by Anne Cassidy
‘Bad day. Some people might say Ricky had it coming,’ Lewis said.
Lewis Proctor leant down and picked up a plastic knife from a table and mimed stabbing it into his own chest. Sherry swore at him. His friends all started to laugh and he chucked it across the hall. The girl didn’t laugh, just turned her back and walked away. Other kids sitting at nearby tables looked on puzzled. Rose felt herself sinking into the seat, her shoulders getting rounder. She wished she could be somewhere else. Emma turned her back on him and he shrugged dramatically and then pretended to wipe away tears. Then he turned and walked off.
Both Sherry and Emma looked straight at Rose. She concentrated on the back of Lewis Proctor, on the way he walked, the shape of his head; how it might look if his hood was up. Was it the same person who had been on the bridge that night?
She couldn’t tell. He looked like any of a hundred other boys who paraded round the school.
‘I don’t know.’
Emma stood up. ‘Thanks, anyway.’
‘Lewis Proctor. Write his name down,’ Sherry said to Rose as though she had made a positive identification.
When they were gone Rose opened up her laptop and spent a few moments looking at emails. There were two from Joshua. She was tempted to read them but wanted to do something first. She went on to Facebook and put the name Lewis Proctor into search. A few seconds later his page appeared. Photos. Messages. Friends. His smile looked like that of any other teenage boy. One of the pictures showed him with a hood up. She looked hard for a few moments but couldn’t see anything familiar.
Later on, when she was on her way out of school heading for Joshua’s flat, she thought of the boy in the hood again, the way he had picked up the plastic knife and pretended to stab himself, mocking Emma about her dead boyfriend.
Lewis Proctor. It was a name Rose wasn’t going to forget.
FIVE
The flat where Joshua was staying was above a shop in Camden Town, a vegetarian cafe and takeaway called Lettuce and Stuff. Rose knew that it belonged to a friend of his, Darren Skeggs, an older boy who he’d got to know when he first moved to Newcastle five years before.
Darren Skeggs was in the third year of an Art degree. Joshua was a first-year undergraduate in Engineering. Darren had let him share the flat for practically nothing. It was the reason why Joshua could afford to study at Queen Mary College. Joshua had told her this and a lot of other stuff in emails he’d sent when they first got back in touch six months or so before.
Rose got off the tube at Camden Town and looked at her map. The shop Lettuce and Stuff was a few streets away. She headed off, feeling the weight of her bag. After a day at school it would have been good to go home and shower and put her things aside. But going home meant that Anna would want to know where she was going, what she was doing, who she was seeing. Since Tuesday, when Ricky Harris had been stabbed, Anna had been fussing over her. It gave her an uncomfortable feeling. There had been many times, in the past, when Rose had wished that Anna would take more notice of her, offer some support or even affection but it hadn’t happened. Since Tuesday night Anna had seemed on the brink of something. She had been talking to her a lot more, standing a bit closer, reaching a hand out as if she were about to pat or touch Rose.
It made Rose feel very uneasy.
She saw the shop on the other side of the road. An odd feeling went through her. She felt inexplicably shy as if this was their first meeting. Her memory of seeing him late on Tuesday night had been suffused with the events at the railway station hours before. She had tried to separate them, to box off what had happened at the station and just think about being with Joshua, but she hadn’t managed it.
As she waited at the crossing for the lights to change, she wondered what the flat would be like and whether Darren Skeggs would be there. She hoped not. She was keen to spend time with her stepbrother alone. She wanted Joshua to fill in all the gaps in the last five years. The emails he’d sent to her had sketched out his life in Newcastle after their parents went missing. He’d headed them as Chapter One, Chapter Two and so on. She had printed them off and read them over and over, piecing together the important events. She’d also saved them on to a file even though she knew them off by heart.
