Five Strangers Read online

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  Again, nothing from her.

  ‘I said, are you sure about that?’

  ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘It’s just that I seem to remember once you weren’t that keen on the idea of having a little Becky around.’

  ‘No, please no, she might hear. She’s upstairs.’

  ‘Shall I refresh your memory?’

  ‘Brian, I’m begging you. I’ll do anything – anything you want, but please not—’

  ‘Not what? That you never wanted her.’ He shouted up the stairs, making certain I could hear, spelling everything out so that there was no doubt to the meaning. ‘Never wanted a baby at all. It wasn’t the right moment, you said. You wanted to try and qualify as a teacher. Not that that would ever have happened, not with someone as stupid as you. A pipe dream, that’s all that was. And you tried to keep it from me, do you remember? Tried to keep it a secret.’

  What? I didn’t understand what he was saying, like he was gabbling something in a foreign language.

  ‘Brian, no. No more.’

  ‘In fact, you were so desperate not to have a child that you tried to get rid of it.’

  Mum’s unintelligible cry split the air.

  ‘That’s how much you loved your little Becky.’ Dad sounded triumphant. ‘You loved her so much you wanted to abort her. You loved her so much you wanted to kill her.’

  59

  JEN

  Steven Walker is the next to arrive. He’s nervous, jumpy, and his eyes don’t dare settle on any one spot. It’s obvious he’d rather be anywhere else but here. I thank him for agreeing to come here and stress once again the importance of the work of Julia Jones’s mental health charity. I tell him that he can have quote approval: anything he says to me I’ll read back to him, and I reassure him that it’s okay if he wants me to leave anything out or rephrase something. I briefly introduce him to Jamie and Penelope, and he thanks her for the fee she has agreed to pay to his mother. It will be a great help, he says. He accepts a glass of Diet Coke from the fridge and we go upstairs. Before we start, I talk to him about his school, his taste in music, his friends. Twenty minutes later he’s finally a bit more relaxed, and he’s happy for me to switch on my tape recorder and start asking real questions.

  ‘I know you’ve told me something of that day – the day of the attack on the Heath – but could you bear to go through it all again?’

  He takes me through his morning, his time at school, and his mum’s mental illness. He shows me some of the texts that she’d sent him – a string of paranoid, accusatory messages – and tells me how he felt so upset and angry that he bailed out of chess club to walk on the Heath.

  ‘I know I should have gone home to check on Mum, but I just couldn’t face it,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t face her.’ Suddenly, he checks himself. ‘You won’t put that in, will you?’

  I reassure him I won’t.

  ‘I just needed a bit of fresh air to clear my head,’ he says, falteringly. ‘And so I started to walk up the path that leads to the viewing point. I saw all these couples holding hands and getting all friendly with one another, yeah it was Valentine’s Day.’ He tries to smirk at the memory, but it’s a half-hearted attempt. ‘I carried on up the hill and stopped to look at the plan of the skyline. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky. Standing there, looking across London, I actually managed to kid myself I could have a future. Do something with my life. Pathetic, I know.’

  ‘Not at all, I’m sure you’ll have a bright future – you can do whatever you want.’ As soon as I say them I realise my words sound false and hollow.

  ‘Really? I don’t know about that. Anyway, I was standing there thinking about what I might do with my life, feeling the prospect of something good about to happen, when it all kicked off. I heard the sound of a man’s voice, raised, a woman pleading with him to stop. Then the smash of a bottle. I turned around to see. It was horrible, really horrible. The way he forced the broken bottle into her face, I’ll never forget it. People tried to stop it – the man, Jamie, you. There was a lot of shouting about calling the police, for an ambulance. I thought the worst of it had happened. I couldn’t imagine it could …’ He breaks off and his voice drops to a whisper. ‘Then the knife came out. The posh-sounding, older lady—’

  ‘Julia Jones, the MP.’

