by Louise Voss
‘I’m so sorry. My memory’s terrible. Nathan who?’
He rolled his eyes, still pretending to find it amusing. ‘Come on, babe, it’s me!’
The nerve of him, Amy thought, acting as though nothing had happened. She knew she was being childish, but she felt alive, exhilarated. Safe. Across the table, Chris was discreetly flexing his pecs and biceps – he was the biggest gym-bunny Amy knew, but even if she’d been there on her own, she knew she would have played the same game. Nothing to lose any more.
He put his hands on his hips, mock-offended. ‘All right, Amy, I get it. You don’t want to talk to me.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know you,’ she said mildly.
‘Of course you bloody well know me,’ he retorted, his gossamer patience already threadbare, as Amy knew from bitter experience. He couldn’t help his voice beginning to rise, and having control over him sent a jolt of pure adrenaline through her body. ‘We lived together for four sodding years!’
She smiled. ‘I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. Sorry – don’t mean to be rude, but my friend and I were in the middle of a conversation …’
Nathan’s face darkened, but Amy felt no fear.
‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ she said, making a small shooing gesture with her hand. Across the table, Chris was smothering giggles. Nathan’s eyes narrowed. If there was one thing he absolutely couldn’t stand, it was being made fun of.
‘I am NOT leaving until you acknowledge me,’ he insisted.
At that moment, the head waiter passed, and Amy summoned him over. ‘Excuse me – this man is bothering us. Please could you ask him to go away? He seems to think he knows me, but he doesn’t.’
All the other diners turned to see the commotion as Nathan shook the waiter’s hand off his arm, purple with fury, and strode off in the direction of the Gents’.
‘Go, Amy!’ Chris said. ‘That was utterly awesome. I’m so proud of you!’
Amy smiled at him, noticing that her hands weren’t even shaking. ‘Thanks. I’m pretty proud of myself, too.’
32
Amy
Thursday, 25 July
Amy stared at the door that the man she had known previously as TooledUp had slammed in her face. Shit. She hadn’t thought for a moment that he was likely to be the cooperative type, but he was an even bigger prick than she’d feared. Amy picked her helmet off the floor and turned to go, thinking at least she was unharmed, and could go. She headed for the stairs, then stopped.
It wasn’t good enough. How could she get back on her bike and ride home, when there was any chance at all that this arsehole knew something that could lead her to Becky?
I’ve got this far, she thought. She took a deep breath, and walked back up to the grimy front door, hammering on it with her fist.
‘I need to talk to you!’ she yelled through the thin wooden panels, welcoming the anger, because anger would keep her strong.
She paused to press her ear against the door, and heard the sound of a toilet flushing. She banged again, welcoming the pressure from her own bladder because the discomfort was making her even crosser.
‘Fuck OFF,’ roared the man from inside.
‘Open the door!’ she shouted back, matching his volume. ‘I’m not going away until you do!’
She paused in her banging, noticing a piece of junk mail lying in a corner of the hall, an offer from Virgin Media addressed to Mr Paul Halsall.
‘Paul! I’m serious – I’m not going anywhere except straight to the police unless you talk to me!’ She pounded her helmet against the door until she was worried she heard a splintering sound – no need to go as far as criminal damage. Perhaps he’d heard it too, because the door suddenly flew open again and he towered over her, looking angrier than anybody she’d seen since she lived with Nathan.
He’s not Nathan, she reminded herself, squaring up to him. He might be twice Nathan’s size, but he’d never be able to do half the damage Nathan had to her.
‘How the hell do you know my name?’ he demanded.
‘I know your name, your address, your Casexual profile details, and I have copies of all the emails you and my sister exchanged.’ No need for him to know she didn’t, in fact, have any such thing. All she had were the messages he had exchanged with Kath. ‘Oh, and I have the ones that you and my sister’s friend Katherine sent each other too. And guess what – Katherine’s just been found dead, under suspicious circumstances. What do you think the police would make of the fact that you were with her recently? I just need a few words with you, then I’ll get out of your hair.’ She intentionally stared at his thinning hair as she said that. His forehead creased with confusion and – as she had intended – worry.
