by Jane Casey
Love you for ever
For ever’s too long
Too long to be lonely
Lonely for you . . .
The tune kept playing in my head as I went through the rest of the pages. Lonely for you. Freya had been lonely. She had wanted to be loved. She would have done a lot for someone who understood her and wanted her because she was a genius artist who wasn’t bothered about conforming. She hadn’t worried about being different, until being different made her a threat to someone who was far below her on the evolutionary ladder.
‘One step above a slug,’ I said out loud without meaning to. I snapped out of my reverie and looked up to see Darcy putting on her coat, poised for flight. ‘Where are you going?’
‘It’s late. I should go.’
‘It is late.’ I yawned. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t stay up too long looking at that.’
‘It’s fascinating. It’s the contents of Freya’s head.’
‘Which explains why it’s mainly about him.’ Darcy gave me a sad smile. ‘Don’t hate me for what I did. Or what I didn’t do, maybe.’
‘You can’t change the past. You can only do better in the future.’
She buttoned up her jacket. ‘With that in mind, can I give you some advice? Don’t get involved with Ryan. He’s not worth it.’
‘What makes you think I might get involved with him?’
‘The fact that you were snogging him on the beach?’
‘Oh. Technically, he was snogging me.’
‘Well, technically, Natasha is going to go completely mental when she finds out about it. And I like you. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.’
‘I can take care of myself.’
‘Maybe. And maybe she’ll leave you alone.’ Darcy didn’t look convinced. ‘If it was me, I wouldn’t take the risk.’
‘You’ve done your bit. Whatever happens this time, you needn’t feel guilty about it.’
‘I will anyway.’
With that doleful remark she left, and I closed the door after her as softly as I could. I couldn’t help shivering as I turned off the lights and started up the stairs, even though I wasn’t cold any more. It was someone walking over my grave, I thought, and really wished I hadn’t.
I got into bed and found myself replaying the evening in my head, over and over.
I don’t want anything bad to happen to you . . . For ever’s too long . . . I wouldn’t take the risk . . . She let it go too far . . . You’re beautiful . . . Stay away from there . . . Whatever happens . . . Whatever happens . . .
Not surprisingly, it was a long time before I slept.
14
IT WAS A quiet morning in Fine Feathers, by which I mean Sylvia and I made it to eleven o’clock without seeing a single customer. The sun was shining and it was actually warm for a change. The people of Port Sentinel and the holidaymakers had better things to do than rummage in a charity shop when there was a beach to sit on and ice cream to eat. I stuck a bucket and spade in Marilyn’s hand and put a floppy straw hat on Brenda, backwards because the front of it was badly frayed, but it was a lost cause. We were never going to pack in the punters on a sunny day.
Sylvia was totally unconcerned. ‘Don’t worry, dear. I like it when it’s not too busy. Gives you time to get things organized.’
Organization didn’t seem to be in Sylvia’s skill set but I wasn’t about to disagree. A job was a job. Now that the place had been sorted out a bit, it was much easier to keep it ticking over. Sylvia might decide she didn’t need me after all, but I very definitely needed her – or rather, I needed the money I could earn by working for her. What I also needed was something to do because standing around waiting for customers was incredibly boring. I couldn’t clean the glass of the display cabinet again; it was pristine.
‘What should I do next, Sylvia?’
She looked vague. ‘Aren’t there clothes to sort out?’
‘We unpacked the last bag when I was here on Tuesday. Unless there have been some more donations.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Sylvia started to twist the long necklace she was wearing. ‘Although . . . There’s the back stairs. I don’t think we’ve tackled that.’
I was puzzled. ‘Tackled it? I didn’t know about it. I thought the shop was just on the ground floor and upstairs there’s a flat.’
‘That’s right. But there’s a flight of stairs that goes up from the back room – you might not have noticed the door in the corner. I keep it bolted shut.’
‘I thought it was a cupboard.’
