The Back Road

by Abbott, Rachel

  With one swift movement, she grasped the rose by its thorny stem and threw it in the waste bin. She placed both hands on the worktop and leant hard against them, trying to calm her shaking. Noticing blood pulsing from her thumb, she grabbed a piece of kitchen roll, and wrapped it tightly round the wound.

  Then she saw her mobile sitting there. She needed some support, and there was only one person she could talk to. Grabbing the phone, she switched it on.

  Six missed calls. All from the same person earlier this evening. She shouldn’t have ignored him. But what was he thinking, calling her here when Max was around. She should have answered and told him again to leave her alone. She’d thought he would get the message if she ignored him.

  Stabbing her finger hard on the screen, she deleted the calls, and quickly started to write a text. Hearing a slight sound behind her, she turned round with a guilty start.

  ‘Ellie, are you okay? I came to see if I could help at all.’ She wondered how long Mimi had been standing there, and felt uncomfortable as she met her inscrutable gaze. She put her phone down quickly. The text could wait.

  ‘Sorry, Mimi. I caught my finger on something and wanted it to stop bleeding. It wouldn’t do to drip blood on the fish and I didn’t think it would matter much if the next course was delayed.’

  ‘I’m sure everybody will be fine for a while,’ Mimi said. ‘Thanks for introducing me to your friends. It’s good to meet more of Patrick’s circle. Maybe when we get a bigger place after his divorce we can invite everybody round to us.’

  Ellie nearly choked at the word ‘divorce’ and wondered if Pat knew that he was getting one. She was damn sure Georgia didn’t.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you about your friends? It’s just that you all seem to know each other so well, and I feel a bit out of it if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ellie said. ‘That’s not intentional. What do you want to know?’

  Ellie knew she sounded abrupt, but she couldn’t help it. She had to try harder, though – for Pat’s sake.

  ‘Fiona and Charles - they seem a bit different to the rest of you.’

  Ellie nearly smiled at that.

  ‘Charles is a very wealthy investment banker. He works in London and he met Fiona when she was living there. She used to go to school with me, and then she left the village and we lost touch. She’s only been back a few years. Don’t worry about not knowing anybody, though. Tom knows nobody at all, and at least you’ve met me and Max before. You’re not the only newcomer.’

  ‘What about the other couple - Gary and Penny I think you said they were called.’

  ‘Gary’s head of planning for the local council – they used to be our neighbours before we moved here. You may have seen him in the pub, actually – although I’m not sure which one he goes to these days.’

  ‘I don’t remember him, but I get to meet a lot of people that way. My future husband for one,’ Mimi said with a tinkling laugh that Ellie couldn’t echo. ‘And of course, people come in from the school all the time. Max has been in a few times recently with that PE teacher he seems so fond of.’

  You little cow, Ellie thought. And I was trying to be nice to you.

  She’d only met Mimi three times, and this was the second time she’d mentioned the gorgeous Alannah, and Max’s relationship with her.

  Well, whatever was going on, Ellie wasn’t going to rise to the bait now.

  ‘Yes, Max has mentioned that they’ve been in. Now look, Mimi, I need to get on with the next course, so if you don’t mind spreading the plates out, I’ll have the fish done in a few minutes. Do you think you could take the cling film off the chillies and ginger, and all those other bits, please? I’m going to grab my wine glass from the table.’

  And I might just throw it in your face, she couldn’t help thinking.

  * * *

  As Ellie went out, Mimi started to do as she had been asked. There was no way she was giving them any more reasons to think she was a waste of space. They already thought Patrick was mental, and they didn’t try very hard to hide it. She knew she was a good actress, although occasionally she couldn’t stop the odd flush to her skin and neck. But these people were all so self-satisfied in their perfect little worlds, and she was struggling to keep a smile on her face.

  She was going to keep Patrick, though, whatever they thought. Maybe causing a bit of disruption in the Ellie and Max household might distract them for long enough to forget about her and stop interfering. They may have invited her tonight, but she knew they were wishing Georgia was here instead. How did they think that made her feel?