  ‘Yes, she tried to talk the man, Dan, out of it. I remember he asked her whether she was the fucking, sorry, whether she was the Queen. Dan then stroked his girlfriend’s hair. I think he even kissed her. Said something to her in her ear so that no one could hear. And then he took his knife and slashed her across the throat. There was so much blood. The young woman who said she was a doctor tried to help save her life. I was worried that Dan was going to attack her, to kill her, and so I warned everyone. I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. Then I heard the police arrive, the sound of the sirens and …’

  I don’t ask the natural next question; instead I wait for him to answer it himself.

  ‘And yeah, I ran away. Back across the Heath, not knowing where I was going. I just ran, as fast as I could away from it all. Away from the blood. Away from the scene.’

  ‘Was it the police? Did they scare you?’

  ‘I suppose so, yeah.’

  ‘Have you been in trouble with them before?’

  He falls silent.

  ‘I mean, it would be totally understandable. If I was in your shoes I would have done the same. I mean, they hardly give kids like you the easiest of times.’

  He looks down at his shoes and starts to fidget nervously.

  ‘Steven?’

  He takes a deep breath. ‘I suppose you may as well know. You’re the kind of person who would find out anyway. It’s probably better coming from me … I ran away because I … because I was a witness at another killing. Lloyd Williams.’

  The 2018 case was famous: a twelve-year-old boy in his school uniform had been stabbed to death in the stairwell of his council block. ‘The boy who got knifed to death in Camden?’

  He nods his head.

  ‘It was a gang thing,’ he continues. ‘Not that I’m in a gang. I’m not like that. I just happened to be there that day. My friend, Lucas, he lived in the same block. We were just coming home from school, walking up the stairwell, when we heard this noise, people running. We came up to the next level and saw a group of boys. I recognised a few of their faces, knew about their reputation. They had this poor kid cornered. He was doing everything to try to escape. He looked over the edge of the railings, perhaps he thought about trying to jump down to the street, even though it was three storeys up. But there was no time for him to do that. One of the lads produced this …’ His voice breaks. He clears his throat. ‘This huge Samurai sword, another a machete, the rest of them had knives. There was a moment when everything seemed to go quiet. I heard a bird singing in a tree. But then the guy with the machete stepped forward and sliced into the front of the boy. Lloyd put his hands over his stomach, but … but …’

  He didn’t need to complete the rest of the sentence. I’d read in the papers what had happened next: his guts had spilled out onto the floor. ‘Oh, Steven, that’s so awful. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Lucas and I took one look at each other and ran. A couple of the gang members chased after us, and they nearly ran us down, but Lucas knew the streets around there really well and we managed to get away. We rang the police as soon as we could, but of course it was too late to save Lloyd. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The police assumed that we’d had something to do with it. That we were in on it. That we knew something. We were both questioned separately for hours. It was really awful. My mum couldn’t deal with it. Even she thought I’d been involved with Lloyd’s death. It sent her … well, let’s just say it didn’t help her condition. We weren’t charged or arrested or anything, but it seemed to drag on and on. I had a really great solicitor, this young woman, who finally made the police understand the truth. Lucas and I ended
up serving as witnesses and helped with the prosecution. The police gave us protection and said that we wouldn’t come to any harm. It was as scary as fuck. Sorry.’

  ‘Swear all you like. I can understand how traumatic that must have been.’

  ‘Although the gang members were charged and arrested and put in prison, of course there are other members out there. So you can understand now why … why on that day on the Heath. Why I ran away. I thought the police would think I had something to do with it. I’d be taken in for questioning again. That, or I’d be identified in some way, and the gangs would find out my name, come looking for me. I just couldn’t take it and that’s why I ran.’

  He suddenly realises what he’s told me.

  ‘You won’t—’

  ‘Don’t worry, I won’t identify you as a witness to that particular crime. I’m sure it might be against the law for me to do that.’

  He still looks worried. ‘And you mentioned something about a photograph?’

