Kiss Her Goodbye: The most addictive thriller you'll read this year Read online

  ‘She was a quiet girl. A real shame,’ she says, with a glance at the church clock. ‘What about you though? You’ve been off a lot lately.’

  I don’t look at her as I speak. ‘My mum’s boyfriend is still doing my head in, if that’s what you mean.’

  She smiles, because she wants me to talk about him again, so I tell her what she wants to hear instead of what I want to say. I practise all my lies on her and she believes them all. As we talk, my palms get hot and itchy, because there’s so much that I want to say instead. I wonder what she’d do if I grabbed her by the throat and shook her until she had to listen, but instead I tell her meaningless things. If I were the crying type, I’d be in tears by now, but I’m not: I’m the lying type and that’s what I do instead. There’s never any point telling the truth, but I’m starting to lose track of what I’ve said. It doesn’t matter though, because they’ll remember – they’ll remember it all.

  ‘Got to go, Hayley. I’ve got an English class in five minutes. You want to give that up. Dirty habit.’ She winks.

  As she walks towards the double doors, I tell her that it’s my birthday, but she doesn’t even bother to look back. She didn’t hear or want to listen. I’m used to it though; they’re all the same.

  *

  Later in the afternoon, I go to the toilets and Leila is in there, doing her hair at the mirror.

  ‘You weren’t in Sociology,’ she says, when she notices me.

  ‘I was chatting to Tibbs. Lost track of time.’

  She chews on the side of her mouth. ‘So long as it wasn’t Mr Phillips.’

  ‘Creep.’ I smile, and hope that we’re OK, but she doesn’t smile back.

  ‘Happy birthday, then,’ she says.

  ‘Fucking birthdays.’

  She looks in the mirror, as though she’d rather see her face than mine. ‘Your present’s in my locker if you still want it.’

  ‘I want it.’ I smile. ‘Mum’s invited you to tea. If you’re free.’

  She scratches her nose. ‘OK. Yeah.’

  ‘It’ll be awful. Mum and Mike will be there.’

  ‘Will there be Pass the Parcel?’

  ‘Pass the sick bag if she’s cooking.’

  She laughs, and I know we’re all right again.

  ‘We’ve got that talk this afternoon about careers,’ she says.

  ‘I’m not doing it,’ I say as I switch off the tap and shake the water off my hands. ‘Neither are you. Come on, let’s go into town or something.’

  ‘Can we go to Afflecks for Barbara? I ripped her new top.’

  I’m not buying anything for Barbara on my birthday.

  ‘Town might take too long, thinking about it. Tea’s early.’

  ‘We’ve got ages, haven’t we?’

  ‘Let’s just go to Stockport. Mum won’t like it if we’re late.’

  She looks as if she’s thinking it over and doesn’t reply. When she goes into one of the cubicles, I stand outside and wait. There’s a crackle of cellophane and I picture a red swirl of her blood in the clear water, while I stare at the initials L 4 S scratched into the cubicle door.

  As we walk out of college, past the science block, Stefan smiles at me through the window and when I look to my side, Leila is waving at him.

  ‘He’s not waving at you,’ I tell her, but she carries on.

  I kick an ant-covered tray of chips and gravy into the road as the wind blows strands of hair across her face.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asks.

  I frown. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Yeah, it is,’ she sighs, and looks back towards college. ‘I don’t get you. Do you still like him or something?’

  I don’t care about Stefan; I care about her, but I can’t tell her that.

  ‘Nah,’ I say, walking faster towards the bus stop, ‘we’re just mates, I told you. Let’s go.’

  16

  Hayley Reynolds

  The last time I came to the precinct, Beverley Samuels was here and I scan the street for her now. The many arches of the railway viaduct dominate the skyline, with the red-bricked factory chimneys behind. A pigeon pecks around the bins, but Beverley Samuels is nowhere to be seen. We walk past the shop windows that are already decorated with baubles ready for Christmas, before we end up in Chelsea Girl. Leila takes a handful of clothes to the changing room and I follow her in with a shirt that I grab from one of the rails. It’s crisp white and expensive-looking, like Gillian Gilbert’s in my New Order poster.

