The Death and Life of Eleanor Parker_An absolutely gripping mystery novel

by Kerry Wilkinson

  Are they friends or foes?

  Somebody over the past two days has been lying to my face but I don’t know who. I silence my phone and spend the evening reading.

  The sky has dimmed to a deep mauve when my phone starts to flash at a few minutes to eleven. The screen pulses with Naomi’s name. I think about ignoring it but it’s nice to remember the late nights we’d spend lying on our respective beds, talking into our phones to one another about whatever was going on in our lives.

  ‘Hey,’ I answer.

  ‘Ell?’

  ‘Who else would it be?’

  ‘Oh, you sound… different. Never mind – we’re parked outside number twenty.’

  ‘Number twenty where?’

  ‘On your street. Didn’t you get my messages?’

  I um and er, not quite sure what she’s talking about. ‘I think there’s a problem with my phone,’ I say.

  She sounds excited: ‘Whatever – we’re down the street waiting for you. Come on.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We’re going on an adventure.’

  I remove the phone from my ear for a moment and stare at the screen. Naomi’s name is still there but it feels like I’ve missed something. I have, of course, having left my phone on silent all evening.

  ‘Who’s going on an adventure?’ I ask.

  ‘We are!’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  Naomi sighs. ‘Who’d you think, Ell? Check your phone. You, me, Ben and Robs. Hurry up!’

  ‘I can’t – Mum’s not going to let me leave the house, not after having a go yesterday. She keeps going on about exams and revising. Plus, we’re supposed to be at college tomorrow and—’

  ‘Ell!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Forget all that. We’re outside number twenty. Hurry up. YOLO, remember?’

  I start to reply but the screen has gone blank and the phone is silent. Then I realise what Naomi said and it’s hard not to laugh. She might only live once, but me…

  There’s little chance of me getting out the front door without being heard by someone. Mum’s a deep sleeper but it’s not quite eleven o’clock and she’s probably in bed reading or playing games on her phone. Ollie will definitely still be up. If I’m going out – which I’ve decided I am – there’s only one way to go.

  I pile on the layers and then open my bedroom window. Below is a drop of a metre or two to the roof of the shed, and then a second plunge of a similar height to the ground. After that, it’s over the back gate, follow the lane around the rear of the houses, and then onto the main street. It won’t be the first time I’ve made this journey…

  Carefully, I lift myself onto the windowsill and then spin so that I’m sitting with my legs dangling out the window. I shuffle forward slowly until I’m balancing on the ledge outside, back pressed against the glass, and then remember that I should probably make sure nobody else is watching. Although our house doesn’t back onto anyone else’s, if any of our neighbours were in their gardens, they’d be able to look up and see me performing my daredevil act. Luckily, with the light dimming rapidly, the evening is silent and there’s nobody in sight.

  The window pushes closed, though I don’t latch it, and then I shift sideways until the shed roof is directly below. It takes some twisting but I’m soon hanging from the ledge and then I drop comfortably onto the roof, landing both feet and gently bending my knees in near-perfect gymnast style. It might not be a ten but it’s got to be worth something in the nines.

  The next drop should be easier as there’s no window to close. I walk to the edge of the shed roof, double check there’s nobody in the kitchen that overlooks the garden, and then hang once more. It should be simple but it’s not. As I slide along the roof so that I can drop onto the grass instead of the path, my fingers glide through a thin layer of mulched twigs that’s coating the rim of the roof. When I try to get a better grip, my fingers slip sideways and, before I can do anything, I’m hanging one-handed. I try to push upwards but I’m off-balance and not expecting it. It’s already too late and when my shoulder clicks, I know I’m falling before I actually am.

  The drop is probably less than a second but I still manage to twist in the air, somehow ending up on my side as my entire weight crunches down. My hand is sandwiched between my body and the concrete path and it’s hard not to yelp, to cry out – especially when the vicious crack of a bone echoes around the garden.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I bite my lip to stop myself howling in pain, except… there is no pain. When I unfold my limbs, the ring finger on my left hand is jutting at a near right angle. It should hurt, should be agony, but I feel nothing. The urge to shout and cry is from the expectation of falling and the pain, not the reality.

