by Liz Flanagan
In memory of
Ben Flanagan
&
Yvonne Hook
with love
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Part Two
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Prologue
Christmas Day
11.48 a.m.
The snowfall stole colour from the valley, leaving it as black and white as an old photo: dazzling fields, leaden skies, winter trees drawn in charcoal. The chapel sat squat and square on top of the hill, guarded by iron gates.
Late morning, two teenagers came trudging up the lane, their clothes shockingly bright against all that white, voices shattering silence.
The words froze on their lips as they reached the graveyard gate.
One pulled ahead. She ploughed awkwardly, knee-deep through the drifts, to the newest grave, to that headstone at the end, not yet weathered in, still gleaming under its little hood of snow. The girl pulled off her hat and gloves and bent over the grave, whispering. Her cheeks were pink with cold and shiny with tears.
‘Let’s make her a snowman,’ she said, wiping her face. ‘She always loved them.’
They both started rolling and patting and scraping. They made a little rounded figure the same height as the headstone. They gave it arms of fallen twigs. They made a face with stones and leaves.
When they left, the snowgirl stayed, keeping watch all that short day, till the shadows turned lilac, then blue, ash, then finally black, till the stars came out, clear and hard and pure, glittering over the valley.
Part One
Chapter One
8.00 a.m.
That morning I have no clue what’s happened. No inkling. No foreboding. Not a sausage. I must be the opposite of psychic, cos I’m actually almost happy.
Mum’s radar picks up on it straight away. ‘Good to hear you singing again, Jess,’ she says as we wait for the kettle.
After breakfast I hug her and tumble out into the blue-and-gold morning. Warm, but with proper cold hiding in the shadows ready to ambush you, warning you that summer’s nearly done. I love September, always have. The air is crisp, with that first bittersweet scent of autumn. It smells of hope, new pencils and fresh starts.
I put my earbuds in and start my favourite playlist as I hurry down the hill. Town’s all laid out in the sunshine like a tourist website inviting you to visit Yorkshire: the tall skinny houses, rows and rows of terraces, clinging to the crazy gradient.
I make myself late cos I keep stopping to take photos on my phone: backlit leaves, tangled weeds all dried and seedy, reflections in the canal. Art is the only GSCE I really care about and I’m looking for something to spark the next project.
I have to run for the bus, but I still get a window seat on the top deck, cocooned in warmth. I lean my head on the glass and half close my eyes. The music is a ladder and my mind climbs it slowly, enjoying the view from up there. I barely see what’s actually through the window – the familiar hills, flung wide like a dancer’s skirts; the farms dotted high along spreading contours; the wooded cloughs; and the houses tucked into the valley bottom or ribboning along this road, this crazy overcrowded road that we’re all addicted to, cos it’s the quickest way out of this place.
In the next village, I get off the bus at the stop nearest school, and that’s when it happens: the morning’s golden bubble shatters like glass.
I see my best friend’s mum. Eden’s mum, Claire. Her car is pulling out of the side road, barely three metres away. Her face is grey, and her ponytail is coming loose. I’ve never seen her without make-up before.
Claire should not be driving cos she can hardly see: her face is crumpled, dripping with tears as she grips the wheel. I’ve seen Claire cry before, but this shocks me to a standstill.
Someone bumps into my back and barges around me. I clutch at the brick wall to my left for balance because the world is tipping sideways.
Before I can dart into the road and knock on the car window, she’s moved out into the main road and driven off.
What’s happening? What is Claire doing here, looking like that?
My heart clenches coldly.
Pain starts building in my temples. It’s been a migraine-free week till now. First in ages. I yank out my earbuds and stab at my phone to silence the music.
One missed call. From Eden’s landline. No message. How did I miss it? Must’ve been boarding the bus.
I call her mobile, breathless. It goes straight to voicemail. ‘E, it’s Jess. What’s up? I saw your mum, just now, at school. Did she drop you off? Did you row? Tell me where you are: I’ll come find you.’
I hurry up the side road towards school, joining the flow of kids all heading that way. As we get near the sprawling brick and glass buildings, I realize something’s most definitely up. Everyone’s staring. Whispering behind hands. Even the lads. Even the oldest ones.
I’m not being paranoid, for once. I glare back, hating them all, hating that it takes me straight back to the worst months of my life. The rest of the school talking about me, not to me. Eyes shifting sideways before they meet mine, like disaster might be contagious.
I even flick my eyes down just to check I haven’t tucked my skirt into my knickers or something. Nope, all present and correct: paint-spattered boots loosely tied with red laces, only slightly torn leggings, black hoodie with sleeves pulled down over my tattoos, skirt twisted sideways and the crappy green school shirt that makes everyone – ’cept Eden – look sick as a dog. I shake my hair forwards, over my face. These days I’m rocking Poppy Red again, though I was stuck on Sky Blue for a bit last year and when it faded there was a weird washed-out stage when I looked like I’d gone prematurely grey. Today I look OK, or as near to that as I’m ever going to get. So what’s happening here?
