Erin called me to say there had been a disturbance at a house on the southeastern fringes of town—a neighbour had called, saying she’d arrived home to see the windows of the house in question broken and a young boy on a bike leaving the scene. The house belonged to one of the teachers at the local school, while the boy—dark-haired, wearing a yellow T-shirt and riding a red bike—I was fairly certain was Josh.
He was easy to find. He was sitting on the bridge wall, the bike leaned up against it, his clothes soaked through and his legs streaked with mud. He didn’t run when he saw me. If anything, he seemed relieved when he greeted me, polite as ever. “Good afternoon, Mr. Townsend.”
I asked him if he was OK. “You’ll catch cold,” I said, indicating his wet clothes, and he half smiled.
“I’m all right,” he said.
“Josh,” I said, “were you riding your bike over on Seward Road this afternoon?” He nodded. “You didn’t happen to go past Mr. Henderson’s house, did you?”
He chewed on his bottom lip, soft brown eyes widening to saucers. “Don’t tell my mum, Mr. Townsend. Please don’t tell my mum. She’s got enough on her plate.” A lump formed in my throat, and I had to fight back tears. He’s such a small boy, and so vulnerable-looking. I kneeled down at his side.
“Josh! What on earth were you doing? Was there anyone else there with you? Some older boys, maybe?” I asked hopefully.
He shook his head, but didn’t look at me. “It was just me.”
“Really? Are you sure?” He looked away. “Because I saw you talking to Lena outside the station earlier. This wouldn’t have anything to do with her, would it?”
“No!” he cried, his voice a painful, humiliating squeak. “No. It was me. Just me. I threw rocks at his windows. At that . . . bastard’s windows.” “Bastard” was enunciated carefully, as though he were trying out the word for the first time.
“Why on earth would you do that?”
He met my eye then, his lower lip trembling. “Because he deserved it,” he said. “Because I hate him.”
He started to cry.
“Come on,” I said, picking up his bike, “I’ll drive you home.” But he grabbed hold of the handlebars.
“No!” he sobbed. “You can’t. I don’t want Mum to hear about this. Or Dad. They can’t hear this, they can’t . . .”
“Josh”—I crouched down again, resting my hand on the saddle of his bike—“it’s all right. It’s not that bad. We’ll sort it out. Honestly. It’s not the end of the world.”
At that, he began to howl. “You don’t understand. Mum will never forgive me . . .”
“Of course she will!” I suppressed an urge to laugh. “She’ll be a bit cross, I’m sure, but you haven’t done anything terrible, you didn’t hurt anyone . . .”
His shoulders shook. “Mr. Townsend, you don’t understand. You don’t understand what I’ve done.”
• • •
IN THE END, I took him back to the station. I wasn’t sure what else to do, he wouldn’t let me drive him home and I couldn’t leave him by the side of the road in that state. I installed him in the back office and made him a cup of tea, then got Callie to run out and buy some biscuits.
“You can’t interview him, sir,” Callie said, alarmed. “Not without an appropriate adult.”
“I’m not interviewing him,” I replied tetchily. “He’s frightened and he doesn’t want to go home yet.”
The words triggered a memory: He’s frightened and he doesn’t want to go home. I was younger than Josh, just six years old, and a policewoman was holding my hand. I never know which of my memories are real—I’ve heard so many stories about that time, from so many different sources, that it’s difficult to distinguish memory from myth. But in this one I was shivering and afraid, and there was a policewoman at my side, stout and comforting, holding me against her hip protectively while men talked above my head. “He’s frightened and he doesn’t want to go home,” she said.
“Could you take him to your place, Jeannie?” my father said. “Could you take him with you?” That was it. Jeannie. WPC Sage.
• • •
MY PHONE RINGING brought me back to myself.
“Sir?” It was Erin. “The neighbour on the other side saw a girl running off in the opposite direction. A teenager, long blond hair, denim shorts and white T-shirt.”
“Lena. Of course.”
