by Lucy Carver
Noticing the two bikes from St Jude’s propped against the wall, I asked him if they were fixed.
‘Ready to go. Just waiting for someone from St Jude’s to collect them.’
‘I’ll collect one now,’ I decided. That way I could cover more ground in my search for Jayden. ‘By the way, Alex . . .’
He stepped back in fake alarm. ‘Whoa, when you say “by the way” I know it isn’t. In fact, this is where I feel the knife go in, right between my ribs.’
‘OK, yeah – it’s important.’
‘Aargh!’ Alex staggered and pretended to fall. ‘I knew it.’
‘Listen to me. You didn’t by any chance notice someone leaving a bag at Tom’s house – the night Lily . . . the night you lot met to arrange the next five-a-side tournament?’
‘Aargh, shit!’ Clutching his stomach, Alex staggered out on to the pavement. ‘Right in the guts.’
‘Seriously – did you?’
‘Seriously – no. And I do know the reason you’re asking.’
‘The police already came calling?’
‘Zap! Kerpow!’
And Alex told me he’d had to give details of who else was at Tom’s house that night, and now they were working their way down that list, taking fingerprints and DNA samples, matching them up with evidence on the bag.
‘What’s the problem? This should be right up your street, Alex – all the Silent Witness stuff.’
‘Yep, except my dad went mental. He threatened to kick me out.’
‘For something you didn’t do? Or I presume you didn’t do?’
‘Yeah, but that’s how he is – old-school strict. A knock on the door from the cops brings shame on the family, blah blah. Anyhow, from now on I’ve got to keep my nose snot-free and that means keeping my head down and staying in school even during my free periods, not hanging out with the wrong crowd, working with him in the workshop in my free time.’
‘Sounds like you’ll have lots of fun,’ I sighed, ready to take a bike and carry on looking for Jayden.
‘Yeah – thanks, Alyssa.’
‘You’re welcome – any time.’ The sarcasm between us was heavy as lead.
Alex stuck his hands in his hoodie pockets (black Nike) and with a sudden change of tone from sarcastic to genuine said, ‘Alyssa, if you really want to know where Jayden is right now, he’s probably walking Bolt on Hereward Ridge.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah, seriously. He does that most Sundays. Don’t tell him I told you.’
chapter twelve
Cycling all the way up to the Ridge told me I wasn’t nearly as fit as I thought I was and gave me plenty of time to wonder why Alex had had a change of heart.
When you think it through, it was definitely guilty conscience over the time he, Micky and Ursula had threatened me in defence of their buddy, Jayden. After all, bullying probably didn’t come as naturally to him, or to Micky for that matter, as it did to scary Ursula.
Anyway, I panted up the last few hundred metres, keeping my head busy with theories about Alex so that I didn’t leave room for darker thoughts. I saved those for the wee small hours, the nightmare moments when Lily’s ghost came screeching through the bedroom walls like those witches of my childhood dreams. Lily staring at me, pleading for help.
Eventually I came to the brow of the hill where I got off the bike and stared back down into the valley. My breath rose like steam into the cold, grey air.
I stood in total silence, wondering in which direction stick boy might choose to walk stick dog. Way below, cars crawled along Ainslee Road like small, shiny beetles. Above my head, rooks rose from the bare trees. To my left, halfway down the hill, stood Upwood House, a Georgian mansion and National Trust property in its big, artificially levelled and landscaped garden. To my right was a stand of ash trees where the cawing parliament of rooks eventually settled. I looked in all directions then decided to follow a bridleway sign towards the ruins of a thirteenth-century Cistercian abbey nestled on the lower slopes of the next valley. I got on the bike again and started pedalling bumpily downhill.
Ten minutes later I was in the grounds of Ripley Abbey and wondering if Alex had made a fool of me.
‘He’s having a laugh,’ I muttered as I gazed at deserted hillocks and hummocks, piles of ancient stones and the odd wall crumbling but still standing after seven centuries of winds and rain. The only part of the building left intact was a row of shadowy cloisters. I checked it out before wheeling the bike through a crumbling gothic arch towards a river that snaked through the valley bottom, all the time looking for signs of recent human activity – anything at all: a crumpled crisp packet, an empty can, footprints in the mud.
