His stomach lurched. He felt the heave of my parents’ loss, of the world’s loss. If only he knew…
He didn’t know what to do, or what he should say to the crying girl, so he stepped away, then reached into his pocket for his mobile phone and called the police.
11
Hours, I’ve been in here. Strictly speaking, there ought to be someone with me. An Appropriate Adult, they call them, but they’re hard to come by on Christmas Day. Like solicitors. But I don’t need a solicitor. I just plan to stay silent. I learned silence from Lara. I’ve seen the power of it. Say nothing, and they’ll do you no harm.
There are footsteps outside and the rattle of keys, but no one comes in. That huge metal slam of a custody door echoes from somewhere. I wonder who else is in here, today of all days. The expression makes me laugh. Today of all days. It’s the expression old people use, people like Helen. I can see her now, drinking a brew in the kitchen, exasperated. ‘Why did you have to run away/get arrested/kill your girlfriend, today of all days?’
And I’d reply, ‘I loved her.’
I wasn’t meant to love her. I’m not even meant to be capable of love with my background, and neither is she, but it turned out we both were. They don’t know anything really, the people who come up with these theories. They’re just idiots who think a few studies of a few kids with dark pasts will tell them everything they need to know about childhood and madness. What they don’t realise is that our histories have taught us nothing better than how to play with the truth. What they want are our hearts and minds, gifted to them on a plate. What we give them is a maze, something to throw them off track. No psychology textbook can ever contain the complexities of the fucked-up human mind. Never.
I was there at the home first, before she came. They threw this other girl out for drinking, and I’d wanted them to send us a boy. I said to Helen, ‘Are they likely to send a boy next?’ I spoke differently in those days – proper posh I was, compared to how I am now. I hadn’t been long out of school, so I suppose that was why; although she taught me, of course. ‘You’ll get beaten up if you speak like that,’ she said.
‘Like what?’
‘Like that. All “if you don’t mind” and “sorry to bother you”. You need force. Show ’em you’re tough, or they’ll have you.’
Anyway, Helen said no, there’d be no boy. It was a girls-only home. I didn’t think much of girls, back then. Their big, bitchy mouths and their tedious self-harming. They all seemed to have their secret stash of razor blades and nails, to drive into their arms whenever the memories got too tough. That other one made me watch it – the crimson bloodfall from her skin to the floor and the sharp, sweet pain of it all, up to her neck in hate.
Boys were easier. You’d never find a boy standing in the bathroom, splashing pretty red drops of his soul all over the tiles. Never. Boys were just plagues of fists and boots, turning their anger outward, on each other. Of course, you had to be careful because some of them wouldn’t think twice about knocking you around too, if you got on the wrong side of them. The trick was to find the ones who’d never hit a girl, and who’d lay into any other boy if he did. They were the ones to surround yourself with.
Besides, I was nearly fifteen and I’d never shagged anyone. It was about time.
I still haven’t shagged a boy. I probably never will, not now.
I’m lying on this blue mat, thinking of the day we met. I’d been at the home three months by then, and Helen brought her into the lounge and introduced us. I was deep into my third hour of Gogglebox and barely looked up. I was still annoyed she wasn’t a boy.
She planted herself in front of the screen, forcing me to look at her. ‘Is this another shit heap,’ she asked, ‘or is it alright?’
I couldn’t help smiling then. ‘It’s alright,’ I said. ‘Anywhere that lets you watch three hours of Gogglebox instead of revising for your GCSEs has to be OK.’
She looked at me blankly. ‘You’re doing GCSEs?’ she asked. ‘You must be really brainy.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m a genius. My teachers always said that. Miss Cox. Genius.’
She looked at me in disbelief. ‘What did you say your surname is?’
‘Cox.’
‘Cocks?’
‘C-O-X.’
‘Oh,’ she said, and sat down. ‘I thought you meant dicks.’