  The changing room is empty and we go into a cubicle together. As she pulls off her tee shirt, with her back to me, there isn’t much room in the cramped space. Leila’s skin is perfectly pale, with faint freckles running underneath the pink bra that she’s wearing. She could have anybody she wanted and it makes me wonder what will happen when she realises. I know it will be the end of us and she’ll leave me as everyone else has done. I look at her sadly, as the light catches the sequined straps of the top that she’s struggling to get off the hanger. I wonder where she would ever wear something like that; nowhere we would ever go to.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah, let’s head down to the café after this.’

  As she pulls on the new top and turns sideways to look at herself in the mirror, I know that for now we’re fine – best friends forever and I should stop worrying all the time – but the end is coming. Before Dad left, he ate breakfast with us and pretended to be happy when he wasn’t. He left us a long time before he actually walked out of the door. Our friendship feels the same and I know that we don’t have much more time left. I’m losing her to the other girls at college and she’s even started to look like them, with her thick black eyeliner and hair sprayed up in a quiff. I want to hold onto her so badly that it hurts.

  I reach into my bag and pull out the vodka that I took from the drinks cabinet this morning. She sighs.

  ‘What? It’s my birthday,’ I tell her.

  She rolls her eyes, but reaches over and takes a swig anyway. She presses her eyes together and then sits on the plastic chair next to me.

  ‘Bit early for this, isn’t it?’

  ‘I told you. It’s my birthday. I can do whatever I want to today.’ The curtain on the cubicle door hangs black against the white wall, like the negative of a photograph, and reminds me of Dad. Leila starts to laugh at the story she’s been telling and it distracts me, so I laugh too, even though I don’t know what she’s been saying. Her eyes glint as a single curl hangs over her pale cheek and I could stay here and listen to her voice forever.

  She looks coy, before she asks, ‘What was it like your first time?’

  I laugh, but she’s serious. These things bother her. She hasn’t been out with anyone, apart from a lad that she met at a campsite in Criccieth.

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  I take a swig of the vodka and hand it back to her.

  ‘Nah, not much.’

  She looks down at her knees and scratches her leg with a painted fingernail.

  ‘You never got off with that lad on holiday, did you?’ I say.

  She shakes her head, without taking her eye off the mirror behind me.

  ‘Mark went to kiss me at Barbara’s party and I walked off. Everyone was there. I thought I’d make a mess of it.’

  I pull my chair over to hers, so that our knees are inside each other’s thighs, but we aren’t touching. ‘You can practise on me,’ I tell her, but she frowns and moves back.

  We’re both a bit drunk now and the changing room is warm. Her eyes are the deepest green, like leaves on a lily pond, and when I bend in to kiss her, she leans away from me.

  ‘That wasn’t very good,’ I say. ‘Open your mouth a bit and you should put your tongue in too. Try again.’

  ‘It’s just a bit…’

  ‘Come on.’

  I put my hands on her shoulder and kiss her again. She pushes her mouth into mine and our teeth bang together as our lips part. I flick my tongue into her
mouth and she moves back, but the warmth of her tongue touches mine.

  ‘Good, now close your eyes,’ I tell her.

  When she kisses me, it’s not hard and fast like a boy, with stubble scraping against my lips; it’s soft and slow. I feel the thump of her heart as I press against her. She smells like moisturising cream and my palm starts to get hot. She tastes of the vodka and something sweet like strawberry bonbons. I could eat her whole; she’s so delicious.

  Before she pulls away, a line of spit joins our lips together, before it breaks and we’re separate again. The way that the artificial light shines on her pale skin and the heat from her body make me sigh, because it’s the best birthday I’ve ever had. We’re closer than we’ve ever been and it’s amazing. I want to grab her face and squeeze her cheeks so hard that they go purple. She’s no idea what she means to me.

  ‘That was fucking weird,’ she says as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

  It wasn’t weird; it was perfect.

  ‘You’re a good kisser.’

