“I will!” I singsong. I want to ask her a question. “Mrs. A?” I say when we are out of earshot of the school garden. “Do you like Mr. Kent?”
“Pardon?”
“Do you think he’s nice?”
“Oh. Yes, of course.”
“So…” I hesitate. “Do you think he can be trusted? You know, not to be involved with Billie’s death?”
She turns and gapes at me, then she puts her hand over her mouth for a moment, as if she’s thinking what to say. “Thera, I don’t want to talk about that anymore. Let’s think about other things, okay?”
“But what about Mr. Kent? Couldn’t he be a suspect?”
“The police are dealing with that.”
“But do you trust him?”
She looks back at Mr. Kent. “Oh my gosh,” she murmurs. Finally she says, “You know what I said about men, Thera. You can’t trust any of them. And you can never be too careful.” We exchange a look, turn and walk toward the car.
Billie usually did things like this for Mrs. A, going to get things from her car and running errands and everything. Mrs. A unlocks her jeep.
“Would you go around the back, Thera, and get the plastic cutlery from the trunk?”
“Sure.” I walk ’round and open the back door. There’s a lot of crap in there: a spade, a canvas bag, cleaning stuff, rope. I’m pushing things around, when I suddenly stop.
Mrs. A has some matches. I open the canvas bag. On the outside it’s covered in dirt, and on the inside there’s some gardening stuff, and some plastic gloves. The rope looks like the rope around Billie. Why would a primary school teacher have rope in her car?
“Thera, have you got it?”
“Coming!” I shout. I grab the plastic bag with the cutlery, and then I think about it and pick up the matches. “Do you want these too?”
“No, why would I want matches?” she says in her light, tiny voice.
“What do you normally use them for?” I look harshly at Mrs. A.
“Well, if you must know, Miss Nosy, I occasionally smoke.”
“Oh.” I put them back in the trunk. “That can kill you, you know.”
“Well, it’s my husband’s fault,” she says. “He used to smoke and he liked how it looked when I did it. Don’t tell anyone, though. It can be our little secret.” She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “Do you know how to keep a secret, Thera?”
“Sure.” I pretend to zip my mouth up. “My lips are sealed.”
“Good. Come out of there, now,” she says. As she closes the door of the jeep, I am still thinking about the stuff in the back of it. Can it be a coincidence that Mrs. A has all those things? But why would she kill Billie? And anyway, she’s not a man. So she can’t be a pervert.
The party goes well, and Hattie is actually being nice.
Afterward Mr. Kent takes us all to the cinema to see the new Star Wars film. We go to the Kinema in the Woods. It’s famous in our area because it’s the only back-projection cinema in the country. It’s really cute. A man always pops up at the interval and plays the organ. The organ comes up in the middle of the stage, and he plays old songs like “I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside,” and there is a glitter ball that turns and makes lights go everywhere in the whole cinema. I buy a packet of Skittles. When we sit down I’m next to Poppy, on the end of the row.
I look along the row at my year, one by one, but in the eleventh chair, because now there are ten and not eleven of us, there is Mr. Kent, who is watching me.
When you fall in love with someone instantly, you don’t exactly fall in love with them. You fall in love with an idea. You have to; you don’t know anything about them. Everybody falls short of an idea, because an idea has so much space to stretch into. It can be infinite and so perfect it makes you cry. It’s such a great solution to the problem of loneliness, the idea that lightning could strike. I mean it did, for us. But then you have to deal with the consequences of accepting that type of love.
I was shy. Stereotypical never-been-kissed. He started inviting me out. Proper dates. He opened doors for me, figuratively and literally. For the first time, I was able to see myself having status; able to see myself as a wife, as a mother, as someone important and valued enough to justify a man marrying me. I had never been on a date before our first. He treated me like a princess, moving my chair so I could sit down, paying for me, ordering nice things. But I would get a little embarrassed, because he always wanted something afterward. The first time it was just a kiss. He didn’t even touch me. He said I was too pure to defile. I took his breath away.