‘It is really. The door at the top is sealed off and plastered over. So I just use the back stairs as extra storage. Or I did. Until it got too full.’
‘That explains how there was so much stuff piled up in the shop on my first morning.’
‘Yes, but there’s an awful lot more on the stairs.’ Sylvia looked worried. ‘I hope you don’t mind going through the bags. They’re quite old, some of them. Just things I didn’t get around to dealing with at the time, when they came in.’
‘And then you forgot about them.’
‘No, I didn’t forget. But there were other bags. Other donations . . .’ She trailed off. The necklace-twisting was reaching the stage where it would break or she’d garrotte herself, so I smiled reassuringly.
‘Don’t worry. I like a challenge. I’ll just take it one bag at a time.’ I headed for the back room.
Sylvia called after me, ‘Be careful when you open the door, won’t you, in case anything falls down on top of you.’
I thought she was being far too cautious, but since my life plans didn’t include being totalled by a rogue platform shoe or a shower of Jeffrey Archer hardbacks, I slid back the bolt and inched the door open with great care.
‘Dear Lord above.’
It was like something from a TV programme about chronic hoarding. The space was rammed with plastic bags of every size and colour, many of them split so that their contents were bulging out, and because they were stacked on the (invisible) stairs, it looked like a vast tower of junk, seconds away from cascading down on top of me. I couldn’t tell how long Sylvia had been using this space as a dump but it smelled musty and had to have been the work of many months, if not years. It was no wonder she had been reluctant to mention it.
Opening the door – even by a few centimetres – had made the entire pile unstable, as the bags near the bottom pressed forward and the ones above them began to shift. Containing the potential avalanche was the first order of business. I yanked a few of the nearest bags out through the gap, then forced the door closed again.
‘Are you managing, dear?’
‘Everything’s fine,’ I said firmly, shooting the bolt across and hoping it would hold. Something fell against the door with a loud thud and I winced. One to remember the next time I was getting anything out of Sylvia’s secret stash.
I hauled the bags through to the shop, where the light was better, to assess what I’d managed to retrieve. I was dusty and hot and not best pleased to discover that one customer had arrived since I’d left my post, given that the customer in question was Coco Golding. She was wearing cut-off jeans that showed off tanned, lean legs, the muscles super-defined without being bulky. She still seemed on the slight side to be a runner but she certainly had an athlete’s body-fat percentage. She was flicking through a rack of dresses, shadowed by Sylvia, who looked distinctly relieved to see me.
‘Here’s Jess now. She knows where everything is.’ To me, she said, ‘I’m making tea.’
‘Not for me, thanks.’ I dragged the bags behind the counter and straightened up. ‘What can I do for you? Were you looking for something in particular?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’ Coco abandoned the dresses abruptly. ‘I wanted to talk to you.’
‘Why’s that?’
She bit her lip. ‘I don’t want to be disloyal.’
‘To Natasha? Feel free. I won’t tell.’
‘I just thought she went too fa
r. On the headland.’ The words tumbled out in a rush.
‘I noticed you throwing up.’
She shuddered. ‘Don’t. That was so embarrassing. I must have eaten something that disagreed with me.’
‘So it wasn’t because you were upset.’
‘No.’
‘Because it reminded you of what happened to Freya.’
‘It was Claudia’s smoke. I don’t like cigarettes. It made me feel queasy.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘I suppose hanging around with her is one way to keep your weight down.’
‘The smoking is a recent thing,’ she said dismissively. ‘I’m not used to it yet.’
‘Right.’ I lifted a bag onto the counter. ‘Was that it?’
‘There’s one other thing.’ Coco came forward another couple of steps. ‘This is going to sound really weird, but I was wondering if you’d like me to have a word with Nats about being nicer to you. I feel as if she didn’t give you a fair chance. She can be a bit of a bitch.’
I frowned. ‘Why do you care?’
‘Because you seem like you’d be fun to have around.’ She laughed. ‘I mean, Ryan likes you, so I’m sure you’re OK really.’
