“Damn it, Eva,” shouted Lauren. “You could have avoided this. You should have gone ahead like that silver car did!”
“That silver car helped cause all this! That truck driver could be hurt, Lauren.”
“I get that. But we need to get to Jamie before that bitch locks him up in the penthouse. You know he won’t let us in once that happens.”
“There’ll be another way. Just be patient.”
“Be patient? I won’t. Not today. Do something!”
“Like what? Look around!” said Eva.
“Then drive over the central reservation – It’s only grass. You’ll be able go over it.”
“We can’t. If the police see, they’ll arrest us.”
“There are no police here. Do it, Eva. You said you wanted this over.”
“I do.”
“Then do it!”
Eva looked at Lauren. She looked tired, but her eyes were wide and insistent.
“You need to calm down, Lauren.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that. I’m your client. I’m telling you to drive around the accident.”
“And I’m telling you we can’t do that.”
“You were always so in love with the bloody rules, weren’t you? So how did you end up with a man like him? A rule breaker in a leather jacket? To make up for all the things you wouldn’t do? Or was he just a bit of rough to make up for all the inhibitions you used to live by?”
“How dare you?!” said Eva. “I almost killed Blane because of you. I wiped the floor with Boothroyd—”
“Only because I was there. See. You need me to push you. Even now you can’t do what needs to be done to finish the job. Fear. Is that what it is? Fear. That’s why you took up with him. To make up for what you don’t have. He’s the hired help who does what you can’t face. Is that it?”
Eva’s eyes flared. “I should tell you to get out of my car. I’ve already done far more for you than I should.”
“And there we have it. You can’t finish this because you haven’t got the bottle!”
The woman was manipulating her again, driving her wild. Eva knew it but she didn’t care. Lauren was right. It had to end here, like this. The manipulation, the lies, the past. It was time to be done with all of it.
Eva thought of Blane. About 2016. The Corsa and Mrs Blane’s accident. Reva Rentals and Adam Boothroyd’s denial that he was ever involved. Of course he would deny it, and so would Blane. By putting Blane and Lauren together in one room together, Eva backed herself to finally cut through the haze of lies. The haze had to be removed – burnt away in the fireworks of an inevitable confrontation.
“I’m warning you, Lauren. Never talk to me like that again.”
Lauren smiled at her, but Eva felt nothing but her mockery.
“Screw you, Lauren.”
Eva took off the handbrake, dabbed he accelerator and turned the steering wheel sharp left. She sent the Alfa Romeo bobbing up over the kerb of the central reservation. The car bumped over the flattened lamppost and navigated around the back of the trailer. Car horns blared angrily in their wake, and a few drivers shouted after her. Eva didn’t dare look back. Passing the lorry, Eva turned the Alfa sharp right and the car bounded down onto the empty road ahead and pulled away, just as the first sirens sounded in the distance.
Lauren whooped and cheered in the passenger seat and looked back over her shoulder. Eva could only shake her head and drive.
Twenty-three
Joanne found the house in the shadow of the tower blocks at Bruton Square, on the eastern edge of town. Most of the red brick terraced houses in the endless streets looked a little rough around the edges, but at least they were neat and orderly, the homeowners doing their best to show pride in their patches of front lawn, but not this one. Number one hundred and fourteen Meredith Avenue looked distinctly unloved. The lawn was a jungle and outside the front door, two prams had been left to rot and grow mouldy in the rain, one upturned and half consumed in the grass. Joanne checked her note to make sure she had the right address. Yes, this was the one. As she headed down the garden path, a man passing along the street called for her attention “Do us a favour, love! You tell her to clear up her mess or get out!” Joanne gave the man a purse-lipped, joyless smile and walked to the peeling front door. The door opened before she had the chance to ring or knock. A young boy in a large cartoon superhero T-shirt looked up at her from the doorway. There was no sign of a nappy, underpants or trousers in sight – just the T-shirt and his naked body. The boy looked up at her with his mouth hanging open, staring and not saying a word.
“Is Mummy in?” said Joanne. The floor behind the boy was strewn with toys. The walls had signs of several different paints daubed over them, test colours maybe, each disliked and abandoned.
“Mummy’s in alright,” came a woman’s voice. “Mummy’s got no choice, has she?”
A stout, short-haired woman emerged from the front room, a moody-looking baby perched on her hip. The baby wore a disposable nappy and nothing else. It had a thick head of dark hair and glared at Joanne like she was an intruder. Tina Dolby had to be as old as Eva. The same year at school, maybe even in the same class, but the difference was stark. She was overweight, tired-eyed, wrinkled and moody. Could this have been Eva if things had turned out differently?
“You coming in? I don’t like leaving my front door open for all the judgey types to see.”
“Yes, of course,” said Joanne, stepping inside. “Thanks for allowing me to come.”
Joanne edged around the boy with no pants on and a muscle-bound action figure in his hands. Its head had been pulled off. The kid stared at Joanne as she walked inside, and she did her best to smile at him.
