Four days earlier
‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart,’ I tell Freya when I drop her back at the house. ‘Mummy has something very important to do, but I promise we’ll have cake and ice cream later on, OK?’
Freya nods, though her bottom lip is trembling.
Oh, my heart. I hate to upset her like this. Few things in life are as important to me as sitting in a café with my little girl, watching her eyes turn into saucers as she spoons ice cream into her mouth. But right now, time is of the essence.
‘I’ll see you a little later on, OK, sweetie?’ I pull her into a hug as Dad appears in the hallway.
‘Did somebody say something about cake and ice cream?’ he says, as if he’s just overheard the most delicious gossip. Freya’s head whips around and she grins then sniffs back a tear as Dad comes and stands by her side, staring straight ahead as if he hasn’t noticed her. ‘Hmm. I was thinking about heading out for some ice cream myself, actually. If only there was somebody to go with me.’
‘Me, Grandpa, me!’ Freya shouts.
Dad lets out a yelp. ‘Oh! Who was that?’ And Freya cracks up.
‘Thank you, Dad,’ I say. He finds time to shoot me a wink as he backs down the hall, pretending to be astonished that his five-year-old granddaughter has turned invisible.
‘Silly Grandpa!’ Freya guffaws, clearly delighted.
Silly, brilliant Grandpa.
Twenty minutes later, I arrive at the address in Chloe’s second message, a large, detached home in a well-heeled part of town; lots of flash cars in driveways, immaculate lawns, people walking around in wellington boots and tweed. The kind of place where houses have names, rather than numbers.
Chloe’s boyfriend’s place – or his parents’ place, to be more exact – is called Fairview, which I suppose is accurate enough, seeing how pretty it is. I duck under a garden arch festooned with flowers in bloom, walk down a perfect stone path to reach the front door and ring the bell. A moment later I hear the rumble of feet on stairs and a middle-aged woman answers. She’s pretty and tanned, wearing a crop top under a tracksuit that offers a glimpse of her toned stomach muscles. A sheen of sweat shimmers at the base of her throat.
‘Yes?’ she says, with a breathless urgency that suggests she’s in the middle of something.
‘I’m here for Chloe?’
The woman, presumably Chloe’s boyfriend’s mum, eyes me cautiously. ‘And you are?’
‘My name’s Jessie,’ I tell her. ‘Chloe’s doing some work experience with me.’
‘Ah!’ She grins. ‘She told me about you. How exciting!’
I wonder why Chloe has told her boyfriend’s mum about me, but her dad didn’t have a clue who I was when I called. Perhaps, with so little interest in her ambitions at home, she looks elsewhere for support and encouragement.
‘She’ll be in the studio.’ She points into the house, down a long hallway. ‘Straight through the kitchen, through the doors and out into the garden. You can’t miss it.’ She ushers me inside and closes the door, then gestures to the ceiling. ‘Online yoga,’ she explains, and with that, she jogs back up the stairs.
I move down the hall and into the kitchen, which is vast and has a rustic, farmhouse feel that probably cost a fortune. At the far end is an open set of French doors and I step through into the large garden and immediately see what the woman referred to as the studio: a single-storey garden office, set apart from the main house.
I see Chloe through the glass walls, lounging on a sofa, dressed in a grey hoodie and a band T-shirt, and I head over and knock on the glass. Chloe looks up and smiles, then gets to her feet, comes over and heaves open the heavy sliding doors.
‘Hey!’ she says, looking pleased to see me.
The studio is a man cave, I realise – or a teenage boy cave. There’s a sofa and bean bags for lounging on, framed posters of action films on the walls, a shelf of rugby trophies, and a mini fridge stocked with energy drinks. There is also, I notice, a rather unpleasant tang of sweat in the air.
Chloe gestures to the corner of the room, where a man wearing a pair of giant headphones is sitting at a desk, playing computer games on a huge monitor.
‘This is my boyfriend, Oscar,’ she says.
He is not at all what I’d imagined. I’d pictured a male equivalent of Chloe, someone small for their age, perhaps a little nerdy – someone a bit like Evan, now I come to think of it. But Oscar appears to be twice Chloe’s size and looks like he could be in his mid-twenties, with a mass of blonde hair, a patchy beard and long muscular legs, his grazed knees sticking out of the bottom of his cargo shorts.
The sound of frantic gunfire is leaking from his headphones.
‘Hey, Osc?’ Chloe says.
When Oscar doesn’t respond, she reaches out and touches him on the shoulder, and he spins around in his chair and glares at her. ‘Fuck’s sake, Chlo! You messed up my game!’
Chloe drops her chin and hunches her shoulders, just like Freya does when she’s getting a proper telling off, though we reserve those for when she’s done something truly silly that risks causing her injury, or worse – like the time I caught her approaching an electrical outlet with Martin’s keys in her hand.
‘Sorry, babe,’ Chloe says. ‘It’s just that …’ Her eyes flick in my direction and Oscar turns to look at me. The hard expression on his face falls away and he looks suddenly younger, boyish, even. He pushes his headphones back, so they hang around his neck like a travel pillow, and looks me up and down, his eyes taking a quick cruise around my body, lingering on my hips and breasts.
‘This is Jessie,’ says Chloe. ‘I told you about her, remember?’
Oscar sniffs. ‘Yeah. Cool,’ he says, then to me, ‘Er, do you want a drink or something?’ He gestures to the mini fridge full of energy drinks. ‘Or I could get my mum to make you a tea, if you want?’