The next time we were kissing, softly, gently, on the lips. He started to get more forceful, and then he pulled my body to his and held me so hard that the next day I had bruises on the skin over my hips. I cried out his name when he bit at my tongue and he stumbled away, shocked. He was so sorry to hurt me. He said he couldn’t help himself. I thought it was sweet. I thought it was exciting how much he loved me. He couldn’t help himself because of me? I had never imagined that could be a reality—a man driven wild by me, my small, ugly body, my pale, dull beauty.
The third date he asked me to hold his penis. He said my hand looked so small around it that it made him look bigger. It was warm and hard. He started to move it. I was excited but also petrified. Scared of doing something wrong. I thought about the boys at school, how none of them would have wanted this from me. Jessica, Nora, Karen, yes, but not me. I should be grateful. And yet, the way he instructed me to hold still made me shiver. I held onto him tighter, cuddled into his chest, my hand still around him. He came on my hand. I had never seen that before, or felt it. He apologized that it had happened so quickly. He said again what he had on our previous date: he couldn’t help himself.
I had a meeting with Mr. Kent yesterday. Just me and him. It was weird. I don’t know why he called me in, but he came to the classroom to do it. We were practicing for the talent show with Mrs. A. He opened the door and we all stopped giggling and went quiet.
“Thera,” he said, “I’d like you to come to my office.”
Hattie and Poppy looked at me. We all hate Mr. Kent. He makes us feel weird. If we go into his office, we always go together.
“She has to practice for the talent show,” Mrs. A whined quietly. I think she was worried we weren’t going to get the routine right. I don’t know why. I thought we were really good.
Mr. Kent ignored her and nodded at me. “Thera?”
I shrugged at Mrs. Adamson apologetically, and followed him out of the classroom and into his office. He gestured to his sofa. “Sit down, Thera.”
So I sat down. He sat next to me. Our knees were touching so I pulled back.
“Would you like a sweet?” he said, and held out the bowl.
They were Opal Fruits, the fruity chew. I held my hand over the basket and tried to decide between flavors.
Lemon was sharp and the most tasty, but strawberry was a classic. Of course, purple and green were the best-tasting, but which one would I pick if I could only eat one?
“Thera, make a decision,” Mr. Kent said. So I took a lemon one.
“You’ve been happy at this school, haven’t you, Thera?” I thought about this. The honest answer would be: Well, no, not really. I’ve been bullied throughout my seven years here by Hattie; Mum says the work isn’t challenging enough for me; I don’t like it when Mr. Kent yells at us; my best, true, forever friend died; and now I feel totally alone and afraid we will all be killed.
“Thera, you like it here, don’t you?” He put his hand on my arm. I froze, and looked at it. He took it back.
“Um, yeah,” I said. “Sure.”
There was a short silence and then Mr. Kent said, “I’m sorry about Billie.”
I frowned. Why was Mr. Kent sorry? Did he kill her? I looked down in panic at the sweet wrappers. Mum always said never to take sweets from
strangers. Was it because they were perverts? Was Mr. Kent? I stared at him. He was quite big and broad. I shrank back in the sofa as he leaned forward.
“What is it, Thera?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. I’m great. Can I go now?”
“Not yet.” This time he put his hand on my knee, firmly, as if to stop me leaving. “I’m sorry about Billie, but I hope it’s not going to change your opinion of your time with us. What happened to Billie isn’t related to our school. It shouldn’t cast a bad light over your time here.”
I didn’t understand what he was getting at, so I just nodded.
He reached out and proffered the basket to me again. “Another sweet?”
“No, thank you.”
“Thera, have another one. It’s rude not to.” So I took a strawberry.
“Do you know what happened to Billie?” Mr. Kent asks.
“Yes.”
“You do?”
“Uh-huh.”
“She was led away by a stranger. Probably the stranger has moved on now.”
I kept quiet. If Mr. Kent was the killer, he would definitely say the killer has moved on now so that I wouldn’t suspect him.
