Beverly crawled out of bed after her parents had gone to work. She’d had a brief conversation with them last night about the damage to the coffee shop. The insurance would cover the damage to the building and its stock. There should be enough to start again, and in the meantime, they’d continue with their temporary arrangement a few hundred yards from the crispy shell of the old shop.
She pretended to feel happy for them, but felt nothing. She should have moved out years ago, and got her own place, but she’d always made excuses not to. The TV shimmered in silence as she shovelled bits of insipid omelette between her lips. She finished it off with a slice of limp burnt toast.
Beverly pushed the plate to one side and reached for the detonator for the C4. Conway - she still found it hard to think of her as Claudia - had shown her how to set the connector between the explosive and the trigger cradled in her hand. She’d been so excited or nervous, and she couldn’t tell which, she’d wanted to do it there and then in Conway’s garage.
‘Don’t be stupid, Beverly.’
That voice had cut right through her, sharp enough to send her spiralling into the past and the time when she was a kid and the other woman was her teacher. She gazed at her then, under no illusions as to what role she played in their partnership.
‘I might muck it up at the reunion. I need a test run.’
Conway put her fingers through Beverly’s hair like an owner would do with its dog. ‘You’ll be fine. If we set it today, there’s always the possibility of an unfortunate accident between now and then. You have to do it about thirty minutes before setting it off. I’ll do the same with mine.’
‘What time would that be?’
‘People might leave before the finish at six, so let’s go out with a bang at five.’
So here she was at ten on Saturday morning with the detonator in hand and the bag on the floor. She’d spent the last two days without leaving the house, expecting a visit from the police at any time, or another one from the British woman hanging around Evie Church. But nobody appeared. She hadn’t seen her brother all week, and her parents were too busy with the aftermath of the fire even to wonder why she wasn’t at work.
She peered at the bag of explosives. There was a larger carrier next to it, dark black and impossible to see through. This was to ensure no one would later say they saw her carrying Kennedy’s backpack.
Beverly thought when she woke, there’d be niggling doubts eating away at her, her mind harassed with fears, but she was the complete opposite, and her determination had strengthened overnight. She stared at the TV while a group of politicians shouted at the screen as demonstrators waved placards at each other.
She spent the rest of the morning in a daze, putting clothes into the washer, including the jeans with the blood on them, and tidying her room. She also considered where she’d move to once it was all over. It was only an hour before the taxi was due that she remembered she had to remove the Trojan from Jack’s laptop. How could she have forgotten that?
In her bedroom, she started the safe computer, imagining what was to come and wondering which of her old school friends would be at the reunion. She’d never sent an official reply of attendance to the organisers, so perhaps they wouldn’t let her in. She brushed her doubts aside and turned to the screen. Conway had made her delete the Trojan on her computer, but she didn’t know Beverly had made a copy of everything on that machine. She’d spend time on that later. Now, she placed the mouse over the connection to Kennedy’s laptop. She was about to open it when she noticed someone had accessed his machine since she had.
Fuck!
It was after he’d gone to Conway’s house. It was after she’d tortured and killed him. She pulled her hand away and stared at the screen.
Who would use his computer?
It had to be the police. If they did a proper sweep of his laptop, they’d find her Trojan. Would they have people capable of tracing it back to her? In a small-town police force like this one, she doubted it. But it wasn’t impossible.
Fuck!
She slammed the lid down. It meant getting rid of the computer and setting up a new safer one. She glanced at the clock on the wall. The taxi would be there soon. She didn’t have time to dispose of the computer. She stuffed it under the bed and trudged downstairs. The two bags stood next to each other in the kitchen while the detonator lay on the table.
Beverly removed her jacket from the back of the chair and put it on. She placed the detonator into her pocket. Then she put Kennedy’s bag inside the other one, sat down and waited for her lift to arrive.
Twenty minutes later, she was in the car and heading to school. She fought off the temptation to call or message Conway. No contact until after. And only face to face.
The taxi driver made conversation with her. ‘How long since you’ve seen most of these people?’
She forced herself to reply. ‘It’s nearly ten years.’
He chuckled. ‘At least you’ll have plenty to talk about.’
She matched his grin, one hand on the bag inside a bag on the seat next to her. Once at the school, she was to go to her office and leave the explosives there. Later on, she would return and set the detonator.
‘What will you do in the afternoon?’ she’d asked Conway.
‘Don’t worry; I’ll arrive well before anyone else, sometime after breakfast. I’ll have a chat with the janitor and make sure he knows what time to lock up. Once he’s gone, I’ll put the C4 and Kennedy’s remains in the boiler room. I’ll pop my head in during the day to say hello to my former students, only briefly, and then retire to my office. No one will know, apart from you.’
It all seemed so perfect. But perfect wasn’t what she wanted. It was the danger she craved the most: the danger of getting the Glick girls into the house unseen; the danger of stepping into Conway’s house to kill her. She’d enjoyed that as much as the violence.
The taxi pulled up outside the school. ‘Do you want to book a return?’ the driver said as she paid him.
‘I’ll call when I’m ready.’
The double bag was the glue between her fingers. She carried it up the steps and through the doors. She expected people there, but all she saw were signs and arrows pointing towards the main hall. Beverly ignored them and went the other way, down the corridor and towards her office. She unlocked it and placed the gifts to her former year group inside. As she locked the door, she wondered how many of them would turn up.
She glanced in the opposite direction, tempted to see if Principal Claudia Conway was in her office. She contemplated it for fewer than ten seconds before heading towards the main hall. The closer she got, the more noise she heard.
Twenty yards ahead of her, sitting underneath the banner proclaiming CLASS REUNION, were a man and a woman. As she approached, she didn’t need to see their name badges to recognise who they were: Wendy Jones, whose previous short blonde hair had now transformed into shoulder-length raven black locks. Her wide grin told Beverly she’d had her teeth fixed since the two of them were last together at school.
Sitting next to her was Jay Johnson. He’d lost his thick glasses and greasy hair, which had covered most of his face, smiling at her through sea-blue eyes underneath a buzz cut straight from an army training ground. She remembered the two of them from the bottom of the school hierarchy a decade ago.
‘Hi there,’ the grinning Jay Johnson said to her. ‘What’s your name?’
They’d changed considerably in the ten years since she’d seen them last, but she knew she hadn’t, not physically. That wasn’t why they didn’t recognise her. They didn’t know her now because they’d never known her then. They’d been at the bottom of the social strata, but were still above her.
She placed a hand on her jacket, her fingers close to the detonator resting against her heart. ‘Beverly Shaw.’
And I am your death.