by Darren Young
As most people had either left or were leaving, she got up and walked to the office and gave the closed door a little tap. David called her in, his voice strained and croaky, and she went in. ‘You wanted to see me?’ she said meekly.
David had a deep frown line across his forehead. On his desk in front of him was a newspaper opened to a page with a large headline that read: ‘Does Life Really Go On?’
There was a grainy picture of Jessica Preston underneath.
Even though it was upside down, Laura had seen the headline and the article enough times to know what it said.
David Weatherall looked up at her, over the top of his glasses.
She was in real trouble.
56 | Laura
‘I can explain.’
Laura knew it didn’t only look bad, but was bad. The editor needed no excuse to get angry with someone whom he felt had let him down and he’d also been feeling unwell after picking up a strain of the sickness bug, although it hadn’t kept him from his desk.
‘Please do.’
He looked as if he might explode if he weren’t so under the weather.
She sat down even though he didn’t invite her to, desperate to get to the same eye level and not feel like the naughty schoolgirl who had been called before the headmaster.
‘It’s delicate.’
‘I can see how it might be,’ he said, holding the paper up, ‘in that it seems that, while I thought you had women’s problems and car trouble, you were really writing for other newspapers and travelling down to the southwest.’
‘I only went once on a work day,’ Laura said instinctively, and regretted it just as quickly.
‘And here I was thinking you’d been taking the piss.’
‘Please, David. It’s not like that. You know the interview I set up?’
‘And cancelled when the girl was found.’
‘I was going to. But when I spoke to her, the mother was so upset … ’
He looked at her with disdain.
‘So I went in my own time, at the weekend.’
‘To do what? Not hurt her feelings? Earn more money? Or just to annoy me?’
‘It’s really not like that.’
‘So what is it like?’
Laura took a deep breath and explained as much as she could allow her boss to find out. She was passionate and fought her corner, telling him the article was crying out to be written and none of the local papers had been interested in Sandra’s side of things, despite the fact that it was such a tragic human interest story; and she told him that it had been well received by the readers.
‘And the money they paid only just covered my travel costs,’ she added.
She didn’t mention anything about the email threat or the man on the coastal path.
The editor listened without interruption and, when she finished, his frown had all but gone.
‘I’ve tried to do it in my own time,’ she continued, ‘and, when I couldn’t, it was totally unavoidable.’
Laura looked down. He waited for more. ‘You’ll understand when you know why,’ she offered.
David chewed on the end of his biro. Then it was his turn to talk, and Laura sat and listened. He told her he wanted local stories and that he hated it when people lied to him. He said that the paper was still recovering from the sickness bug and the last thing he could afford was to lose anyone to stories that were not connected to the Gazette. Laura nodded.
But then he said that he also understood that sometimes a journalist had to follow their instincts and protect their stories and sources.
‘Was it worth it?’ he said at the end.
‘I think it will be.’
‘OK,’ the editor said, sitting back in his leather chair so that his glasses fell back where they should be. ‘We’ll draw a line under it. But it doesn’t happen again. Not on my time, right?’
‘Absolutely.’
He looked at the door, his signal that she should go. She smiled apologetically and stood up to leave.
‘And Laura,’ David said as she opened the door. ‘Nice article.’
Laura smiled again and went back to her desk. She tidied it up, sent a few emails and made a priority list for the next day. Then she got up, making sure David had seen that she had stayed late, and left the building.
She was immediately hit by an icy blast of wind as she walked out of the revolving doors, and she pulled her scarf up around her face to protect it. It was a clear sky, thousands of stars twinkled above, but the temperature had plummeted quickly and she hurried to her car. The Gazette was on the town’s main road, the last but one building; parking was extremely limited and there were nowhere near enough spaces for everyone. A year earlier, the local authority had introduced a permit scheme that made it impossible to park on the side roads in and around that part of the town, so Laura usually, if she wasn’t running late, opted for the more car-friendly side of town even though it was quite a way away.
She walked quickly to keep warm as the wind howled through gaps between the buildings, hurting her face. As she crossed the road and looked both ways, something caught her eye.
Something, or specifically someone, familiar.
A tall man was walking towards her, about a hundred yards away on the opposite side. He was dressed all in black, a roll-necked top pulled up high, almost covering his mouth, and a black woolly hat that was pulled down level with his eyebrows.
Her heartbeat quickened. Even at that distance, she knew she had seen him before.
Laura glanced again and saw that he was crossing, and she opened the zip on her handbag to make sure the defence spray was in there. She slowed down and looked again; he was on her side now and, when she stopped and checked her phone, he stopped too and pretended to look in a shop window. He was fifty yards from her.
She began walking again, quicker now, and, when she turned to look, the gap between them was the same. She was sure he was following her, and at the next set of pedestrian lights she pressed the button and waited until the lights changed and the green man lit up. She put her phone to her ear and pretended to speak, hoping he might think she was calling the police, and crossed the road again.