“Did you bring that milk?” said the woman.
“Yes,” said Joanne. “And some Freddos. Here.”
Joanne put a two pint carton of green-lid semi-skimmed on the dining table then pulled out a purple foil pack of Freddo chocolate bars and lay them beside it.
“Froggy bars!” said the pantless kid. The baby clapped his podgy hands at his brother’s delight.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Tina. “You can have one each. And if you’re quiet while the lady is here, maybe you’ll get another.”
The boy cheered, the baby clapped. Tina put the baby into his high chair and strapped him in before tearing away the foil and sticking the chocolate frog into his hands. The baby poked at it before sliding most of the small bar into his mouth. He made a surprised face at the taste, and Joanne smiled. The other boy plonked himself on the floor among the detritus and sucked his bar like a lollipop.
“You’re smiling at them now, love,” said Dolby, “but you won’t be in ten years. They might be cute, but they’re bloody hard work.”
Joanne didn’t dispute it. The woman looked knackered, and the word ‘cute’ seemed a little generous.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m tired. And as far as kids are concerned, this isn’t my first rodeo.”
“No?”
“I’ve got a seventeen-year-old daughter too. Out doing whatever she likes whenever she likes, there’s no stopping her. She’s moved out now. I keep telling her not to get herself pregnant but what can I do?”
Joanne kept her smile in place. She’d been seventeen herself not long back, but now it seemed young. Far too young to be abandoned to a hard life with too much freedom.
“You don’t look old enough,” said Joanne, thinking mostly of Eva.
“No? Your eyes are telling me different. Tea?” said the woman.
“No thanks. Just had one,” she lied.
“Right you are. Take a seat in the lounge then. We might get five minutes quiet if we’re lucky – before bedlam starts up again.”
Joanne nodded and walked across the open-plan living space towards a dated cream leather sofa. She smoothed her skirt behind her and perched on the edge. The woman seemed to take in every gesture and recognise what it meant. There was a hard look behind her apparent calm.
“You could be half Eva’s age. How come you said she’s a friend?”
Tina poured the water, left the bag in her cup and took the milk with her to the armchair.
“Until recently, I was her employee. Now we’re friends.”
“An employee, eh? Eva’s doing well for herself then.”
“Mostly,” said Joanne.
“Isn’t she a private detective or something? I never saw that coming!”
“Yes. She’s been a very successful PI. Tackled some very important cases… in fact, she’s something of a role model for me, to be honest.”
“Role model? Ha. Good for her. Back in the old days, Eva was just the butt of our jokes. I mean, she was pretty, very pretty, but she acted like she didn’t know it. She was the only one who didn’t, mind. All the boys would have liked to get at her, but she so was so aloof no one tried. Looking back, I think she was just shy. Now I wish I’d been a bit shy too. Things might have turned out different.”
“Did you know Eva well then?” said Joanne.
“No. Mostly from a distance. She was quiet. Back then she hung around with Lauren Jaeger. They were peas in a pod in those first years at St Cecil’s. Then come the third and fourth year – years nine and ten – Lauren changed. She was still with Eva for a while, but she started hanging around us, making jokes with our crowd. Smoking ciggies, that kind of thing. She even started mucking about with the boys like we did, and by the end she was the worst. She liked the older boys, ones who’d already left school. Lauren wouldn’t admit it, but I know she screwed around with a few of them. In year ten, she disappeared from school before the end of term… no one knew why. But I guessed she’d had an abortion. She never said – it was just a feeling, you know?”
“Did that happen while she was friends with Eva?”
“No. In year nine, Lauren still sat with Eva in class but took the piss out of her behind her back. When she finally gave Eva the heave-ho, she admitted to us that she really didn’t like the girl. Us lot used to go to the big park in Basildon some Saturdays and hang around with the bad boys and get up to no good. Some nights Lauren would seem happy, some she would go right off the rails. But whenever she lost it, it always came back to Eva Roberts. Eva was smarter than her, prettier, too much of a goody-two-shoes. The slagging off was endless.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Lauren wanted what Eva had, you see, but she wanted to be cool as well. One of the girls like us. But you couldn’t be both. That’s what burned her. I think she hated Eva even when they were still sitting next to each other in class. She probably hated her the whole time.”
“Hate? That’s a strong word to use about two schoolfriends.”
“I’m telling you how I see it. They weren’t friends. They might have looked like it, but that was it. If you’d heard what Lauren used to say about her, you’d be in no doubt. It was hatred. Hate and jealousy, pure and simple. And Eva didn’t know anything about it until Lauren cut her dead out of pure spite.”
“Spite?”
“Eva had all those things Lauren wanted. What did Lauren have? Looks, a good figure, half a brain, a snappy sense of humour, but I think Lauren knew she was wasting it all. And by the end of school her bad points started outweighing any good in her. She was bossy, controlling, and a back stabber too. And she only ever got worse.”
