Five Strangers Read online

  I feel somebody touch my shoulder. The shock of it forces me forward and I nearly lose my grip. I see the ground spinning below me, a vortex swallowing me up, before a hand wrenches me back.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing, Jen?’

  It’s Bex.

  ‘I— I—’ The words don’t come out. ‘I got – more messages. From him. From Laurence.’

  I pass her my phone. ‘I thought he must be outside, watching me.’

  ‘Fuck,’ she says as she reads.

  She goes to the window and looks out. She stands there for a minute, before slamming the window shut and pulling the curtains.

  ‘I can’t see him. He must have gone.’ She comes to stand by me. ‘Jen, you’re shaking. And it’s freezing in here. Let’s get you back to bed.’

  She leads me to the sofa. I’m too nervous, too afraid, too angry, to sleep. I drape the duvet around my body, while Bex fetches me a glass of rum.

  ‘Here, drink this,’ she says, pushing a tumbler into my shaking hands.

  I know what the next step is, something I hardly dare acknowledge. My fear is so deep it seeps into my marrow. Earlier tonight, Bex asked whether I wanted to go to the police and show them what we’d found. But I dismissed it out of hand. I knew what would happen if I did that: precisely nothing. Perhaps they’d drop by and question Laurence, ask him about the mask and the attack on me on the Heath. But he’d have some clever way of getting out of it. Why had these two women – one of whom was his ex-girlfriend – broken into his house? Had they hidden the so-called evidence in his home? It was clear that I had mental health issues, he’d say, and the police could check with my doctor and therapist. It would be, when it came down to it, a case of my word against his. And his would win. Men like Laurence always came out on top.

  Not any more. Not with me.

  54

  BEX

  I’m pretending to Jen that I have doubts about our plan. It’s early Tuesday morning and we’re having coffee at the flat. Neither of us slept much as we were up half the night talking. Jen’s skin is porcelain pale and there are dark shadows under her eyes.

  ‘But last night you said that we could give him a fright, that we’d do it together,’ she says.

  ‘I know what I said. And it was probably the drink talking.’

  She is silent for a moment. ‘Remember all those times you told me that you’d do anything for me?’

  ‘I know – but Jen, I was talking about helping you through normal life shit. Work problems. Relationship issues. Things you wrote about in your column.’ I drop my voice to a whisper. ‘I wasn’t thinking about …’

  I don’t say anything more for a few moments.

  ‘If you don’t help me, I’ll do it anyway, without your help,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll go ahead and take the risk. I don’t care if Laurence turns around and attacks me, or that I’m caught and sent to prison. I’m doing it, Bex.’

  ‘Just calm down. Let’s talk this through.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of talking. You don’t know what it’s like. Waking up each day thinking someone’s watching you. Looking at your phone and seeing those messages.’

  ‘Have you had any more?’

  ‘Not since last night.’

  ‘Do you think Laurence saw you – when you followed him down onto the Tube platform?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but perhaps he could have caught a glimpse of me when the train pulled out of the station.’

  ‘Maybe that freaked him out, that’s why he sent those messages last night.’

  Now it’s her turn to go quiet. She gets up from the table and goes to make some more coffee. I hear her bang around the kitchen, noisily slamming things around the small space.

  ‘Look, I know you’re angry,’ I shout, as I push my cup away and get up to follow her. ‘I get that.’

  ‘Do you?’ A little colour blooms in her face as she spits out the words, ‘Do you really?’

  ‘Of course I do. Laurence is a horrible, violent man. And it’s frightening to wonder what he’s capable of, what he might do next.’

  ‘So – you’ll help me?’

  ‘Okay and—’

  Her eyes light up. ‘You will?’

  ‘Don’t get too excited, but I think I know how we can get away with it.’ I go to my bag and pull out a map. ‘Over the course of the last few months the council has been in discussions with the Corporation of London about a possible expansion of security on the Heath. I’ve got a map showing every single CCTV camera. So we could—’

  She finishes my sentence for me. ‘Follow him when he is out jogging.’

  ‘Exactly. And the beauty of it would be that if we choose the right area, the incident wouldn’t be recorded by security cameras.’

