Hold Your Breath

by Caroline Green

  It seemed ages before Tara found herself at the top of a cul-de-sac called Riverdale Rise. She made her way down towards the river to the number Will had written down – ten. It was only when she got to number eight that she realised the house she wanted was the shabby one she’d seen from the back.

  Well . . . that’s a bit of a turn-up, she thought.

  There was a small front garden surrounded by tall railings with white paint peeling off them to reveal patches of dark rust. An old bike, missing a saddle, was propped up against the railings. An open bin bag filled with empty wine bottles sagged next to an old dressmaking dummy wearing a greasy-looking baseball hat. The stained grey torso looked eerily like a body half slumped there. Two white lion statues adorned the end pieces of the stone steps. One was missing a head; the other had a bit of bedraggled tinsel tied limply round its neck. Its nose was chipped off, like it had been in a fight.

  Tara looked up at the house which, despite all the rubbish garlanded around it, was about four times grander than her own. A pane of glass was broken in the big bay window on the first floor, where a circular dream catcher with faded feathers hung down inside. Paint peeled on the rotten, wooden window frames. Tara glanced at the house on the other side, which had pristine windows showing swagged silky curtains. As she turned her gaze back to number ten, she thought she saw a movement at the window, but it was too fast for her to be sure.

  Suddenly determined to get out of there, Tara stepped forward and lifted the heavy door knocker. At that moment though, the door swung open from the inside, making her yelp and stumble back.

  ‘Can I help you, darling?’ A tiny, blond woman a bit younger than Mum stood at the door. She had lots of smudgy kohl around sleepy, pale blue eyes and her hair was twisted up into a messy knot on her head. She was wearing a long cream top that was a bit see-through over knee-length off-white leggings. Her small feet were bare, her toenails pale pink. She reminded Tara of a dishevelled fairy.

  ‘Oh, ah, I’m . . .’ Tara gabbled and then managed to find her words. ‘I’m just dropping this off for Melodie . . . Mel.’ She thrust at the envelope at the woman, arm straight out. ‘It’s her purse. She, ah, she left it at, um, my house.’

  The woman hesitated and then took it from her before yawning widely, unselfconsciously showing pink gums like a cat.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ she said, ‘I was having a little nap.’ She had a strange, babyish sort of voice. ‘What did you say your name was, darling?’

  She hadn’t said anything like that of course, but replied, ‘It’s . . . Tara.’

  The woman, presumably the aunt, Faith, that Will had mentioned, scrunched up her brow as she tried to place her. Then she smiled. ‘Well, Mel has a lot of friends.’

  A loud thud of bass suddenly drowned out her words. A black car pulled into the cul-de-sac and parked at the kerb. The music died suddenly as the engine was turned off. A bald, muscular man in a tight black T-shirt climbed out of the car. He was staring at Tara with an interest that made her skin prickle. He half smiled as he strode up to the doorway, brushing a bit closer than he needed to as he passed.

  ‘Who’s this, baby?’ he said to Faith.

  ‘This is Tara,’ said Faith in a friendly way, ‘she’s a friend of Mel’s. She’s brought her purse.’

  ‘Has she now,’ he said and his eyes crept up and down Tara’s body.

  Ugh, what a sleazebag, Tara thought.

  As he moved past Faith to get through the front door, he put his hand on Faith’s bum and squeezed before leaning over and giving her an open-mouthed kiss, his eyes never leaving Tara’s. She could actually see his meaty tongue. This, she guessed, was Ross. No wonder Melodie could be a pain, living with these two horrors. But did Leo live here too?

  She shuddered and failed to hide a grimace. ‘Thanks, if you can just let her have it, that’d be great,’ she mumbled, blushing now.

  ‘Of course, lovely,’ said Faith. ‘Thanks for dropping by.’

  She heard a giggle as the door closed and realised her hands were shaking violently. Wanting to get home more than anything, she happened to glance inside the car as she passed the window. There was a tiny, naked doll hanging from the rear-view mirror.

  Creepy.