‘I meant apples,’ I said, not moving my eyes from the screen.
‘I suppose they taste better.’
‘I suppose they do,’ I said, pretending I wasn’t shocked, pretending I knew all the things she knew about, even though we were only fifteen and shouldn’t have known any of it.
She was quiet for a moment, then said, ‘Bollocks being a kid in care, isn’t it?’
‘Yep.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘Because my mum’s mental. Why are you here?’
‘Because my mum’s mental, too.’
And that was how we started – the first glimmer of the connection that was going to light our worlds and then pull us down.
12
Helen
Helen was writing lists. If anyone asked her why she was doing this or what their purpose was, she wouldn’t have had an entirely clear answer for them, other than that she needed to be doing something and so she was sitting at her desk, anticipating questions from the police, trying to build coherent answers.
Why were Annie and Hope out alone in a threatening landscape at night?
1 They were young, reckless girls with no idea of how to keep themselves safe, and in Hope’s case, no real desire to stay safe. She took deliberate risks and didn’t care what happened to her.
2 They were in love, which was forbidden, and they were always looking for ways to be alone together.
Did Annie have any enemies?
1. None, that Helen knew of, although…
2. …there were some issues surrounding her mother.
Is it possible anyone from Hope’s life might have wanted to see Annie dead?
1 Once you brought Hope into it, a whole new can of worms opened.
2 Hope had two main enemies: her mother and Ace Clarke. Her mother was behind bars and blamed Hope for turning her in. She’d made it very clear she wanted revenge.
3 Ace Clarke was someone Hope had always struggled to break away from, even though she knew he was bad for her. He was a dangerous, violent man – although he could be charming – and it wasn’t impossible to think of him taking revenge on behalf of Hope’s mother, who he claimed to love. He, too, had been angry when Hope betrayed her mother.
4 It was possible – maybe, if you were considering all possibilities – that instead of killing Hope, which would have been too obvious after everything that had already happened, Ace had gone for Annie instead. Kill that which was most dear to Hope and in doing so, ruin her life.
Who would you say were the main suspects in Annie’s death?
1 Someone connected with her mother.
2 Ace Clarke.
3 Annie herself (???).
She put down the pen with a sigh. This was, of course, all nothing but crazy speculation. In reality, Helen didn’t have a clue who could have killed Annie. She was just desperate to straighten out the jumble in her head, the stories of both girls’ lives that were now playing endlessly through her mind.
She wished she could lock the office door, unplug the phone and turn off the wifi. The interruptions were endless and made it impossible to concentrate. Calls kept coming in from the off-duty management team. Everyone had a view on what might have happened. That was the trouble, Helen thought. It gave everyone a rush of adrenaline that went straight to their heads and exposed the fact that they all thrived on a good drama. Of course, the sudden death of a fifteen-year-old girl was tragic – unbearably so – but in among the shock and grief lurked that secret, shameful pleasure. They couldn’t help but feed on it, think the unthinkable thoughts, spiral downwards into crazy speculation and lose any grip on t
he possible truth.
Danny still wasn’t back from identifying the body, but she knew he’d be a wreck when he walked through the door. No one was paid enough for this. Helen sighed and wished she still smoked. She’d love a cigarette right now, would love to draw on it deeply, feel the nicotine hit on her throat, the smoke in her lungs, the cloudy-grey taste of tobacco on her tongue. Instead, she reached for a can of Coke from the mini fridge beside the desk and snapped it open. The cold, black fizz of it wasn’t as good as a fag, but it hit the spots that needed hitting.
She’d put each one of the girls’ files in order, made sure not a single piece of paperwork was missing or in the wrong place. The police would be here soon, ready to examine them all minutely, to mine the stories and find a motive that could be matched with the DNA on Annie’s body. At least, she assumed that was how it worked. Find the DNA, find the motive, nail the bastard. It was how they did it on Netflix.
