Kiss Her Goodbye: The most addictive thriller you'll read this year Page 22

  Mrs Green finds us a nice café with flowery china. We listen to the piano music through the speaker and she stares at the empty chair in between us. As we sip our drinks I have no idea how to stop the silence. I know she’s thinking about Kirsten and wishing she were here instead of me. After a while, Mrs Green blinks as though she wants to cry and I wait for her to say that she wishes she’d never agreed to come out.

  ‘This is lovely,’ she says instead, and pats me twice on the arm as if to say thank you.

  *

  Mum comes to meet me in the hall as soon as I get home and I can tell she knows I haven’t been to college again.

  ‘Nice day?’

  I shrug.

  ‘I had a call. They wanted to know if everything was all right at home. What have you been telling them?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I don’t need this right now. I don’t know how Mike’s coped on his own with you.’

  ‘He coped fine. Especially when he slept in my room. Oh, and he’s seeing someone else.’

  She slaps me across the face and it stings, but it feels good too. If she doesn’t care about Dad, then she’ll care about this. I like hurting her, as she’s hurt me. She goes into the living room and lights up a cigarette.

  ‘I shouldn’t have done that. All these lies. You just make me so—’

  ‘The flowers were for me.’

  She turns to face me. ‘I don’t know why you’re doing this. I’ve always done my best for you.’

  ‘Just ask him if you don’t believe me.’

  I run upstairs and slam the bedroom door, before getting out my box of special things: the lock of Kirsten’s hair, the newspaper cuttings and the ornament. I pick up the glass swan and run my finger along the delicate glass before I snap its neck. That’s what they should have done to me when I was a baby. Everyone would have been a lot better off.

  At least Beverley Samuels hasn’t been back here, but I can’t help thinking it’s only a matter of time before I see her again. I touch the pendant around my neck as I look through the things on my bed and think about what Mrs Green told me about being myself, but I’m just not sure who that is any more.

  When Mike comes home, Mum starts questioning him straight away.

  ‘What’s been going on while I’ve been away?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  They close the living-room door and I hear them argue through the ceiling.

  ‘Who is she?’ Mum shouts, before something smashes against the wall.

  ‘I can’t do this any more,’ Mike says, before the front door slams and his car starts up and drives away. If he’s gone for good, then she deserves it.

  When I go downstairs, a broken frame lies on the floor and smiling through the shattered glass is a photograph of Mum and Mike. On the table are piles of travel brochures spread out. I hear the sound of a cork and Mum comes into the room, glass of wine in hand.

  She picks up a business card and throws it across the table.

  ‘That’s who he’s been seeing. That’s who he’s been ringing. He was going to surprise me.’

  She lets the card drop to the floor and she goes back into the kitchen. After she’s gone, I read the card. It says, ‘Andrea Fothergill, Chorlton Travel’.

  Whoever he’s been going to see isn’t a travel agent – they don’t work until eleven at night – but she won’t believe me as usual. I go over to the carnations and pull the heads off every last one before I go upstairs.

  *

  That night, I look out of my window as the pampas grass sags, heavy with rain, and the puddles shine under the moonlight. Through the darkness, at the back of the garden, I see something in the blackness of the bushes and I know that Kirsten’s out there. I pick up the scarab and hold it tight in my hand. I wonder if Kirsten knows that Beverley Samuels is trying to find out what happened to her and it makes my head ache just thinking about it. The first time I saw Kirsten by the river, it was fate. She needed me and I was there for her. What else matters?

  The silhouettes of the trees move outside the window and their black branches wag like fingers. She knows what I want before I do. I’ve got the urge again. I put my hands to my head to block out the thoughts, but they keep coming. The black leaves make an ebony mass and through the foliage Kirsten jumps across the branches from tree to tree. When I focus on the place where she was, there’s another movement in the far corner of my eye. She’s too fast for me now and as I try to see her through the darkness, she disappears. She’s everywhere: under and over, inside and out. Tree branches split the sky like the dark thoughts cutting through my head and I know that she’s waiting for me: in the garden or against the trunk of a tree and I’ll never get away. She’s learnt how to hide from everyone at last, even from me.