  Although it doesn’t hurt, there’s surely no question that my finger is dislocated, perhaps broken. I grasp the tip of the shattered finger with the thumb and forefinger of my other hand and then let it go, watching it flop uselessly. Still it doesn’t hurt. I squeeze it but there’s nothing, almost like it’s somebody else’s finger.

  A glimmer of light flashes from my pocket – probably Naomi calling, wondering where I am – so I wrap the fingers on my other hand around the drooping digit, close my eyes, and then yank it back into place in one, swift movement. I catch myself grimacing even though it doesn’t hurt and, when I reopen my eyes, everything looks as it should. I try wiggling the finger and it moves more or less as normal.

  It’s all a bit surreal but then everything that’s happened recently has been like that. I rush to the back gate, lift myself over and then race around the back lane until I emerge on the street. Robbie’s Vauxhall is idling with the headlights off outside number twenty and when I wrench open the back door, Naomi shrieks in alarm.

  She’s in the passenger seat and spins to look at me, then gasps. ‘You scared the crap out of me.’

  Ben’s alone on the back seat and there’s nowhere else to sit except next to him. I close the door, strap the belt across myself and then Robbie pulls away. When he reaches the end of my road, he flips the headlights on.

  ‘Didn’t you get my messages?’ he asks, eyeing me in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘My proper phone died, so I’m using my old one. It’s all over the place.’ I hold it up but Robbie’s looking ahead and Naomi’s directly in front of me. Only Ben notices and he offers an awkward, watery smile.

  ‘Naomi called shotgun,’ he says.

  ‘Shotgun!’ she shouts from the front seat.

  ‘What is shotgun?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s where you get the front seat,’ she replies.

  ‘Well, obviously. But why’s it called “shotgun”? Why wouldn’t you just yell “front seat”?’

  Naomi twists to peep through the gap between the seat and the headrest. ‘You think too much,’ she says.

  Ben clears his throat dramatically. ‘It’s to do with the Wild West and old stagecoaches,’ he says. ‘The driver would be the bloke holding the reins of the horses, the guy next to him has the shotgun to stop them being robbed.’

  There’s a short silence in which I can read the thoughts of both Robbie and Naomi. There’s always a smart arse.

  Robbie catches my eye again in the mirror. With no words and only the movement of our eyes, he asks if I’m all right and I tell him I am. For the first time since waking in the river, I feel normal. There’s the pulsing fire of adrenaline flowing because this is exciting.

  Naomi passes back a brown plastic bottle of cider but I hand it off to Ben. I can barely manage water and haven’t eaten in two days, so who knows how booze will affect me.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

  Naomi is back facing the front, the light from her phone reflecting off the side window. She’s playing a tap-tap game badly. ‘It’s a surprise,’ she says.

  Robbie is driving away from the village and the lanes are getting narrower and darker. There are no streetlamps, with the light coming from a mixture of his headla
mps, the moon and the red of the horizon.

  ‘She won’t tell me either,’ Ben says. I can feel him trying to catch my eye but ignore him. Naomi giggles and then reaches for the cable dangling from the radio. She plugs in her phone, twists the volume dial and then moments later, ‘Here Comes the Sun’ by The Beatles is tinkling from the speaker behind my ear. Long live Tape Deck, hey? We must be the most music literate kids in the country.

  Naomi turns and grins at the irony as the sun has almost entirely disappeared. She shouts the ‘do-do-do-do’ bit and then we’re all joining in.

  We get through three more songs about summer and then Robbie turns off the main road. Ben and I are bumped up and down by the rough, gravelly track as the car rattles in and out of potholes before we finally roll to a stop.

  ‘This it?’ Robbie says, turning to Naomi.

  ‘You’re the one driving.’

  ‘I’m only going where you said.’

  ‘Then it’s probably right.’

