by Alex Lake
Back, in short, to the daily grind.
Kate swung her legs out of bed. She felt groggy, jet-lagged almost, which she supposed she was: her body clock had adjusted to late nights and lie-ins, and here she was, dragging herself out of bed hours earlier than she was now used to.
It was going to be a long, painful day.
She walked along the landing to the bathroom. Her feet were tanned, a white V splitting at her big toes and running up to her ankles tracing where the straps of her sandals had been. She smiled as she remembered walking through the markets in the sunshine, evading the traders who tried to get her and May and Gemma into their bazaar with the promise of cheap leather bags or real gold jewellery or – this was her favourite – the offer of genuine fake watches. She’d laughed out loud when the man, a young Turkish guy with wide eyes and an infectious smile, had stepped in front of them and gestured to his stall.
Come in, he said. Only for a look. Best watches in Kalkan. Genuine fakes!
And then he laughed, and they laughed, and went in. Gemma bought a Rolex – a real, honest to God, no messing genuine fake Rolex – for Matt. Kate would have got one for Phil, in a different life. There was a Tag Heuer that he would have loved, and she almost bought it, but no: it would have sent mixed signals, and she had enough to deal with where Phil was concerned already.
The shower took a few minutes to warm up. She wondered briefly whether the boiler was broken – Have to get Phil to look at it, she thought, then remembered that Phil was no longer an option for that kind of thing, so she’d have to call someone. She thought they – she – had a service contract, but Phil had dealt with it, so maybe she’d have to call him to find out, unless there was paperwork somewhere – in the kitchen drawer, maybe … Then the hot water came and she relegated the boiler service contract to a mental note – that she would ignore – to check it later.
When she was done she switched off the shower and grabbed a towel. It was odd to emerge to a silent house. Phil was an early riser and, by the time she finished her shower, he was normally downstairs, dressed, with the radio on, so that she dried herself and put on her make-up to the sound of the Today programme, mostly, or sometimes Radio One, the smell of coffee wafting upstairs.
Not today. Today the house was silent and scent-free.
The holiday had been fun, a blur of movement and action and laughter with her friends. Apart from when Phil kept calling – which had stopped after the morning he’d called the hotel – it had been simple to forget the break-up and all the implications it had. And that had been exactly what she needed.
But now the holiday was over, and reality was about to hit. And the reality was that this was not going to be easy.
9
She was at her computer, a large coffee on her desk, not long after eight.
A couple of minutes later, her neighbour, Gary, an overweight father of three in his mid thirties, arrived. The office was open-plan, each person having a small desk – paperless, which was the new office policy – divided from whoever sat next to them by a low screen. There were booths scattered around the office where you could go if you needed to have a private conversation, or concentrate on something for a while, but generally speaking you were at your desk in full view of anyone who happened to be passing. Kate didn’t mind it that much; she’d joined the workforce at a time when that kind of office arrangement was more or less the norm, but some of the older people hated it.
Gary was one of them. Prior to the move to open-plan, he had been the proud occupant of a small, windowless office which he had worked for years to obtain, and the loss of it still rankled. Kate suspected that he would have been less bothered by a pay cut than the loss of his office; there was something about the visible reduction in status that he found particularly hard to take.
He made up for it by swearing a lot. In the open-plan area everyone could hear, and it showed his younger colleagues how, even though he had been stripped of his office, he would not be cowed by the management.
‘Welcome back,’ he said. ‘Fucking traffic was abysmal as usual this morning.’
‘Not too bad coming from my side,’ Kate said. ‘The normal slow-moving car park.’
‘It was total shit coming from Glossop,’ Gary said, shaking his head. ‘Total fucking shit. Anyway, no bother. How was your holiday?’
‘Great. Really good.’ She would have said that if it had been a shocking disaster; it was how you responded in an office, especially to people who you didn’t know outside of a professional setting. It was odd; she sat with Gary every day, heard him talk to his wife about the bills they had to pay for private schools, heard him arrange beery nights out with his friends, knew that he was a fan of Leeds Rhinos in rugby league and Sheffield Wednesday in football and hated Arsenal with a passion, but, for all that, she didn’t know him at all. Despite the time they spent in close proximity to each other, they never shared more than pleasantries, general chit-chat. He didn’t even know that she and Phil had broken up.
He probably didn’t know they’d been together. She left her private life, as many of her colleagues did, at the door.
‘Good week to be gone,’ Gary said. ‘It was mad. An audit blew up.’ He puffed out his cheeks. ‘I was in here all hours. Got home Friday and I was fucking whacked. Then I had to wake up early on Saturday to take the kids to some fucking party.’
‘Hope it’s calmer this week,’ Kate said, suppressing a smile at his horrendous swearing.
‘Doubt it. Anyway, welcome back to the jungle.’ He tapped his login details into his computer. ‘I’m going to the canteen, get a bacon butty. You want anything?’
Kate nodded at her coffee. ‘That’ll do me. Thanks, though.’
