Five Strangers Read online

It’s good for her to see if she can manage by herself, I tell myself, as I walk off across the Heath. What do they say – sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind? Jen really had it coming to her though. What a fucking cheek she had to accuse me of stalking her when I was only doing my best to protect her. Who knows what could have happened in that isolated woodland if I hadn’t turned up when I did. Jen believed that the boy – what was he called? Steven? – was harmless, but who knows? I left her knowing that she wasn’t in any real danger – I had seen him run off. But it was important to teach her a lesson.

  As I walk I realise that perhaps it’s time to get on with my own life. I’m due back at work at Camden Council soon. I’ve my own friends and interests that have nothing to do with Jen. But as soon as I start to make plans I feel a terrible sense of sadness and guilt. I’m so bound up with Jen that we’re like sisters. And, like sisters, although we have our occasional rows and nasty spats, we will always return to each other.

  I take out my phone to see if she’s sent a message or a text, but there’s nothing. I’m not going to ring her, I tell myself. Let her sweat. Then she’ll learn to appreciate me and everything I’ve done for her.

  I replay the scene on the Heath in my head, hardly noticing the route I take towards Kentish Town. At the flat, I try to fall back into my normal routine – I had some washing to do, some work emails to check, a spot of cleaning – but I can’t get Jen out of my mind. She haunts me like a ghost, a shimmering mirage just out of reach. I go for a walk, but she’s still there, temporarily inhabiting the bodies of passing strangers. She’s around every corner, at the bottom of each street, glimpsed in windows, on passing buses, her blonde hair a beacon of light in a grey, lifeless world.

  At night, I take a couple of pills and wash them down with some white wine. But as I gulp down the cold, golden liquid even that reminds me of her. I sleep fitfully, my dreams saturated by distorted images of her. Jen on the Heath, desperate and lost, her clothes torn, her arms scratched by brambles. She is calling my name. She says she can’t live without me. She walks down to the ponds and looks into the water, her reflection beckoning her in. She steps forwards and disappears into the murky depths. But this then morphs into a vision of Jen at university, seeing her for the first time that day in halls. The awkward little thing desperate for someone to take her under their wing. She looks terrible. Her skin is a mass of acne. Her hair is a lank mess. Her breath smells. Help me, she says. I need you.

  She begins to tell me how she’s suffered. She talks about the tragic death of her parents in that car accident. I see her in the car with them, but she’s driving. She’s smiling as she presses her foot on the accelerator, a mad look on her face. Her mum and dad are screaming at her to slow down, but as the car speeds through a network of deserted country lanes Jen laughs like someone unhinged. There is a manic look in her eyes. She wants them to die. As the car turns a bend she takes her hands off the steering wheel and the vehicle crashes into a tree. Her parents are catapulted through the windscreen – the glass tears their skin into shreds, the force of the collision bends their heads backwards, almost decapitating them – but Jen just sits there, serene and unhurt, a smile of accomplishment on her face. It wasn’t an accident, I realise. She had it all planned. She wanted them dead.

  I wake up sweating. I get up to go to the bathroom, switch the light on and splash some cold water on my face. I look at myself in the mirror. I don’t have brown hair, but blonde. The shape of my nose is not right, the contours of my cheeks are different. My eyes are not my eyes. For a moment, I see not my face but Jen’s staring back at me. I gasp in fear – this can’t be happening to me, I think – but the noise in my throat wakes me up. I’m still in bed, still clammy with sweat, still dreaming of Jen.

  27

  JEN

  I’m no longer crying by the time I reach Penelope’s house, only furious with myself. Bex has been the one good, constant thing in my life, and I’ve gone and pushed her away. I think about a future without her. Everything seems so bleak. What can I do to make it up to her? To show her that I didn’t mean what I said? I will ring her later and apologise. Even though I haven’t got any money, I’ll suggest taking her out for a meal or a spa day at a fancy hotel.

  I turn the key in the lock of the front door and immediately hear Penelope’s voice.

  ‘Darling, is that you?’ she calls out.

