The Wrong Move

by Jennifer Savin

  Jennifer Savin

  * * *

  The Wrong Move

  Contents

  Prologue

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Jennifer Savin is an award-winning journalist and currently Features Writer at Cosmopolitan. She has a particular passion for undercover investigations, which have seen her do everything from exposing predatory landlords who target vulnerable women, to sharing a cramped bedroom with a stranger while reporting on the housing crisis. The Wrong Move is her debut novel.

  You can follow Jennifer on Twitter @JenniSavin and Instagram @savcity

  For everybody who lived (and loved) at 17 Wakefield Road

  Prologue

  The sunlight dazzled that afternoon. Two women thanked their cab driver and mounted the steps of their shared flat, skin still laced with sweat and salt from the night before, mouths dry. Both were desperate to crawl under the covers of their respective beds and cocoon themselves, blocking out the slithers of Sunday dread that were already beginning to creep in. Neither were ready to start thinking about work or real life again just yet.

  ‘I know I say this every time,’ started the taller one, ‘but I can’t keep partying like that; the day after is too much of a killer.’

  The other, with smudged eyeliner, murmured in solidarity and began fumbling in her bag, searching for keys. Her neck was stiff from sleeping on an unfamiliar sofa. Hot rays beat against their backs as the key turned in the lock. For anyone else, this would be the perfect summer’s day. For them, it was too early. Too bright.

  The cool air in the hallway felt unusually still. It was gone lunchtime; surely their other flatmate would be up and about by now? Boiling the kettle and sliding bread into the toaster, singing along to music playing from her phone. It wasn’t like her to sleep in so late.

  They headed upstairs and the woman with the smeared make-up knocked on the door of their flatmate’s room. She waited a few moments for a reply. There was none. Hesitantly, she let herself in, just wanting to check that everything was okay. The sour stench of vomit hit instantly. It was all over the sheets and in her flatmate’s hair, undignified clumps of it clung to her chin and lay scattered across her chest. She noticed her flatmate’s ashen face, the body lying there lifelessly. She shook her, then urgently tried to scrape whatever was blocking her flatmate’s airways using her finger, took her wrist in one hand. There was no pulse. She let out a high-pitched scream and her friend ran in, stood for a moment in stunned horror then grabbed the phone from her bag and started to dial an ambulance. But she could see it was too late. Their flatmate was dead.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Flat-hunting had proven to be a thoroughly arduous task, on a par with training for a marathon or having a tooth – no, several teeth – extracted, by an incompetent dentist. In fact, Jessie Campbell decided, either of those options would be preferable to viewing yet another flat that was riddled with damp, or falling in love with a room listed on SpareRoom or Gumtree, only to realise it was three times over budget. Even the ones that she’d actually visited in person and liked seemed to end in disappointment. It was always the same: she’d reply to a ‘flatmate wanted’ advert, make small talk in the kitchen with the current tenants, before judging whether or not all of her belongings could fit into the available bedroom. So far, after a month of intensive searching, Jessie had made an offer on four different places and heard nothing back from any of them. Nothing. Despite politely following up twice. The rejection was worse than being vetoed after a job interview, given that it was based strictly on the twenty minutes of personality she’d been allowed to display – not her skillset or lack of experience – all the while trying to work out how much cupboard space she might get in the kitchen.

  Jessie had posted her own ‘room wanted’ adverts too, to minimal response, and then spent an afternoon emailing all of the Brighton letting agents that came up on the first page of Google, with a list of her requirements. A good-sized double bedroom in a friendly flat-share, £600 (bills included), happy to live with males or females, but no students, please. Within minutes, her phone had started buzzing non-stop with calls from unrecognised numbers. Did letting agents not sleep? And how did they keep managing to convince her to view so many rancid places? Jessie always felt as though she were snooping without permission when viewing a bedroom still obviously in occupation, barely daring to do more than peer around from the threshold.

  One of the dives she’d been shown by an agent, on Upper Lewes Road, had an actual gaping hole in the floor covered by a sticky Persian rug. Another, a basement flat near Preston Park station, smelled of burnt rubber and was so cramped that when Jessie sat on the bed, she could touch the walls either side. Then there was the rundown townhouse by Hove Lawns, where a plump landlord resembling Henry VIII had given her a wink and said that he often crashed on the sofa whenever he had business in town. Truly repulsive. She’d seen plenty of properties with black mould scattered across the ceilings in hazardous constellations too, all of which made her ache for the flat she’d spent the past three years lovingly curating with a man she’d believed was her future. A flat that had once upon a time seemed so perfect.

  Ian, the balding letting agent from Happy Homes (or was it Moving On Up? They’d all started blending into one), seemed to be the nicest of the bunch. Almost trustworthy, if he weren’t working on commission. His favoured lilac shirts were a little on the baggy side and his shoes always meticulously shiny, reminding Jessie of a child on their first day of school. Endearing, really. The car he drove her around to viewings in was always pristine too and smelled of freshly cut pine, thanks to a tree-shaped air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror.

