His & Hers(29)

“And that’s you, is it?”

“In the absence of anyone else, yes. She’s been seen wandering around the town, lost, wearing just her nightdress in the middle of the night, for God’s sake.”

“What? I don’t believe you.”

“Fine, I’m making it up. I suppose you weren’t in Blackdown yesterday either?”

I didn’t mean to blurt the accusation out like that, but the look on her face tells me a lot more than I expect her response will.

“Have you finally lost what was left of your tiny mind? No, I wasn’t here yesterday,” she says.

“Then why is there a pay-and-display ticket in your car that says you were?”

She hesitates for just a second, but it’s a second long enough for me to see, and she knows it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I suggest that from now on, you stay away from me, my car, and my mother. Do you understand? Maybe just stick to looking after your own family, and doing your job, given what has happened.”

I see her then, my daughter in Anna’s face, her eyes. People always say that children resemble their parents, but sometimes it’s the other way around. It brings it all back and I can’t hurt her any more than I already have.

“That’s good advice,” I say.

“This is some form of harassment. You shouldn’t be here.”

“No, I shouldn’t.”

She pauses, as though I have started speaking a foreign language she is not fluent in.

“Are you agreeing with me?” she asks.

“Yes. It would appear I am.”

I study the face I have loved for so long now, and enjoy the unfamiliar shape it makes when surprised. Anna is rarely that. Even though it goes against everything I know about what not to do, I want to see how she reacts to what I shouldn’t say.

“The dead woman was Rachel Hopkins.”

I feel physically lighter once I’ve said her name out loud.

Anna’s face doesn’t change at all, as though she didn’t hear me.

“You do remember Rachel?” I ask.

“Of course I do. Why are you telling me this?”

I shrug. “I just thought you should know.”

I wait for some kind of emotional reaction, and can’t yet decide how to interpret the lack of one.

Anna and Rachel used to be friends, but that was a very long time ago. Perhaps her lack of emotion is normal, to be expected. People our age are rarely still in touch with the friends they went to school with. There was no social media or e-mail back then; we didn’t even have the Internet or mobile phones. Hard to imagine a life like that now—it must have been so much quieter. We’re both from a generation that was better at moving on, rather than holding on to friendships that had run their course.

I regret telling her almost instantly.

I’ve gained nothing from doing so, and it was unprofessional. Next of kin haven’t even been informed yet. Besides, it isn’t as though I need Anna to confess to how much she hated Rachel Hopkins. I already know that.

My phone buzzes again, interrupting the silence that had parked itself between us.

“We’re going to have to pause this little reunion. I need to go,” I say, already rolling up my window.

“Why? Worried the whole town might find out that you’re stalking your ex-wife?”

I consider not telling her any more, but she’s going to find out soon enough.

“They’ve found something that might help identify the killer,” I say, starting the engine and driving away without looking back.





Her



Tuesday 11:00



I watch Jack drive away, and wonder what my face did when he told me that the dead woman was Rachel Hopkins. I hope I didn’t react at all, but it’s hard to tell, and Jack knows me a lot better than anyone else. He has always been able to see straight through me when I’m trying to hide something.

I saw his crappy car parked on the street as soon as I stepped outside Mum’s house. It’s a secondhand rust bucket, probably all he can afford, now that he’s living with a woman who is allergic to working for a living. Since leaving me, Jack has found himself a new home, along with a new mortgage to pay, and a new child to support. All on just the one salary. We were together for over fifteen years, and for a long time I couldn’t imagine my life without him in it. I think I understand now. It’s as though I’ve lived lots of different lives in one lifetime, and the one I shared with him was never meant to last forever. Sometimes we hold on too tight to the wrong people, until it hurts so much we have to let go.

I wait until his car has completely disappeared from view before taking the photo out of my pocket. Finding it inside the jewelry box in my old bedroom gave me goose bumps, and what Jack just told me made them return. It might have been a very long time since we were all at school together, but I still recognize every one of the faces in the picture. And I remember the night it was taken. When we all dressed up trying to look older than we were, getting ready to do something that we shouldn’t. An evening not all of us would live to regret.

I peer down at the face of Rachel Hopkins, a younger version of the dead woman in the woods staring back at me. We are standing next to each other in the photo. Her arm is wrapped around my bare shoulder, as though we were friends, but we were not. She’s smiling—I am too, but I can see mine isn’t real. If only I’d been more honest then, I might not have to hide behind a lifetime of lies now. I wish I’d never had to move to that awful school. We would never have met and it would never have happened.