“Yeah, sounds like it. You want me to go and pick her up?”
“Leave her for today,” I said. “She’s had enough. Have you managed to get hold of the owner—of Henderson?”
“Not yet. I’ve been calling, but it’s going straight to voice mail. When I spoke to him earlier he said something about a fiancée in Edinburgh, but I don’t have a number for her. They may even be on the plane already.”
I took the cup of tea in to Josh. “Look,” I said to him, “we need to get in touch with your parents. I just need to let them know that you’re here, and you’re OK, all right? I don’t have to give them any details, not right now, I’ll just tell them that you’re upset and that I’ve brought you here to have a chat. That sound OK?” He nodded. “And then you can tell me what it is that you’re upset about, and we’ll take it from there.” He nodded again. “But at some point, you are going to have to explain the business about the house.”
Josh sipped his tea, hiccupping occasionally, not quite recovered from his earlier emotional outburst. His hands were wrapped tightly around the mug, and his mouth worked as he tried to find whatever words he wanted to say to me.
Eventually, he looked up at me. “Whatever I do,” he said, “someone is going to be upset with me.” Then he shook his head. “No, actually, that’s not right. If I do the right thing, everyone is going to be upset with me, and if I do the wrong thing, they won’t. It shouldn’t be like that, should it?”
“No,” I said, “it shouldn’t. And I’m not sure you’re correct about that. I can’t think of a situation in which doing the right thing will make everyone upset with you. One or two people, maybe, but surely if it’s the right thing, some of us will see it that way? And be grateful to you?”
He chewed his lip again. “The problem,” he said, his voice trembling again, “is that the damage is already done. I’m too late. It’s too late to do the right thing now.”
He cried again, but not like before. He wasn’t wailing or panicking; this time he cried like someone who has lost everything, lost all hope. He was in despair, and I couldn’t bear it.
“Josh, I must get your parents here, I must,” I said, but he clung to my arm.
“Please, Mr. Townsend. Please.”
“I want to help you, Josh. I really do. Please tell me what it is that’s upsetting you so much.”
(I remembered sitting in a warm kitchen, not my own, eating cheese on toast. Jeannie was there, she sat at my side. Won’t you tell me what happened, darling? Please tell me. I said nothing. Not a word. Not a single word.)
Josh, though, was ready to speak. He wiped his eyes and blew his nose. He coughed and sat up straight in his chair. “It’s about Mr. Henderson,” he said. “About Mr. Henderson and Katie.”
Thursday, 20 August
LENA
It started as a joke. The thing with Mr. Henderson. A game. We’d played it before, with Mr. Friar, the biology teacher, and with Mr. Mackintosh, the swimming coach. You just had to get them to blush. We took turns trying. One of us would go, and if she didn’t succeed, then it was the other person’s turn. You could do whatever you liked, and you could do it whenever you liked, the only rule was that the other person had to be present, because otherwise it wasn’t verifiable. We never included anyone else; it was our thing, mine and Katie’s—I don’t actually remember whose idea it was.
With Friar, I went first and it took about thirty seconds. I went up to his desk and I smiled at him and bit my li
p when he was explaining something about homeostasis and I leaned forward so that my shirt gaped open a bit and bingo. With Mackintosh, it took a bit more work because he was used to seeing us in our swimming costumes, so it wasn’t like he was going to go mad over a bit of skin. But Katie got there in the end, by acting sweet and shy and just a little bit embarrassed when she talked to him about the kung fu films we knew he liked.
With Mr. Henderson, though, it was another story. Katie went first, because she’d won the round with Mr. Mac. She waited until after class, and while I was packing away my books really slowly, she went up to his desk and perched on the edge of it. She smiled at him, leaning forward a bit, and began to speak, but he pushed his chair back suddenly and got to his feet, taking a step backwards. She carried on, but halfheartedly, and as we were leaving, he gave us a look like he was furious. When I tried, he yawned. I did my best, standing close to him and smiling and touching my hair and my neck and nibbling my lower lip, and he yawned, really obviously. Like I was boring him.