  We all pile out of the vehicle to find ourselves in a gravel car park. When Robbie remembers to switch off the headlights, it leaves us in near darkness. Around the rim of the parking area are lines of tall trees, slightly swaying in a cool tickle of wind. The glittering white of the moon peeps through the forest, leaving the night a shimmering silver. There’s a large board ahead of the car, welcoming us to some country park, but the rest of the car park is deserted.

  Robbie opens the boot and Naomi grabs two large bottles of cider, passing one to me. Ben has the opened one and she hands him a supermarket bag for life that’s filled with something I can’t see.

  ‘What are we doing?’ I ask.

  Naomi doesn’t answer, instead illuminating the flashlight on her phone and heading towards the trees. She’s wearing muddied Doc Martens, her trademark over-the-knee socks, shorts and the denim jacket we decorated together a few years ago. It’s covered in sparkly stars and painted swirls. It would look ridiculous on me but has always suited her. She’s also sporting a Kermit the Frog beanie, his long legs dangling down her back.

  Ben scuttles off to catch her but Robbie slides in alongside me and takes the cider bottle. He’s in a hoody and loose basketball-style shorts. ‘I’m glad you came,’ he says.

  ‘Came to what? Where are we going?’

  ‘No idea. Naomi told me to drive here. You know what she’s like when she gets an idea. She said it was an adventure.’

  We follow Naomi further through the woods. There’s a mossy path with low-lying bracken on either side, plus the odd cluster of twigs and stones that are there presumably to trip up people walking through the woods in the dead of night. Naomi seems to know where we’re going and doesn’t look back, so there’s little option other than to follow.

  Eventually, we arrive at a clearing that doubles as a picnic area. There are half a dozen wooden tables and benches around the rim, with red-lettered signs telling people to use the bins and not litter. That’s fair enough, obviously, but it always astonishes me how obsessed people seem to be with bins and, specifically, emptying them.

  Last year, our bin day fell on 25 December, meaning that week’s collection was postponed. Fair enough, huh? No one wants to work on Christmas Day. Except the locals almost rioted. There were talks about people driving their junk to the council building in Langham and dumping everything on the pavement – which seemed a lot more work than simply bagging it up and waiting a week. Here, there are more signs than bins – and there are almost more bins than benches. Whoever wrote the messages on the signs is a big fan of exclamation marks. ‘Warning! Use the bins provided! Do not dump your rubbish! Litterers will be prosecuted!’

  There is, predictably, a Mars bar wrapper flitting around the clearing.

  Naomi sits on one of the benches and takes the bag from Ben. She looks inside and then stares up at him. ‘I thought I said, “bring food”?’

  ‘That is food,’ he protests.

  She pulls out a large paper bag and removes an uncut loaf of bread. ‘It is food,’ she says. ‘But what are we supposed to do with this? I meant chocolate, crisps, cold pizza – not a crusty loaf from the village bakery.’

  He shrugs and sinks onto the bench next to her. Naomi pulls out three tins of tuna – no tin-opener – and a tub of margarine – no knife. ‘Twiglets,’ she says. ‘You could’ve brought Twiglets.’

  ‘You said “bring food”. If you’d said “bring Twiglets”, I’d have brought Twiglets.’

  Robbie stands over them. ‘Can everyone stop saying “Twiglets”?’

  He pulls out a utility Swiss-army style knife from his shorts pocket and finds some tool that soon has him slicing into the can. After that, he slides open a serrated blade and cuts the loaf into slices. ‘Tuna sandwiches it is,’ he says.

  Naomi looks between the boys and then to me. She shrugs and then lies back on the bench, staring up at the sky. She lets out a long, breathy gasp and then I look up too.

  It is wonderful.

  The pinprick dots of stars stretch far across the breadth of the near-black sky, winking and blinking. It goes on and on, elongating in all directions, only interrupted by the height of the trees.

  ‘Wow,’ Robbie says. I look to him quickly and he and Ben are both staring up. He offers me his arm and it feels right, so I cuddle into his side and together we both gaze at the beauty of what’s above. It’s only when he holds me tighter that I realise I’m no longer feeling cold. For the first time in almost two days, I’m comfortable.