  The sound of Christmas music is on the air and a loudspeaker announces a ‘Ho ho ho!’ as the Rotary Club Santa comes round in his truck, as he does every year. In the past I might have gone out to watch it, but the thought of Christmas makes me want to retch. I pick up the broken swan and it slices the top of my finger. As I suck the blood, something black runs across the lawn towards the house and, even though it’s probably next door’s cat, I lock my window just in case.

  A wall of black covers everything. I know that her muddy grin will be pressed up against the window and her wet hand will be up against the glass in seconds. I shut the curtains as fast as I can to keep her out, but the darkness has got inside me too and there’s nothing I can do. My head hurts so much. The pounding bass of the Rotary Club’s Christmas songs and Santa’s booming laugh come through the trees and I bend my pillow over my ears to block it out. It sounds as if it’s headed towards Mrs Green’s road. When I wanted to be with Kirsten, I never thought it would end up like this.

  29

  DS Beverley Samuels

  As I leave the house for my run, it’s mild and the air is still. My feet pump the concrete, while the words from Moira Timperley’s autopsy report move around my head with every step.

  Blunt force trauma. Blunt force trauma. Blunt force trauma.

  I could run until my feet were bloody stumps and it would stay there like a heartbeat. I try to change my route, but I always end up on the river path hoping to see Michael Lancaster or Hayley Reynolds. Even though I vary the times I go, it hasn’t made a difference; they’re never there.

  When I run down Hayley Reynolds’s road, the drive is empty and I continue along my route: up by the bus stop, through the park and down the cobbled hill that leads to the industrial estate. I torture myself with the idea that Hayley’s mum is just like Moira’s, hiding something for the man who’s using her. As my feet hit the pavement I scan the brambles for signs of Kirsten’s pendant or anything else that we’ve missed. I just can’t help myself.

  I carry on past the weir, behind the warehouses and up to Kirsten Green’s house. Every step is a step I shouldn’t be taking, but when I get home the adrenaline is pumping. I get in the shower with my muscles tight and as the hot water hits my face I feel better than I’ve done for days.

  *

  I lean backwards in the chair, with my neck against the sink, as the hairdresser washes my hair. Her bright red lipstick is perfectly applied. In her Dynasty-style shoulder pads and pencil skirt, she reminds me of my sister. When we fell out about selling Gran’s house, things were never the same. They got their business started without my money anyway. The last time I saw her she had glitter mousse in her hair and a fake Rolex on her wrist, telling Mum that all the council houses should go. Mum was agreeing, as usual. It was ridiculous.

  The girl pushes the shampoo through my hair and a trickle of warm water runs down my neck and makes me shiver. I haven’t been touched for so long that it’s almost too intimate. As the porcelain digs hard into my nape I think about the bruises on Moira Timperley’s neck and face. Despite how she spat and cursed the first time I met her she was just a scared kid. She would have opened up to me if I’d made time for her. She didn’t stand a ch
ance. The hairdresser digs into my scalp with her fingers as the water flows and all I want to do is forget about Moira for a few moments at least.

  I tell her to cut it short. I want the past cut away so that it’s no longer a part of me. I’m out with work tonight and that’s why I’m here, but there’s too much noise: people talking, hairdryers drying, music playing, and I want it to end. Even the red-and-white-striped wallpaper is too bright. I close my eyes so that I don’t have to make conversation until she combs my hair in silence.

  ‘I think women should wear their hair long,’ an old woman next to me says, as though I should care.

  Grey curls lie by her feet as she waits for my response. I ignore her and the hairdresser looks embarrassed as she fluffs and sprays my hair rigid. As I get up, the hairdresser looks sideways at herself in the mirror.

  ‘We’re getting booked up for Christmas already. Shall I make you an appointment?’ she asks, without looking at me.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I reply.

  I give her a pound tip and regret leaving anything.