  She savagely tore the cling film off the highly organised individual dishes that Ellie had laid out with the ingredients to accompany the fish, screwing it up into a tight ball.

  She despised them all - but one more than the rest.

  Lifting the lid of the bin, she was about to hurl the ball of cling film in when she saw something that caused her frustration to be replaced by curiosity. A perfect single yellow rose lay on top of the rubbish. Strange. Why would Ellie have thrown it away?

  As she turned back to the worktop, she caught sight of a mobile phone, and remembered that Ellie had been typing a text message when she’d interrupted her.

  Mimi peeped around the opening into the dining room, and could see that Ellie was talking to Charles. She couldn’t help noticing that Patrick had left the room too. Her mouth tightened into a thin line.

  Turning her back to the door, she picked up Ellie’s phone and touched the screen. And there was the message - incomplete, but complete enough. She narrowed her eyes at its content. So that’s why the rose was in the bin. An unwanted gift. And she knew exactly where it had come from.

  Mimi’s skin prickled with the heat of anger when she saw who Ellie had been texting. She quickly typed a text of her own, pressed send, then erased the evidence.

  At that moment she heard the message tone of her own phone, buried in her handbag on the kitchen table. She hadn’t thought she would be needing it tonight. She walked over and checked the screen, already knowing what it would say.

  14

  The mood around the table was strange. To Leo it seemed as if everyone was acting a part that was different from any version of themselves she had ever seen. As an observer of this intriguing phenomenon she had the best seat in the house, between a slightly manic Max who appeared determined to be jolly, and a very subdued Pat. She was opposite the new neighbour, who appeared remarkably sane in comparison to everybody else, and looked casually trendy tonight in a white linen short-sleeved shirt over dark blue chinos. She was keen to learn his story, but now perhaps wasn’t the right time.

  Mimi was like a limpet around Pat - whom she insisted on calling Patrick because apparently Pat was a girl’s name. Max, being Max, had tried to oblige for about two minutes, but had quickly forgotten and reverted to the name he had been using since they met at university nearly eighteen years ago. Pat, on the other hand, seemed almost uncomfortable. There was no evidence of his occasional moments of dry humour tonight.

  She felt a bit sorry for Ellie and Max’s builder. He had been seated between Mimi and Gary, and was definitely ill at ease. Mind you, that wasn’t surprising as Mimi wouldn’t speak to him in case she missed something that Pat was saying, and Gary, as usual, was only interested in talking about himself and in an even louder voice than normal. Leo hadn’t seen Gary for some time, and had forgotten what an idiot he could be - especially in the way he spoke to his wife. Penny had hair the colour of butter shortbread, and she’d grown it long so that when she leaned forward a shiny curtain of pale gold hid her face from view. With a sixties style fringe, there wasn’t much of her left to see. She had barely lifted her head all evening, apparently intent on focusing on the food, but on the occasions that she did look up, Leo noticed that the skin under her eyes was tinged with purple, as if she wasn’t getting enough sleep. Penny had been a kind and thoughtful neighbour for Ellie, especially after the twins were bo
rn, and Leo was sure that Max only put up with Gary because he was Penny’s husband.

  Gary had the sort of haircut that required constant brushing back with the fingers, or even - God help us - the occasional flick of the head like a shy girl on her first date. There was no doubt that he was technically a handsome guy, with piercing blue eyes, a broad forehead and sensuous lips, which opened to reveal the brightest teeth that Leo had ever seen. Somebody had been a little excessive with the whitening treatments, it would seem. But he wore the look of a person who believes himself to be superior, as if he were looking down his nose at everybody around him. Leo couldn’t help enjoying the fact that she could see the back of Gary’s head in the mirror on the wall behind him, and there was undoubtedly a sign of thinning there. He wasn’t going to like that one little bit.

  As Mimi was whispering in Pat’s ear, Leo took the opportunity to lean across them and talk to Sean.

  ‘You’ve made a wonderful job of renovating the house, Sean. It’s superb.’

  Tom chipped in too, obviously realising that Leo was trying to bring Sean into the conversation.