‘Dead – that posh Katherine bird? The art teacher?’ He shook his head, and Amy relaxed a tiny bit, partly because it had clearly come as a shock to him, and partly because it was his first foray into conversation with her.
‘You don’t want the police to think you’re a suspect,’ she said, softening her own voice.
His lips tightened into a thin white line. ‘Yeah, and I don’t need you telling me what I want to think.’
One step forward, two steps back.
‘Please. It won’t take long. It’s just a couple of questions. Katherine’s dead and Becky’s missing. I think someone’s got her.’
‘What, and you reckon it’s me?’
‘No, of course not,’ lied Amy. She actually didn’t think that he would be holding Becky somewhere, nor that he had the intelligence to be tweeting from her account and posting photos on her Facebook page – but she thought it was entirely plausible that some harm could have befallen her if Becky had been mad enough to meet him for a repeat performance. Squashed under the weight of his muscles, perhaps. She shook away the mental picture of him hauling off her dead sister, hidden in a roll of lino – in her imagination it was the same as the grey, squashed-fly lino in his flat – to some deserted woodland burial place … but she just couldn’t picture this guy sending that email, pretending to be Becky.
‘I don’t give a shit about the police, because I didn’t have nothing to do with either of them, apart from that one night. And what we did ain’t illegal between consenting adults. If you’ve read our emails, you’ll know that they most definitely consented.’
‘What happened that night?’
He bared his teeth in a fake smile. ‘Gave ’em both exactly what they wanted, didn’t I?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Amy, keeping her voice level. ‘Did you? Why don’t you let me in so we can talk about it?’
He folded his arms, his forearm flexors popping menacingly towards her. ‘Why should I do anything for you? You’re harassing me.’
Amy sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to harass you. My sister is missing, and I need to find her. Can’t you just agree to help me, because you’re a decent human being?’
He laughed meanly. ‘That ain’t how my ex-wife would describe me. So what do you want to know?’
Amy took a deep breath. ‘I need to know if Becky was doing drugs. I’m guessing Katherine was, because she OD’d. I need to know if either of them talked to you about other men they’d met, or were going to meet. Do you know a man called Fraser? Did they mention him?’
‘That’s a shitload of questions,’ he said, contemplatively stroking one side of his jaw. ‘You willing to pay me?’
‘Depends – do you have any information worth paying for?’
They were locked in each other’s gaze like two cowboys in a showdown on the High Chaparral.
‘As it goes, reckon I do,’ he said. ‘I’ll let you have it, for five K.’
Amy laughed out loud. ‘Five grand? You’re out of your mind!’
Paul Halsall shrugged and started to close the door. Amy stuck her foot in the gap. ‘Wait!’
‘You’re persistent, I’ll give you that. So, what are you prepared to pay? I want cash – there’s a cashpoint over the road.’
‘I can’t get more th
an two fifty out of the cashpoint in one day.’ Amy couldn’t believe she was bartering for information like this.
It was his turn to laugh. ‘No way. I ain’t telling you nothing for less than a grand.’
Amy felt like banging her head against the wall. ‘I don’t have a grand – and anyway, now that I think about it, I don’t even have my cashpoint card with me.’
A crafty expression crossed his face as he gazed at her bike helmet. There was something very transparent about him – Amy bet that he counted on his fingers, and silently mouthed the words whenever he read anything. ‘What bike you got?’
Oh, no. Not her bike. ‘Forget it.’
‘You forget it, then.’ He closed the door again.
She thought about it for several minutes, then knocked again. When he opened the door, she was dangling the bike key from her forefinger, tears in her eyes.
‘If I do this, you’re not going to screw me over? You definitely have something important to tell me?’
He smiled, a greedy smile but a genuine one, and, for the first time, Amy saw what Becky and Katherine must have liked about him.
‘Come in,’ he said. He was a big, muscly hard man, but she bet that if he wanted something, he could do a fairly convincing seduction routine. She also bet that he hadn’t staged that routine in this poxy little flat, though, with its curling lino in the kitchen and damp circles mushrooming across the Artexed living-room ceiling. Amy knew her sister well enough to know that she’d never willingly have got her kit off in this bleak, tawdry accommodation, and she doubted that Katherine would have done either. Not unless slumming it had been part of the turn-on.