  She frowns. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘From the heart.’ I bang my fist against my chest and as I do it I feel Kirsten’s pendant bang against me from under my top. She looks down and I put my hands under my thighs, because I’m not sure I can stop myself from grabbing her again. There’s so much I could show her if she’d let me, and the ache to do it makes me hurt inside.

  She moves the chair backwards and gets up. ‘I don’t like this one, but the red one’s all right,’ she says as she pulls it over her head and turns away from me. When she changes back into her old clothes, she glances at her watch. ‘We can get the quarter-to bus if we go now,’ she says, as though nothing’s happened, and I let her finish the vodka so that I have the taste of her in my mouth for longer.

  I think about Kirsten’s kiss and, although it’s probably just the vodka making me emotional, my eyes fill with tears. I don’t want to lose Leila too. I want to keep her like a doll in a box, my perfect plaything, but I know that it can’t be. My knee brushes against hers as she passes the white shirt to me. I want to grab her and squeeze her so hard that she never leaves me. I want us to be this close forever.

  ‘Aren’t you trying yours on?’

  I look in the mirror at my scruffy hair and the dark circles under my eyes. I’m not beautiful like Gillian Gilbert. I could never wear a smart white shirt and look the way she does. I’d have to be a different person to ever look good in something like that.

  ‘Nah, changed my mind.’

  We leave the clothes hung on the rail by the changing room, before we go outside. Grey clouds curl around the chimney of the hat factory as we walk towards the bus depot.

  ‘Fancy town tomorrow? Celebrate your birthday properly? The Ritz is OK on a Wednesday.’

  ‘Maybe another time.’

  She’ll only want to bring Barbara and I don’t want to go.

  Leila bites her bottom lip.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone what happened in there, will you?’ she says.

  ‘What? That you nearly bought that minging top? Never.’

  I put my finger to my lips and pretend to lock them with a key. She smiles and links arms with me. ‘You’re a nutter sometimes.’

  As we walk back past Bogart’s wine bar, I feel her softness through her trench coat and just like that she’s mine again. I don’t care that I’ve got to go home and have a birthday tea with Mike and Mum, because I’ve got Leila and nothing else matters. We’re best friends and no one is ever taking her away from me.

  The sun sets in a lemon-coloured sky as a train goes over the viaduct. Underneath it the river flows angry and fast. Buddleia bushes have taken root, high up in the cracks of the brickwork, and as I see them up there I know that I will cling onto our friendship to the end.

  17

  Hayley Reynolds

  My birthday party is an embarrassment. There’s a pile of soggy orange Crispy Pancakes on the table and a cake that looks as if it’s been dropped and stuck back together again. When we walk in, Happy Birthday by Altered Images is playing. I bought it for Mum and now she plays it at every birthday party. A dog barks as a rocket bangs outside, while Mike reads on the sofa. He’s dressed up like Andrew McCarthy with a baggy shirt and his jumper slung around his neck.

  ‘That’s just great, really great.’ He laughs into his magazine.

  Leila’s drunk. She takes out the new Cure single she bought for my birthday and puts it on. Mike watches, amused, as she starts to dance in the middle of the room. She and Barbara went to see them at The Apollo a couple of months ago and didn’t even ask me. She waves her hands and twists her body as her red curls bounce against the small of her back. Mike gets up and dances too and she turns with wide-eyed laughter, hand outstretched towards me, but I shake my head.

  Mike spins her around, before he pulls her back into him, pressing against her and pushing her backwards into another turn. Leila bends backwards, with her hair hanging down like the leaves of a weeping willow as she smiles. She’s so beautiful that it makes my stomach ache.

  Mum laughs, when she comes back from the kitchen.

  ‘Mike! You said that you couldn’t dance!’

  ‘He can’t,’ I reply.

  I pick up my camera to take a photograph of Leila, but she notices and stumbles back into the wall with a laugh and I don’t get one. When she goes to sit down, Mum smiles at me as though I’m going to take her photograph too, but I pretend not to notice. Mum puts on my New Order album and Leila rolls her eyes. I can’t believe it. They must have got it out of my room.