  ‘I’ll make sure your face is pixelated out. So no one can see it’s you.’ I give him a comforting smile, but inside I feel like screaming. Is there anything of the interview I can use? How am I going to explain this to my editor at the Mail? ‘And how have you been since the incident?’

  ‘Up and down. I have dreams … well, nightmares really. It’s like the two killings have somehow been blended together. Sometimes I see Daniel Oliver standing there with a machete and cutting into Lloyd. Then it’s Vicky Da Silva who’s on the landing of the council block, surrounded by a circle of gang members.’

  ‘Have you been able to talk to anyone about it?’

  ‘Not really. There’s a counsellor at school, well, the Spanish teacher who likes to think she’s good at that sort of thing, but it’s not for me. I guess it’s best to try to get on with life.’

  We talk a little more about his ambitions – he wants to become a pilot, he says, or do something to do with aeroplanes, but he’s worried he won’t get the grades. I tell him it’s best to aim high.

  ‘And whenever I go out I have to look over my shoulder. I think someone’s following me. Although the kids who killed Lloyd have all been locked up in prison, I still think there’s one of them out there, waiting with a knife to finish me off. Or there’s someone from the police keen to fit me up for the crime. That’s why I freaked out when I saw you the other day at the school, why I ran off like I did.’

  ‘I’m sorry, it was wrong of me to turn up at your school like that.’

  ‘I’ve noticed I can’t deal with sudden movements, loud noises, even normal things like exhausts going off,’ he says, as if remembering my earlier question. ‘Anything like that freaks me out. Stupid, I know.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Like the other day when your friend turned up on the Heath, near Kenwood, and surprised me.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry about that – that was Bex being overprotective.’

  ‘I suppose that’s what she was doing that day, the day of the murder–suicide. Looking out for you.’

  ‘Looking out for me? No, it’s just that we’d arranged to meet there – at Parliament Hill Fields. We were going to grab a coffee and then get the bus into town.’

  Steven doesn’t say anything for a moment. He looks puzzled, like he’s thinking something over.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replies. ‘You say your friend’s name is Bex? The one who scared me away the other day?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘It’s just that I recognised her. I’d seen her before. I knew I had, but I didn’t realise where for ages.’

  ‘What do you mean – recognised her? You’ve probably seen us around together. We spend a lot of time hanging out with each other. I’ve moved back into her flat, you see.’

  ‘No, it’s not that. It’s from that day, the day of the murder–suicide.’

  ‘Yeah, like I said, we’d arranged to meet.’

  He goes quiet again.

  ‘Steven?’

  ‘I saw her earlier, talking to someone on the Heath. The man you said the police were looking for, who ran away – you called him “the mystery jogger”. I saw your friend talking to him.’

  60

  BEX

  So Mum never wanted me. She planned on aborting me. Flushing me down the toilet like a dirty tampon, like a piece of shit.

  She knew that I knew, that I’d heard the row between her and Dad. The next day I couldn’t meet her eye and whenever she tried to reach out to touch my shoulder or give me a cuddle I pulled away like she disgusted me. She tried sitting me down and talking about it, but I said I didn’t want to hear. I told her I couldn’t listen to her empty words. She begged me, really, properly begged me, asked me to try to understand what had been going on with her at the time, how she felt she needed more from life, how she didn’t want to be trapped, how she thought she might have a different kind of future. But I met her pleas with a blank stare and cold eyes.

  At night, in bed, I kept thinking about how she might have done it. Obviously, she hadn’t gone to a clinic, but why had she tried to do it herself? I’d heard of women using knitting needles, gin, hot baths, even throwing themselves down the stairs. But that seemed like ancient history. How many times had she tried to rid herself of me? Had her heart leaped with joy every time she bled, hoping that this was the moment she’d start to lose the baby? Did she sit on the toilet, looking down into the bowl, willing the white ceramic to be streaked with blood? How old had I been when she had attempted to kill me? A few weeks, a few months? And how had she felt when she realised that she was going to have to keep it … keep me?

