing things into a small rucksack. She looks up and grins. “On an adventure. Want to come?”
It’s been so long since we did anything together. Ellie dying, Julia moving in, Jack, Sean, Max…so many things driving a wedge between us. I only ever go to the woods alone now.
“Where?” I ask again.
I want to go, I do, I do. But I want it to be just me and her—Tess and Bella on a big adventure, not trailing round some shopping center after her and her sniggering mates.
“It wouldn’t be an adventure if I told you. Go on, come with me. Please.”
I never could resist when she gives me puppy-dog eyes.
We walk to the bus stop and it is, for those ten minutes, just like old times. Bella walks next to me, swinging her rucksack, rattling on and on about nothing at all and I’m happy to walk next to her listening. It’s such a gorgeous day, I can’t believe it’s November, cold but bright, the ground crunchy with fallen leaves, red and orange and yellow, speckled with frost.
“So, come on—are you ever going to tell me where we’re going?” I say as I see the bus approaching in the distance.
“Okay,” she says, laughing. “We’re going to meet Jack and Sean.”
“What?”
“Sean’s going to sneak out of school and Jack’s off work—we’re going on a picnic.”
“A picnic? In November? With Jack and Sean? After everything you said about Jack after Nic died?”
She shrugs and holds up a hand to flag the bus down. “Yeah, I was upset about how Jack was over Nic. But I saw…it was a defense mechanism, the way he was. We talked and…I was wrong. They’re actually…” She turns to me and a smile grows huge on her face. “Oh, Tess, he—they are actually pretty amazing.”
Which one, I wonder as I take a step back. Which one of the brothers has put the smile back on my sister’s face?
“Come on then,” she says, stepping onto the bus.
I shake my head and take another step back. “No way. I’m not going anywhere with them. You shouldn’t either—they’re…they’re dangerous.”
She laughs. “Dangerous? Oh Tess, don’t be daft!”
I watch her climb onto the bus, that massive smile still on her face, and I waver, rising onto the balls of my feet. If I run, I could make it, jump onto the bus with my sister, off on an adventure with the “amazing” brothers, the Insanely-Hots. Or I could wait while the bus pulls away, taking my sister on an adventure while I stay at home. Safe. Alone. No massive smile anywhere near my face.
I’m still wavering when she turns back to me, two tickets in her hand. “Max and Lena might be there,” she says, and it breaks my trance. I jump onto the bus after her, snatching my ticket out of her hand as she laughs.
I know it’s a mistake the moment we get off the bus and I see Jack and Sean already waiting. Jack’s eyes are hidden behind sunglasses but he’s grinning that hateful grin of his. Sean is leaning against the bus stop, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, looking down at the ground rather than at us. Bella said they were taking us for a picnic, but neither of them is carrying anything.
“Where are Max and Lena?” I say as I follow Bella off the bus.
Jack cocks his head. “Is that the only reason you came? To see the lovely Maxie-boy?”
“Shut up, Jack,” Bella says, rolling her eyes. “Stop winding her up. Where are they? And where’s this picnic you promised?”
“They couldn’t sneak out of school. Not as practiced as us. And the picnic was a bit of a red herring to get you here.”
“To get us where?” Bella says, looking round at the dead-end street. We’re in a town half an hour’s bus ride from our village, nothing about it standing out as worth a visit—a few tired-looking cheap shops, some ugly houses.
“Come on,” Jack says. “You’ll see.”
He leads us away from the town center, Bella and Sean flanking him, me trailing behind, wishing I’d never come. It’s a two-hour wait until the next bus home, so I’m stuck with them until then. And I swear it’s colder here—my toes are going numb in my sneakers. Some bloody adventure.
We’ve been walking for fifteen minutes when Jack stops. We’re well out of the town center, surrounded by trees and fields. Jack stands by a fence bordering a scrubby field surrounded by woods.
“This is it,” he says, looking back at the rest of us.
“This is what?” Bella says, a note of irritation in her voice.
“This is where the other girl—Annie Weston’s body was found.”
I take an involuntary step back from the fence. Next to me, I hear Sean take a sharp breath in. He didn’t know where Jack was bringing us either, then.
“What the fuck, Jack?” Bella almost shouts. “Why the hell would you bring us here?”
“Relax, we’re not about to be jumped by a serial killer. They’ve arrested someone, didn’t you hear? They tracked down Annie Weston’s ex, some twenty-year-old druggie. Bet they’ll find a connection to Nic.” He sounds fierce as he says it. “They still haven’t found that other girl, either. I tell you, if I could get hold of that bastard…”
I haven’t heard. Wouldn’t it be all over the local news if they’ve caught the killer? How come Jack found out first? Maybe the police told him. He was Nicole’s boyfriend, after all. Bella says his indifference was pretend, a defense mechanism. For the first time, I can see it. The fierce anger in his voice…and something else. There’s relief in his voice as well. If they’ve arrested someone, he’s off the hook.