Annie’s case was an odd one, though. Her past had never been violent, just unstable. If it had been Hope who’d died, her file would have been filled with potential suspects: her murderous mother; Ace Clarke; any number of wastrels from where she’d grown up. But there was no one obvious who’d want to harm Annie. She’d been Helen’s most hopeful case so far. She was bright and easy enough to get along with. Her foster placements should never have fallen apart. It was that bloody disease that always wrecked things, but she seemed to have recovered from that, although no one could ever be sure. Annie was good at hiding the symptoms and she’d never have trusted anyone enough to ask for help, not even Danny.
Helen sighed, and looked at the files again. She felt compelled to keep leafing through them. She’d thought Hope would make an enemy of Annie when they first met, but the opposite was true. And yet, Hope was there by the body, which made her the only obvious suspect. Helen needed to grab hold of something, something she could give the police to show them that although Hope had problems and a foul mouth, she also had a huge heart.
She wasn’t capable of hurting anyone, especially not Annie. The girls were in love. But then, that created a whole other issue.
13
Twenty-one hours they’ve got left, to either arrest me or let me go. I’m still lying here on this old stone bed, but now I’m staring up at the CCTV camera on the ceiling, wondering who’s watching me. Are men allowed to watch live TV images of banged-up girls, or is there a women-only rule? If they leave me here much longer, I’m going to flash my arse at them. It’s what she’d have done, and I’ve already decided I need to live out the rest of my life in her honour: to be tough and use nothing but the f-word, and never speak the truth to anyone.
I tried to sleep a while ago, but the nick is noisy. Banging, voices, footsteps, echoes. It never stops. I should do them for breaching my right to rest. It’s the only escape I have. When I’m awake, every moment is strewn with her image. I want to close my eyes and drift far away from here before being forced awake to face the cleft in my heart and the deep loss of her.
Sometimes, I think I sound a lot like a poet. I used to pay attention in English. I quite liked it. But then it all just started to seem a bit mad and irrelevant, after everything that happened. I couldn’t really be dealing with fairies in Shakespeare and what they meant, when my mother was insane.
Anyway, because I can’t sleep, I’ve been memorising the writing painted on the walls. It’s high up, so you have to crane your neck to see, and is in bold black writing that’s far from friendly looking, despite the caring words.
Drug/alcohol problems? Want fast-tracking for treatment?
Drugs/alcohol referral workers operate in this station.
Ask to speak to one in confidence.
I quite like the way they’ve used ‘operate’, as if they’re giving a warning like the ones you get on the underground about criminals. Pickpockets operate in this area. People who can help you operate in these cells. Maybe it’s to put you off using them. They probably cost a lot, and I reckon most people in these places have already drained the taxpayer of thousands. It’s easier to let us die.
If I lie back in a certain position and kind of slump against the wall, I can look through the letterbox in the door and out into the corridor. It’s not really a letterbox, obviously. People in custody aren’t allowed visitors, so they’re probably not allowed letters, either. It’s just there so the pigs can come and speak to you without having to get too close and be contaminated by your criminal ways.
There’s not a lot to see – a few pairs of black-uniformed legs swaggering by, some arms held together with handcuffs, a person and a mop now and then … nothing much. But it’s something to focus on.
Then suddenly the footsteps in the corridor stop outside my cell and the door swings slowly open. A bloke officer from earlier is standing there, looking triumphant and ripe for a row. Beside him is Gillian from the home. She stares at me for a moment, then looks down at the floor, as if she can’t really bear the sight of me.
‘Right, young lady,’ the pig says. ‘We’re ready to interview you again now. You know Gillian here. She’s going to act as your appropriate adult.’
Bollocks.
Gillian.
She’s totally going to do me in. They could have ordered me a stranger.
He leads me down the corridor of cells and back out to the brightness of reception, then along to the interview room we’d been in before. They’ve tidied up since I trashed it.