  ‘Yes, only me,’ I reply.

  I never stopped to think that Bex would ever feel jealous about my new friendship with Penelope. What is there to envy? Yes, I admire Penelope a great deal from a professional point of view. She is feisty and full of anecdotes. She has lived a good life. She makes me laugh. And yes, she inspires me. But I can’t compare our superficial acquaintance with the depth of the friendship I enjoy with Bex. When I speak to Bex next I will tell her this, and more.

  I walk into the kitchen where Penelope is sitting at the long wooden table reading the papers and listening to Radio 4. When she sees me she raises her head and asks, ‘Now, tell me, how did you get on? I want to hear each single detail, from the very beginning, as soon as you stepped into the Da Silvas’ home until you left. Leave nothing out, no matter how insignificant.’

  Over a cup of tea I tell her everything. At the news of Victoria Da Silva’s pregnancy her eyes light up and she claps her hands like a small child at a birthday party. The instinct for news, however unsavoury or tragic, has not left her. I think about that quote – now, whoever said it? – about how writers have a splinter of ice in the heart. I go on to tell her about the encounter with Steven Walker, but I say nothing about my argument with Bex.

  ‘But this is simply wonderful,’ says Penelope, fluttering her eyelashes. ‘You’re making real progress. Victoria’s pregnancy could be the key to the whole thing. But what a shame the young boy ran away before he had the chance to tell you what he knew. Cold feet, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, I guess that must have been it,’ I lie.

  ‘But never mind, now you know where he goes to school you can just wait for him outside the school gates. That’s if he ever turns up for class. He seems like he’s got his hands full trying to deal with the situation at home. And, of course, you must follow up the other good lead about Victoria’s best friend, what did you say her name was?’

  ‘Caro Elliott,’ I reply.

  ‘Have you heard from Julia Jones again? Or that young doctor?’

  ‘Not yet,’ I tell her. ‘I need to chase them.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ she says. She’s about to ask another question when she stops herself and looks at me. I feel her eyes burning into me. ‘Jen – are you sure everything’s all right?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask, turning my head away from her so she can’t see my expression.

  ‘I don’t know, I feel there’s something you’re holding back.’

  ‘I think I’ve told you everything,’ I say. If I explain about what happened with Bex I’m afraid I will burst into tears again. ‘Thanks for the tea,’ I add, standing up. ‘I’d better go and send a few emails.’

  Penelope clears her throat, pushes herself up from her chair, and says she has something to say to me. There is something about the tone of her voice – something like that of a headmistress at an expensive girls’ school – that strikes fear into my heart.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘You mustn’t look like a rabbit caught in the headlights,’ she says. ‘It’s nothing serious. Just that since you’ve been out I’ve been doing a little research myself.’

  ‘What did you find out? Anything interesting?’

  ‘It has potential,’ she says, mysteriously. ‘You see, one of the advantages of being an old, decrepit specimen such as myself – particularly if you’re an elderly woman – is that no one seems to notice you. You become invisible. You, my dear, are still an attractive young thing—’

  I try to tell her that by definition I’m middle-aged, but Penelope holds up her hand, a signal that she will not
be interrupted.

  ‘You are still an attractive young woman,’ she continues, ‘and so you won’t understand this. Why would you? When I was your age, well … I could tell you a few stories.’ She smiles to herself, no doubt amused by some of her past adventures. ‘But I mustn’t digress. The point is that as an old crone one is able to slip past certain people unnoticed.’

  I begin to feel anxious at what she is about to tell me. ‘Penelope, what are you talking about? I hope you haven’t done anything—’

  ‘I’ve told you before, you don’t find anything out by just waiting for things to happen,’ she says, crossly. ‘You need to show more – what is that unfortunate word used by Americans? – spunk.’

  I smile and let her continue.

  ‘Don’t stand in judgement on me, but I thought it was about time we found out a little more about the killer, Daniel Oliver,’ she says. ‘And so I paid a visit to see his mother.’

  ‘Tell me you’re making this up.’