‘It’s a 1969 Triumph Daytona. Burgundy, 500 cc,’ she said miserably, holding out the keys. ‘Worth at least five grand.’ And my pride and joy, she thought, feeling the wind whipping the bits of hair sticking out of her helmet as she rode across Roman roads and down motorways, recalling that sensation of total freedom and happiness. At the back of her mind was the germ of a plan about telling the insurance company it had been stolen, although deep down she knew she was too honest – or too scared – to make a false claim on it. Besides, it wasn’t the money. It was her bike, her baby …
But Becky was far, far more important.
‘Are you serious?’ he asked, and she nodded. ‘Only if you have something to tell me,’ she repeated.
He walked across to the table, took a pad of lined paper and tore off a sheet. Then – his tongue indeed sticking out of one corner of his mouth – he wrote in slanting capitals: ‘TRANSFER OF OWNERSHIP.’
‘What’s your name again?’
‘Amy Coltman.’
‘I, AMY COLTMAN, CONFIRM THAT I HAVE GIVEN MY TRIUMPH DAYTONA TO PAUL HALSALL NO RETURNS OR COMEBACKS THIS IS A LEGALLY BINDING DOCUMENT.’
Amy, looking over his shoulder, somehow doubted that.
‘Sign and date, please,’ he said briskly, and Amy took the biro.
‘This is crazy,’ she said.
‘Do you want to find your sister or what?’
It’s only a bike. A heap of metal and rubber and chrome and leather. A motorbike. Becky, however, is your sister and you love her.
Amy signed and dated it, then pushed the paper back towards Paul. ‘So – what do you know?’
He examined her signature as if it was a forgery. ‘She didn’t do drugs. At least, she didn’t that night, even though her mate was. She said she never touched them.’
It was a huge relief to hear it, but not enough. ‘And?’
‘That’s it.’
She put her hands on her hips. All her fear of him had gone – he was a pathetic, acquisitive creep and she felt prepared to torture the information out of him if it wasn’t forthcoming. Why couldn’t she have felt like this when she was with Nathan?
‘That’s it? I’ve given you my bike, for that? It’s not good enough. What else?’
He grinned again, like a kid who’d unwrapped a giant Christmas present. At one point he even rushed over to the window to admire his new toy.
‘I told you. Your sister was drinking loads but didn’t do any drugs when I was there, and I don’t think did at all, because she was a bit, you know, arsey about her mate whenever she snorted another line of charlie. We all, er, got it on – I’m assuming you don’t need a blow-by-blow description of that?’ His face changed. ‘Though you can have one, if you like,’ he said slyly, and Amy glared at him.
‘No, thanks. Then what?’
He pretended to think. ‘Hmmm. We was at her place, I think it must’ve been, ’cos she wasn’t happy with the coke being there. That’s right … after we’d finished, her mate – Katherine? – started banging on about this party they were going to the next day. I goes, “Can I come?” just joking, you know? I remember getting pissed off ’cos Katherine laughs. She goes, “They wouldn’t let you in, it’s an Orchid Blue party. We paid a fortune for it.” Snotty cow. Like I knew what a fuckin’ Orchid Blue party is. I remember the name though, because I looked it up afterwards.’
‘What kind of party is an Orchid Blue party?’ Amy asked, although she had a horrible feeling she could guess.
Paul Halsall, a.k.a. TooledUp, hooked the key of Amy’s motorbike off her finger.
‘I want the ownership document too, you know, the V5C. Proper deal, this. You’ve got my address. You can post it to me.’
‘What kind of party?’ she repeated, and TooledUp laughed.
33
Becky
Saturday, 29 June
‘Damn, we look good. Smile, babe!’
Kath puts her arm around me, and holds out her camera phone in front of her to capture us both in our finery. She’s not wrong – we look great. I snatch the phone off her to examine the photograph, and it’s lovely. We’re pouty and glossy and look nothing at all like teachers and everything like the sort of women we’re presenting ourselves as – beautiful and sophisticated. To be honest, I’d been worried that we wouldn’t fit in, that we’d look somehow dowdy or frumpy next to the real classy birds. But now that I see us in our slinky cocktail dresses and killer heels, our hair freshly coloured and blow-dried, gel nails in place, our tender skin still smarting from the Brazilian waxes we had earlier, I can relax. We’ll fit in perfectly.
