His & Hers(47)

I stare at her and she doesn’t look away. She might be small and young, but she is surprisingly confident. No wonder Jack likes her. I can feel myself falling in hate. It’s a lot like falling in love, but tends to happen harder and faster and often lasts a lot longer, too.

She steps outside the room, leaving the door open. I can hear her talking to someone a little further down the corridor, so I reach inside my bag, open a miniature brandy, and down it. Then I find my little tin of mints and pop one in my mouth. When I look up, the detective is standing in the doorway staring at me. I don’t know how long she has been there, or what she has seen.

“Mint?” I ask, rattling the tin in her direction.

“No, thank you.”

“You do know I’m Jack’s ex-wife, don’t you?”

Her smile looks out of practice.

“Yes, Ms. Andrews. I know who you are.”

I’m not sure what makes me more uncomfortable, her words or the strange expression on her face. I told them both how scared I was when I got the call this morning, but it’s as though neither of them believe me. The fact that I contacted the newsroom before I notified the police didn’t go down particularly well either. I’m a journalist, so of course I followed up the tip-off and drove to the school. In hindsight, I can see how it might look a little foolish, dangerous even, but some stories are as addictive as success. Individual murders don’t make or save careers, but a story about a serial killer could keep me on-air for weeks.

I’ll never forget seeing Helen’s lifeless body for the first time though. The girl I went to school with had grown into a woman I barely recognized, but of course I had known who she was. Same hair, same cheekbones; for all I knew it might even have been the same stapler she used on the school newspaper sitting on her desk. It’s the kind of mental image you can never erase, and the sight of all that blood first thing in the morning would make anyone want a drink.

The young detective continues to stare at me, as though her big brown eyes have forgotten how to blink. I look away first, and feign interest in the pictures on the office walls. Staring at them brings back memories of being summoned to this room as a teenager. I was never in trouble at my first school, but when I moved to St. Hilary’s everything changed. Not that it was my fault. It was almost always down to Rachel Hopkins or Helen Wang, both of whom are now dead.



* * *



Rachel took me under her wing when I first arrived at the school, and I was so grateful. She was the most popular girl in our class, which made sense, because she was beautiful, clever, and kind. Or so I thought. She was always doing things for charity, even then—sponsored runs, bake sales, collections for Children in Need. I didn’t think it at first, but after a few weeks, I soon started to wonder if she just saw me as another one of her little projects.

She had invited me to her home, let me borrow some of her clothes, and taught me how to do my makeup. I’d never bothered wearing any before. She liked to paint my nails when we hung out together, a different color every time we met. Sometimes she would draw letters with varnish, one on each nail to spell out a word on my fingers: CUTE or SWEET or NICE were her favorites. She was always calling me nice. It’s still the word people use most often to describe me now. I’ve grown to detest it. The sound those four letters make translates from a compliment into an insult inside my ears. As though being nice is a weakness. Perhaps it is. Perhaps I am.

Rachel also bought me little presents all the time—lip gloss, scrunchies for my hair, sometimes tops and skirts that were a tad too tight, to encourage me to lose weight—and she even took me to her hairdresser’s one weekend, to get my hair highlighted the same way as hers. She knew I couldn’t afford it, and insisted on paying for everything. I did wonder where the money came from, but never asked. Rachel also let me sit next to her and her friends at lunchtimes, and I was glad about that too. There were some people who sat alone and I didn’t want to be like them.

Catherine Kelly seemed nice enough to me. She was always eating chocolate or chips, and she looked a little strange—with her white-blond hair, braces, and scruffy uniform—but she didn’t do or say anything to upset anyone. She didn’t say much at all really, just sat quietly reading her books. Mostly horror, I noticed. I’d heard that her family lived in a strange place in the woods, at the edge of town. Some people said it was a haunted house, but I didn’t believe in ghosts. I thought it was a shame that she didn’t seem to have any friends at all, and I felt sorry for her.

“Should we invite Catherine to sit with us?” I asked one day, slowly eating the lunch ladies’ interpretation of lasagna and fries.

The other girls stared as though I had said something offensive.

“No,” said Rachel, who was sitting directly opposite me.

“Are you actually going to eat all of that?” said Helen, staring at my plate. I had noticed that she always skipped lunch. “Do you know how many calories are in that processed crap?” she continued when I didn’t answer.

I didn’t know; it wasn’t the sort of thing I thought about much.

“I like lasagna,” I replied.

She shook her head and put a small bottle of pills on the table.

“Here, have these. Call them an early birthday present.”

“What are they?” I asked, staring at the unexpected “gift.”