  ‘Yes, it’s beautiful. I’ve recently done my own place. Not a patch on this, of course. Are you working on any more projects?’ Tom asked.

  ‘I’ve got something on the go, but it’s still a bit hush-hush. We’re hoping to get everything signed in the next week or so,’ Sean answered. ‘And then we need to get the plans approved, which my friend on my right here tells me shouldn’t be a problem.’

  He nudged Gary as he spoke.

  ‘What do you do then, Gary?’ Tom asked

  ‘I’m head of planning for the council,’ Gary answered. ‘Crap job, but somebody’s got to do it!’

  Leo knew all about Gary’s thwarted ambitions. His favourite line was that he was originally going to be an architect, but Penny buggered all that up for him by falling pregnant. She wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to bore everybody with that line again, so Leo turned to Ellie.

  ‘The food is amazing, Ellie. As always.’

  ‘Thanks Leo.’ Ellie turned to the rest of the guests. ‘I had to go into work today, so I didn’t have as long as I’d wanted to prepare. I hope everything’s all right?’

  Leo looked at her in disbelief, as everybody passed on the congratulations. How could she think it was anything other than okay? Ellie was a wonderful cook, and after the oriental sea bass, they had feasted on a tender fillet of beef in a soy honey glaze. In fact, half the table still hadn’t finished and were taking it slowly.

  ‘I seem to remember you saying that you’re a nurse, Ellie - is that right?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Yes. At the Royal, in the ICU. I only work three shifts a week, and not usually on a Saturday. But we’re a bit short-staffed with the holidays, and we got a serious head injury in during the night. We can’t leave them unattended.’

  Pat put his knife and fork down and leaned towards Ellie across the table.

  ‘It wasn’t Abbie Campbell, was it by any chance Ellie?’ Pat asked quietly.

  ‘Abbie Campbell? Why, what’s happened to her, for God’s sake?’ Max said. His habitual smile had disappeared in an instant. The whole table fell silent as Max’s tone penetrated the buzz of conversation.

  ‘The Head had a call from the police in the middle of the night to say that a young girl had been rushed to hospital, but nobody had been reported missing, and they didn’t know who she was. They wanted him to go and see if he could identify her.’

  ‘The Head?’ Max raised his eyes to the glass ceiling. ‘I don’t think he’d recognise more than about five per cent of the kids. What did he do?’

  ‘He called Alannah at about four thirty this morning, apparently. She knows all the girls, of course.’

  ‘I’m amazed that she was sober enough to identify anybody,’ Ellie said in a slightly acid tone.

  ‘Oh, she wasn’t drinking last night. She was driving, wasn’t she Max?’ Pat asked. Without waiting for an answer, he continued. ‘Anyway, she identified Abbie. I was going to tell you, but I decided to wait until later so as not to spoil the evening.’

  ‘Christ. What happened to the poor kid?’ Max asked.

  ‘She was knocked over last night on the back road. A hit and run. Left for dead, I’m afraid.’

  ‘God almighty. What sort of a bastard would do that?’

  Max looked stunned for a moment, then glanced around the table realising that his guests were a bit excluded from this conversation.

  ‘Sorry, everybody. But this is dreadful news. Abbie’s a pupil at our school. She’s only fourteen and she’s a nice kid, if a bit quiet. I don’t have much to do with her personally, being the boys’ PE teacher, but Pat’s a deputy head, and he knows her quite well. Do you know how she’s doing, Ellie?’

  Nobody was eating, and everybody’s cutlery had been gently laid down as the shock that something like this could happen in their village permeated the room. Turning towards Ellie, Leo couldn’t help noticing her sister’s expression. She looked close to tears.

  ‘I’m afraid she’s in a critical condition. I’m sorry to say that it’s not looking very hopeful,’ Ellie said.

  For once, even Fiona had the sense to be quiet. Tom Douglas broke the silence, looking around the room as he did so. Ever the policeman, Leo thought.