The lights changed and Rose walked across the road and found herself outside Lettuce and Stuff. The door to the flat was at the side of the shop entrance just as Joshua had described. She looked at her mobile. It was 4.32. She was a little early. She moved forward to ring the bell but suddenly felt tentative, awkward. Shy.
She wasn’t ready to go in and see him.
The door to Lettuce and Stuff opened and a couple came out arm in arm, holding takeaway cups of coffee, the man giving the woman a kiss on the forehead.
Rose slipped into the cafe and up to the counter. She waited to be served, then got a peppermint tea and sat down at a table. The tea had been served in a tall glass with a silver handle. She stirred it with a long spoon, the kind that was used for a sundae. She looked around. At the next table was a young girl with a baby in a pushchair. The baby was sound asleep; the girl had headphones on and was nodding to the silent beat. Two young women were sitting at another table talking quietly, one of them giggling at what the other said. The cafe door opened and a bald man came in holding a folded newspaper under one arm and carrying a red holdall with the other.
Rose glanced up at the ceiling. Joshua was one floor above her. When she’d had a few minutes to relax and get herself together she would go out and ring the bell, and when he opened the door she’d say Hello or Hi! in some breezy way as if she was used to visiting him; as if they had never been apart, as if they hadn’t been rudely separated five years before.
She stared out on to Camden High Street. The cars were queuing, cyclists weaving in and around them. Some school boys in purple blazers were walking along in a straight line, causing pedestrians to sidestep them.
She remembered that separation keenly. Her grandmother had eventually taken Rose to live with her and Joshua had gone to his uncle Stuart’s in Newcastle. After the split they had gradually faded out of each other’s lives.
At first they’d stayed with foster carers, Paul and Alice Townsend. They’d been there since a couple of days after their parents disappeared. For two weeks they’d huddled together in various rooms throughout the house, keeping themselves to themselves. They didn’t say much to the others who were there, a surly teenage boy who stomped around the house wearing his coat most of the time and a tiny girl of about seven who sat sucking her thumb, her eyes glued to the television set. They had rooms next door to each other and they spent most of their time in one or the other. Late at night, when Paul or Alice said it was time for lights out, they would separate.
They talked about what had happened non-stop.
From time to time they looked out of the front windows of the house in the hope of a police car pulling up outside. They were eager to see a policeman, any policeman who had some information for them.
Paul and Alice told them as much as they could. No, there was no fresh news. Yes, the police had questioned the people at the restaurant where her mum and Brendan had gone for a meal. Yes, the other shops and pubs and bars had been questioned but no one had seen the couple after they left the restaurant. And yes, Brendan’s car, a blue Audi, had been found parked in a side street.
Then one day a female social worker came to the house. She wanted to speak to Rose alone. She told her about the grandmother she never knew she had. She took her to a house in Belsize Park. Rose walked hesitantly through the big front door and was faced with a tall stiff woman with shoulder-length hair, a streak of grey at the front. The woman had held out her hand formally for Rose to shake. She’d noticed the nails then, pale pink, rounded, like shells from a beach. Anna Christie her name was and she was dressed smartly – like someone going to a wedding. Rose noticed her patent high heel shoes clicking on the wooden floor. She followed her further and further into the big house, glancing backwards
until she could no longer see the front door. They had tea in the conservatory and her grandmother asked her some questions about her life. She did not mention Rose’s mother. Not once. Nor did she ask any questions about the night her mum and Brendan went out for a meal and never came back.
When Rose returned to the foster home she spent every minute with Joshua. She sensed that she would not be there for long. Joshua had had a phone call from his uncle in Newcastle. He was to go and live with him.
Paul and Alice Townsend hugged them and wished them luck. The little girl waved from her place on the settee, her eyes leaving the television for only seconds, then returning to the screen. The boy was upstairs somewhere and didn’t answer when they called Goodbye.
We’ll keep in touch, Rose had said.
I’ll see you soon, Joshua had said, I’ll visit. You can come up to Newcastle.
But it hadn’t happened.
