by Agatha Frost
“Ow!” Barker screamed, clutching his right hand in his left. “The evil thing just—”
But the wasp wasn’t finished with Barker yet. It dove again, this time for Barker’s face. Its sting punctured Barker’s bottom lip, causing him to cry out in even more pain. Julia rushed in and dragged Barker up to his feet, knowing she was past trying to calm him down. They ran into the kitchen, and Julia locked the back door and closed the kitchen window behind them.
Even though her long-distance eyesight wasn’t the best, she was sure she spotted the two wasps enjoying the sandwiches they had left behind.
“There must be a nest nearby,” Julia remarked.
“It stung me!” Barker cried, clutching his hand while looking down at his lip. “Twice! I thought they couldn’t do it more than once?”
“That’s bees.”
“Oh.” Barker poked at his lip with the end of his tongue. “What do I do?”
“I – I don’t know,” Julia said, looked around the kitchen. “I remember my gran doing something with vinegar, but I can’t remember what. Wait here.”
Julia rushed into the sitting room and grabbed her laptop from the coffee table. She pulled it open and waited for it to load up. When it finally did, she searched ‘wasp sting’, and a page on ‘Insect stings and bites’ popped up. Before she could read anything, she heard another cry from the kitchen.
Taking the laptop with her, Julia ran back into the kitchen. Barker was splashing malt vinegar onto the sting on his finger, wincing with every dash. His bottom lip, meanwhile, had already started to swell.
“Barker, stop.” Julia put the laptop on the counter before snatching the bottle away from him. “It says here that we need to cleanse the areas with soap and water and then apply something cold for the swelling.” She scrolled down further. “It also says things like vinegar are unlikely to make a difference.”
“You said vinegar!”
“I know.” Julia pulled Barker over to the sink. “I’m sorry. This might hurt a bit.”
Julia pumped hand soap into her palm and massaged it against the raised red bump on Barker’s red index finger. He flinched, but she held his hand tightly in place. She turned on the cold tap and put the finger under before moving onto his lip with a soapy cloth. The swelling appeared to be growing by the second, turning his bottom lip inside out from the middle outwards.
“How bad is it?” Barker mumbled.
“It’s not that bad,” Julia lied as she rinsed the cloth out. “It’ll be fine when you have some ice on it. You seem to be having a normal reaction.”
“This is normal?” Barker pulled out his bottom lip. “I look like those girls on the telly with the huge lips.”
“Well, it’s certainly a look.” Julia ran over his bottom lip with the clean cloth. “You’ll be fine.”
After sitting Barker at the counter, Julia pulled out a bag of frozen peas. She held it against Barker’s bottom lip and lifted his right hand so he could press his index finger against it while holding the bag up with his left. The ice-cold bag made him flinch, but he didn’t try to stop it. Julia’s mobile phone rang from the hallway, making them jolt.
“Stay here and don’t move the ice,” Julia instructed as she ruffled Barker’s hair. “It’ll help calm the swelling before it gets too bad.”
Julia ran into the hallway and pulled her phone from her bag. ‘DI John Christie’ flashed on the screen. Her heart sank, and she closed her eyes as she lifted it her to ear.
“Julia?” Christie called loudly over what sounded like his car’s loudspeaker. “I spoke to one of my colleagues, and I have a name for you. I was right about it being a hit and run. They were only able to confirm the identity this morning because no one reported the poor woman as missing.”
“Who was she, Christie?”
“Some girl from the Fern Moore Estate,” Christie said. “A twenty-year-old by the name of Samantha Wicks.”
Julia paused, her throat closing as she stared at herself in the hallway mirror.
“Julia?” Christie called. “Did you hear me?”
“I did,” Julia replied flatly. “Thanks, John. I have to go.”
Julia hung up and numbly walked into the kitchen. She didn’t react when she saw the tiny green frozen peas bouncing from the open end of the bag as Barker tilted his head. The peas hitting the kitchen floor sounded like the rain the night Samantha ran out into the storm.
“Barker, I need to go out.”
9
Julia didn’t know what could be achieved from driving straight to Fern Moore, but she did it anyway. She tried to convince Barker to stay at the cottage to take care of his swelling, but he had insisted on going with her.
“It’s all my fault,” Julia said when the tower blocks of Fern Moore came into view. “I should never have let her leave in that storm. I should have gone after her.”
“You weren’t to know,” Barker mumbled behind the frozen bag of cauliflower he had grabbed after emptying out half the peas. “You couldn’t see into the future.”
“She was only twenty.”
“Julia, she—”
“I should have done better.”
Julia pulled into the small car park. Everything was eerily quiet and empty compared to her last visit. The new wooden play park in the middle of the courtyard was empty, and the usual loitering gangs were nowhere to be seen. The only people she could see were all gathered together with bowed heads outside one of the ground floor flats.
Julia jumped out of the car, leaving Barker in the passenger seat. She walked straight over to the small gathering, their muffled tears filling her ears the closer she got. One of the young women pulled away in floods of tears, retreating to a flat further down the row. In the gap, Julia saw dozens of flower bouquets heaped in front of the flat’s white door. A dry lump formed in her throat when she noticed a picture of Samantha had been stuck to the door with ‘R.I.P.’ written above it in marker pen.
