Five Strangers Read online

  ‘You could do it for a Saturday paper,’ says Penelope. ‘I know the editor of the Mail. He would love to run it. I could drop him a line, if you like.’

  ‘Would you?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, and I’ll do better than that,’ says Penelope. ‘I’ll negotiate the fee for you myself. I’ll be your agent, but without taking a cut. How about it?’

  The deal is being done before Bex’s eyes, and it’s clear she’s not pleased. She brushes a strand of her glossy brown hair off her face as she looks down and studies her whisky. I know she only has my best interests at heart. She’s got me through some really difficult times. And I’ll always be grateful for her. But she has to understand that I have to make a living somehow.

  ‘Yes, I’ll do it,’ I say. But then I realise about the deadline. ‘Shit, I forgot. I’m supposed to be meeting Laurence for lunch tomorrow.’

  ‘Can you put him off?’ asks Penelope.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I say. ‘I’ll send him a text and explain.’

  Penelope bangs her liver-spotted hand on the table in a small act of triumph. ‘That’s wonderful,’ she replies. ‘I’ll get on to the editor right away. And don’t look so worried, Bex. Yes, Jen’s had to witness a most terrible thing. She’s seen it, lived through it, but by writing about it she can move on, and hopefully make some money along the way. What’s the worst that can happen?’

  4

  BEX

  The worst that can happen? Well, where do I start? An image of Jen slumped on my sofa, looking like the mere shell of a person, her blue eyes dead and empty, comes back to me. It was the morning after she’d heard the news that she was being let go by her newspaper. She’d insisted on drowning her sorrows with bottle after bottle of white wine, but the next day the hangover and the harsh reality of the situation had kicked in. Laurence knew she was going to stay the night at my place, but he didn’t know the reason why Jen had got so drunk. She said she felt too ashamed to tell him.

  She couldn’t see a future for herself, she said. She was worthless. She hadn’t been given a pay-off due to the nature of the dismissal, and she was worried sick about money. She felt so embarrassed that she said she would have to leave London and perhaps even go back up north. It was the end. She felt that she had shared so much in her column – she’d talked about so many intimate aspects of her life – and for what?

  As she sat there, looking into the void that was her future, I felt seriously worried about her. I refused to let her out of my sight. I rang Laurence and told him that Jen was feeling the worse for wear after a particularly heavy night – he was used to her marathon drinking sessions – and that she would spend the day with me. He knew that I’d look after her. After all, I was her oldest friend.

  I remember the first day we met in the autumn of 1995. We’d both arrived in London from the provinces – Jen from the north and me from Essex. That day, I was sitting in my room at the halls of residence feeling at a loss to know what to do with myself when I heard the sound of crying coming through the thin walls. I got up, peered into the corridor, listened again. There was a stifled sob drifting out of the room to the left. I knocked gently on the door and a moment later a girl with greasy, mousy hair, terrible acne, and thick glasses appeared. She looked like she was itching to get out of her own skin. It was obvious she was crying out to be helped by someone like me.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

  The frightened-looking girl wiped the tears away and nodded her head.

  ‘My mum and dad have gone and I’m feeling a bit low,’ I said. My words were more for her benefit than my own.

  The mousy-haired girl looked nonplussed, but I continued. ‘I’ve got some cider if you want some?’

  And with that the girl, who told me her name was Jennifer Hesmondalgh, smiled. She came back to my room and, as the sweet cider took effect, she started to seem a bit happier.

  ‘I’m so pleased you’re here,’ I said. ‘I was feeling pretty low when my parents left. Did yours drop you off?’

  Jennifer lowered her eyes. ‘I don’t have any,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry?’ I asked.

  ‘Parents – they’re both dead,’ she said.

  ‘Oh.’ I didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘But it’s okay, I’m fine about it,’ she said in a way that suggested the opposite.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘They died in a car accident when I was fourteen,’ she said. Her eyes blinked a little too quickly. Her fingers reached up nervously to her face. ‘I don’t like to go on about it, but my life changed overnight.’