Caw! Caw! Even the rooks laughed at me from their giddy heights.
Then Bolt charged along the riverbank, teeth bared.
‘Down!’ I yelled, putting the bike between me and the Staffie and thrusting the frame into his snarling face.
But he only took orders from one master and that definitely wasn’t me. He growled and snarled, crouched, leaped, barked then snarled and snapped some more. The bike didn’t seem like it was a good enough defence so I looked for places to hide – behind a pile of stones, up a grassy hillock or some worn stone steps leading nowhere. Finally, still using the bike as a shield, I turned towards the river and saw Jayden standing calmly mid-river, perched on one of thirty or so stepping stones used by the old Cistercian monks.
‘Call your dog off!’ I yelled.
Jayden didn’t move. He let the swift, strong, black current flow around him, watched me suffer.
‘Stay down, Bolt!’ I cried, driving the bike’s front wheel straight at him. He ducked out of reach, teeth bared, spittle dribbling from his mouth.
‘Jayden, for God’s sake!’
Stick Boy moved at last, stepping from one worn, moss-covered stone to the next, balancing like a high-wire performer, arms stretched wide. The wind caught his unzipped jacket and made it billow like a sail.
Burly Bolt barrelled downhill to the water’s edge, gave a throaty bark and trundled back. He repeated this three times as I tried and failed to escape. Jayden stopped two steps from dry land.
‘Jayden!’ The dog had me cornered against a heap of medieval stones. The look in his eyes said, ‘Kill!’
Stick boy smiled and jumped clean over the final stepping stone, made a crunch landing on the gravel bank. ‘Down, Bolt,’ he said quietly.
Vicious Bolt stopped everything he’d been doing and lay quiet as a lamb. There must have been a switch inside his head, activated by the sound of his master’s voice. But his brownish-amber eyes were still trained on me and my bike, ready for Jayden to flick the next switch.
‘Alyssa,’ Jayden began casually. What are you doing here? hung unspoken in the ancient air, whispering through the arches, along the dripping cloisters.
‘That dog is seriously going to hurt someone,’ I gasped.
He nodded.
‘He’s not going to attack me again, is he?’
‘Not unless I tell him. Anyway, what do you want?’
As far as Jayden and I were concerned, we were done with the pleasantries long ago. ‘Why did you and Harry fight?’ I asked outright.
‘Who says we did?’ Shrugging and slouching up the bank, past the boulders towards the shadowy cloisters, Jayden expected me to follow. ‘Stay, Bolt,’ he muttered.
The dog watched me go, eyes darting after me. Kill!
‘Someone gave him a black eye and a busted lip,’ I insisted. ‘It’s on record that the someone was you.’
‘He’s lucky that’s all he got.’
I was staring at Jayden’s back, trailing along three steps behind. ‘It wasn’t. You damaged his ribs, knees, knuckles – you want me to go on?’
He turned and smiled. ‘It turns out Harry isn’t as tough as he looks.’
I sighed then – wait for it – here comes my most predictable question. ‘It was about Lily again, wasn’t it?’
‘For Jesus’s sa
ke.’
‘It was. With you, everything comes back to Lily. You didn’t move on.’ In spite of being dumped by her, in spite of scary, multiple face-piercings Ursula.
Jayden stopped but didn’t turn. He put his arm out and traced his forefinger up and down the nearest stone pillar, threw back his head and studied the uncanny civil-engineering achievements of the ancient, Cistercian monks.
‘The cops finally got the pathologist’s second report,’ he said in a flat voice.
The news hit me like a physical blow to the chest. ‘Not good news?’
‘Brace yourself.’
‘Jayden, for God’s sake!’
‘We’re talking mutilation.’ His eyes bored into me.
‘Mutilation?’
‘Deliberate. Not accidental.’
Silence enveloped us. I don’t know how long it took for me to understand. In the end I just repeated what Jayden had said. ‘Someone deliberately mutilated Lily’s body?’
Jayden nodded. ‘It turns out that one of Lily’s teeth was missing.’