‘I thought that was the problem.’
‘Part of it. But you can handle the Ryan thing. You can persuade him to leave you alone. Natasha will get over it.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘The other part of the problem is Freya.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nats doesn’t like you asking questions about her.’
‘I bet,’ I said softly.
‘If you could just . . . not. That would be ideal.’
‘So you want me to drop the whole Freya thing, and tell Ryan once and for all I’m not interested in him. In return, you give Natasha a personality transplant that means she’s actually pleasant for a change. And then we could all start again. Get to know one another. Make friends.’
Coco nodded, but her eyes were wary.
‘That’s just not going to happen.’
‘Which bit?’
‘Any of it.’
Coco’s shoulders slumped.
‘You must have known it was a long shot,’ I said.
‘Worth a try.’ She gave me a tight little smile and turned to go.
‘If you don’t like bitchy behaviour, why on earth are you friends with Natasha?’ I said, and Coco stopped, one toe drawing patterns on the floor as she thought about how to answer me.
‘She’s not so bad.’
‘I beg to differ.’ I frowned. ‘I just don’t understand why you hang around with her.’
‘I don’t know. Habit.’ Another smile, this one more genuine. ‘I know it’s hard for you to imagine, but she can be really funny. It’s a good distraction for me. I get too wound-up about training if I’m on my own too much.’
‘Darcy told me you run.’
‘A bit.’
‘Seriously, though.’
‘You could say that.’ Her eyes danced. Just talking about it was enough to make her forget everything else that worried her. ‘It looks as if I might get to compete at the next Olympics.’
‘That’s brilliant.’ I meant it.
‘Yeah.’ Coco’s good mood evaporated as quickly as it had bubbled up. ‘Well, I did my best. If you change your mind, let me know.’
‘I will.’ I watched her go, striding off down the street in a hurry, and wished she had been friends with just about anyone other than Natasha.
Sylvia creaked out of the back room with a steaming mug of pale, watery tea. ‘Did she find what she was looking for, dear?’
‘Not this time,’ I said, and started to untie one of the bags, concentrating on the job in hand. There were five of them – mainly clothes, although there were also some CDs and bits of bric-a-brac. Pulling on some rubber gloves, I sorted through the first one, untangling a smudged brass candlestick from a pair of fluff-covered opaque tights that were destined for the bin.
‘Why should anyone think a charity shop would want their old tights?’
‘People don’t think. They just want to get rid of things they don’t want any more.’ Sylvia leaned across and took out the candlestick’s twin, this one still with bits of wax on it. ‘Dented. What a shame.’
‘I’ll polish them up and they’ll look much better. They might appeal to a Goth.’ I could already see them in a special Halloween window display, if they didn’t sell before that – Marilyn as a vampire and Brenda as her unwilling victim. There was a flowing white nightie that would be ideal for her. It was deflating to realize that by October I would have been back in London for months. Life in Port Sentinel would be going on without me, without anyone much noticing or caring that I wasn’t there any more. I would miss them more than they missed me, I thought with a pang.
The bell at the door jangled and Petra bounded in, the perfect antidote to gloom in canary-yellow jeans and a sky-blue T-shirt. ‘Hi, Jess! Hello, Miss Burman.’ She craned her neck to see over the counter. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Working,’ I said repressively. ‘I’ll be finished at one.’
‘Oh. Can’t I help? I’ll be excellent at . . .’
‘Sorting through donations.’
‘Yes. That.’ She turned to Sylvia. ‘Please, Miss Burman. I won’t distract Jess. I’ll help.’
‘Of course you will.’ Sylvia smiled. ‘If you want to spend this lovely sunny morning in here, I don’t mind at all.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather be on the beach?’ I asked Petra when Sylvia had gone into the back room.
‘Yes. But I wanted to spend some time with you.’ It was typical Petra: honest to the point of brutality.