Rose hadn’t understood why Joshua couldn’t come to live with her and her grandmother. He was her stepbrother. She’d lost her mum and Brendan. Why should she lose Joshua as well? Her grandmother had been brisk when the subject was raised. Her eyes had rolled and she’d made a tsking sound. It was not how things were done. Joshua had to go and live with his blood relatives. That was the law. She wouldn’t be drawn on it. Rose and Joshua had written to each other and there were a number of awkward phone calls when the conversation dried up after a few moments. When Rose went to boarding school these things less happened less often until eventually they lost contact.
Then six months ago, when Rose was looking at her laptop, she got an email message. Joshua had contacted her to say that he was coming to London to study. After that she received long emails from him and sent long replies.
Now she was sitting in a cafe looking at an empty glass of peppermint tea, aware that Joshua was in a flat above her. She looked around. There was only the man with the red holdall left. The others had gone. It was almost five o’clock. Why not go out and ring on the bell? Then she could go up to his flat and see how he was living. She could find out all the stuff she’d wanted to find out on Tuesday night before the events at the station. Why not? Why was she feeling so awkward about it?
She sighed and went to the counter again. She bought a blueberry muffin and a bottle of water. When she sat down the man looked up at her. He gave a polite smile and she felt she ought to respond. For a second he looked familiar so she averted her eyes. The last thing she wanted was some small talk with someone she vaguely knew. She pulled out her laptop and set it up on the table, then waited for it to load up. She tweaked a corner of the muffin and felt it crumble on her tongue.
She looked at her email and smiled, seeing another message from Joshua.
Rosie, looking forward to seeing you later!
She moved it into the folder marked Josh. It joined a long list of saved emails and she scrolled up them. She highlighted one and then another, scanning the content, remembering the information from when she’d read it the first time. She took a chunk of her muffin and ate it, chewing it slowly, looking over the paragraphs that Josh had sent. Then she opened one with the title Flat in Camden. It was the story of how Joshua had got to know Darren Skeggs. She glanced over it and then closed it down. Then she went on to Facebook and looked up Joshua’s page. She scrolled through his friends to see if there was a picture of Darren Skeggs. There wasn’t.
When Joshua had started at a local boys’ school in Newcastle he’d had to prove himself. He had lived in and around London all his life and when he had gone back to the place where his dad was brought up he stuck out like a sore thumb. There was blood spilt, he’d told her in the email. She’d remembered those very words with a chill.
One day he had found Darren Skeggs in the toilets. The boy was in a state, beaten and bruised. Joshua had helped him up and got tissues so that he could wash himself. If that had been all that had happened I would have just left it. Violence in a boys’ school; it’s practically mandatory, he’d said. But Darren’s asthma inhaler had been chucked down a filthy toilet. It made me mad, he’d said. It sent me into a rage. He’d found the boys concerned and dragged one of them back and made him put his hand down and retrieve the inhaler from the fetid water. Some of the boys’ mates turned up to help him but Joshua didn’t back down. I took the kid’s mobile, expensive it was, and I dropped it into the same crappy toilet.
Darren Skeggs had been left alone after that.
‘Excuse me, you’re a student at Camden, aren’t you?’ a voice said.
She looked up, her reverie broken. The bald man was standing at his table as if he was about to leave. He had a leather jacket on, like a biker’s jacket. There was no crash helmet although his bag looked big enough to hold one. It was a bright red colour and there was a chequered flag on it, the kind that is waved in front of a racing car.
‘Yes,’ she said, pulling the lid of her laptop half closed.
‘I thought I recognised you. I work there. I’m a technician.’
‘Oh, hi,’ she said, giving a stiff smile.
‘You are the girl who was involved when that boy got killed?’
She nodded. Did absolutely everyone in the world know about it?
‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘That boy was nasty to you. I had to speak to him about it.’
‘Yes,’ she said, tapping her fingers on her laptop.