She watched him walk off, his trousers loose and saggy around his buttocks, shirt partially untucked, shoulders round and slumped. Was that her future? Was this what life had to offer? Rotting away in an office, doing a job she hated, or, at best, found repetitive and boring?
That was what she feared. Maybe it was because she had just come back from holiday, but watching Gary walk away she thought, I don’t want to be like that. There has to be something more.
There had to be. Surely she could do something she found more inspiring. Become a cider-maker or a pilot or a photographer.
And the thing was, it felt possible, now that she had broken up with Phil. With him, her life had been mapped out for her, a gentle progression from wife to mum to grandma. Now though, she could do what she wanted. She had some money saved up; she could go travelling for a year. Or two. Or three. Maybe go to Nepal, meet someone and stay there, or move to New Zealand to work on a sheep farm. Who knew what would happen? That was the beauty of it. No one knew. All she had to do was make the decision to go and then the world would change from this – she looked around at the rows of desks – to an endless series of possibilities. She could end up anywhere.
But before that, she had work to do, emails to read, contracts to review. She looked at her inbox. Six hundred and twenty-four emails. She almost groaned.
She was about to sort them by sender so she could read the ones from her boss first when her phone pinged. It was a text message from Gemma.
Check out the news.
She typed a reply.
What is it?
They found another body in Stockton Heath.
It took Kate a few seconds to understand what Gemma was getting at, then it clicked. There’d been another killing. Another murder.
There was a link in the text message. She tapped it with her finger and watched as the story came up.
The body of a woman was found this morning near Walton Reservoir, on the outskirts of the village of Stockton Heath. Police were called to the scene by a local resident who spotted something unusual when out running.
This is the second body of a young female to be found in the vicinity of Stockton Heath. It follows the discovery ten days ago of Jenna Taylor, 27, not far from the location where the latest victim was found. Speculation is
mounting that the two killings may be linked. When asked about the possibility that there was a serial killer at work, the police said it was too early to comment, but they would be pursuing all lines of inquiry.
A police spokesperson said that the woman was in her mid to late twenties, and named her as Audra Collins.
She blinked at the screen. She read the name again to be sure.
Audra Collins.
She knew Audra Collins.
She knew her because she knew everyone who was around her age and who had been at high school with her. That was how small towns worked.
But she also knew her because people had always said that Audra Collins could be her sister. Or your secret twin, they joked. Proof of human cloning.
May and Gemma had joked that the first victim – Jenna Taylor – looked like her. She was dead, and now Audra Collins – her secret twin, her clone – had joined her.
And the joke wasn’t funny any more.
She picked up her mobile phone and scrolled to May’s number. She was about to press call when a voice interrupted her.
‘Welcome back.’
Kate looked up; it was Michaela, her boss. She put her phone down, screen to the desk. She always felt guilty when she was caught reading the news or sending texts at work.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Just checking the news. Someone sent me something.’
‘Oh? Anything interesting?’ Michaela said.
‘Did you hear about the body they found a week ago?’ Kate said. ‘Near Stockton Heath?’
Michaela nodded. ‘Did they find the killer?’
‘No. They found another body. Another woman in her twenties.’
Michaela’s mouth opened. ‘You’re kidding? Is it the same person, do they think?’
‘They don’t know.’ Kate raised an eyebrow. ‘But it seems a hell of a coincidence if it isn’t.’ Too much of a coincidence, she thought, especially since they look so similar.
‘Well,’ Michaela said. ‘I wouldn’t be wandering around on your own, if I was you.’
‘Right,’ Kate said. ‘That’s what I need to hear when I’m newly single.’
‘Speaking of that, how was your holiday?’
‘Great.’ She repeated the bland formula from earlier. ‘Really great.’
‘Good,’ Michaela said. ‘It was a busy week. Glad you’re back. Are you free at ten? There’s some stuff I need you to work on. We can meet in the conference room.’
The small talk was over. Michaela was back in business mode.
‘Of course,’ Kate said. ‘See you then.’
10
At four p.m. – an hour or so before his normal departure time – Phil shut down his computer. He watched the screen go black, then put his laptop in his bag. He was leaving work early. An idea had come to him during the day. And it was a good one. An excellent one. It could not go wrong.
It went like this:
Kate had come home from holiday at midnight, after a week away, a week in which whatever food she had in her house would have gone off. OK, there might be some pasta and sauce and packets of soup and things like that, but there would not be any fresh stuff: no fruit, no vegetables, no bread, no milk, no cheese, no meat, no fish.
So he would take her some. Yes, they had broken up; yes, he knew that he was not handling it well; yes, she had made it clear that she wanted some distance between them, but this was different. This was merely a friendly, thoughtful gesture to help her transition from holiday to home. He’d knock on the front door, hand over a bag – or bags – and then, if she wanted him to, he’d leave. No problem.
Of course, if she saw that he was a standout guy, a caring, resourceful, loving partner and decided to ask him in to share the meal, then he would accept. As a friend. To provide some company; nothing more, nothing less.
And if they ended up having amazing, mind-blowing make-up sex, then that would be OK too.
Phil stopped himself following that train of thought. It was simultaneously too exciting and too upsetting for him to handle. He took a deep breath, and walked out to his blue Ford Mondeo.