  Tara peered into the car. Something snagged her attention. What was it? She glanced nervously up at the windows of the house but couldn’t see anyone looking, so she scooted round to the passenger side and peered in the window.

  It was a faded pink scrunchie. Long blond hairs were caught in it.

  The edges of her vision darkened and everything seemed to slow down. Tara could hear her own breaths, ragged and laboured, and a feeling of terror clutched at her stomach with an icy grip that made her moan softly. Her chest hurt. It was so dark . . .

  No! Stop it. I won’t do this again. Tara squeezed her fingernails hard into the soft flesh of her palms and the pain seemed to force her mind back to the reality of where she stood.

  A car alarm in the next street shrieked then with earsplitting aggression and it helped to break the effect. Glancing once more at the tall white house, Tara almost sprinted out of the cul-de-sac and towards the main road.

  The idea of walking along the towpath suddenly seemed a lot less attractive than it had earlier. A dull headache began to throb behind Tara’s left eye again.

  But she’d stopped it, hadn’t she? Sort of, anyway. She’d stopped the pictures that were trying to force their way into her mind and, for the first time in ages, it gave her a feeling of control.

  When she was a few minutes from her front door, she pulled Will’s business card from the pocket in her bag. She looked down at what was written on it.

  Will Meadows, Musician.

  The words were in arty writing on a plain white backdrop. She reached for her phone and then hesitated. Once Will had her number, he’d probably want her to do something else in his lovesick quest. He’d probably been dumped and just couldn’t accept it, she thought, pushing back the images that tried to nudge the back of her mind, telling her Melodie Stone was in danger. Anyway, she’d done what Will asked her to do and now she could just leave the whole thing alone.

  She walked over to a litter bin and dropped the card into it before hurrying towards home.

  Hunched over the laptop at the kitchen table, Tara’s fingers worked at the keyboard with fast clicks. Mum was reading the local paper, tortoiseshell glasses perched on the end of her nose. She made a loud tutting sound and then murmured, ‘Gosh, what an awful thing.’ But Tara wasn’t really listening. She was busy emailing Mahlia for the first time in ages. She’d been meaning to for weeks, and then a sudden craving for the familiarity of her old life finally made her sit down and get on with it.

  After a few minutes Mum got up and stretched her arms, yawning widely. ‘I’d better get ready for Pilates,’ she said, leaving the room.

  Tara grunted in response and finished off her email. She sat back in her chair, pleased she’d finally made the effort.

  Thirsty now, she got up and walked over to the sink, where she took a glass and filled it with water. She grabbed an apple from the bowl on the counter and walked back to her laptop, already impatient for Mahlia to reply, even though she knew it was far too soon to check.

  Crunching into the apple, she glanced at the paper that was still spread across the table. Mum was messy, like Beck, whereas Tara and Dad liked things tidy and ordered. A picture caught her eye and then the headline above it. Something in her subconscious sent adrenaline coursing through her veins like an injection of iced water.

  MUSICIAN CRITICAL

  AFTER LATE-NIGHT HIT AND RUN

  Tara bent over to look more closely. Dread clutched at her stomach like a cold fist. The picture was of Will, smiling up at the camera as he played a guitar on a picnic blanket. His hair was shorter and his feet bare below his cut-off jeans. His thin ankles looked vulnerable. He looked much younger. Innocent and boyish. She hastily read the piece.

  A promisin
g young musician has been left in a coma after being hit by a car late on Wednesday night at the junction of Homerton Road and Eastern Street.

  William Meadows, 20, a singer/songwriter who has performed at the Stourton County Festival and a variety of local music venues, was leaving the Mi Casa Bar on Homerton Road at 1 a.m. when a white car or van was seen approaching him.

  An eyewitness, Joanna Greenfield of Stamford Crescent said, ‘It wasn’t going very fast but then seemed to speed up as he went to cross the road. It all happened so fast that I didn’t manage to get the number plate or even see what sort of car it was. Only that it was small and white. It may have been a van. All I can say is that I hope the driver will do the decent thing. My prayers are with William and his family right now.’