  *

  When I walk into the pub, Nick waves from a busy table. A cloud of cigarette smoke and table of empty pint glasses suggests they’ve been out for a while. I get a drink from the bar, before sitting down next to him.

  ‘How’s things? No more bother?’ Nick asks me quietly as the others share a joke that I’ve missed.

  ‘Fine.’

  He puts down his drink. ‘He’s got the message, then.’

  ‘Yeah, reckon.’

  I doubt it, but I want Nick to stop asking about it. I don’t like being talked to like a victim and I don’t need him to save me.

  Steve and Dave come back from the bar with hands full of drinks and sit down. As they talk about the time that Steve fell in the canal, I let the laughter wash over me. More people arrive and the number of empty glasses grows as The Fine Young Cannibals plays on the jukebox. Nick taps his finger against his pint glass.

  ‘Here for the night?’ he says.

  ‘Nah, you?’

  ‘Maybe a couple more.’

  I’m already checking the clock behind the bar to see what time I can slip away without anyone noticing.

  ‘Your hair’s different,’ he says.

  ‘Don’t start.’

  He leans back. ‘It’s cute. You look…’

  I squint. ‘Like a boy?’

  ‘You look all right. More than all right.’

  I move back in my seat, unsure of what he’s doing. I want to tell him that I’ve missed our friendship and that’s why I’m here. I just want us to have a laugh and that’s all. It annoys me that he thinks I must want more. We haven’t mentioned the Kirsten Green case and it feels like we’re moving on. I take a sip from my drink and place it on the beer mat next to his. As ‘Johnny Come Home’ continues to play it makes me think of Kirsten’s mother. I can’t stay here for much longer. Nick laughs with the others, while my thoughts are on Mrs Green and if she still goes down to the river.

  ‘Call it what you like. They’re anarchists,’ says a voice from behind the pillar.

  ‘That lot are part of the problem,’ says a lad in a Harrington jacket, with a nod over to our table.

  The barman pours a pint from the tap, while the voices rise and fall, but it doesn’t go any further. He goes over to a table where a girl in a black and white checked shirt is sitting waiting on her own. I stay for another drink while conversations blur and when Nick goes to the cigarette machine I say my goodbyes, get my coat and walk out.

  There are spots of drizzle on the air, but it’s mild. Dead leaves rattle on the trees as the wind picks up and the church clock strikes in the distance. As I walk out of the car park, someone shouts me back and when I turn around, Nick is standing on the step with a pint in his hand.

  ‘Dave’s got us lifts sorted.’

  ‘It’s fine. I’ll see you at work.’

  ‘Look, the flowers I sent. They were just to cheer you up. Nothing else.’

  I think about the pink bouquet with the big bow that is rotting in the graveyard. It didn’t cross my mind that they’d be from him.

  ‘I thought they were from Tom.’

  ‘Shit, you didn’t? There was a card. Wait a sec. I’ll get my coat.’

  ‘I’m fine. I’ll see you Monday,’ I shout after him.

  As he goes back inside I walk down the passage over the road before he has chance to come after me. A red Ford Fiesta drives past, window wipers squeaking, but there’s no one else around.

  It’s a five-minute walk to Hayley Reynolds’s house and by the time I get there, my clothes are soaked. Michael Lancaster’s car isn’t on the drive and the lights are off upstairs. He must think that everyone has forgotten about him and he’s right – they all have, but me. I watch the rain pour from the blocked gutters onto the front garden before I walk away. I already know that he was working this week, because I called and asked to speak to him. I put the phone down before the receptionist could ask who I was.

  Instead of going home, I walk through the estate and over to the edge of the woods where the warehouses are. Parked cars line the kerbs near the path to the river, but Michael Lancaster’s isn’t one of them.

  I stand at the gates to the path that leads to the river. The lane fades into a wall of blackness as the rain hits the muddy path. I consider going down it to see if he’s there, until a sharp blast of wind hits me like a slap. My tongue is dry from the alcohol and I know that Michael Lancaster could be anywhere. If Nick could see me now I know what he’d say. He doesn’t know that I’ve been putting together information on Michael Lancaster back at the office either and I try to put him out of my mind.