  ‘Y’know,’ Naomi says, ‘with Robbie playing football all summer, then going off to uni, this is one of the last times we’ll be together as a foursome.’

  Robbie’s fingers clench on my side as he tenses, though he says nothing. None of us do. Forgetting everything that’s happened – as hard as that is – this moment does feel like the end of an era. All the linners, all the giving the piss… we’ll soon be going our separate ways.

  The crack of a twig and the breathy swearing of an unseen female interrupts our silence. We all turn to the path and then Helen emerges, the moonlight blazing from her green top. She’s in a short black skirt with boots and her red hair is loosely tied back. There are more people behind her, too. Students from our year and the one above. More acquaintances: people to nod at and say hello to. Not friends, but close enough.

  Naomi leaps up from the bench and bounds across the clearing towards Helen, relieving her of a lager six-pack. ‘You made it!’ she shouts.

  ‘We did indeed,’ Helen grins back.

  More people arrive, bringing more food, which thankfully doesn’t include a granary loaf with filling. There are cool boxes full of ice and more six-packs. Someone’s brought along a pair of speakers and starts bluetoothing music from their phone. Within a few minutes, the clearing is humming to the sound of our impromptu party. There are young people everywhere, standing in small groups and chatting, or bobbing away in the centre of the clearing that is doubling as a dance floor.

  It’s a while until I find Naomi again. She’s ditched her own cheap cider and is swigging from a can of beer.

  ‘Did you plan this?’ I ask.

  She shrugs. ‘I figured we could have a longest day party, mixed with a goodbye thing for Sarah. I told a few people – including you if you’d answered your phone – and we managed to get word around.’

  Naomi nods over my shoulder and I turn to see Ollie walking through the crowd by himself, hands in pockets. My brother doesn’t notice me, instead plonking a bottle of vodka down on what has become the drinking table and then disappearing into the swarm of people.

  ‘Eh, up,’ Naomi says and I spin a second time, this time to where Rebecca and her Ravens are perching on the edge of one of the picnic benches. They look immaculate, utterly out of place in the forest. They are all wearing short black dresses and heels, bare knees crossed provocatively. Within seconds, a pair of lads has descended upon them, asking if they want anything to eat or drink. Rebecca takes a cigarette from one of them and starts p
uffing away.

  ‘Did you invite them?’ I ask.

  Naomi snorts. ‘Not directly. I wanted it to be a celebration. I suppose if people want to come, they can come.’ She still gives a withering frown in the Ravens’ direction before dragging me towards the centre of the clearing. ‘C’mon – let’s dance.’

  And we do.

  The music plays and we dance, we sing. I don’t even know half the words but nobody cares because there’s a crowd of us all doing the same. La-la-la is a popular lyric. More people arrive, some I know, others I don’t, but it doesn’t matter because I’m having fun. Genuinely enjoying myself. It’s so good to forget and to be me.

  Everything is going great until the party comes to an abrupt halt when the music cuts out. Everyone carries on dancing for a few seconds until we realise and then there’s a sullen groan. I’m on tiptoes, trying to peer over the mass, expecting blue flashing lights or some police officers, here to send us all home. Instead, it’s an altogether more surprising sight.

  Ollie is standing on one of the wooden picnic tables, looking down upon the rest of us. He has his arms out, trying to hush the rippling murmur of voices. My brother clears his throat and then calls ‘hi’. There are more mutterings, then people shushing the mutterers, then even more people shushing the shushers. It sounds like a steam train is on the way.

  ‘Hi,’ Ollie tries again when it’s finally quiet. ‘Sorry to interrupt the music. I know we’re here to have a good time but I just wanted to say a few words about Sarah. I—’

  ‘Murderer!’

  The cry has come from somewhere in the middle of the clearing, the anonymous male voice sheltered by the surrounding horde. Ollie gulps and tries to say something else but he’s lost the crowd, his voice drowned out by the back-and-forth braying of people who want to hear him and those who don’t. I don’t know what to do but Naomi is tugging my sleeve, moving me away from the dance area, closer to the table on which Ollie is standing. He’s disappeared from sight but then another figure appears on the table.