I couldn’t get that out of my head, the way he’d looked at me like I was nothing, like I wasn’t interesting in the slightest. I didn’t want to play anymore. Not with him, it wasn’t fun. He just acted like a dick. Katie said, “Do you think so?” and I said I did, and she said all right then. And that was that.
I didn’t find out that she’d broken the rules until much later, months later. I had no idea, so when Josh came to see me on Valentine’s Day with the most hilarious story I’d ever heard, I messaged her with a little heart picture. Heard about your bae, I wrote. KW & MH 4eva. I got a text message about five seconds later saying DELETE THAT. NOT JOKING. DELETE. I texted back, WTF? And she texted again. DELETE NOW OR I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL NEVER TALK TO YOU AGAIN. Jesus, I thought. Chill.
The next morning in class, she ignored me. Didn’t even say hello. On our way out, I grabbed her arm.
“Katie? What is going on?” She virtually shoved me into the loos. “What the fuck?” I said. “What was that about?”
“Nothing,” she hissed at me. “I just thought it was lame, all right?” She gave me this look, one I’d been getting from her more and more, like she was a grown-up and I was a child. “What made you do that, anyway?”
We were standing at the far end of the bathroom, under the window. “Josh came round to see me,” I told her. “He said he saw you and Mr. Henderson holding hands in the car park . . .” I started laughing.
Katie didn’t laugh. She turned away from me and stood in front of the basin, looking at her reflection. “What?” She pulled her mascara out of her bag. “What exactly did he say?” Her voice sounded strange, not angry, not upset; it was like she was frightened.
“He said he’d been waiting for you after school and he’d seen you with Henderson and you were holding hands . . .” I started laughing again. “Jesus, it’s not a big drama. He was just making up stories because he wanted an excuse to come and see me. It was Valentine’s Day, so . . .”
Katie squeezed her eyes shut. “God! You’re such a fucking narcissist,” she said quietly. “You really do think everything is about you.”
I felt like I’d been slapped. “What?” I didn’t even know how to respond, it was so unlike her. I was still trying to think of what to say when she dropped the mascara into the basin, gripped its edge and began to cry.
“Katie . . .” I put my hand on her shoulder and she sobbed harder. I put my arms around her. “Oh God, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“Haven’t you noticed,” she sniffed, “that things have been different? Haven’t you noticed, Lenie?”
Of course I had. She’d been different, distant, for a while. She was busy all the time. She had homework, so we couldn’t hang out after school, or she was going shopping with her mum, so she couldn’t come to the cinema, or she had to babysit Josh, so she couldn’t come over that night. She’d been different in other ways, too. Quieter at school. She didn’t smoke anymore. She’d started dieting. She seemed to drift out of conversations, like she was bored by what I was saying, like she had better things to think about.
Of course I’d noticed. I was hurt. But I wasn’t going to say anything. Showing someone you’re hurt is the worst thing you can do, isn’t it? I didn’t want to look weak or needy, because no one wants to be around someone like that. “I thought . . . I don’t know, K, I thought you were just bored with me or something.” She cried even harder then, and I hugged her.
“I’m not,” she said. “I’m not bored with you. But I couldn’t tell you, I couldn’t tell anyone.” She broke off suddenly and pulled herself out of my arms. She walked to the other end of the room and sank to her knees, then crawled towards me, checking under each stall.
“Katie? What are you doing?”
It took until then for it to hit me. That’s how clueless I was. “Oh my God,” I said as she got back to her feet. “Are you . . . are you actually saying . . .”—I lowered my voice to a whisper—“there’s something going on?” She said nothing but looked me dead in the eye and I knew that it was true. “Fuck. Fuck! You can’t be . . . That is insane. You can’t. You can’t, Katie. You have to stop this . . . before anything happens.”