  The musician’s mother, Anna Meadows, 55, said, ‘Will is the gentlest boy in the world. He’s never hurt a soul. All he wants is to make music. How anybody could hurt him and leave him like that is callous beyond belief.’

  Doctors at the Princess Royal Infirmary say William is in a critical condition with head injuries. He remains in a coma.

  Police say there are no CCTV cameras covering that crossing and they have so far been unable to identify the vehicle. If anyone has any information relating to the crime, please call this number.

  Tara’s legs suddenly felt wobbly. She sat down at the table, staring at the story until the words stretched and blurred together.

  Pictures whizzed through her mind. Will walking along a street, late at night. Maybe a bit drunk. Not concentrating – thinking about Melodie, perhaps – as he steps out into the street. The shock on his face as the car bears down on him, headlights like monstrous eyes. The impact, the pain . . . then darkness. It was almost like she could feel the road rearing up at her like a wall.

  She pushed her hair out of her eyes with a shaking hand. This wasn’t one of her weird turns. She knew that. It was just her imagination going overboard. But she felt strangely guilty. As though this all had something to do with Melodie and what Will had asked her to do. Maybe he’d been wondering why Tara hadn’t texted him, like she’d said she would. Maybe he was so distracted about it that he didn’t pay attention as he crossed the road . . .

  But she knew that was stupid, really. Any number of things could have been going through his head. And anyway, what had that witness said? That the car seemed to speed up when Will came into sight? That didn’t sound as though Will had been to blame. It sounded . . . deliberate.

  Tara breathed slowly through her mouth, trying to calm her galloping heartbeat. He’d said Ross had threatened him in some way. Could Ross have done this? But for what reason? Because there really was something to hide about Melodie?

  Ross had a black car, but the witness had definitely said it was a white vehicle. Could he have more than one?

  Mum came back into the kitchen, humming. Tara had enough time to rearrange her face into an impassive expression and get up to wash her glass as though nothing was wrong. She let her hair fall across her flushed cheeks as she rinsed the glass and put it on the drainer. The last thing she wanted was an inquisition from Mum, who was probably better than the Gestapo at extracting information when she got wind of something. It would be impossible to explain that she vaguely knew Will without Mum wanting to know exactly how she knew a twenty-year-old bloke.

  ‘See you later, sweetheart, okay?’ said Mum, grabbing her handbag from the kitchen table and patting Tara’s shoulder. ‘There’s some chicken in the fridge for dinner, bread from that artisan bakery, and salad stuff. Make sure you get some before Beck descends on it like a plague of locusts. You know what he’s like when he’s had football practice. Or indeed, what he’s like on any given day.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Tara, forcing a grin.

  ‘Oh,’ said Mum, ‘Dad says he’s sorry to work late again, but you know how it is with him still being the new boy.’

  ‘Course,’ said Tara. ‘Have fun at Pilates.’

  Her laptop pinged with an email as her mother left the house. She sat down to read it, distractedly. It was from Mahlia, who was so happy to hear from her and so sorry she’d been rubbish about getting in touch and so dying to catch up.

  Tara’s eyes skimmed the email but the chatty words rolled over her without meaning.

  She couldn’t get the picture out of her head: Will looking up and seeing the car, surprise and then naked terror on his face. The sickening thump as he hit the road.

  Could someone have done this to him on purpose? And if so, why?

  CHAPTER 8

  SKIN

  Tara tried to put it out of her mind. She’d caught Karis’s eye a couple of times and thought about starting a conversation, but decided against it. Karis was often on the fringes of the Gossip Girls set now. They would be stretched out on the grass, sunning themselves like lizards – lizards with long, tanned legs – and Karis would be sitting slightly to the side, as though she was with them but not with them all at the same time. Tara knew she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from asking if Karis had heard about Will’s accident . . . or whatever was the right word for what had happened. And she didn’t really want to get into that.

  Because now she kept thinking about Leo and whether he could have been the person who knocked Will down. Walking home from school, she went over it again in her mind. There was no reason to suspect him in any rational way. He seemed all right, despite his Hard Man look. But Will had mentioned that Leo disapproved of him. And Tara had seen Leo arguing viciously with Melodie the day before she’d gone missing.