  Although she doesn’t respond, I can tell she likes the plan.

  ‘We’ll show him he can’t fuck with you any longer,’ I continue. ‘When we’re finished with him he’s going to regret he ever treated you like this.’

  The stovetop coffeemaker bubbles in readiness, hissing in angry agreement. ‘But we’re only going to scare him,’ I state. ‘Nothing more. Okay?’

  Jen nods her head, but something stirs inside her. Hopefully I’ve planted the seed of an idea in her head. Murder.

  55

  JEN

  Bex says it’s important to carry on as normal, and so I’m trying to work. I’ve followed up my emails to some of the witnesses, and it looks as though there’s a chance that the feature might actually get off the ground. Jamie Blackwood says he is happy to take part, and Julia Jones is interested too. She is a patron of a mental health charity and suggests that my piece might help raise awareness of the effects of trauma and how talking about it is vital for recovery. However, she has one condition: the charity desperately needs funding and she hopes that the Mail could make a substantial donation. I write an email to Nick and outline how this might be the way to get everyone involved.

  After lunch I pocket the map of the Heath with Bex’s annotations and make my way up there. As I snake my way along the paths I look out for the cameras on the tall, specially manufactured posts. Most of them are visible, but there are a few that Bex marked down that are difficult to spot. I draw some crosses on the map, noting areas that are safe and ones that are not. When I come to follow Laurence I won’t know exactly which way he will turn – he could easily venture off down a path or across the grass to a different part of the Heath altogether – and I need to be able to act quickly. Obviously, I have to be able to do it when nobody is looking. Fortunately, Laurence often runs in the evening, sometimes when it’s getting dark.

  On my way back towards Dartmouth Park I realise I’m walking on the pathway that leads up to Kite Hill. It’s a grey, overcast day but there are still a handful of people up here gazing at the spectacle of London’s skyline. Today no one is bothering to look at the pile of rotting flowers placed there to commemorate the life of Victoria Da Silva. If I hadn’t witnessed it myself or hadn’t read the news reports I would never know what had happened here nearly three weeks ago. Tentatively, I go and stand by the spot where I was that day. I close my eyes, let the cold wind whip across my face, and try to remember the exact location of the other witnesses: there was Jamie Blackwood and his boyfriend, Alex, playing with their dog, Julia Jones running past, Steven Walker studying the plan of the city, and Ayesha Ahmed, who sprang to her feet from the bench when Vicky’s blood hit her. And then there was Laurence, his face obscured in that hoodie.

  Just then my phone rings. It’s Penelope. As I see her name flash up on my screen I feel a pang of guilt that I’ve ignored her. She did speak out of turn, I won’t forget what she said, but I’m no longer angry with her.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Jen, darling – how are you?’

  She doesn’t let me reply.

  ‘Listen – I’m so sorry for those things I said to you the other day. You were quite right to storm out.’

&nbs
p; ‘I—’

  She interrupts me. ‘I’m a stupid old woman. I know that. A stupid old woman with a big mouth, who wants to apologise.’ She takes a deep, dramatic breath. ‘Will you accept my humble apology?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have gone off in that huff like I did. And you were right, completely right, about me being a crap journalist.’

  ‘I never put it like that!’

  ‘I know, but I could see where you were coming from,’ I say, laughing.

  ‘Listen, darling – where are you staying? I’ve been so worried about you.’

  ‘At Bex’s.’

  She goes quiet.

  ‘It’s been fine. I’m on her sofa, but it’s comfortable. It’s not like your big house, obviously, but it’s a place to rest my head.’

  ‘It would be lovely to see you. And we can talk about … well, about a few things.’

  She sounds vague. I just hope she hasn’t been trying to dig up anything more about the Daniel Oliver–Victoria Da Silva case.

  ‘You haven’t been stalking vulnerable, bereaved parents, have you?’ I ask.

  This makes her snort with laughter. ‘Of course not! What do you take me for? Anyway, you’re probably too busy to pop over for a cup of tea.’

  ‘I’m not actually.’ I don’t tell her I’m on the Heath.

