“Because why would he? This all seems connected to Blackdown, someone who knew me from before, maybe?”
“What makes you say that?”
“How well did you know Rachel?” she asks. “Had you seen her since you moved back here?”
Several times, in all sorts of places and positions.
“I think everyone saw her. She was the kind of woman people looked at.”
Anna pulls another face when I say this, one that really doesn’t suit her. I still think I handled the question as well as I could without lying. She always used to know when I did that.
“But how well did you know her?” she asks again.
I imagine a thin film of sweat forming on my forehead, but then my ex carries on speaking without waiting for a reply, something she’s always been rather good at. “Everyone always thought she was so kind when we were kids … but Rachel had a dark side. She hid it well, but it was there, and maybe it still was.”
“Sorry, you’ve lost me. What does that have to do with you?” I ask.
“She was blackmailing me.”
“What?”
“Over something that happened when we were at school. She got back in touch recently, asked me to do something, and when I said no … What if she was trying to blackmail other people too?”
“What happened when you were at school?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Clearly you think it might, or you wouldn’t have mentioned it.”
“Being married to a person doesn’t mean you know everything about them, Jack.”
She looks away. My face tries to form an appropriate reaction to what she just said, but I’m not sure there is one.
“Oh my god,” she whispers, staring inside the car.
“What?”
“You kept asking about the friendship bracelet I was wearing yesterday. I genuinely thought I’d lost it, or that someone might have taken it from my room last night. I swear I have never seen that inside my car before.”
I bend down to look through the smashed window, and see a smiley-face air freshener made of bright yellow cardboard. It is hanging from the rearview mirror, spinning in the breeze, and has been tied there with a red-and-white friendship bracelet.
Her
Wednesday 08:00
I watch as a team of strangers start to examine my car and I feel physically sick. It’s going to take forever to wipe it clean when they are done. Jack walks toward me, and there is something inside the clear plastic bag he is holding that I can’t quite see.
“You have a personal breathalyzer in your glovebox?”
He says it loud enough for the whole team to hear, and they all turn to stare at me.
“It’s not a crime, is it?” I reply, and he smiles.
“No, it’s just … funny.”
“Well, I’m glad to have amused you. Can I have my phone back now, please?”
Jack stares at me for a long time before reaching inside his pocket.
“Sure, but if you get any more calls or texts, I want you to tell me straightaway. Not the bloody news desk, okay?”
I dislike him the most when he speaks to me as if I am a child. He often did that during our relationship, as though always believing he knew best. He didn’t then, and he doesn’t now. Jack never learned to tell the difference between when I was telling the truth, and when I was telling him things he wanted to hear.
What I want now is a drink, but instead I stand at the edge of the parking lot, watching and waiting. Besides, everything alcoholic I had left was in my overnight bag; all I have on me now is a collection of empty miniature bottles.
I can’t stop thinking about Jack’s face when he described how the friendship bracelets had been tied around both of the victim’s tongues. It felt like some kind of out-of-body experience. His expression was definitely different when he talked about Rachel. He thinks I don’t know he had a thing for her, which was a foolish mistake. Wives always know.
* * *
I didn’t talk to Rachel, or Helen or Zoe, for several days after the Coke can incident. I would sit on my own in class and at lunch, ignoring the sound of their laugher that seemed to fill every corner of the school. I missed Rachel terribly, but couldn’t forgive her for what she did to Catherine Kelly. The poor girl was quieter than ever before, with permanently red eyes. That, combined with her wild white hair, made her look like an animal that had been experimented on. People had even started to joke that she belonged in a cage.
My mother picked up on my bad mood. She soon noticed that I was once again coming straight home from school, instead of hanging out with my new friends, and kept asking me to invite Rachel to our house. I couldn’t tell her what had happened—I worried that she might think less of me if she knew—so I just kept making excuses.