  *

  When I get home, the house is cold and unwelcoming. I peel off my wet clothes and put on my dressing gown, but my mind is too busy for sleep. I get under the blanket on the sofa, with the gas fire on low, and watch a recorded programme about when Charles and Diana met the Reagans at the White House. The princess is dancing in an ink-blue velvet gown and the choker around her neck sparkles as she spins. She laughs as she dances with John Travolta and he bites his lip, before pulling her in close. She’s radiant and happy, as Kirsten Green and Moira Timperley could have been. As the princess smiles I can’t take my eyes off the choker. The missing pendant is still out there: in the undergrowth, sitting in the muddy depths of the river or in someone else’s hands. As my eyes close and I fall asleep to the hum of the television, I just can’t get it out of my mind.

  When I wake, my body is hot with sweat and my head filled with thoughts of Moira Timperley. I dreamt she was clawing at a silver pendant as it wound tighter and tighter around her neck, until her screams became silent. It takes me a few seconds to adjust to where I am. Her mother’s face was ashen white as she held her hand in the hospital and I can’t forget the look of pain in her eyes. A continuous shrill beep comes from the television and the test-card girl in the red dress stares back accusingly. The room is hot from the fire and the clock says that it’s 2.00 a.m.

  I switch everything off, go to the bathroom and wash my face in the sink. As the water glistens off my face I see how much I’ve changed. The running has made me muscled and my short hair is slicked back to my head. I’m not the person that I was a year ago.

  My mum and sister would be surprised if they could see me now. I got a letter from them this morning asking if I wanted to stay with them at Christmas. Their sun-kissed faces looked happy in the photograph and the letter talked about oranges on the trees and hidden bays. With her tanned skin I can see my dad in my sister, more than ever before. She’s lost some weight and she’s even got his dimples. I hope Mum sees it in her too; because I resent the way it was always them against us. My sister was her baby and we weren’t ever close; the age gap was too big. Mum was always busy with her and I got ignored after she came along. I sent one back asking them to come here instead. Christmas will be bad enough without having to spend a week with them. Sometimes I wonder what it would
be like to feel the sun on my face and leave this place behind, but I’d never tell them that. They never really wanted me to go with them to Spain anyway. They only wanted us to pool the inheritance money and, despite everything that’s happened, I’m glad I didn’t. Perhaps one day they’ll realise there’s more to life than money.

  *

  On Monday morning, I drive Nick through Didsbury, on our way to interview potential witnesses about a twenty-year-old lad who was beaten up on the estate.

  Nick glances at me from the passenger seat. ‘I went looking for you the other night.’

  ‘I said I was going.’

  He turns to look forwards out of the window.

  ‘I would have walked you back.’

  ‘I needed the headspace.’

  I want to tell him that I don’t need him to walk me home or buy me flowers either. I can look after myself. I deal with it every day. I’ve got a headache and I don’t need this.

  Tom posted me a letter through the door this morning and inside he wrote:

  Just send me a cheque for the stuff you got rid of and we’ll call it quits. Drop it round to Mum’s or ring me? You’ve probably heard that I’m seeing someone else, but I miss talking to you. Call me? Xxx

  I threw it in the bin and didn’t even consider ringing. He hasn’t changed. All he ever wants is money for booze and the next woman’s bed. There was no stamp and the thought of him putting it through the letterbox makes me uncomfortable. I pull the car down a gear as traffic builds near the shops. I don’t need Nick on my back too.

  ‘I put your name down for the Christmas do. Thought you’d want to come. You just need to pay the deposit,’ he says.

  ‘Are we going to the shop first?’ I say, to change the subject.

  ‘You reckon Mr Ahmed will talk to us?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither. Let’s go there anyway.’

  He puts a chewing gum in his mouth as the traffic slows and that’s when I notice the car. I’d know it anywhere now. The dint on the passenger door and the panda sticker on the back window give it away: it’s Michael Lancaster’s.