A tooth! This was so not what I’d expected. If I was thinking anything, it was that maybe there was a cut, a flesh wound, something similar.
‘Back tooth – molar, bottom right, with the socket gaping open.’
‘Don’t – I don’t want to hear any more!’
‘Sorry, I thought you needed to know.’
‘It’s just too . . . nasty.’
‘Perverted?’
‘Yes.’ I leaned against the pillar and tried to take a deep breath to steady myself.
Jayden’s voice didn’t alter – it was a monotone drained of emotion. ‘So did Lily go to the dentist for a tooth extraction the week she died?’
‘I don’t know, Jayden – no, she didn’t! She would have told us. It would have been a big drama.’
‘Which means the pathologist is right – the tooth was taken out after she died,’ he muttered.
The shock got to me and I felt sick. ‘We have to find out who took it and why.’
‘Right! If we knew that we’d have all the answers – is that what you mean? The guy in charge of the investigation . . .’
‘Inspector Cole.’
‘. . . maybe he already knows who took it?’
‘I doubt it.’ I said. ‘But they’re not sitting on their arses doing nothing. They’re starting to collect forensic evidence – DNA, fingerprints – from the bag Lily packed the day she disappeared. You know they found it at Tom’s house?’
Jayden didn’t answer. Instead he grunted and stayed with his new favourite topic. ‘The tooth – Harry didn’t seem to have any answers either.’
‘Good God, Jayden – you challenged Harry Embsay about Lily’s missing tooth? That’s the same as saying you think he killed her!’
‘He swears he hasn’t got it.’ Still no emotion, no direct eye contact as Jayden ran his fingers over the rough, cold stone.
‘Why? Why would he have Lily’s tooth? You think he’s keeping it in a little jar somewhere – as a souvenir? In a drawer, on a shelf, hanging on a chain round his neck?’
Jayden didn’t react. ‘Me and Harry moved on to the tooth subject after we dealt with the who’s-the-daddy topic.’
‘Oh, Jesus!’ I didn’t know what to say or to think, except that it was possible that this time Jayden had totally lost it. OK, so I’ve said before that Harry Embsay isn’t my type. Remember how he blamed everyone the second he saw Paige lying badly injured in the stable yard, how he was always throwing his weight around, even way back when Saint Sam addressed the whole sixth form in the new library?
‘What’s he going to tell us that we don’t already know?’ Zara asked.
‘Search me,’ Harry said, huffing and puffing. ‘But it had better be worth dragging me out of bed for.’
Harry is big and sulky and doesn’t stay out of your personal space enough for my liking. He’s athletic without any grace and it’s brute strength, not balance and finesse, that allows him to yank on the reins and control Franklin when he gallops him through the woods and almost knocks me down.
‘He denied everything,’ Jayden told me in a flat, slightly slurred voice, speaking without moving his lips as if he didn’t really want to let go of the words.
‘Of course he did!’ I spluttered. ‘Lily wouldn’t . . .’
Jayden tilted his head to one side then turned to look at me from under hooded lids. He waited.
‘She wouldn’t . . .’ I began again.
Another memory wormed itself out of the deep recesses of my brain. It reappeared verbatim – a conversation with Paige, in our room, sitting on our unmade beds.
Maybe the baby was a result of a one-night stand – this had been my theory.
Unshockable Paige had been shocked and defended her dead friend’s honour. ‘Lily didn’t do one night stands,’ she’d insisted.
Then maybe a holiday romance – a random waiter or beach bum?
‘Lily didn’t go on holiday this year.’ Paige wouldn’t even listen to my idle speculation as we tried to work out who was the baby’s father.
‘She didn’t?’ No luxury yacht, no penthouse suite overlooking the beach?
‘No. She was in the UK, drifting, doing her own thing, staying away from her dad.’
‘The tyrant.’
‘Yeah,’ Paige said – the pre-accident Paige, the invincible Paige. ‘She came to see me ride in the Burghley Horse Trials. That was late August. Harry Embsay and Guy Simons were there too.’
I drew in a sharp breath then let it out, felt my head swim as I computed what this might mean. ‘Harry – it could’ve been . . . Wait, Jayden – I’m not sure!’