“But some girls can be like that, right?” said Joanne. “I knew a few myself.”
“Not like Lauren, you didn’t. Lauren knew Eva depended on her. That was the only weapon Lauren had left against her. So she used it and killed their friendship stone dead. And when she’d done that we saw the poor girl go into mourning. It was pathetic to see – you had to feel for her. What Lauren did was cruel. But we laughed, because Lauren laughed. But it only made her worse. She went off the rails big time, and became a kind of ringleader for us, did all kinds of crazy things. After that it was like she didn’t care anymore. But she would still talk about Eva, even while her life was going wrong from all the drink and drugs and the boys we were mucking around with, she only ever blamed Eva.”
“Even then?”
Tina nodded and stirred her tea. The child had finished his first Freddo bar. He stood up and showed his mother his gooey chocolate covered fingers. His mouth was coated with the stuff. The woman nodded at the table. “Get another bar for you and one for your brother. I’ll open them for you.”
The little boy cheered and did as he was told. Tina tore off the wrapper and left the empty packets on the sofa. The boy ran and gave his baby brother his chocolate. The baby whooped.
“By the last year, Lauren was more or less knocking off three fellas at once and snorting as much of the white stuff as they would give her. But Eva was all she talked about. The jokes had gone. The charisma too. She was ruined, but she blamed Eva. “Eva set an impossibly high bar to reach.” All that shite. It was boring to listen to, but she was so full of hate, we felt she was dangerous. None of us dared contradict her. We knew she could flip, like she did when she smashed old Gernahue’s window.”
“That’s where I got your number, Mrs Gernahue.”
Tina nodded, a hint of guilt still showing on her face. “How is the old dear?”
“Very well, by the sound of it.”
“Good. What we did to her was out of line. I saw she got the shakes because of Lauren, the dear old girl. I always felt bad about old Gerny. She was one of the nice ones.”
Joanne felt an unpleasant edge of concern rising in her chest. She needed to know more.
“Lauren Jaeger, you make her sound really bad.”
“She was.”
“Do you think she was stable?”
“Back then? Of course not. She was off the rails in all senses, and obsessed with Eva, though by the time Eva got herself back on track, I doubt she was aware of it.”
“Obsessed?”
“I told you, she hated her. Lauren used to hatch stupid ideas about how to get more revenge on Eva, as if revenge was owed She talked about making her less pretty. Breaking her nose, smashing her teeth out… It sounded like a fantasy, but you just never knew. Thankfully it never happened. And that was a long while ago now.”
“Do you think she might have changed? Mellowed?”
“I don’t know, do I? But I wouldn’t bloody bet on it. After we left school and I got shacked up with my first husband, I heard the rumours. It got bandied about in the pub. Lauren Jaeger had finally flipped. She chased some French lover boy from London all the way to Paris… and when he mucked her about and got with someone else, she tried to top the pair of them on the Paris underground. Does that sound mellow? Something like that was always coming. Lauren had a screw loose. There was always so much anger, like a scratch that needed itching. It was bound to happen.”
“She did what?!”
“She tried to kill them. Push them in front of a train, so I heard.”
“How did you hear about it?”
“Oh… One of the school receptionists must have blabbed to someone else, you know how it goes. The rumour did the rounds, then we moved on. Lauren was already gone you see. Her gossip value was pretty much over with.”
“But… now she’s back.”
“So you said. And she’s back with Eva? That’s not too clever if you ask me. Not clever at all.
Joanne stared at Tina waiting for the answer she dreaded to hear.
“Why not?”
“You heard. She tried to kill this French couple because they crossed her. How many times did I hear Lauren spouting off about Eva? About hurting her? Killing her, even?”
“Killing her? She said that?”
“Yes. Even that. Said she wanted to drown her in the sea or push her in front of a car. Anything she could get away with. I thought it was all talk, but after I heard about France, well, it put our school days right in perspective. Lauren was like dynamite ready to explode. Looking back, we were lucky none of us got stabbed by her. She was too much but we were scared, weren’t we? That
’s how it goes with kids.”
“Do you think… do you think she could still hate Eva like that?”
“Hate her? Yes. I think so. That hate only got stronger in the time I knew her.”
“And… what about killing her? Do you think she meant it?
The woman looked down at her steaming mug. “I tell you, that girl was capable of anything. And after what happened, she ended up in a madhouse for a long time, so they say. If it was me in Eva’s shoes, I’d never want to see her again. And I don’t. She’s deadly, that one.”
Joanne’s eyes widened. She looked around the room, but she was already absent, no longer seeing the room about her. Her mind was racing.
“Are you… are you okay?” said Tina.
“Oh no… oh my God,” said Joanne. “She’s in danger. Eva’s in danger. She trusted that woman too much and let her get too close… She’s let Lauren get into her head.”
Joanne launched up from the sofa and pulled her bag over her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Tina. I’ve got to go. Thank you for seeing me. You might just have saved Eva’s life…”
Play With Fire Page 35