Head down, I hurry towards the left of the buildings. I need somewhere to think, before I can face this. I need to escape all these people staring at me.
I hear snippets of speculation that no one is even trying to keep quiet.
‘She must know!’
‘Do you think the police will want to talk to her?’
‘Jess Mayfield and Liam Caffrey. Definitely.’
Liam is Eden’s boyfriend. Hearing our names linked like that is not good. I feel my cheeks burning. On autopilot, I navigate the main driveway, ducking to miss a football. I’m heading for the back route, around the Portakabins, so I can slink into the side yard and hide till Eden rings me back.
I take the corner too fast
and slam straight into Josh Clarkson, Eden’s ex-boyfriend from last year. Josh’s arrogance reaches you two metres before he does, just like his aftershave. I never got what Eden saw in him, except they matched in a tall, golden, pretty kind of way. Till he opened his mouth.
‘Look, lads. If it in’t Mayfield, the miserable mosher.’ Josh flicks his cigarette away. ‘No wonder she looks so beat up.’
He tosses the long hair out of his eyes and sneers at me, ‘You’re some shit magnet, you know that?’ He takes a step closer. ‘You’re a freak, your mum’s a lezzer, and now your best mate’s missing.’
They surround me, Josh and the three mates he keeps to make him look good. They’ve all bought in to the same weird posture and over-styled hair, like they’re expecting to be kidnapped into some low-rent boy band any day now.
Maybe it was a mistake coming this way. There’s no one to see what happens. To my right, the wall of the Portakabin. To my left, an overgrown hedge and the fence behind. It’s like a corridor – with escape up ahead too far away.
They start crowding me. The pain in my head ratchets up. I use deep, slow breathing to keep control. I concentrate on the feel of a small stone on the tarmac pressing into the base of my boot.
‘Lost your better half? Eden Holby’s not so perfect now, is she?’
Tick, tick, tick …
Precious seconds slip by. Whatever’s happened, Eden will need me. I need to find out. I need to move.
‘She was asking for it, Eden Holby. On self-destruct.’ Josh Clarkson smiles, slow and wide, trying to seem wolfish or something. ‘No way she’s gay – you won’t turn that one. Always liked it dirty, know what I mean?’
The hyena boys start baying.
‘What do you want, Clarkson?’ My voice hardly wobbles at all.
‘If Eden’s missing, Liam Caffrey did it, no question. Is that what you’ll tell the police?’
This is going too fast for me. I can’t take it in. What’s he on about Liam for? I can see why Josh hates him though. Liam’s got Eden now. Plus he’s everything Josh will never be.
‘Get lost.’ I screw my eyes closed and hold my breath and march forwards. Maybe I look weird enough to win some space, cos when I open them again, the side gate is closer, and my way is clear.
‘Ask Caffrey where he hid the body!’ Clarkson bawls after me, so loud the whole school can hear him. ‘Go on, ask him, why don’t you?’
Liam would never hurt Eden. The idea is so ridiculous I could laugh.
As I scuttle towards the safety of school, I can’t help noticing stupid details all around me: an empty crisp packet blowing past; the smell of the freshly mown grass; the way the sky is reflected in the school windows, a lovely deep blue with fluffy clouds.
And then it hits me: Liam could hurt Eden. Liam has hurt Eden. And I’m the only one who knows.
Chapter Two
8.35 a.m.
‘E, it’s me again! Please … Listen, I don’t care where you are. I’ll come find you. Just call me back, OK?’
Eden Holby. Eden Holby. Everyone’s saying her name. I hear it on repeat, like emergency news headlines on the TV screen, cutting across everything else.
Somehow I make it into registration, but our form teacher, Mr Barwell, isn’t there. There’s some nervy standin who can’t keep control. This makes it worse. The chaos in our form room mirrors the panic rising inside me.
I gulp down headache pills, hoping I’m in time to stop it turning blinding. Today is too important to be eaten up by a migraine. I need to stay alert.
I know everyone’s still talking and staring as we take our seats, but it reaches me distantly.
‘Where’s Eden Holby?’
‘Hey, goth girl, where’s yer mate?’
I feel like I’m underwater. Everything’s muffled. I think a few of them – Ebonie, Sam, Amir – try to be kind. I watch their mouths moving but I can’t work out what they expect me to say.
I sit stiffly, clutching my bag and my phone, ready to bolt. The seconds slouch by. My eyes flick from the clock on the wall to the display on my phone, and the supply teacher doesn’t dare tell me off for using it in class.