With a final squirt of perfume, much giggling and the addition of a few last-minute accessories from her wardrobe (a black feather boa for Katherine, and one of her glittery evening bags for me as it’s smarter than my black satin one), we’re ready, ten minutes before the cab is due to arrive. Suddenly we hear the sound of a key in the front door.
‘Shit!’ Kath hisses. ‘Clive said he was out at band practice till late! Where do I tell him we’re going?’
‘Charity ball,’ I hiss back. ‘Be vague about where.’
Kath calls down over the banisters: ‘That you, darling? Becky and I are just off out.’
I hear Clive’s feet on the stairs, and his exclamation of surprise when he sees Katherine’s outfit. ‘Bloody hell! Where are you going? You look—’
‘Gorgeous?’ preens Katherine, giving him a twirl. The soft chiffon folds of her short dress lift up in a puff, showing her stocking tops and a flash of lace knicker.
He appears on the landing and gives me the evils, as the kids at school would say, before turning his attention back to her. ‘Tarty,’ he says, wrinkling his nose, and I see Katherine’s face fall. She’s being massively, hideously, disloyal to him by going to this party – it was her idea, she registered us on the website and booked the tickets; but even so, I still feel a bit sorry for her. Perhaps if she had a boyfriend who told her she was beautiful instead of tarty, she wouldn’t feel the need to get her kicks among strangers. I’m not sure why they decided to give their relationship another go, since neither of them seems at all happy. Secretly, I think that Clive’s a sap for taking her back when he knows she’s been on dating websites.
‘Charity ball, sweetie, remember? I told you about it a few weeks ago. Becky’s friend is on the or
ganizing committee. It’ll probably be really boring – you know, charity auction, we’ll probably be on a table with a load of deaf old buffers trying to feel our knees under the table; but hey, it’s good to have an excuse to dress up and have a night out, eh?’
Clive looks suspicious. ‘You’ll give the deaf old buffers heart attacks dressed like that,’ he says.
‘What are you doing home, anyway?’ Katherine licks her finger and rubs a tiny mark off the front of her patent-leather stilettos.
‘Forgot that I’d told Jerry he could borrow my bass amp. I’m going straight back.’
Clive vanishes into their spare room/office and comes out with his arms full of a black box trailing cables.
‘I’ll stay at Becky’s tonight, so don’t wait up,’ Katherine says, blowing him a kiss as he stomps back downstairs, the amp’s plug banging on the steps behind him. There is a pause at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Kath? Can I have a quick word?’
Katherine makes a face at me. She kicks off her shoes and runs down the stairs. I hear frantic whispering, mostly from Clive, and I go for a final pee so that I’m not tempted to eavesdrop. I know that Katherine will tell me anyway.
‘What did he say?’ I emerge from the bathroom to hear the front door shut, and Katherine is back in the room, spraying hairspray vigorously all over her curls.
‘It was a close one!’ she crows. ‘He’s been so bloody clingy since that big row. For a minute there, I thought he was going to insist on coming with us, can you imagine? He made me promise that we’re not “up to anything”. Honestly, it’s quite pathetic.’ She gives me a hug. ‘I’m so excited, Becks! Just think of all the sexy rich guys we’re about to meet. That reminds me – have you got condoms?’
She is completely shameless. At the thought of what we’re potentially about to do, my stomach gives a nervous flip. I quash down the thought of what the other teachers at school would say if they knew. Worse – what Amy would say.
I wonder, too, what Amy would say about some of the other stuff I’ve been doing … Like the encounter with that guy Paul, the one who called himself TooledUp. He’s so not my type … not the type the old Becky would have gone anywhere near. But since all this started, just a few months ago, it’s as if this new Becky has been born – a kind of dark twin, a part of me I never knew existed. There is something seductive and addictive about losing yourself, about going far beyond what you would normally do, casting off the shackles, going wild … In those moments, in the bedroom with Paul and Kath, I became another person, sexy and crazy and free.