  ‘Who’ve you been living with since then?’

  ‘My mum’s sister,’ she said. It was obvious she didn’t want to talk any more about her past. She gulped down her cider and said, ‘I could get used to this. Any more?’

  And with that we moved on to talk about where we’d grown up – she in Lancashire, me in the countryside just outside Colchester – our taste in music (she liked stuff like Take That and Celine Dion, while I couldn’t get enough of the grungier Oasis, Blur and Pulp), and our politics (we both agreed how much we hated the Tories and John Major). We discovered we had other things in common too: neither of us had any brothers and sisters, and both of us were doing English, but at different London colleges. By the end of the night she told me that I could call her Jen. Later, some of the cooler girls on the corridor asked me why I spent so much time with ‘that weird freak’ as they called her. But I felt sorry for her, I guess. I’d always had a soft spot for the underdog. For the runt of the litter.

  Jen seemed so vulnerable, so helpless. And she’d lost her parents when still so young. But gradually, as Jen learned to trust me, she opened up about her bulimia. Her low self-esteem. And so I made it my mission to try to bring her out of herself a little. I started by persuading her to ditch some of her frumpier clothes, and took her to Topshop. Then we addressed her diet, swapping junk food for healthier options. I persuaded her to get rid of the thick glasses and replace them with contact lenses. I took her to a nice hairdresser, who suggested she go blonde.

  Jen got the bulimia under control, her acne began to melt away, and, with her new highlights, by the end of the second term she looked like a completely different girl. With her new appearance came a new personality, one that was funnier and more confident, able to engage with the world instead of retreating from it. The other students in the halls noticed it too. She started to get asked out by boys, some of them really quite good-looking too, and the bitches who’d been mean to her behind her back began to invite her for coffee and drinks.

  And how did she repay me?

  The trouble started soon after Jen began to work for the student newspaper and she fell in with a new crowd of people. Initially, she helped with production, checking copy and proofs, occasionally coming up with a witty headline. Then, at the beginning of our second year, the star writer of the paper, Samantha King, did not file her usual column. Guy Davies, the editor, was going mental, ringing Samantha repeatedly and, when he got no answer, he sent someone around to her house. But the news came back that Samantha wouldn’t be filing her column. She’d taken too many drugs and was in a psychiatric unit after suffering a psychotic episode. There was a panic in the office – what was going to fill the empty space? Jen, there doing some subbing, offered to write the column.

  I learned all this when we met up for coffee so she could explain what the fuck had happened.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ she said.

  ‘Pleased? How exactly would I be pleased?’

  ‘Because you helped me so much,’ she said. ‘Without you I’d still be the tongue-tied, weird-looking girl that everyone avoided.’

  ‘But this, Jen. Seriously?’ I said, holding up a copy of the newspaper. I looked down at her column and read out a sentence from the first paragraph. ‘“Bex came along and set about transforming me from an ugly duckling if not into a swan then at least a passable cuckoo or magpie. She gave me
the confidence to be me.” I mean, really?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Bex, but I just panicked,’ she said. ‘It’s just that when Guy told me to write about something that would appeal to freshers, the first thing that came into my mind was how unhappy I was when I arrived at uni. And it’s all true, you know what you did for me.’

  ‘I don’t care a fuck about the truth!’ I said, my rising voice attracting the attention of strangers in Starbucks. ‘And why did you have to go and use my real name?’

  ‘I honestly thought you wouldn’t mind,’ she said. ‘And it’s only your first name.’

  ‘And what’s with your new name?’ I asked.

  The story carried not her own last name, that of Hesmondalgh, but Hunter; later, when she started work as a journalist, she changed her name by deed poll, a sign perhaps that she wanted to rid herself of the past.

  ‘Guy said that they didn’t have time to redesign the page and so I had to choose a new byline that was shorter and which would fit into the space.’