Without knowing why she had rushed over, Julia hung back. She didn’t want to intrude. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she watched the young women mourn the loss of one of their own. She folded her arms and tucked her hands into her armpits, sure everyone could see the blood on her hands.
A hand rested on her shoulder. She jumped, turning to see Barker without the ice pack. The swelling had gone down slightly, but his shiny bottom lip was still three times bigger than his top.
“I could have stopped this from happening,” she whispered as she leaned into his chest. “This is all my fault.”
Barker wrapped his arm around her without saying a word. Hearing Barker’s assurances were usually enough to calm her, but today she was glad he had decided to remain silent. Nothing he could say would make her feel any less responsible for this young woman’s death.
Another of the women turned away from the shrine, and Julia immediately recognised her as Louise. She had blotchy red skin, and her soft hair was lank. She looked like she had been crying all morning.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” Julia whispered to Barker.
As they met Julia’s, Louise’s eyes flickered with recognition. She paused and squinted at Julia before approaching her.
“You were in the shop the other day,” Louise said. “Asking questions about my job at the manor. You’re not from ‘round here, are you?”
Julia shook her head.
“What do you want?” Louise asked, words taut with anger. “You said you were a nurse at the manor, but after you left, I knew I’d never seen you before. Who are you? And how did you know who I was?”
Barker attempted to pull Julia away from the advancing woman, but Julia shrugged away from her husband and stepped closer to the shopkeeper. Louise roughly wiped away her tears, glaring at Julia for an explanation.
“I lied,” Julia admitted. “I’m not a nurse. I’m Brian South’s daughter.”
“The guy at the manor?” Louise’s brows dropped low. “Are you being serious? Why did you lie?”
<
br /> Julia attempted to swallow the lump in her throat, but it didn’t budge. It was time to tell the truth.
“My father asked me to speak to people who had been in the manor to see if I could help him get to the bottom of the burglary,” Julia admitted. “You were the first person I spoke to.”
“You think I robbed the manor?” Louise forced a laugh. “Seriously? A bunch of rich white people have their precious furniture nicked, and the first thing you do is find the black girl?”
“No, that’s not what—”
“You’re just as bad as they are,” Louise interrupted, her upper lip curling. “First you think you can get away without paying me, and then you accuse me of robbery?”
“She never accused you,” Barker said. “She just wanted to see if you knew anything.”
“Which you didn’t,” Julia added quickly, not wanting to add to her offence. “I didn’t think for a second you were involved after I spoke to you.”
“Then why are you back here?”
“Because I heard what happened to Samantha.” Julia glanced at the shrine, unable to linger on the image stuck to the door. “I came straight here. I met Samantha briefly the night of the robbery. She ran out into the storm. I tried to stop her, but she was too quick for me.”
“Quickest in our year at school,” Louise said, her voice softening. “She tried out for the Olympic team when a scout came to our school, but they were never going to pick a girl from here, were they? People like us rarely get away from places like this.”
“You knew her well?” Julia asked, suddenly wanting to know more about the girl she hadn’t been able to save.
Louise shrugged. “When you grow up here, it’s hard not to get to know everyone. We weren’t that close in school, but we grew close after I moved back from university. Her dad died last year, so we all looked out for her.”
“Did she have no other family?”
“Just her dad,” Louise replied. “Police said no one reported her missing, like none of us cared, but that’s not true. People come and go all the time here. You never know if someone is just in their flat or staying at a mate’s house. It was only a few days. We would have noticed.”
Julia heard the defence in the girl’s voice; evidently, she wasn’t the only person blaming herself.
“She wanted to be a hairdresser,” Louise said after a deep breath. “She wanted to go to college, but she needed to get a job to keep paying for the flat. They put our rent up when they did all this new stuff, and they were threatening to cut her benefits because she hadn’t been able to find a job. Who could blame her? She was grieving for her dad. She was fragile. She only went for that cleaning job because she knew I’d quit. I tried to talk her out of it, but she was stubborn. I should have put my foot down. I should have offered to let her live with me if they took that flat off her. She wouldn’t have been out on that road if it weren’t for that manor.”
Louise’s tears started afresh. She collapsed onto one of the new benches lining the perimeter of the new play area. Julia joined her, wrapping her arm around Louise’s shoulders, not caring if she lashed out. She didn’t; she simply melted into Julia’s side like they were old friends.
“This place sucks the life from you,” Louise said through her tears. “It crushes your spirit. They treat us like we’re nothing, and then when one of us dies, they don’t care. They told us there was a hit and run, and that they were looking into it. I bet they’ll never find who did it. They don’t care when they know we’re from here.”
Anger radiated through every pore in Louise’s body, and Julia couldn’t blame her.
“I care,” Julia said. “There are people who care. Not everyone looks down on this place like you think they do. I know good people live here. I’ve met many.”