‘That’s sweet of you.’
‘There are always too many people around. We never get a chance to talk.’ She pulled a jumper out of the bag I had given her and held it up. It was a lurid shade of green, with a V-neck. ‘Who would buy something like that?’
‘A golfer, maybe? Someone who came to their senses, anyway, since they gave it away.’
‘It’s been nibbled by moths.’
‘Badly?’
She turned it round so I could see that it was riddled with tiny holes.
‘Throw it out. No one will want that. Hideous is one thing. Manky is another.’
‘Someone might like it. You don’t know for sure.’ Petra started to fold it. I picked up the bin and held it in front of her.
‘Drop it in there. Believe me, we’re not lacking in stock for the shop. We don’t need anything that will just take up space.’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘This kind of thing.’ I had found some jeans in the second bag I was emptying, and I was scanning them like a crime-scene investigator, trying to work out why they’d been donated. ‘These look perfect. Designer denim. Skinny cut and size six, so they’re not going to appeal to everybody, but these were expensive jeans when they were new, and they’re not ancient. We’ll sell them for a tenner.’
‘Bargain. I might try them on.’
‘Feel free.’ Out of habit I checked the pockets. ‘Wait a minute. Someone’s left something in here.’
I held the jeans upside down and shook a silver chain out of the small coin pocket. It slithered onto the counter. There was a pendant on it and I flipped it over to look at it: two lovebirds with a tiny red enamel heart held between their beaks. ‘That’s so pretty. Oh, but the chain’s broken. Well, that explains why she forgot about it, whoever she was. Or maybe she wanted to donate it. But I’d have kept the pendant and got a new chain, myself.’
Petra hadn’t said anything. She reached out and lifted up the pendant, staring at it.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘This.’ Her face was completely white. ‘This was Freya’s.’
‘What?’
‘This was Freya’s,’ she repeated. ‘She got it a few weeks before she died. She wore it all the time – I mean, all the time. I never saw her without it.’
‘She must have had one
like it. It’s pretty, but it can’t be unique.’
Petra turned it over. ‘No, it is hers. I’m positive. Look, the bird on the left has a wonky tail.’
It was true: the tail was set at a slightly odd angle, as if it had been bent and pushed back into shape.
‘And Freya’s was the same?’
‘Definitely. Hugo teased her about it. He said it must have been on special offer because it was broken and whoever had got it for her was a cheapskate.’
‘Didn’t she say who had bought it?’
‘It was posted through the letterbox one night. Freya said she didn’t know who it was from.’
I had a feeling I knew. It fitted all too well with the imaginary boyfriend. ‘All right. It could be Freya’s. Are these her jeans?’
‘No. Definitely not. She didn’t wear that sort of thing. She couldn’t have afforded them in the first place.’
‘So what’s Freya’s necklace doing in someone else’s pocket?’
‘Maybe it fell off without her noticing and they picked it up,’ Petra suggested.
‘Maybe.’ I was looking at the broken chain, at the links that were pulled out of shape at either end. ‘Something snapped this chain. Someone pulled on it, hard, or it got caught in something. It didn’t just fall off. Did she say anything about losing it?’
Petra shook her head. ‘As far as I remember, she was wearing it the last time I saw her.’
‘Which was when?’
‘A few hours before she died.’ The significance of that was starting to sink in. Petra stared at me with wide, haunted eyes. ‘Oh God.’
‘Exactly.’ I sounded as grim as I felt. ‘So the next question is—’
The shop bell interrupted me and I stopped dead as the door opened cautiously. It was Darcy, today with her hair in ringlets, wearing a lot of peacock-blue make-up around her eyes.
‘Can I come in?’
‘There’s nothing to stop you.’ Smoothly, and without drawing attention to what I was doing, I slid the necklace off the counter and into the pocket of my own jeans. I was on the wrong side of the counter to kick Petra if she started to talk about it and I hoped like hell she had the sense to stay quiet.