‘Sir, excuse me, sir? Jess Mayfield has to go to Trent’s, I mean, Mrs Trent’s office, sir.’ The Year Seven kid disappears almost before he’s finished the message, and I’m out of there without waiting for the nod.
I throw myself down the empty corridor. Out into light. Speed across the yard. Concrete stairs. Two at a time. Back inside. Main doors. I’m there.
In the corridor outside Trent’s office, I find Imogen and Charlotte heading the same way. Eden’s other friends. The ones from the top sets. The ones who match her in swagger and style.
Imo has black hair extensions down her back, huge brown eyes and perfect dark skin. Charlotte has a glossy little bob that swings as she moves. Her eyebrows are plucked so high that she always looks vaguely surprised, but I think she actually means it right now.
They don’t often speak to me. We’re different planets, orbiting Eden. But today we’re spinning off course and it makes us collide.
‘Hey, Jess,’ Imo says. ‘Isn’t it awful? I couldn’t believe it when Eden’s mum called me before school.’ She manages to make this all about her, as usual, letting us know that she was the one Claire turned to first. ‘Do you think Eden’s OK?’
‘I mean, we knew she was drinking too much …’ Charlotte chips in, watching to see how I react. ‘We were just talking about that.’
‘Do you think she had a problem with it?’ Imo takes a quick furtive look around us. ‘I mean, it’s understandable and everything, but was it out of control?’ She whispers it confidentially, as if she’s giving me something precious, and I resist the urge to slap her.
The school trip – five days in July – surfaces in my mind, and I squash it down again. They were there, Imogen and Charlotte, but they didn’t have a clue. Anyway, Eden didn’t have a problem. Except the obvious. She was drunk and sad, that was all.
‘No,’ I say firmly. But another memory rises up, evidence for the prosecution, and this one takes more effort to push away.
Chapter Three
8.45 a.m.
I appear to have killed their attempt at conversation, distracted by bad memories. The three of us stand in silence, facing Trent’s door. To try to get a grip, I use an old trick of Mum’s. She says, ‘However bad things are, make a list of three things you can do about it. Doesn’t matter how small.’
Right now it’s:
1. Get in there
2. Find out the facts
3. Ring Eden again, soon as
I focus on the door: smooth, dull grey, with a neat little printed sign, ‘Head Teacher, Mrs C. Trent’, and a panel of fireproof glass. Right now it’s holding back something terrible and I don’t want to open it.
I imagine the bad news trapped inside, like a fire. I picture myself opening the door …
Whoomph! The air is devoured. The smoke pours out, hot and choking. Flames erupt, faster than thought, tearing up the walls.
I blink.
I reach out to knock.
Before I can make contact, the door opens from the inside and I stumble forwards. My hands land on Liam Caffrey’s chest. Warm cotton. I swear I can feel his heart.
I pull back as if I’m scalded.
It’s the first time I’ve seen him close up all week. I think he’s been avoiding me. My body reacts, even now, betraying me. My legs turn unsteady. My palms are sweating and my heart goes mad.
He doesn’t look like Liam. Nothing gorgeous about him now. Hulking in that doorway, he seems to fill more space than usual. His short fair hair is tufted up, like horns. His face is scrunched up so tightly I can hardly see his eyes. His eyebrows are knotted tight, telling me to back off. I can feel the anger coming off him in hot waves, and I flatten myself against the wall instinctively. For a split second I am afraid of him.
Then the questions crowd in, and I choose the two at the front. ‘Liam, w
hat’s going on? What did she say?’
But Liam stalks past us in silence. He grabs the outer door handle and wrenches it open so hard it bites into the wall, sending little white crumbs of plaster flying.
I’ve never seen him so angry. What has she said to him?
‘Jess? Is that Jess Mayfield?’ Trent appears, and I can see she’s rattled. She tugs at her navy suit jacket, pats her cropped grey hair, then fumbles for the glasses resting on her formidable chest. She puts the glasses on and peers at a sheaf of papers in her hand.
It shocks me to notice the whole lot is trembling.
‘Jess? Come in. Charlotte, Imogen, wait there. I won’t be long, girls.’
I don’t move. I can feel the other two staring at me.
‘Jess? I said, come on in. It’s all right, Jess, it’s only me and Mr Barwell.’ Trent beckons me forward.
I peer inside.
Barwell’s OK. In the past, he’s proved he’s human and I can trust him.
‘Morning, Jess.’ He sighs his words out and nods, beckoning me in. He looks terrible.
I go in. It’s warm, too warm, with sunlight pouring through the glass walls of the room. It feels like a goldfish bowl. Don’t goldfish die if they get too hot? This feels suffocating.
I flop onto one of the empty chairs on this side of the desk – I can feel the coarse padded weave of it through my leggings. I know this place well. I’ve been here a lot this past year.