“Really?” Louise forced another laugh as she pulled away. “It’s not like the things people say are even that far off. The troublemakers give us all a bad rep. I’ve never been in trouble with anyone, but if I go for a job and tell people where I’m from, I see the looks in their eyes. I’m going to be stuck in that shop for the rest of my life.”
“Not if you don’t want to be.” Julia rubbed her arm. They gazed at the flowers in front of the door. “Samantha wanted to be a hairdresser. What did you want to be? You said you went to university? You must have had a dream.”
“I studied social sciences,” Louise said as she wiped her tears away. “I wanted to become a social worker to make a difference. I dealt with enough of them growing up here, and none ever properly helped. They’d point fingers at our struggling parents without caring why we were struggling. I wanted to be the person who helped the kids who cared. I only came back here after uni ended to find a job … but then I fell pregnant and had my little boy, and now I’m busy working forty-two hours a week in that shop to keep a roof over our heads and pay for childcare. How am I supposed to look for a job I actually want with all that baggage?”
“How much does my dad owe you?” Julia asked, already opening her handbag. “You said you worked for three weeks?”
“He owes me around £900,” Louise said, scooting back on the bench, away from Julia. “I don’t want your money. You don’t owe me anything.”
“I just want to help.”
“People like you always do.” Louise stood up and backed away from the bench. “I don’t want your guilt money. Go home and forget this place exists, like the rest of the world does. We’re all too far gone to be saved.”
Louise ran across the courtyard and into the shop, leaving Julia feeling even guiltier. In the middle of all the grief, Louise’s anger seemed perfectly justified.
“I was only trying to help,” Julia said as she closed her bag.
“I know.” Barker pulled her up to her feet and gave her a hug. “But I think she’s right, Julia. You can’t save everyone. You’ve done an amazing job with Jessie, but the people on this estate aren’t your burden to carry.”
“They’re not a burden, Barker.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He sighed as he pulled away. “I just don’t want you jumping into something you can’t fix. The problems here are bigger than you and me.”
Julia stared at the picture of Samantha on the front door and felt the dead girl stare back. Her single interaction with Samantha had been fleeting, but Julia was likely the last person Samantha had ever spoken to, and she wasn’t going to let this girl’s death fall through the cracks of the broken system.
“Samantha left before midnight,” Julia said, wiping away the last of her tears. “And I think the burglars entered the manor between four and five, while I was asleep. They must have arrived earlier than that, to keep watch, and hit Samantha when she was trying to run home in the storm.”
“You don’t know that’s what happened.”
“It’s all I have to work with.” Julia inhaled deeply as she turned away from the shrine and back towards her car. “I’m not going to go home and pretend none of this is going on. I might not be able to help everyone here, but I’m involved, and I need to hold myself partly accountable for what happened to Samantha. This isn’t just about money. It’s about a young woman’s life being cut short. I will find out who those people were.”
Barker sighed, but he didn’t argue. Another man might have put up a fight or tried to convince her otherwise, but she knew Barker better than that. Barker supported her as much as she supported him, and it only made her gut twist that she hadn’t told him about her pregnancy.
She considered telling him that very moment just so she didn’t have to keep the secret for another second, but she glanced over at the gathering at the shrine. She couldn’t reveal something that would make Barker jump for joy when something so heart-breaking was happening metres away.
“I’ll help,” Barker said, wrapping his arm around her again. “I’ll do whatever I can. I still have my contacts at the station. If there’s anything to work with, I’ll find it.”
“Thank you.”
Feeling like she had overstayed her welcome in a place she had never belonged, Julia set off towards her car. A white ‘A to Z Builders’ van pulled up in the space next to her car and Jessie’s brother, Alfie, jumped out, immediately spotting Julia and Barker.
“I didn’t think anyone else would have a car like yours,” he called from his place between the van and car, shielding his eyes from the bright sun. “What are you two doing here?”
“I don’t really know,” Julia admitted. “A girl who lived here died. She was the new housekeeper at the manor the day of the burglary, and she was hit when she left in the middle of the storm.”
“That’s horrible,” Alfie said. “Do you know who did it?”
“It has to be the same people who robbed the manor,” Julia said, her eyes fixating on Alfie’s work boots as he stepped out of the shadow of her car. “She died on the same road they would have taken that night.”
Her heart began to pound as she watched Alfie’s heavy boots walk around the van to open the back doors. They were the exact boots she had seen when on the floor in the manor, she was certain of it; those boots had been the only things she could focus on. Alfie returned with a toolbox, but Julia couldn’t tear her gaze away from his boots.
“I’m here for a quick job,” he explained. She glanced up in time to see him look down at his boots with a slightly puzzled expression on his face. “Didn’t need Billy for this one. It’s just a simple shower fix for the council. Their usual contractors are busy with a house that burnt down the other week, and apparently, this woman has been complaining and making threats for months.” Alfie looked from Julia to Barker. “What happened to you? I hope the other guy looks worse.”
“A wasp,” Barker explained, scratching the back of his head as he attempted to look down at his swollen lip. “I’m embarrassed to say the thing got away in one piece. Julia, shall we get going?”
“Sure,” she said, eyes dropping to the boots again like they had magnets she couldn’t resist.