  I didn’t say anything, knowing that my silence would hurt more than any words.

  ‘Just looking at it now makes me feel sick,’ she said. ‘I wish I’d never written it. But Guy was looking over my head, asking me whether I’d finished, and when he read the first couple of paragraphs he told me that it was great, told me to keep going. Before I knew it he was sending it off to the printers.’

  ‘You should have asked me whether I wanted to be in it,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see that?’

  We fell into another horrible, moody silence before finally Jen began to speak. ‘What I did was unforgivable, and I can understand it if you don’t want to be friends with me. I’ll do anything – anything – to make it up to you.’

  I took one look at her quivering lip and the tears forming in her eyes. I couldn’t be angry with her any longer.

  ‘Never do anything like that again,’ I said. ‘Okay? Never write about me ever again. Promise?’

  ‘I promise,’ she whispered.

  5

  JEN

  Saturday, 16 February, 2019

  VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE – A DIFFERENT KIND OF KNIFE CRIME

  Writer JEN HUNTER was one of the bystanders caught up in a horrific murder–suicide on Hampstead Heath on Thursday. Here she writes exclusively about the brutal crime.

  It should have been a day like any other – no, better than any other. It was Valentine’s Day, after all. Couples were holding hands, looking at the ever-expanding London skyline, planning their romantic dinners. The sunlight caressed our faces as we stood on Parliament Hill Fields, Hampstead Heath, London, enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. And then something happened, something that could have come straight out of a horror film.

  The facts are these. A man – recently named as 28-year-old Daniel Oliver – threatened his girlfriend, Victoria Da Silva, 26, an interior designer and the daughter of the multi-millionaire Portuguese businessman, Pedro Da Silva – with a champagne bottle. First of all, he smashed the bottle into her mouth and then, when brave bystanders wrestled this off him, he pulled out a knife from his pocket and slashed the young woman’s throat. Oliver then used the knife to slit his own throat. Both Oliver and Da Silva were pronounced dead at the scene.

  Police have issued a statement saying they believe that the crime was a murder–suicide. Friends of Oliver, a city trader from a working-class family in Essex, say that they believe jealousy was behind the murder. According to one source, who did not want to be named, Oliver believed that Victoria Da Silva was having an affair. Yesterday, her father, who lives on The Bishops Avenue, one of London’s most expensive streets, released a statement that said, ‘Victoria was the perfect daughter – beautiful, bright, artistic and kind. She had the world at her feet. She was taken from us too early.’ He asked for privacy at this most difficult of times.

  Oliver’s family – his parents are divorced and still live in Essex – expressed astonishment and disbelief that their son could have stabbed his girlfriend to death. ‘Dan loved Vicky, we saw that with our own eyes,’ said his mother, Karen, 52. ‘I just don’t believe he would do a thing like that.’

  Although Daniel Oliver’s mother may not believe it, the truth of the matter is that he did do it.

  I saw him do it.

  I saw him smash that broken bottle of champagne into Victoria’s mouth as she tried to speak. I saw the outpouring of blood, after he shouted at her, ‘Don’t you f***ing talk. Don’t you say another f***ing word!’ I saw people, brave people, try to stop the attack. I saw it all with my own eyes, and I would give anything to wipe those images from my mind.

  One of the other people standing at the top of Parliament Hill Fields that day was 42-year-old hedge fund manager Jamie Blackwood. He was out walking his dog with his boyfriend, Alex Hughes, 24. Blackwood suffered a series of minor injuries to his hands as he wrestled with Daniel Oliver in an attempt to take the broken bottle from him. And for a while, after Blackwood succeeded, we thought the whole horrible event was over. But then, as we waited for the police to come, Daniel Oliver took a knife from his pocket and slit Victoria’s throat. The expression on the young woman’s face – a mix of astonishment and horror – was one I will never forget.