He stared at me then started to walk jerkily towards the daylight at the far end of the cloisters. Stones dripped centuries of black slime; his footsteps echoed under the arches.
I ran after him and grabbed him by the arm. ‘What exactly was Harry’s answer?’
‘He swore he hadn’t screwed Lily,’ Jayden said as he broke free. ‘He shouldn’t have talked about her that way, like she was nothing, just a piece of meat. That’s the reason I hit him.’
And kicked and punched him, smashed his fists into his face, his feet into his ribs. I could definitely relate to why Jayden had done that.
‘Come!’ he told Bolt.
The gleaming-eyed dog was at his heels in an instant. They walked away from the ruins along the dead riverbank, stick man and stick dog.
I went back to school, found Jack in the sports centre and told him every detail of my conversation with Jayden.
Whenever I paused for breath, he repeated the same two small words – ‘A tooth?’
‘It’s so weird,’ I sighed. ‘I mean – why?’
‘Does a psychopath have to have a reason?’ Jack wondered.
‘No, you’re right.’ But the idea scared me. If there was no logic attached to the action, how could the police or Jack or me or anyone sane follow the clues? Holding Jack’s hand across the table in the mezzanine coffee shop, I felt we were Hansel and Gretel scattering crumbs in the forest, using it as a trail to follow to get back home, only to find that birds had come along and eaten every last one.
Children lost in the forest – that was me and Jack.
Then, during a free double period next day, after I’d watched the morning headlines on TV – New Tragedy Strikes at Top Public School/Olympic Hopeful in Hospital Intensive Care – I pulled myself together and decided to slide Lily’s diary from its hiding place under Paige’s mattress and take it to the old library where I could find a quiet corner to reread it among the newspapers and magazines.
I handled the diary carefully, stroking its dog-eared pale blue cover before I opened it at random.
February 14th – Sent you-know-who a Valentine’s card. Didn’t get one back. Got one from Tom W and one from H. A not doing well so they changed her tablets.
I read between the lines, worked out that she’d sent Jayden a Valentine’s card and received one from Tom
Walsingham (the only Tom W I’d heard of around here) and one from Harry maybe. She wasn’t interested in either. ‘A’ was her mum, I guessed, taking anti-depressants that didn’t suit her.
April 1st – P swears L is R-Patz lookalike – hah! I say J is more movie/rock-star material than L – think Joaquim Phoenix/Kurt Cobain. P played April Fool’s joke on L – apple-pie bed, extremely juvenile. He was not amused. Met J in Anslee – shh!
Interpretation – P is Paige and L is obviously Luke. Lily has hit on the stick man hieroglyph for Jayden, her secret, guilty passion.
On April 20th the stick dog made its debut, together with:
Walked with J and B on Hereward Ridge.
May 24th – Quiet time at J’s house. Amazing.
Followed by the rectangle with four legs – definitely a bed to mark the first time Lily and Jayden had sex, I was convinced. And I noticed it appeared often through the rest of May and all of June, with snippets of information about J’s life – his abusive father now living in a homeless hostel in Bristol, his love of football (Everton) and his dog. He found Bolt in an animal rescue centre and took him home without asking his mum. Bolt lived in the garden shed for three months until Jayden’s mum relented and finally allowed him into the house.
July 2nd – Met J after school. LOVE HIM!!!
And just so there was no room for doubt –
July 4th – Met J after school – LOVE HIM!!! Then the row of red hearts linked by the letters of Jayden’s name and Am thinking of getting tattoo around ankle, etcetera.
The same entry had the reference to Lily’s phone call with her mum, when the tyrant broke off their conversation – which made more sense now that I knew how sick Anna actually was. I envisaged how worried Lily must have been about her mum and how Robert Earle had done his usual thing of ranting and dishing out orders for what he might have thought were good reasons (to protect Lily, Anna or both), but which turned out to be lousy psychology because it ended up with Lily permanently hating him and Anna in a psychiatric hospital.
I flicked forward to September 5th – when the circle and dot drawing appeared for the first time – the date Lily wanted to be the day of conception, but with a question mark and written some time after the event in a different coloured ink. Then back to late August, where I read and reread each entry.