  ‘Really. How wonderful. Well, just come over when you’re ready.’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ I say and ring off.

  I spend the next hour or so retracing my tracks around the Heath. I check and recheck the areas with cameras and refer to the annotated map again and again until I’m convinced I have committed the plan to memory. I reason that if CCTV picks up images of me, and if I were to be questioned later about my movements, then I would say that I was out enjoying a walk. Surely, I’d say, there’s no crime in that.

  Once I’m finished I push the map deep into the pocket of my coat and make my way over towards Hampstead. When I arrive at her house Penelope’s in her front garden, wearing gardening gloves and pulling up some weeds. I watch her unobserved for a moment, noting the determined look in her eyes even when doing something as ordinary as weeding. She’s slim and trim, and it’s clear she’s still quite strong too. As I watch her I realise that I’ve missed her. She pulls the roots of something from the ground with a grunt and catches sight of me out of the corner of her eye.

  ‘How long have you been standing there?’ she asks.

  ‘I’ve just arrived,’ I lie.

  ‘Indeed,’ she says, not believing me. ‘Anyway, you’ve caught me all sweaty and dirty. I won’t hug you as you can see what kind of state I’m in.’ She raises her dirty gardening gloves in the air and threatens to rub them into my face, a gesture that makes us both laugh. ‘I don’t know about you, but I could do with a cup of tea.’

  She leads me into the house and takes my coat. As she talks it’s as if we’ve never quarrelled. That is all in the past now, I suspect. She won’t refer to it ever again. After making the tea, we sit at her vast kitchen table.

  ‘Now tell me, how have you been?’ she asks.

  ‘Fine, mostly,’ I reply. ‘I’m making progress on the story. The Mail have asked me to do a big piece about the effects of the murder–suicide on those who witnessed it. After all, none of us asked to be there that day, on the Heath. But we’ve all been affected by it in one way or another. Anyway, they want 2,000 words. And the fee isn’t bad.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ she exclaims, clapping her hands together.

  Doubt begins to shadow the good news. ‘Listen – you didn’t put in a good word for me, did you? I mean, I’m grateful if you did, but I’d like to think that—’

  ‘No, not at all. Obviously, I know all the editors at the paper, but no, this is the first thing I’ve heard about it.’

  I smile to myself and take a sip of tea. ‘Although Jamie Blackwood has agreed to take part, I’m still waiting on the rest. Julia Jones is interested in principle as long as the Mail makes a big donation to a mental health charity. I still need to persuade the doctor, Ayesha Ahmed, and the teenager Steven Walker. And of course, as he’s at school I need to get the permission of his mother too.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that might be difficult.’ She drums her pink fingernails on the table as she thinks.

  ‘But, listen, I don’t want you going out there and trying to talk to him.’ I don’t tell her about how I tried to do the same, how I frightened the poor boy, how he ran away from me. ‘You know that’s against the law.’

  She waves a hand in the air as if that’s of no consequence. She leans in and stares at me as if she’s trying to see into my soul.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, a bit tired. Didn’t sleep that well last night.’

  She blinks, a sign that she doesn’t quite believe what she’s being told, and her extravagant false eyelashes flutter like black butterflies. ‘Are you sure that’s all?’ And then she pauses, waiting for me to say something. God, she must have been a brilliant interviewer.

  ‘I was kept awake worrying about whether I could pull off this feature. Just that it’s a lot to ask to bring the witnesses together – and then there’s the issue about where to do the interviews.’

  ‘Well, if that’s what’s making you anxious you can always do them here.’ Her hand falls back, gesturing to the series of big empty rooms that lie outside the scope of the kitchen. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I do have an awful lot of space. One may as well put it to good use.’

  ‘Do you mean it?’

  ‘Of course I mean it! When have you ever heard me say something I don’t mean?’

  ‘Fair point. Well, yes, that would be great.’

  ‘Just let me know when you’d like to do it. And I can always help with interviews.’

  The idea of Penelope asking them questions makes me bristle. Although she managed to get useful material from Karen Oliver, her style of investigation left me feeling nervous.

  I don’t want to upset her, as the house would prove to be incredibly useful, but I don’t want to commit either. ‘Perhaps, let’s see if it works out.’