Or his Ford Mundane-o, as her dad had called it. He was into cars and he always teased Phil for his choice. As Phil pointed out, it was practical and good value for money, and – above all – safe, which you would have thought would appeal to a father, but her dad had shaken his head and told him to get a Triumph Stag or something with soul. He knew he was only teasing him – Kate’s dad teased him all the time – but Phil hated it. It had probably contributed to Kate dumping him. He felt his resentment rise.
No – enough of that. That was the past. For now, he had a job to do.
Kate was normally home around six thirty – Phil knew her routines well, since he had been part of them up until a few weeks ago – so he timed his arrival at about fifteen minutes after she returned. He parked behind her Mini – British Racing Green; her dad had insisted that she get that colour – picked up the two Sainsbury’s shopping bags from the passenger seat, and walked to the front door.
He knocked. He didn’t want to use the bell; it was somehow too formal.
The door opened. And there she was.
Looking beautiful. Looking like Kate. She was barefoot. He glanced at her feet. They had tan lines from her flip-flops. They reminded him of the holiday they’d taken the year before in Mallorca. She’d had them then, as well as other tan lines in more intimate places. Despite her pale skin, Kate tanned heavily in the sun and he had a clear image of her white buttocks contrasting with the golden brown of her legs and lower back.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Welcome home.’
She stared at him. She looked tired, her eyes a little red. ‘Phil,’ she said. ‘Hi.’
‘I brought you some provisions,’ he said, and held out the shopping bags. ‘I thought you might need some fresh food. You probably don’t have anything in, coming back from holiday. This might help.’
She didn’t take them. ‘That’s so sweet,’ she said. ‘But you didn’t have to do it.’
‘I wanted to. Got to keep your strength up!’
‘For what?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just – I just said it.’
And I should have said nothing, he thought, but I’m so fucking nervous, which is ridiculous, this is Kate.
‘How was the holiday?’ he asked, his tone bright.
‘It was good.’
‘You didn’t call me back that day.’
‘We were busy. And I was enjoying myself, Phil. The point was to get away.’
‘I know, but I’m your—’ He stopped himself. He’d been about to say ‘boyfriend’, a status which would have given him the right to expect a call from his girlfriend when she was on holiday, but that was no longer correct. ‘I’m your friend,’ he finished.
‘I know. But I have lots of friends who I didn’t call from holiday.’
‘Right. So what did you do all week?’
‘Hung out on the beach. Went out at night.’ She shrugged. ‘Usual holiday stuff.’
‘Did you – did you meet anybody?’
‘We met lots of people.’
‘Right.’ There was a long, awkward silence. They both knew what he was asking, and they both knew that she wouldn’t answer. They both knew that it would be better if he didn’t ask again, but they both knew he would.
‘Did you meet any – you know – any guys?’
‘Phil, if you’re asking me whether I met any men, then the answer is yes. We met lots. If you’re asking me whether I went out on dates with them or kissed them or did whatever, then the answer is that it’s none of your business.’
‘It sounds like you did.’
‘Fine. Think what you like.’
This was not going well. He needed to get it back on track. He held the bags out to her. ‘Are you going to take them?’
‘I’m not sure, Phil. You don’t need to feed me.’
He opened one of the bags and showed her the contents.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Smoked salmon. And crab pâté. And some white wine. Asparagus. A baguette.’
‘Phil,’ she said. ‘I’m tired. I don’t have the energy to make—’
He put the bag down and opened the other. ‘Vegetables: carrots, potatoes … parsnips – your favourite. They’re organic. And two steaks. Filet mignon. They’ll be delicious.’
She folded her arms. ‘Why two steaks, Phil?’
He stared at her, speechless.
‘I thought this was something to welcome me back, to make sure I had food in the house?’
‘It is.’
‘Then why two steaks? I only need one.’
He blinked. He didn’t need to answer the question. They both knew why there were two: one for each of them. Which meant that this wasn’t a kind, selfless gesture, after all, but a desperate attempt to get back together with her.
He put the bags on the stone step. The bottle clinked.
‘Do whatever you want,’ he said. ‘Sorry I tried to be helpful.’
‘Don’t guilt-trip me, Phil.’
He looked at her, at the woman he loved more than anything else in the world, and he realized that it might be over, after all, that this might be for real, that he might be losing – have lost – her for good.
That couldn’t happen. Not under any circumstances. He had to get her back. Had to.
He turned and walked back to his car. Behind him, he heard the door shut. As he drove away, he saw that the bags were still outside.
11
Kate watched him leave from the window, saw him glance back at the bags on the front step.
It was a kind gesture – typical of him, in many ways. He was thoughtful and caring and she loved him, she did, but not enough. Not in the way she once had. And, more to the point, the more this went on, the more she lost respect for him. She understood that he was hurting – she was, too, she missed him – but he needed to accept it and move on.
And so she hadn’t taken his bags of food; if she did, she worried that it would create an expectation on Phil’s part that she owed him something. But now they were sitting on her front step.