  Tara made an angry noise in her throat. If anyone had been nearby, they would have thought she was mad, like she was talking to herself. Luckily, no one was.

  Missing? Who said anything about Melodie being missing? No one had. There was no real reason to think anything had happened to her. As for Will, plenty of hit-and-run accidents happened, especially late at night when people were drunk.

  As she got nearer to home, another thought came to her. As far as Leo was concerned, she and Melodie were friends. Was there any harm in getting into a conversation and mentioning she was worried Mel hadn’t been in touch? Maybe he could prove to her in some way that the girl was living happily in Brighton and hanging out with celebs. A vivid image of Melodie came into Tara’s head then, honey hair swinging down around her neck; eyes creased meanly as she regarded Tara, like Tara was dirt and she was some goddess. It wasn’t hard to imagine her living in luxury, not caring that people were worried about her.

  Tara didn’t care what Melodie Stone was doing. She only wanted to stop this nagging sensation she couldn’t shake off. Plus, she felt bad about Will. She knew where she had to go.

  There was a sticky moment later when Mum suggested coming swimming with her, and Tara blurted out that she was meeting a friend from school. Mum couldn’t have looked happier. She practically forced a tenner into Tara’s hand, saying they could ‘hang out together and have coffee after’, in a way that made Tara feel a sickly mix of cringing, guilt and love.

  The air was hot and still. Tara expected the pool to be busy when she finally got there, feeling a little sticky and uncomfortable in her baggy top that was cut to hang off one shoulder. After debating with herself for a ridiculous amount of time, she’d brought the bikini again, rather than the stout Speedo, just because it went better with the T-shirt. It had nothing to do with Leo, she told herself. She didn’t even know what kind of person he was. He might be someone capable of attempted murder.

  The girl she’d seen cleaning the pool was at the entry kiosk today. She smiled at Tara, seeming to remember her, as she took the coins from her hand. Tara turned it round to be stamped but the girl waved her own hand airily to signify that there was no need.

  Once through the gates, Tara scanned the pool area for Leo. He wasn’t there. The old bloke from before – Dobby – was sitting at the side of the pool in a lifeguard T-shirt. Good job she was a strong swimmer, she thought. She didn’t much fancy the idea of being
rescued by him in a crisis.

  Squinting into the sunlight, Tara looked around. The water sparkled like a sheet of diamanté and the sun bounced off the grotty sun loungers, making them seem newer and whiter than they were. There were a few more people than last time: a group of teenagers younger than Tara were messing about in the shallow end, the girls shrieking as one of the boys vigorously churned the water with a skinny arm. The old lady with the daisy swimming cap was there, barely making an impression on the surface of the water. Tara felt an unexpected fondness at seeing her again. In the shallow end an obese woman sat on the side with her toddler, whom she kept dunking like a biscuit into tea while singing a nursery rhyme. The child thrashed its legs and made unhappy noises.

  There was one other person, a man, swimming alone in the fast lane, his strong, confident strokes cleanly slicing through the water. As Tara got to the changing rooms she happened to look again and was startled to see that the swimmer was Leo. He was getting out now, the muscles in his strong arms bulging as he pressed down on the pool’s edge and levered himself out. His hair was slick and wet. His eyes looked dark and intense as he ran his hand over his face. He was strong but tall and slim too and Tara couldn’t help looking at his smooth chest and flat belly. His black swimming shorts clung to the strong curve of his thighs.

  ‘God, get a grip, Tar . . .’ she mumbled under her breath, a hysterical giggle threatening to hiccup out as she hurried into the changing room. You need that cold water, girl, she thought. As she got undressed, her hands shook a little. Then it struck her that he was probably at the end of his shift if he was swimming. Disappointment bit harder than it ought to have done.

  But when she emerged from the cubicle a few minutes later he was still there.

  ‘Thanks, Dave,’ he said. ‘I needed that. I’ll take over now.’