  ‘I heard about the accident, actually. A friend of mine is on the investigation team. Apparently she was found in the early hours of this morning. I don’t know much more than that, though.’ Leo had to wonder how honest Tom was being. She didn’t doubt for a moment that – one policeman to another - his friend would have shared some of the finer details, but Tom wasn’t about to reveal more than the basics.

  ‘The early hours? And she wasn’t reported missing?’ Max said. ‘That doesn’t sound right to me. She comes from a good family - there’s no way they wouldn’t know where she was. I can’t believe she would have snuck out in the dark on her own. She’s not that kind of kid at all.’

  Nobody appeared to have any suggestions to explain this, and the table remained quiet. There was a stillness in the room which Leo found hard to place, as if more than one person was holding his or her breath. She was being fanciful.

  Max broke the silence.

  ‘Did you see anything on your way home from the barbecue, Pat? I never worked out what time you left the rugby club. One minute you were there, the next you weren’t.’

  ‘I didn’t go home that way,’ Pat said quietly.

  ‘What do you mean? There isn’t another…’

  ‘Can I top anybody’s wine up?’ Ellie said in a loud voice, giving Max a glare that only he and Leo could see.

  * * *

  Tom was watching reactions round the table. He’d been asked to see what gossip he could pick up, so maybe this would be as good a place as any to start.

  ‘How well did you know this girl, Pat?’ Tom asked. Pat had been pretty quiet all evening, and had seemed a bit bland in comparison to the others. If he’d been interviewing him though, Tom would have said that Pat was a man with something to hide.

  ‘I know her quite well. I look after the pastoral care side of things at school, and Abbie has a few issues. She’s a quiet, well-behaved girl, but she does have problems making friends.’

  ‘Obviously not as quiet as you think, darling,’ Mimi said. ‘What sort of fourteen year old is out on the streets at that time of night?’

  Tom saw a brief spark of anger in Leo’s eyes. She spoke sharply, her cheeks flushed.

  ‘We don’t know what goes on behind closed doors, do we? We don’t know what her home life was like, and we shouldn’t condemn the girl out of hand.’

  ‘Her parents are good people,’ Pat said. ‘I doubt she was running away.’

  ‘I’m with Mimi on this,’ Gary added, twirling the stem of his wine glass in his fingers and studying the contents of his glass. ‘There’s no way that my kids will be out at that time of night when they’re that age. Bloody ridiculous.’

&n
bsp; Pat’s lips had tightened.

  ‘I think it’s probably best to reserve judgement until we know a bit more, don’t you?’ he said.

  Sean leaned forward so that he could speak to Tom across Gary and Penny. ‘I’ve got a fourteen year old stepdaughter myself. The parents must be going through hell. What are the chances of catching the person that did this, in your experience?’

  Sean’s face was a picture of concern. He’d not had much to say up to now, and Tom had noticed a few times that he seemed a bit fidgety.

  ‘It depends,’ Tom answered. ‘There could be all sorts of forensic evidence; tyre tracks, paint or glass fragments, that kind of thing.’ Tom knew perfectly well that there was no evidence found at the scene, but he wasn’t about to say so. He expected every word he said would get round the village, and he sincerely hoped that somebody would soon be feeling very guilty, and very scared. ‘In this case, it seems that the girl was moved to the side of the road, so that could very well be a source of evidence, and of course there’s CCTV and ANPR.’

  He noticed a few puzzled frowns.

  ‘I know what that is,’ Charles said, looking pleased with himself. ‘Automatic number plate recognition. Fancy cameras that can read the characters and store them. That might just catch the scoundrel who did this.’ He looked around the table from face to face, his eyes not settling for long on any one person.

  ‘Charles is right,’ Tom said. ‘I don’t know what the coverage is like around here, but I’m sure they’ll be checking to find out who was out and about at that time of night, using every resource possible. There’ll probably be some cameras on the main trunk roads and in the village - at the petrol station for example. Anybody who passed through might be questioned. I gather that the back road is mainly used by people from the village, so that might narrow things down a bit. And of course, they’ll be hoping that people who were driving in the area at the time will make themselves known to the police and make their job easier. Most people don’t realise how often they’re caught on camera, so let’s hope this bastard is one of them.’