“Well, the police don’t have any suspects, in any case.”
“Um. Okay,” I said.
He leaned in, so I could smell his foul breath. I tried not to shrink back or show any fear. His hand was still on my knee. I suddenly thought, why are people always touching me? Everybody does it, hands fiddling with my hair, hands on my back steering me places, hands on my shoulders. As if to hold me down. As if I belong to everyone.
I stayed stiff and didn’t say anything.
“You’re safe here, Thera,” he said softly, looking into my eyes. “You’re safe with me.” He didn’t stop looking into my eyes. I felt funny in my body, kind of like I felt with Nathan, but like I didn’t want to feel that way. Then, suddenly: “You may go now,” he said.
So I got up and he opened the door for me, and I stepped out.
Mrs. A was standing in the corridor, looking worried. “Eve,” Mr. Kent said, and nodded to her before he closed the door.
“What did he say?” Mrs. A asked me.
I chewed my lip. “I don’t really know.”
Mrs. A frowned. “What do you mean you don’t know, Thera? You can’t remember what he said just now? You’re supposed to be really bright, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Did he say anything about Billie?”
“Not really. Just that probably her killer was a stranger. Why?”
She put her hands over her eyes and spoke to me without looking at me. “Nothing. Go back to the classroom. I’m going to get a drink of water.” She walked over to the staff room (it’s a tiny school, so this was about three steps) and shut the door on me.
It now occurs to me in the cinema, as the Star Wars theme tune starts, that if Mr. Kent and Mrs. A were in league together, he would have access to all the suspicious crap in her car.
It’s still light when we get back from the matinee at the cinema. We are dropped off at the school and then everyone’s parents pick them up, except for me, Poppy, and Hattie. We walk home together, and then I’m the last one walking. The idea was that there was only a tiny stretch of road between Poppy’s house and mine, but I am taking a quick detour and enacting part of my plan today.
I walk past the river, with the little bridge over it, and keep walking until I reach the pub. It is an old medieval pub, called The Shepherd’s Arms. Our whole village built up around this one pub. We did it in a school history project. It used to be an inn with rooms in the sixteenth century, and travelers used to stay here on their way from the castles to Lincoln. There are two castles nearby, Tattershall and Old Bolingbroke, but one is just ruins. I try the door handle and push hard. The door is heavy, wooden, and painted black. As soon as I open it up, I hear music.
“Hup! Hup!” a man shouts.
I walk around a wooden beam that goes from the ceiling into the stone floor. Behind it is a circle of men. One is on a banjo, and one has a shallow drum in his hand and a stick that looks like a two-ended pestle. They are shouting things back and forth. A third has a guitar. Some men are clapping and some are just sat there, nodding along to the music. The musicians look happy. They have shaved heads and earrings and one has a tattoo. The banjo guy has a tooth missing. You could lose a tooth if a girl punched it out of your mouth while you were killing her. There are a lot of other men in the pub who look unhappy. One man behind the bar looks at me grumpily. There are unhappy men hunched over at the bar, or sat in the corner, talking to each other with their arms folded. They are telling each other things. “This is how you…” “What you want is a…” “I’m telling you…” I hear around me.
“So this is the world of men,” I murmur. “I’m in enemy’s territory. In the belly of the beast.” I narrow my eyes and study them. I hate men now. They are all scary. I’m over average height for my age by a centimeter, but they are a lot taller than me. A large hand clamps down on my shoulder. I jump and whirl around. “Don’t touch me!” I cry out accidentally.
It’s the man who was behind the bar just a minute ago. His face and head are all covered with the same stubbly black hair, and his whole body looks sweaty. He takes his massive paw off me and wipes it on a rag. I stare at the rag, looking for blood. I can’t tell in the light. “Hello, young Miss Wilde.”
“How do you know my name?”
“You’re Andy’s daughter, ent’cheh? He comes in here to play darts.”
“Yeah, I know. He tells us when he’s going.”
