Different men stayed over a lot. I. Didn’t. Like it. So when that evening’s friend knocked on the door – another face I didn’t recognise but was sure I’d never seen before – I stormed out. Thirteen-year-old me met a girl in the park that night, behind the tower block where I lived. We sat on the broken swings and shared a large bottle of warm cider. It was the first time I drank alcohol, the first time I smoked a cigarette, and the first time I kissed a girl. I was in no rush to go home. It made me wonder how many firsts a person can have before life only offers them seconds.
The girl tasted like smoke and bubble gum, and she said that I could do more than just kiss her if we could find somewhere to do it. She taught me how to steal a car – she’d clearly done it before – then she taught me how to drive it behind a disused warehouse. She taught me how to do other things for the first time too in the back seat, we made noises of our own, and teenage me thought he was in love.
That’s why I did what she said when she told me to drive around the estate. I remember the sound of her laughter, and the rain bouncing off the windscreen making it almost impossible to see. Faster, she said, turning up the car radio. Faster! She put her hand on my crotch and I looked down. I took the corner too fast and we started to spin. When I looked up, I saw my mother.
And she saw me.
It all happened so fast: the sound of screeching brakes, the car mounting the pavement, my mother’s red kimono flying in the air, the smash when her body hit the windscreen, and the thud of the wheels rolling over the dog. Then the silence.
I couldn’t move at first.
But then the girl was screaming at me.
When I didn’t respond, she pushed me out of the car, climbed into the driver’s seat, and drove away. Some of the neighbours came out not long after that, they found me leaning over my mother, crying, and covered in her blood. Everyone presumed I’d been walking the dog with her when it happened.
I didn’t even know the girl’s name. And I’d never been able to recognise faces. When the police asked me to ID some pictures of a teenage girl they suspected of driving the stolen car, I genuinely couldn’t help.
I thought I’d never see her again so it was a shock to discover we were married.
Do I feel bad about what happened to Amelia?
No.
Sadly, people die every day, even the good ones. And she wasn’t one of them. None of us know when we’re checking out, life isn’t that kind of hotel. I’m happy now. Happier than I thought I could be again. I just want to put everything behind me, and now I finally can. Sometimes a lie is the kindest truth you can tell a person, including yourself.
Sam
Samuel Smith is not a happy man.
As a young boy, he was obsessed with horror and crime novels. He devoured books by Stephen King and Agatha Christie, and dreamed of being a detective one day. Becoming a private investigator was as close as he got. When Sam celebrated his fortieth birthday alone, drinking warm beer and eating cold pizza in his London flat, he made a confession to himself: this was not living the dream.
But the next day – when Sam was feeling rather worse for wear – an elderly man called. He asked for Sam’s professional help to keep an eye on his estranged daughter. The old man was reluctant to tell him his name at first, but being a PI was a job that required facts, so Sam had to insist. Eventually, the caller confessed he was Henry Winter, and Sam’s disappointing career suddenly became a lot more interesting.
He thought it must be a joke, a belated birthday wind-up by a friend, perhaps, but then remembered that he didn’t have any. Reading books was how Sam spent most evenings. His favourites were the creepiest ones, and Henry Winter was the king of horror in Sam’s eyes. He had been reading the author’s stories since he was a teenager. Once he had checked a few facts, and made sure it was the real Henry Winter who was asking for his help, Sam would have been happy to do the work for free.
But a man has got to eat.
It wasn’t as though the elderly author was short of a bob or two: quite the opposite. But Sam still started to feel bad about how much he was charging him. Following Henry’s daughter and keeping tabs on her husband was easy money.
Sam likes to think that he and Henry became friends over the years that followed, and in some ways they did. Sam even managed to persuade the old man to get a laptop, so that they could email from time to time. He would follow Robin or her husband twice a week or so – when they walked the dog, or on their way to work, or sometimes he just sat outside their house in Hampstead Village – just to keep track of things. Then he sent a monthly report Henry’s way. But their exchanges weren’t all work-related. They often chatted about books, or politics, instead of Robin and Adam. Sam took great pride in the fact that Henry trusted and confided in him, even though they had never met.