‘No, thank you,’ I say.
‘Cool,’ he says again, his head nodding. ‘So, Chloe’s doing work experience with you?’
‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘Just for a few days.’
‘Awesome,’ he says, still nodding, and because he doesn’t seem to have much else to offer, I turn back to Chloe.
‘Shall we make a move?’ I say.
It’s another two hours until the vigil, but I want to get Chloe on her own as soon as I can, so I can ask her to keep what she told me last night just between us.
Chloe points to a door over her shoulder. ‘Let me use the loo,’ she says, and she heads into the bathroom.
While I marvel at the fact that Oscar’s boy cave has its own en suite, he takes a vape out of the pocket of his shorts, sucks on it and blows a pungent cloud of sickly-sweet vapour into the air.
‘Sucks, what happened to Evan,’ he says, which is rather downplaying it, in my view.
‘Yes, it does,’ I say. ‘Did you know him at all?’
Oscar shakes his head. ‘Nah, different schools,’ he says. ‘I go to St Mark’s.’
St Mark’s High is a private school, set in acres of lush woodland at the edge of town. The fees are no doubt extortionate, and from memory, they’re big on sports there – rugby in particular – which explains the shelf full of trophies, and Oscar’s grazed knees.
He goes on. ‘I know Chlo used to hang around with him sometimes. I think she felt sorry for him, because he used to get picked on by some of the rougher kids. I told her, she should have brought him round here. He could have chilled with us, played games, watched movies, whatever, but I think he was a bit shy of meeting people, you know?’
‘So I’m told,’ I say.
Oscar leans back in his chair, spreading his legs. Thank God his shorts are of the long variety.
‘So, you made Born Killer?’ he says. ‘That’s super cool. I’m sort of a content creator myself, as it happens.’ He lifts a hand to muss up his hair while he locks eyes with me, revealing a small cut above his right eye – another rugby injury, I expect.
Is he flirting with me? Is that what he thinks he’s doing?
‘Is that right?’ I say.
‘Yeah. I stream on Twitch, like, three times a week. I know it’s not the same thing, but I’m building my audience. Everyone’s got to start somewhere, right?’
‘Absolutely,’ I say, as Chloe emerges from the bathroom and I hurry her along.
She gives Oscar a long kiss goodbye, one with enough tongue to make me feel like I need a shower, and a moment later we’re in the car.
Had I not met Martin, it’s possible I might have ended up dating some inappropriate boys in my teens, the sort of guys that Dad wouldn’t have approved of. It seemed normal for girls at school to date boys who were older, who could drive, who had facial hair and jobs, the imbalance of power and experience never once occurring to us. These days, young people are more attuned to that sort of thing, and Chloe seems to have her head screwed on, but I still feel a pang of unease at how Oscar spoke to her.
‘Everything OK, between you two?’ I ask her, as I start the engine. She looks back at me, blankly. ‘The way he snapped at you, when you interrupted his game …’
‘Oh, that.’ She waves a hand. ‘It’s fine. He takes his gaming way too seriously, that’s all. And he has told me, like, a million times, not to interrupt him when he’s in the middle of a game. I mean, I don’t like it when he interrupts me when I’m playing, either, so …’ She trails off with a shrug, like she deserved it.
I want to tell her she doesn’t have to put up with him speaking to her that way, but it isn’t my place. And it isn’t why I’m here.
‘What you told me yesterday, about Evan …’ I begin.
She turns to me. ‘I haven’t said anything to anyone, I swear,’ she says, pressing a hand to her heart. ‘Not even Oscar. I only told you.’
Relief flows through me.
‘That’s good,’ I say. ‘Because I wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea, or for Connor to get in trouble because of a rumour, or a misunderstanding. Before we tell anyone else, I’d like us to try to establish the facts. Does that sound OK?’
‘Totally,’ she says, as if it hadn’t occurred to her there was another other option. ‘That’s why I came to you in the first place. So we can establish the facts.’
Music to my ears.
‘So, what’s next?’ she asks, with an eager grin.
Given how quickly Chloe confirmed she was willing to keep her mouth shut, I feel guilty for rushing Freya home now. There was time for cake and ice cream after all. Still, I suppose it means I have time to follow up a different lead.
‘Have you ever been to the games café, in town?’ I ask her.
She does that fringe flick again that reminds me of Amy. ‘No. Why?’
‘Because there’s someone there I need to speak to.’
She smiles. ‘You’re taking me along on an interview?’
Am I? Yesterday, the last thing I wanted was a teenager tagging along during my investigation. For one thing, it could be dangerous. For another, she could be a liability. Still, I find myself wanting to keep her close, not only because of what she told me about Evan, but because every time she flicks her hair out of her eyes the way Amy used to, I feel a small jolt of electricity that quickens my heart.
Taking her along for one meeting can’t hurt, can it?
‘It’s not an interview, just a friendly chat,’ I tell her.
‘That’s still cool,’ she says. ‘What do you want me to do?’
What do I want her to do, apart from stay quiet about Evan’s supposed visit to Connor on the night he was killed?
‘Observe,’ I say. ‘Don’t just listen to how he responds to questions, but watch him closely. Look at his posture, his facial expressions, what he’s doing with his hands, where his eyes are looking. And don’t fill the silences. If he goes quiet, and things start to feel a bit awkward, that’s fine. We don’t mind silence, but he might. Got it?’
‘Got it,’ says Chloe, that sparkle back in her eyes.