  I studied the photographs of an embryo at differing stages of development in my biology textbook, tracing my fingers over the images: a mini Alien monster at four weeks, eyelids and ears forming at eight, two inches long at twelve, fingerprints on toes and fingers at sixteen, sucking its thumb at twenty, and a good chance of survival if the baby had to be born prematurely at twenty-eight weeks. I felt tears sting my eyes when I thought of myself curled up inside her, feeling all safe and secure swimming around in the warm sac of amniotic fluid, until she tried to do everything in her power to dislodge me. What had made her want to do that? What lay behind her decision? Did she realise she didn’t love the man she went on to marry, my dad?

  All these questions and more fizzed through my head, until I was sickened by the thought that she might have hurt me in some way. I’d read about babies being born with various syndromes after their mothers had drunk too much or taken drugs. But could her attempt to abort me have left me … I don’t know … damaged? I was good at school, so it obviously hadn’t hurt my intelligence. And that’s all that most people seemed to worry about: whether you could pass exams. Neither Mum nor Dad had done any education after leaving school. Mum had wanted to be a teacher, but had met Dad during her A levels. They’d started to go out, she’d got pregnant, tried to get rid of me, that didn’t work, so they’d ended up getting married. End of story.

  Except it wasn’t. As I lay in bed, festering in the heat of a summer’s night, I started to think of a different kind of life, a life away from them. I let the word ‘divorce’ play around my mouth, imagining what it would be like if they split. They were clearly not suited to one another. And then they had their own problems. Dad with his violent temper, and Mum with her drinking. But did I really want to have to spend time with either of them? A father who would beat me at any opportunity, or an alcoholic mother who had tried to abort me? I realised that if I told anyone about what was happening at home – a teacher, say – the social services would get involved and I would be taken into care.

  I started to imagine a number of different scenarios. Mum and Dad in our old banger of a car, fighting, the argument getting out of control, Dad lashing out, Mum hitting back and accidentally hitting the steering wheel so the vehicle careered off the road, smashing into a tree at top speed, causing the death of the
two passengers. Mum contracting a devastating terminal illness – liver cancer, a result of her heavy drinking – and Dad dying of a heart attack. Mum committing suicide, tablets washed down by vodka or white wine, and Dad falling off a ladder while painting the guttering outside a house. Unfortunately, all these depended on chance or circumstance, or simply waiting to see if the passing of time resulted in their deaths. But what would happen if Mum died and I was left with Dad, or Dad passed away and I was trapped at home with Mum? If I did nothing, I could be stuck with them for ever, or at least until I was eighteen and I could move out, go to university, which seemed like for ever.

  Was there another way? I knew Dad was a jealous bastard. He didn’t trust Mum. He still believed that she’d been having an affair with Mr Jarvis. Each night that sweltering summer I played a game in my head. What would happen if …? I’d start the sentence and then see what happened next, moving around the figures of Mum and Dad and Mr and Mrs Jarvis like pieces on a chessboard.

  Occasionally, I’d stop myself, tell myself that the game wasn’t a nice one, but then I’d be tempted by the delicious prospect of it and I’d start plotting again. What would happen if …? What would happen if …? What would happen if …? My English teacher always said I had a wild imagination, that I should allow it to take flight.

  Now here was my chance to shine.

  61

  JEN

  I quickly draw the interview to a close and usher Steven down the stairs. He asks me whether there’s something wrong, but I tell him not to worry. I thank him again for his time and his honesty. Downstairs I find that Ayesha Ahmed is already here. I go through the motions of greeting her, thanking her, introducing her to Steven, but my mind is elsewhere. I tell everyone I just need to make a quick phone call. I step into the back garden feeling as though there’s not enough oxygen in the air. I quickly dial Bex’s number. She doesn’t pick up. I dial it again, but this time using WhatsApp. I hear a click.