  It was a calm October afternoon, just after lunchtime when they pulled up outside 4 Maver Place. The flat was part of a large Edwardian house conversion, split over three floors – the top one of which was occupied by neighbours who let themselves in via another entrance down a small side alley.

  ‘From what the current tenants have said, the neighbours pretty much keep to themselves,’ Ian told her. ‘A bonus, if you ask me.’

  It was in a superb location – only a short walk from the seafront – and the rent was below the market rate for Brighton, a city growing notoriously more expensive with every passing year. Ian had reassured her that the three housemates already residing in the property (he always said ‘property’, never ‘flat’) were also young professionals in their twenties, just like her.

  ‘One m
ale and two females,’ he’d chuckled. ‘The poor bloke!’

  Jessie tried not to let herself get too excited, looking up at the red-brick building with its blue front door and sweet little balcony, but she couldn’t help the fizzing in her stomach. Hope mixed with desperation. Something was telling her that this, the twenty-third flat she’d seen, might just be the one.

  Ian did his customary rat-a-tat-tat knock before letting them in. Jessie followed timidly behind him and blinked at the hallway. Magnolia, nothing special, but not as shabby as some of the other flats she’d seen over the past month. When they reached the open-plan kitchen-lounge at the end of the hallway, it became apparent there was somebody home after all, despite there having been no answer to Ian’s banging on the front door. A young woman was sitting at a round pine table, engrossed in her phone. She jumped at the sight of them, then removed her headphones before introducing herself as Lauren. She had bleached-blonde hair chopped into a sharp bob, tucked behind pierced ears, impeccably straight teeth and red lacquer nails. In the centre of her face was a perfect, dainty turned-up nose.

  ‘Sorry, I was in my own little world then.’ She held up the phone. ‘In a bit of a YouTube rabbit hole.’

  She smiled, pushing her chair back with a loud scraping sound.

  ‘Tea?’

  Ian laughed and gave a grateful nod.

  ‘That’d be great, thanks. We’ve been running about all over the place today.’

  Jessie nodded too, taking in the room. The lounge area had two squashy, burnt-orange sofas and a rickety bookshelf, creaking with artistic tomes from museum gift shops and dog-eared paperbacks. A shoddy coffee table stood before the TV, with a few cardboard beermats pilfered from a nearby pub in use instead of proper coasters. She watched as Lauren stirred the milk in, and spotted a tiny tattoo of a delicate pair of feathered wings on her wrist. She decided the tattoo made this potential housemate, Lauren, instantly cooler than her. Jessie had never been able to brave getting one herself. Not because of the physical pain, but because she was too terrified that she’d end up regretting it. Feeling confident in her decisions wasn’t a strongpoint of hers. Lauren, on the other hand, came across as the type of girl who spearheaded the conversation at parties, regaling a hooked crowd with her wild tales, gesturing animatedly with a rolled-up cigarette in hand. The type of person who both drew Jessie in and unnerved her a little. At parties Jessie was usually the one quietly stacking plastic cups into neat piles and making sure nobody knocked anything onto whichever laptop the Spotify playlist was coming from.

  After handing over steaming Sports Direct mugs to Jessie and Ian, Lauren leaned back against the faux granite kitchen counter clutching her own mug, making idle chit-chat. She’d seemed excited at the prospect of having Jessie move in, especially after discovering they shared a few basic interests.

  ‘I’ll have to take you to my favourite yoga studio sometime in that case, it’s just down the road,’ Lauren had smiled, when Jessie mentioned she enjoyed taking the odd class.

  By odd class what she had really meant was that she’d been a handful of times, in an effort to de-stress, and found the posture names like ‘passive pigeon’ and ‘humble warrior’ a bit ridiculous. But finding a new flatmate was like dating (something else she would need to get used to all over again) – any vague interests you had quickly became fully fleshed-out hobbies in order to make you appear more of a well-adjusted, easy-to-live-with individual. She had a strange urge to impress Lauren, whether or not she decided to move in. Ian slurped down a final mouthful of tea.

  ‘Shall we do the rest of the tour, then?’ he asked, putting his mug in the sink.

  Lauren went to wash it up immediately, along with her own and Jessie’s, then trailed them upstairs.

  The bathroom was unremarkable but not unpleasant, despite rust-coloured grout lining the tiles above the taps, something Jessie had come to view as par for the course. A typical array of Aussie Miracle Moist shampoos and conditioners fought for space around the bath and the toothbrushes lived in a mint-coloured plastic beaker perched on the edge of the sink. Next door to the bathroom was Jessie’s room (in theory) if she decided to take it.