‘Anyway. Terrible thing. I’ll let you get back to your work.’
The man turned away and went out of the cafe. The door hung open for a second, letting the cold air in. Rose relaxed. Then she felt immediately guilty. Why was she so ill at ease with people? The man had done her a favour – why couldn’t she be more pleasant to him?
She thought back to the day in school a couple of weeks before when she’d been in the IT suite working on some graphics for an art project. She’d been deep in thought and felt someone flick the back of her head. She looked round to see Ricky Harris standing behind her with a couple of his mates. She’d turned back to her work, ignoring him and blushed quietly as she heard him talk loudly about her.
‘You know what private school girls are like. They give it away to anyone. They’ll do anything you ask them to. Right slags.’
Rose felt her temper rise but made herself sit very still.
‘You!’ a strong male voice called. ‘Leave that girl alone. What’s your business in here? Have you got a pass? What’s your name?’
Rose looked round to see one of the technicians striding across the room, his identity tag flying out. He was a tall bald man. The top button of his shirt was undone and his tie knotted loosely. He had black jeans on and his legs looked thin and long.
‘All right, gay boy. Calm down,’ Ricky Harris said.
‘Get out of here,’ the technician said.
‘I will. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I don’t want to get touched up. Wait, you sure you’ve had one of them CRB checks? Sure you’re not on the sex offenders’ register?’
‘I’ll be speaking to your form tutor.’
‘Speaking to him. I bet you’d like to do more than that!’
They left, laughing. The technician looked flustered. Rose saw his name tag then: Frank Palmer, IT Technician. Kids were looking up from their computers and a couple of the other technicians were looking over at him, talking to each other.
‘Thanks, you didn’t need to say anything …’ she said.
‘You should speak to your form tutor. No one should treat you like that.’
The cafe was empty and Rose began to pack her laptop away. Why hadn’t she been nicer to the man when he spoke to her? He had only wanted to pass the time of day. In any case why was she still there, sitting in the cafe? Her muffin was finished, the paper case baggy, its pleats misshapen. Joshua was expecting her.
But she couldn’t get Ricky Harris out of her mind. His bullying had got to her. Then, on the walkway above the railway lines, someone had bullied him. Should she feel a tiny bit pleased about that? He had
turned on to the walkway and taken the last steps he would ever take. He had come face to face with the person who would kill him seconds later. Someone who was past throwing stuff down toilets and tormenting shy classmates. This was a person who meant business, who carried a length of steel that slid in and out of flesh as though it was butter.
The thought made her feel weak for a second.
Ricky Harris had no doubt been grinning to himself because he had ruffled the feathers of the posh girl from school. Perhaps he had had a smile on his face. Was it likely that that smile had offended another young man who had a name to make for himself? A young man like Lewis Proctor? What you smiling for, Harris? he might have said before putting his hand into his pocket and pulling out a knife.
She walked to the door of the cafe.
Violence and boys. Why did these two words fit so well together? Joshua said that it had been round every corner in his boys’ only school. She pictured packs of snappy dogs eyeing each other, their tails stiff with apprehension. How different from her boarding school. There had been no violence at Mary Linton School for Girls. Nothing physical; no blood, no bruises, no hair pulling. Nothing so common for so many well brought-up girls. There had been other stuff, though; hurt and embarrassment, shame and envy. She thought of Rachel Bliss for the first time in months. Her oldest friend. Her closest friend. Rachel who had a soft smile and a hard heart.
It gave her a momentary jolt.
She’d spent too long thinking about the past.
Joshua was upstairs and she needed to go and see him.
She opened the cafe door and went out into the street. Moments later she was standing by Joshua’s front door and ringing his bell.
SIX
There was the sound of heavy footsteps coming down the stairs. Rose expected Joshua to open the door. She worked herself up to a smile to greet him. She heard bolts being pulled back. The door opened abruptly and a young man with heavy black glasses and flat black hair stared at her.