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t want to intrude in any way.’ She shifts in her chair and gives me another of her penetrating stares. ‘There’s something else though, isn’t there?’

  I feel my heart begin to race. Has she somehow guessed about what I’ve got planned?

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ I say. I take a deep breath. ‘It’s not just the piece that’s stressing me out. It’s money, debts.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you tell me? You know I can help you out. How much do you need?’

  ‘Oh God, Penelope, that’s so kind of you. But I couldn’t possibly take anything.’

  ‘Don’t be so proud. I mean, do I look like a poor person to you? I’ve got more than I can possibly spend in my lifetime. It’s always been my policy to give to my friends in times of need. Now, tell me. How much?’

  ‘Listen, Penelope. You’ve already done so much for me. Letting me stay here when—’

  ‘And you know you can move straight back in as soon as you like.’

  ‘Again, that’s so kind. But I’ve got to learn to be independent again. Honestly, I’ll be fine once the piece is written and I’m paid.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Completely,’ I lie. ‘The fee will more than cover my debts.’

  ‘Now, would you like some more tea?’

  ‘No thanks, I’d better be going. Anyway, I’ve drunk so much tea I’m going to be pissing like a horse.’

  I know that this kind of rough language amuses her and as she claps her hands the delight lights up the laughter lines in her face.

  ‘Actually, can I use your loo?’ I ask.

  ‘You know where it is,’ she says.

  I close the door to the loo and breathe a sigh of relief. I’ve managed to put Penelope off the scent. Not by lying – she could sniff that out in a second – but by telling a different truth.
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  56

  BEX

  If you tell someone not to do something it’s obvious they’ll want do it all the more. I remember I learned this for myself when I was young. I don’t know how old I was, probably only seven or eight. I recall it in a series of fragments, not like a normal narrative of beginning, middle and end. The reasoning of cause and effect came later as my brain began the desperate task of piecing it all together.

  It was a Sunday afternoon. Dad was in one of his black moods. Mum had been drinking from the bottle in the fridge and was looking out of the front windows. She had gone quiet but whenever she did manage to say anything she slurred her words and her eyes looked all dull and glassy. I wanted to get outside. A new family had moved into the house across the close and they had a little girl who had smiled at me the other day, and I wanted to play with her.

  ‘Mum, can I go outside and play?’ I asked.

  She looked down at me as she tried to focus. ‘O-of course you can … but don’t …’

  I knew what she meant: don’t go too far from the house. ‘I won’t,’ I promised.

  Dad cast me a sour look. ‘Don’t you be going anywhere near that new family.’

  I didn’t understand. ‘Why?’

  Dad struggled to find the words. ‘They’re … he … they can’t be trusted,’ he said as he cast a glance towards Mum.

  ‘Just pl-play on your bike,’ Mum managed to say, stumbling her way towards the armchair. ‘I’ll just have a little rest. Sunday lunch always …’

  Dad looked cross at Mum, like he wanted to hurt her.

  I made for the door.

  ‘And Becky, remember what I said,’ snarled Dad. ‘Stay away from that family.’

  I skipped outside, pleased to be out in the fresh air, and jumped on my bike, which was sitting on the drive. I pedalled up and down the cul-de-sac, letting the wind blow through my hair, imagining that I was flying through the clouds. I looked down on the little box-like houses, the tiny patches of gardens. I was escaping for a big adventure. I was going to a place where I didn’t feel the necklace of fear tightening its grip around my throat. I cycled faster and faster, faster than I had ever done before, my feet spinning around the wheels like pistons. It was then that I saw Bella, the sweet little West Highland White Terrier belonging to Mr and Mrs Hastings. Had it got out again? I looked over to see if I could spot its owners – I didn’t want it to run away again – but in that split second, in that moment when I glanced over, I took my eyes off the handlebars. I felt the bike drop beneath me, heard a terrible grinding sound, and then I knew I was flying through the air for real. I stretched out my hands to break the fall, but came crashing down onto the pavement. The shock of it all winded me into silence. It was only when I looked up to see a girl standing above me that I started to cry.