  ‘Your favourite,’ Mum says. ‘You should have asked more people.’

  The instrumental song is like a siren calling from the water and Mum presses against Mike in a white dress that reveals every bump of her body as he slides his hand over the small of her back.

  ‘Not very partyish,’ Mum says. ‘Have you got any Nik Kershaw? I do like him.’

  I could scream.

  ‘Don’t you even know what an elegy is?’

  ‘What?’ Mike asks.

  I’m not even going to try to explain. It’s my music, not theirs.

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Barbara saw them at Salford University with her sister. Said they were ok, not great though,’ Leila tells them.

  I want to snatch it off the record player and put it back in my room where they can’t touch it. I hate any of them having anything to do with it.

  ‘Remember that princess outfit we got for your eighth birthday?’ Mum says to me, before turning to Mike. ‘Wouldn’t wear it. Refused. Had to give it to one of Brenda’s girls.’

  Mum shakes her head as if to say: She was a nightmare.

  ‘I thought every girl wanted to be a princess,’ says Mike.

  ‘Well, they don’t,’ I reply.

  ‘I’m sure that Leila did,’ Mum says as she stands by the window, but Leila has her eyes closed and doesn’t reply.

  ‘She was a funny little thing,’ Mum continues, more to herself than anyone else as she stares at the blackness outside. The softness of her voice reminds me of how we’d get under the covers together and she’d read me stories when I was little. One time we lay there and listened to the rain against the window until I fell asleep. It’s something that I hadn’t thought about for a long time and it almost doesn’t seem real. When I told her what Dad’s friend did to me, she stopped coming into bed with me and things changed. She didn’t believe me then and she stopped listening to anything I had to say. As the phone rings a rocket lights the sky red through the window. Mum picks up the receiver and when she speaks, I wish I’d answered it.

  ‘We’re having a birthday party,’ she says, and turns away from Mike. ‘Jesus, Danny, it’s Bonfire Night. Whose birthday do you think?’

  I can hardly breathe.

  ‘Dad?’

  She holds out the phone and her hand shakes as she gives it to me. I can’t believe that she still gets like this about him. I press it to my ear and listen
to him breathing, without saying a word. I squeeze the handset until my fingers hurt, because it’s the closest I’ve been to him for so long and I don’t want it to end.

  ‘Sandra, I need that paperwork…’

  His voice sounds tired. There are so many things that I want to say to him, but all that I can say is, ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hayley? Happy birthday.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You got my card?’ he asks.

  I look at the card on the windowsill with the girl in a straw hat on the front. Inside he’s just written ‘Hayley’ and then ‘Dad’, but nothing else, no ‘love’ no nothing.

  ‘I got it. I got a camera too. So I can take pictures like you.’

  ‘Oh? What kind did you get?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s black and silver.’

  There’s silence, until he says, ‘Nice night for a Bonfire Night.’ He pauses. ‘Mild.’

  ‘You’re moving? To France?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, well, if I can get a few things sorted out first. Listen, I’m sorry, Hayley, it’s great to talk, but I’m down to 10p. You couldn’t put your mum back on before the pips go, could you? Happy birthday though. I’ll try to come and see you soon.’

  ‘I’ve got to go anyway, Dad. I’m having a party.’

  Saying the word ‘Dad’ feels weird and I press my tongue against the roof of my mouth and hold the phone to my ear to get a few seconds longer, while next door’s baby cries with hopeless anger through the wall. It makes me feel cold inside and I don’t want to let the phone go, but Mum takes it off me.

  ‘Call back tomorrow,’ she says, before she puts the phone down. ‘I need a cigarette.’

  She walks out of the room and I stare at the phone and wait for him to ring back, but he doesn’t. Above the phone is the framed photograph of the kingfisher. Its turquoise wings are open as it dives and lava-like bubbles swirl around the scattering fish. I remember when he put it up, because I felt proud – as if it was my photograph too – but now I just feel like one of the fish that were snatched from the water.

  ‘Is it all right to have more cake?’ Leila asks. ‘Or some more beer?’