  ‘I went to see his mother – what’s wrong with that?’

  I try to control myself. ‘Oh, Penelope, I wish you hadn’t.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Just that I was trying to do this on my own terms, with sensitivity and—’

  ‘Sensitive is my middle name,’ she responds.

  ‘I know, but—’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  I don’t know what to say, so I sigh deeply. I regret ever involving Penelope.

  ‘And I suppose you don’t want to hear what she told me then?’

  She takes up an opened bottle of red wine and pours a glass. She passes it to me with a wicked glint in her eye. It’s impossible to remain angry with Penelope for long, and even though I try my best to continue to look cross with her, I feel my mouth relaxing into a smirk. I take a sip of wine as she pours another glass for herself.

  ‘I haven’t lost my touch, I can tell you,’ she says. ‘The house was being staked out by a couple of the tabloids. They were so obvious. Young men sitting in cheap cars, dressed in even cheaper suits. They kept their eyes out for their counterparts, but what they hadn’t reckoned on was an old lady. Even though I doubt they would have recognised me, I did go out of my way to disguise myself a little. I put on a pair of thick spectacles and an unflattering hat. And of course, I went entirely without make-up, which as you know is very unlike me.’

  She’s not wrong there. I have never seen Penelope without her trademark pink lipstick, flawless and evenly-applied foundation, and extravagant eyelashes.

  ‘I felt so awful without my warpaint that as soon as I came in I made myself up,’ she says. ‘Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, I was hobbling down the pavement, doing my best old lady act – do you know that I actually had an audition at RADA when I was young? I would have gone onto the stage if it hadn’t have been for—’

  ‘Penelope – tell me what happened!’

  ‘Yes, of course, my dear,’ she says, laughing at my impatience.

  ‘I was hobbling down the pavement when I passed the house. Number 57. I’d found the address of Mrs Oliver beforehand, obviously. I simply pretended to feel a bit dizzy, like I was going to faint. One of the spotty-faced young lads, from the Mirror, I believe, jumped out of his car and came to my rescue. He offered me some water, but I told him that I wanted to use the loo – quite urgently. You should have seen the look on his face! He was scared that I was going to shit myself.’

  ‘Penelope!’ I exclaim.

  ‘Don’t pretend to be shocked.’

  ‘I’m not pretending – I am shocked. Not by your language, but by the fact you would use such tactics to get into someone’s house.’

  ‘This is tame stuff compared to some of the stunts I’ve pulled in the past. Before Leveson and all that crap spoilt everything. One day I’ll tell you about the time I used a wooden leg and a blonde wig.’

  ‘No doubt you will,’ I say. ‘But back to earlier today.’

  ‘The lad from the Mirror escorted me up the driveway and rang the bell of Number 57. Mrs Oliver thought he was asking for yet another interview, but when he explained that he’d come across an old dear who had nearly collapsed outside on the street, asking to use the nearest toilet, she promptly ushered me into the house. She was the salt of the earth type, a decent working-class woman who would never dream of turning away someone in need.’

  ‘Did you not tell her what you were really there for?’

  She looked startled by my suggestion. ‘Of course not! What do you take me for – some kind of beginner?’

  I am about to tell her that what she had done was probably against the law, when she launches into her account of her encounter with Mrs Oliver.

  ‘She couldn’t have been kinder,’ she says. ‘She showed me to the loo, where I ran my hands under the taps. I came out and thanked her, told her that she was a lifesaver. I said that I was on the way to visit my daughter’s grave in the local cemetery—’

  ‘You told her what?’

  ‘That I was going to clean my daughter’s grave and I had taken a turn for the worse. The grief was still fresh. I knew she’d understand.’

  ‘You can’t say that.’

  ‘Well I did, and I’m pleased to tell you—’

  ‘But Penelope, you must realise that the things you’ve done and said in the past – well, you can’t do and say them today.’

  ‘Perhaps not, if you’re happy to be the average kind of reporter. I like to think that I’ve always operated on a different plane.’

  The audacity of her behaviour takes my breath away.