This would tell her for sure.
When she reached the other side, she switched direction and headed back towards the Gazette’s offices. In her peripheral vision she saw the man walk past on the opposite side and she instinctively quickened her steps.
She counted to twenty in her head, stopped outside a shoe shop and looked at the window display, a combination of sale signs and stilettos, and then turned her head back up the street.
He was there. Forty yards, give or take. He had also crossed, and was walking in her direction. She took her phone from her ear and pushed it into her bag.
And then she began to run.
She headed for the offices, hoping the security guard who worked there had taken over from the receptionist on the front desk. But she was still five hundred yards from the building and her legs were buckling.
At that moment a bus passed her and stopped to let a passenger off. She looked around: there was still quite a gap between her and the man following her, and with one short burst of energy and adrenaline she sprinted the last ten yards just as the driver closed the doors. As he indicated to move away, she desperately banged on the door with her hand and the driver looked at her with mild annoyance. She mouthed the word ‘please’ at him through the glass and he opened the doors and let her get on.
‘Thank you,’ she panted.
The doors closed behind her and she saw the dark shape of the man run up alongside, but the bus had already pulled back on to the road and was gathering speed along the high street.
‘Where to?’
Laura took a two-pound coin from her purse and pushed it into the payment machine.
‘Doesn’t matter.’
57 | Laura
‘Everything OK, love?’
Laura had stood in the area of the bus where mothers woul
d put their pushchairs, and the concerned bus driver had been glancing at her through his rear-view mirror. He asked the question as they reached a stop just over a mile from the high street where she’d got on.
She had stopped shaking, and nodded.
‘I can change that for a return if you want.’ He indicated towards her hand, which was tightly gripping her ticket.
‘Thanks, but this is my stop,’ she said, and stepped off back into the cold night air. She looked down the deserted street that led down the hill back into the town and started walking, fast. Her eyes darted all around for signs of the man but there was virtually no one around. It took fifteen minutes to reach the well-lit car park, despite the icy wind pushing her back at times, and she was calmer by the time she had got to the car, checked all around it – including the boot and back seats – and sat inside.
She drove home quickly. Her parents needed to know what had happened, as did the police. She knew it was time to stop taking risks before someone got hurt. The stakes were just too high.
The house was in darkness even though her mother’s car sat in its usual position on the drive. She didn’t expect her father to be home but her mother was always there at this time, ready to serve the evening meal when he walked through the door.
She checked her phone but hadn’t missed any calls. She opened the door and called inside. Not only was it dark but it was cold too, and she went around switching lights on and turned the dial on the central heating so that it whirred into action.
In the utility room, Mimark’s tail was excitedly thumping against the washing machine, and she opened the door to let him out. ‘What are you doing all alone?’ she said, ruffling his fur and giving him a handful of little bone-shaped biscuits from a tin on the shelf. She called her mother and then her father but both phones immediately forwarded her to their voicemail, so she hung up and then sent her mother a text message asking where she was.
She started to boil the kettle and took off her coat as the house began to warm up. She called both numbers again but with the same outcome, although this time she left a message on her father’s voicemail. As she put the phone back on the table, it rang. DAD came up on the screen.
‘Where are you?’
‘The hospital,’ he said, almost in a whisper.
‘Where’s Mum?’
There was a pause.
‘She’s here. She’s been … attacked.’
Laura took a moment to process what she’d heard. His voice was so quiet she could only just about pick out the words, but she realised he was calling from inside the ward.
‘Attacked?’
‘About an hour ago. At the house.’
Laura’s heart started beating quickly again. She checked the time on the microwave: it was ninety minutes since she’d been chased and got on to the bus, and it didn’t take long to work out what her pursuer had done next.
‘I’m on my way.’
She took the ward details. It took her twenty minutes to reach the hospital and another five to find a parking space. When she arrived on the ward, her mother was in a private side room and was talking to a police officer as her father stood listening. Laura could see she had a bruise on her cheek and a cut under her left eye, and it shocked and upset her so much that she pushed past the officer and grabbed her mother’s hand. ‘Mum!’
She hugged her tightly and the police officer stood back. ‘Laura,’ her father said, ‘the officer was just—’
‘It’s OK, Mr Grainger. I’ll give the three of you a moment.’ He left the room and closed the door.
‘What happened?’
Helen looked at her husband, who was visibly trying to stop his anger boiling over.
‘There was a knock at the door,’ she said, ‘and I thought you’d forgotten your key or something and there was this man and he … ‘ She began to cry.
‘He did this,’ Robert finished for her.
Laura felt sick. ‘What did he say?’
Her mother shook her head.
‘Nothing,’ her father spat. ‘Looks like he just wanted to send a message.’