She looked at me like I was a bit dim, like she felt sorry for me. “Lena, it’s already happened.” She half smiled, wiping the tears from her face. “It’s been happening since November.”
• • •
I DIDN’T TELL the police any of that. It wasn’t any of their business.
They came to the house in the evening, when Julia and I were in the kitchen eating dinner. Correction: I was eating dinner. She was just pushing her food around her plate like she always does. Mum told me Julia doesn’t like to eat in front of other people—it’s a hangover from when she was fat. Neither of us was talking—we hadn’t said anything to each other since I came home yesterday and found her with Mum’s things—so it was a relief when the doorbell went.
When I saw that it was Sean and Detective Sergeant Morgan—Erin, as I’m supposed to call her now we’re all spending so much time together—I thought it must be about the broken windows, although I did think that both of them coming seemed like overkill. I held my hands up to it right away.
“I’ll pay for the damage,” I said. “I can afford it now, can’t I?” Julia pursed her lips like she thought I was a disappointment to her. She got up and started clearing away the dishes, even though she hadn’t eaten a thing.
Sean took her chair and pulled it round so that he was sitting next to me. “We’ll get to that later,” he said, a sad and serious expression on his face. “But first we need to talk to you about Mark Henderson.”
I went cold, my stomach flipping over like when you know something really bad is about to happen. They knew. I felt devastated and relieved at the same time, but I tried my best to keep my face totally blank and innocent. “Yeah,” I said. “I know. I smashed up his house.”
“Why did you smash up his house?” Erin asked.
“Because I was bored. Because he’s a dick. Because—”
“That’s enough, Lena!” Sean interrupted. “Stop messing about.” He looked properly pissed off. “You know that’s not what we’re talking about, don’t you?” I didn’t say a word, I just looked out of the window. “We’ve been talking to Josh Whittaker,” he said, and my stomach flipped again. I suppose I’d known all along that Josh wouldn’t be able to keep quiet about this forever, but I’d hoped that smashing up Henderson’s house might satisfy him, for a little while at least. “Lena? Are you listening to me?” Sean was leaning forward in his chair. I noticed that his hands were shaking a bit. “Josh has made a very serious allegation about Mark Henderson. He’s told us that Mark Henderson was engaged in a relationship—a sexual relationship—with Katie Whittaker in the months before she died.”
“Bullshit!” I said, and I tried to laugh. “That’s total bullshit.” Everyone was stari
ng at me and it was impossible to keep my face from going red. “It’s bullshit,” I said again.
“Why would he invent a story like that, Lena?” Sean asked me. “Why would Katie’s little brother come up with a story like that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know. But it’s not true.” I was staring at the table and trying to think of a reason, but my face just kept getting hotter and hotter.
“Lena,” Erin said, “you’re obviously not telling the truth. What’s less clear is why on earth you would lie about something like this. Why would you try to protect a man who has taken advantage of your friend like that?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake—”
“What?” she asked, getting right up in my face. “For fuck’s sake what?” There was something about her, about how close she got to me and the expression on her face, that made me want to slap her.
“He didn’t take advantage of her. She wasn’t a child!”
She looked really pleased with herself then, and I wanted to slap her even more, and she just kept talking. “If he didn’t take advantage of her, why do you hate him so much? Were you jealous?”
“I think that’s enough,” Julia said, but no one listened to her.
Erin just kept talking, kept going on and on at me. “Did you want him for yourself, was that it? Were you pissed off because you thought you were the prettier one, you thought you should get all the attention?”
I just lost it then. I knew that if she didn’t shut up I was going to hit her, so I said it. “I hated him, you stupid bitch. I hated him because he took her from me.”
Everyone went quiet for a bit. Then Sean said, “He took her from you? How did he do that, Lena?”
I couldn’t help it. I was just so fucking tired, and it was obvious that they were going to find out now anyway, now that Josh had gone and opened his big mouth. But most of all, I was just too tired to lie anymore. So I sat there in our kitchen and I betrayed her.