  ‘And luckily, the tactic worked,’ she continues. ‘She invited me in for a cup of tea, over which she told me about the incident with her son. Of course, she never mentioned the words “murder” or “suicide”. Mrs Oliver – Karen – said that Daniel had been under a lot of pressure at work. He had a good job, a well-paying job, in the City. She was so proud of him. He’d done so well, not like his sister, Tina, a waitress who was now living in Australia. I got the impression mother and daughter are no longer in touch.

  ‘Karen started crying when she related what happened next, about how Dan had done what he’d done on Hampstead Heath. She was still trying to come to terms with it, she said. She didn’t understand it. I didn’t need to ask any questions. I just listened while she poured out her heart to me. There had been some trouble when he was a teenager, an infatuation with an older woman. But with the arrival of Vicky on the scene she thought he was on the straight and narrow. She thought he’d put his problems behind him.

  ‘Mrs Oliver talked about what a lovely girl Vicky was. Well, she thought that to begin with. But then Dan had started to lose his temper with her, his mother that is. He’d fly off the handle over any little thing. Karen knew there was something wrong. You can’t fool a mother’s instinct, she said. He became moody, depressed. He began to drink more. She suspected other substances were involved too, perhaps cocaine. She knew that the men in the City liked to work hard and play hard. But one day, when Dan was visiting her alone, Karen asked him if he was happy. He normally played the hard guy, you know the type, she said. But on that occasion his face just crumpled and he fell to pieces. She cradled his head in her arms, just like she’d done when he was a little boy. But now, she said, she’d never be able to do that again.’

  Penelope pauses as she sips from her glass of wine.

  ‘Mrs Oliver told me that nothing would excuse her son’s behaviour. She would always be angry with him for what he had done, for killing himself as much as doing what he did to Vicky. Looking back, they probably should never have got together. He should, she said, have stuck to his own type of person. He should never have tried to aim out of his league. The problem, of course, was the fact that he was handsome. And posh girls did seem to like him. It was then that I asked my one and only question: why had Dan been so upset that day when he came to see her? She told me that Dan thought Vicky was having an affair. That day he said that if he found out tha
t this was true he would kill her. But Mrs Oliver thought it was just a figure of speech. She never believed he would do that. Never in a million years.’

  28

  BEX

  I wake up, drowning in a sea of guilt. I look at my phone. It’s 6.15 a.m., too early to call or message. I lie there, thinking of Jen. I type out a line or two on WhatsApp, include a funny emoji, but then delete it. I try to put myself in her position. If I was feeling paranoid and had received some weird messages on Twitter I would be feeling jittery too. I might very well lash out. Despite my flare-up of anger that had exploded inside my head when Jen accused me of stalking her, I am ready to forgive her. I tell myself that I will make everything better today.

  I get up and put on my running gear, grabbing a water bottle as I leave. A long run always helps to recharge me. In a matter of minutes I’m out on the streets, taking in the cold, early-morning air.

  I take the longer route to the Heath, across the bridge over the railway line and through Dartmouth Park. I jog past Julia Jones’s house, a warm glow coming from one of the windows inside. As I run I enjoy the feeling of energy being expended, the rush of blood to my head, the sound of my breath as I inhale and exhale. At Parliament Hill Fields I choose the pathway that leads to the viewing point. The cordon is still there, a marker that something terrible happened here.

  I pause for breath and take in the view. The city is shrouded in low-lying cloud, the sun casting its delicate rays onto the enormous glass skyscrapers. I start to run again, across the Heath and down to the ponds. I do a circuit, tracing the line of the water, entranced by the reflections of the ever-changing sky. Then, as I pass by the entrance to the men’s pond, I see a figure in the distance. It’s Laurence. He’s coming towards me. I jog on the spot for a moment to make my turn less noticeable and then start running, slowly, away from him. I take a left and continue to jog on the spot, in the hope that he will run straight ahead; if he comes in my direction I will start off again in an effort not to be seen. I watch as he jogs ahead. I follow him, allowing a few other runners to occupy the space between us.