The female cop is waiting there. She looks at me, but doesn’t smile. She thinks I’m a waste of space. Fuck you, my eyes say.
‘Sit down,’ the bloke orders.
I do as I’m told. The sofa is an improvement on the stone bed, and at least there’s a window in here, but it only has a view of the station yard, where the police cars are parked. I’d much rather have a view of the town. It’s been months since I saw any normal people, going about their normal lives, but I suppose investigations like this have to be performed in secret, away from the prying eyes of nosy bastards.
There’s a tape recorder on the coffee table. The woman flicks it on. ‘Tape recorder running.’
The bloke leans back in his chair and looks at me like he’s got one over on me.
‘Now,’ he says, ‘how about we begin at the beginning, and you start by telling us your name? Your real name.’
14
Helen
Oh, dear God.
It was Hope, not Annie, who was dead.
Danny had come back from the mortuary, ashen-faced and shaking. ‘It’s Hope,’ he said. ‘It’s her body. It wasn’t Annie.’
‘What?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what’s gone on. At first, I thought maybe they’d both died, but then I remembered that policeman saying Annie wasn’t co-operating. Maybe she gave them the wrong name, just to mess things up a bit. Her idea of a dark bit of fun.’
‘It is the sort of thing she’d do,’ Helen agreed. For a moment, she lost herself in images of Annie at the station, cocky and rude, with no real grasp of the seriousness of lying to the police, or the consequences of it. She sat with her elbows on the desk and leaned her head against her hands. ‘Oh, Annie. You bloody idiot.’
‘Right.’
‘How … What did Hope look like?’
Danny sighed deeply. ‘Peaceful,’ he said. ‘She looked peaceful. Despite everything.’
Helen nodded. ‘Peaceful,’ she repeated. ‘I suppose that’s something. Maybe it’s the first time…’ She stopped herself. She’d been going to say it was the first time in Hope’s life she’d been at peace, but of course, Hope was dead. Murdered. There was nothing peaceful about it, and even Helen, who knew all Hope’s grievous history, couldn’t make herself believe the killer had done her a favour by forcing this peace upon her.
Helen had hoped – naïvely, she now realised – that there was a chance of both girls achieving some kind of peace when they met. It was unusual for the children she encountered here to ever form any kind of
decent friendships. Instead, they just lived alongside each other, guarded, tolerating one another at arm’s length. But there’d been a connection between Hope and Annie, perhaps because Annie’s past, though difficult, hadn’t been so awful that she’d completely barricaded her heart with awful, primitive defences. And Hope … Well, Hope was just desperate. For acceptance, love, anything at all.
She should have known how quickly it would all get out of hand.
‘What happens to the body now?’ she asked Danny.
‘They said the forensics team will set to work on her. Find out how she died. Find clues. DNA. That kind of thing.’
Helen nodded slowly, taking it in. ‘OK. So I suppose we’ll have to arrange the funeral. I don’t know if we even have a budget for that. It’s going to be horribly small if we do.’
She was trying not to let her mind drift to Ace Clarke. The pimp in shining armour. The very thought of him turned Helen’s stomach.
Everything had changed, now it was Hope who’d been killed. There was an urgency to it all that she hadn’t felt when they’d said it was Annie.
She said, ‘The police phoned while you were out. They needed someone to act as an appropriate adult, so I sent Gillian. I thought she needed something to keep her busy, but she didn’t know it was Annie she’d be seeing there, unless the police had already found out and told her beforehand. God, what a shock it’ll be.’ Helen almost laughed. ‘Enough to make someone question their sanity. But then, I suppose that’s what Annie’s after – to mess with people’s heads and confuse everything.’
‘I suppose so,’ Danny agreed. He paused for a moment, twisting his fingers together nervously, then said, ‘You don’t think Annie…’
‘No, I don’t,’ Helen said abruptly. ‘Absolutely not.’
Danny nodded. ‘I know. She loved her, but the friendship was so—’
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