There was a tap at the door and they all looked to see the police officer’s face in the glass panel. Robert opened the door. ‘Come in. We’ll leave you to do your job.’
He looked at Laura, and she followed him into the corridor. He led her down it until they were far enough away from the room for him not to be heard.
‘Dad, I—’
His face was red with anger. ‘Save it, Laura.’
She looked at the ground.
‘We all know why this happened,’ he said fiercely.
‘Have you told … ?’
‘The police?’ he snapped, and then seemed to remember he was in a public place. ‘No. Your mother told them she didn’t know anything.’
Laura was about to tell him what happened when she left work, but at that moment the police officer came out of the room and came towards them down the corridor. Laura went back to the side room while her father thanked him.
‘Oh, Mum.’
‘I’m OK.’
She looked at her mother’s injuries. The bruise was shining and looked sore. The cut wasn’t serious enough to require a stitch but the hospital had bonded the skin with a Steri-strip.
Her father came back into the room. ‘Happy now?’
‘Robert!’
‘Well, what do you want me to say, Helen?’
‘Of course not,’ Laura said, still looking at her mother.
‘This ends now. I don’t care about the story. The police need to handle this.’
Laura nodded. ‘Let me call Danni first,’ she said, looking at her mother’s bruised face. She’d done her best to delay the story coming out, but it had gone too far.
Somebody had got hurt.
58 | Laura
‘I can’t help you any more.’
Laura looked at her reflection in the mirror on her dressing table as she said the words, but they sounded lame and she shook her head.
‘I can’t carry on with your story.’
She closed her eyes. That was even worse.
Eventually, after a few more unsuccessful attempts to find the right words, she climbed into bed without making the call to Danni and decided to sleep on it and hopefully have more ideas when she woke.
The next morning, the first thing she did was call David Weatherall on his mobile and tell him about the attack.
‘Do they know who did it?’
‘No idea,’ Laura replied, having deliberately kept the details vague. ‘She’s pretty shaken up, and I said I’d take turns with my dad to sit with her at the hospital for the next couple of days.’
‘Of course,’ said the editor with genuine concern. ‘Do whatever you need to.’
After that, she called Danni.
There was a terseness to her voice when she answered. ‘Is it set up?’ she asked before Laura had a chance to speak.
‘I need to speak to you about—’
‘You said a couple of days.’
‘My mum got attacked.’
Laura let the sentence sit between them, knowing that Danni would make the connection soon enough; and she did.
‘God! Is she OK?’
‘Just about. Cuts, bruises and a bit of shock.’
Laura explained what had happened when she’d left work and how she’d avoided the attacker, who had then gone to her house instead. ‘I think he wanted to send a warning. Mum was just in the wrong place.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s my fault. He said this would happen.’
‘You can’t think like that,’ Danni said.
‘My dad says I have to end it.’
‘I don’t blame him.’
There was more silence. Laura searched for the right way to tell Danni that she would have to carry on without her, but it was Danni who helped her out.
‘So I’m on my own.’
Laura squeezed her nose and screwed up her eyes.
She could picture Danni clearly, walking into the police station with Sam.
She could see Sandra sitting by the window waiting for them to arrive.
She could picture Kelly’s headline in the Gazette, a day after the national papers had devoured the incredible breaking news.
She wasn’t sure which image was hardest to stomach.
‘I’m not stopping.’
‘What?’
‘If they can do this to my mum, then it shows how afraid they are.’
‘But your dad … ’
‘I’ll deal with him. We’re still going to see Sandra.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Danni.
‘I’ve got this far,’ said Laura, ‘and I’m not stopping now.’
59 | Danni
‘Just give me tomorrow to get things clear at work.’
Danni wanted to see Sandra at that moment; to just walk straight out of the dental surgery even though she had only just got there, to get into her car and drive to High Cliffs House, but she knew it was unfair to ask that of Laura with her mother in hospital.
And she didn’t want to do any of this alone, so she scribbled Sandra – Thursday on the next blank page of the notepad on the reception desk and arranged for Laura to pick her up from Sam’s house. She tore the page out and pushed it into her bag.
‘I hope your mum is OK,’ she said, as they ended the call.
After that, she tried to get on with the day, but it was almost impossible to focus on anything other than the attack. Until then, even though she’d been alarmed by the threat to Laura, she’d felt detached from it. But this was real now, and she knew that, if they were prepared to hurt someone close to Laura, there was no telling who might be next.
In her lunch break, she called her new employers in Southampton to make arrangements for her start date and induction programme, a series of meetings and training sessions that would take up most of her first week, including two days out on the road with a sales rep and an area manager. Her soon-to-be-new boss sounded lovely when she spoke to her and they hit it off immediately; when she said her goodbyes, it struck Danni that they were looking forward to welcoming her as a new recruit; but she wondered if they would be so keen to welcome her if she was Jessica Preston.