  A young doctor, Ayesha Ahmed, 25, who works at the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead, and who was on her lunch break, did everything she could to save the life of Victoria Da Silva. She even tried to save the life of Victoria’s attacker too, Daniel, who slit his own throat. But by the time the authorities arrived, the couple was dead.

  The scene looked like something from a slaughter house. There was blood everywhere. ‘I never saw anything like it, and witnessing it made me physically sick,’ says Julia Jones, the Labour MP, who was taking a run across the Heath. ‘And at this stage my sympathies go out to both families, who have been devastated by this horrific crime. There will, of course, be an inquest, and I’m helping the police piece together a picture of what happened on 14 February. But as this incident shows, it’s important to remember that knife crime can affect any community – black or white, rich or poor. This epidemic of knife crime has to stop.’

  Police are keen to talk to a black teenager who was another witness, but who fled on foot just before the authorities arrived. They are also appealing to a male jogger who ran past the viewing spot of the famous Parliament Hill Fields just as the crime was unfolding. Anyone with information relating to the incident is urged to contact the police immediately, or call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

  Almost as soon as the piece goes online I get an email from Laurence. The sight of it pinging into my inbox lifts my spirits.

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: You ok?

  Hi Jen,

  Just read your news story – God, how are you? What a horrible thing to have witnessed. Like you say, it sounds like a horror film. I can’t imagine how you must be feeling. It seems as though the guy was driven crazy by jealousy. But what a thing to do.

  Sorry we couldn’t meet up yesterday. It would have been nice to see you. But as I said in my text I totally understand.

  I know we didn’t part company on the best of terms. We both said some terrible things that night, some of which I regret. I’m sure you would say the same. But looking forward to seeing you soon. Let’s make another date.

  Laurence

  It’s obvious he still cares about me. I picture us holding hands in the cinema, cuddling on the sofa, enjoying a meal together. I don’t allow myself to dwell on the idea of us in bed. But what do they say about clouds and silver linings? Perhaps the fact that he knows that I witnessed the attack will make him feel more sympathetic to me, and it might even serve as a way of bringing us back together.

  The sudden frenzy on my Twitter feed disrupts my train of thought. I scroll through my notifications, bracing myself for the hate from the trolls. There’s quite a lot of criticism about the headline, but also a few retweets and supporti
ve comments too. Then comes a message from someone whose Twitter name freaks me out: @WatchingYouJenHunter.

  @WatchingYouJenHunter Hello. You’ve got a pretty face.

  I check the profile, created today, and I see that they’re now following me. There is no potted biography, neither are there any other tweets attached to the account. The image belonging to the Twitter handle is a picture of my byline photo. Then the tweets come like a wave, one that unsteadies and unsettles me.

  @WatchingYouJenHunter I think I recognise you from somewhere.

  @WatchingYouJenHunter Have we met before?

  @WatchingYouJenHunter Did you really see what you thought you saw?

  I’ve endured my fair share of weirdos and social media trolls over the years – there is nothing like a personal column in which you share your vulnerabilities and weaknesses to bring out the world’s nastiest people – and the best policy is to ignore them. For a moment I think about blocking or muting the account, but there is something about this last question that intrigues me. I’ve enjoyed a few glasses of wine with Penelope to celebrate the publication of the piece, and I’m now back in my room. And so I tweet back.

  @onlyoneJenHunter What do you mean?

  There is nothing. And so I try again.

  @onlyoneJenHunter Do you have any info about the Daniel Oliver–Victoria Da Silva case?

  I stare at the screen of my phone. The icon apps burn into my brain as I wait. Still nothing.

  And then, just as I am about to put the phone down and get ready for bed, I receive another message.

  @WatchingYouJenHunter Daniel Oliver didn’t kill Victoria Da Silva.

  6

  BEX

  Jen is behaving strangely. I suppose this isn’t that surprising considering what she saw on Parliament Hill Fields. If I’d witnessed a brutal murder, followed by a suicide, I’m sure I’d be pretty warped in the head too.