Suddenly the music stops. The band players are looking at me. It seems like all the men in the pub are looking at me. When I turn my gaze to the banjo player, he smiles at me. I imagine him doing what Nathan did to me. Would he crush me? I look at his big body. Is that how you die from rape? The barman touches me more gently now, on my back, at the top, near my neck. I jump away. See? Everyone touches me. The musicians have started up their playing again. I turn back to the barman, remembering why I’m here. I need to tie up a loose end for my plan.
“I need to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right.” He nods solemnly. He must know why I am here. “Can we talk behind the bar?”
“Only over-eighteens allowed in there, legally.”
I fold my arms so he can’t see I’m shaking a bit. “I’m here on business.”
“Oh, are you?” he says, and he looks up and winks at someone behind my back. I’m being watched. I gulp. “Come this way. What was your name? Andy’s said it before, but I can’t remember. Mira, or something?”
“Thera,” I say, but it comes out a whisper. “Can I borrow a pen and paper?”
“Oh, sure you can.” He gives me a waitress’s pad and a ballpoint pen, and leads me through a little archway by the bar, into the back room. It’s a restaurant, but it’s empty.
“Why is there nobody here?” I say quietly.
“We only serve food Fridees, Saturdees, and Sundees,” he says, pronouncing the days funny. He sits down at a table for two and I sit opposite him, careful not to touch his legs with mine underneath the table.
“First let’s start with you.”
“Okay.” He laughs.
I look behind me, instinctively whipping my head around to catch the person watching me. But there is no one there. It’s just him and me. I look at his hands. They could break my neck. I steel myself. If I have to be, I’ll be brave to the end.
“What’s your name?”
“Sam Peeves!” he says with a flourish.
“Occupation.”
“Well, I own this pub, love. I live upstairs.”
“Where are you from?”
“Here!”
“But you’ve got an accent. Where were you born?”
“All right, th
en—Yorkshire.”
“And how long have you been living in the pub?”
“’Bout seven year. Enough to call myself an old-time Lincolnshire boy.”
I raise my eyebrows. “I’ve lived here eleven years. By that logic, I’m an old-timer. You be straight with me,” I warn him.
He holds up his hands, still smiling. “Ooh, all right, missus. I’ll play ball.”
I narrow my eyes. “Are you in league with my dad?”
“Pardon?”
“Is that a no?”
“No, I don’t think so. What do you mean?”
“You don’t know what I’m talking about? You’re not running black ops from this pub? Is this pub a cover for murders?”
“Gordon Bennett!”
“Who’s he?”
“Would you believe it!”
I stand up, pushing my chair back, put my palms on the table and lean in, like the police do on TV. “Is Gordon Bennett the one who did it?”
“No, no, no, Gordon Bennett is just a saying! Like ‘Christ alive.’”
“Don’t swear in front of me,” I say sternly. “I’m only eleven. Now, I’m going to ask you a very serious question.” I leave a silence to make him sweat. “Were you working on the Saturday night that Billie Brooke died?”
“Yes, I was. I work every Saturdee night.”
“Do you remember that evening well?”
“Yes, I do. We had the musicians in, and the darts players—”
“Ah-ha! Was my dad here?”
“Of course, he comes in most Saturdees.”
I leave another beat. “Are…you…sure?” I ask slowly.
“What’s this about, love?”
“Don’t patronize me. Just answer the question.”
“He definitely was, because your mother called the pub to get him to come home when the police came ’round. I gave a statement to the police to say so, on the Sunday.”
“Oh, good!” I say in relief. Dad’s not the killer! Definitely, definitely not. I wanted to make 100 percent sure he didn’t do it. I know it was probably the walker or a stranger (or maybe the walker is a stranger?), but I was secretly a bit scared that it might be Dad. After all, he knows Billie. She would have gone with him if he had asked her to come to the woods. He might have even said she was going to meet me there. But he didn’t. I lean my head on the table, suddenly dizzy. Daddy didn’t do it. Phew.
Dead Girls Page 16