  She’d felt Lauren’s eyes on her, as Ian opened the bedroom door and motioned for her to step inside. Jessie had been careful to inspect the space without looking overly judgemental, taking in the grey carpet and peering inside the white double-door wardrobe. It wobbled, but at least it had a mirror inside, and enough space for all her coats. There were two drawers built into it, which could hold her underwear, pyjamas and gym gear too. The rest of her clothes would have to live in boxes under the silver double-bed frame, just as they’d done when she was at university. That was the last time she’d moved in to a flat with strangers. Those boxes would be a daily reminder that life had taken a step backwards.

  At least the previous tenant had already cleared their personal belongings out of the space, leaving nothing but a few ghostly dents on the carpet where heavy furniture once sat. A small nod to the cycle of renting life.

  ‘How long has it been empty for?’ she asked.

  ‘Only a week or so,’ replied Ian, before Lauren had a chance to. ‘And we have plenty more viewings lined up for tomorrow. If I’m being completely honest with you, Jessie, I don’t think this room will be available for long.’

  Jessie readied herself for another of his sales pitches.

  ‘It’s the best size you’re likely to get for your budget,’ he continued, looking at her with earnest eyes. ‘Plus, there’s so much more communal storage space downstairs too. It will get snapped up, so don’t take too long thinking it over.’

  As much as she hated to admit it, she knew Ian was probably right. Jessie ran her finger across the windowsill, gathering dust along the way. Whoever the former tenant was, they hadn’t done the best job with cleaning.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ she announced to the room, as if not only informing Ian and Lauren, but all of the Argos budget furniture and heavy damask curtains she’d inherit too.

  Ian’s face split into a grin.

  ‘An excellent decision.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  A week later, Jessie stood on the doorstep of 4 Maver Place, with her suitcase and a couple of carrier bags by her feet. After that initial viewing, she’d hopped back into Ian’s car and been driven to the cheerily named Happy Homes letting agency, to give them her reference details to check. Yesterday, her reference cleared, she’d signed the contract for a six months (minimum) tenancy and received a set of keys. They came complete with a plastic keyring displaying the Happy Homes sunshine yellow logo of a grinning house, the windows of which looked like kind eyes – hopefully a good omen of things to come, of the fresh start that she so desperately needed.

  Jessie held the keys in her hand, but it didn’t feel right clicking them into the lock and marching on in as she was yet to pay her share of a gas bill, had never left an IOU on a fellow housemate’s milk or spent a night on one of those sunken sofas, cramming pizza into her mouth and watching Friends on a loop. Perhaps knocking was a better idea?

  She prodded the carrier bags with the toe of her boot as she waited for someone to answer. A dark shadow slowly approached the frosted pane of glass in the centre of the blue wooden door, before pulling it back. It was Lauren.

  ‘Hey, newbie, come on in!’ She looked down. ‘Is this all you’ve got with you?’ she asked, reaching for the suitcase.

  ‘There’s more in the van I’ve hired,’ Jessie said, nodding her back head in the direction of where she’d parked across the street. ‘It’s lovely to see you again.’

  ‘And you! I was so pleased when you said you’d take the room,’ Lauren replied, immediately putting her at ease. ‘Here, I’ll give you a hand.’

  Together they carried Jessie’s possessions from the van up into her new room. She was relieved to see it looked just as she’d remembered it and hadn’t shrunk over the past week while her referencing forms were being processed. Jessie’s mum
had seemed pleased with the photos she’d sent her of Maver Place too, which strengthened her belief that she’d made the right choice. The extensive searching had all been worth it. And although Jessie had liked the comfort of coming home to her parents every night after a long day of flat viewings and job hunting in Brighton, she knew that leaving her hometown of Chesterbury, over 100 miles away, was for the best. There were too many ghosts there for her to be happy.

  ‘Thanks so much for helping me move my stuff. I think I’ll have to leave properly unpacking it all until tomorrow – I’m pretty knackered now.’

  Lauren nodded in understanding.

  ‘I honestly can’t think of anything more exhausting than moving. I totally get how you feel.’

  ‘Somehow it always seems to take so much longer than you remember, too,’ said Jessie, conscious of sounding overly negative.

  Lauren laughed.

  ‘God, yeah! I guess you don’t feel like cooking, and neither do I. How about we order a Thai?’

  She was already fishing her phone out of her back pocket to pull up the website of a local takeaway joint.

  ‘Sofie and Marcus aren’t back for another hour or so, but I’m not sure I can wait that long.’

  Although she would have preferred pizza, Jessie would never dare say. Thai would do fine.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ she said with a smile. ‘I’ll run to the corner shop and grab some Prosecco while we wait, to say thank you for all your help.’

  ‘That’s so sweet of you. I need tobacco, I’ll come too.’

  As the big hand of the kitchen clock pushed past the 12 and the small hand hit the eight, the two new flatmates spooned curries from plastic boxes onto mismatched plates. Not that she could have known, but Jessie’s plate had been hand-painted in deep purple swirls by Sofie Chang, the woman who occupied the bedroom next to Lauren’s, directly opposite her own.