One day earlier
In a glass-walled meeting room, down a short corridor at the very back of Westhaven Library, Peter Rand is sitting at the head of a long table with five other members of the games club, all children – the youngest perhaps no more than nine or ten, and the oldest in their mid-teens. They are gathered around a large board with plastic figurines arranged on it, each player armed with pencil, paper and a handful of what looks like playing cards. I’ve no idea what game they’re playing, but it looks like they’re having fun; sounds like it too. As we approach the door, a small boy in glasses gets to his feet and jumps up and down with excitement while the other children cheer.
It doesn’t feel right, interrupting their game, and I don’t want to go barging in, encroaching on their safe space. But I have to speak to Rand.
I knock on the glass and heads turn, all eyes looking in our direction. The boy promptly sits down and shrinks into himself while Rand looks up from his notebook, registers our presence, then gestures to the children, moving his hands in a calming motion.
He comes over, opens the door and pokes his head out into the corridor. ‘Can I help you?’ he says, his kids’ TV presenter smile nowhere to be seen.
‘Sorry to interrupt,’ I tell him. ‘But we need to speak with you.’
‘Can’t it wait?’ He gestures behind him. ‘You can see we’re in the middle of a game. I should be done in half an hour, or if you want to come by the café later, we can talk then.’
I don’t want to wait, don’t want to give Rand the opportunity to avoid us, but I scan the kids’ faces, and decide that, despite my concerns about Rand, I don’t want to cause a scene.
‘That’s OK,’ I say. ‘We’ll wait until you’re done.’
While Rand disappears back into the room, Chloe and I take a seat on a pair of low chairs, out of sight of the children, but with a clear view of the room’s door. Not that I think Rand is about to make run for it, but it would be a clear indicator that he’s been up to no good if he did.
Chloe leans over and says, ‘He looked kind of annoyed, but …’ She shakes her head. ‘I dunno. I’m not sure he’s the type. He’s too nice.’
‘The type?’
‘You know …’ She leans in closer and whispers, ‘A murderer.’
‘I suppose,’ I say. ‘But not all murderers look like creeps, you know. And maybe that way of thinking is why some don’t get caught. It’s like I said, just because someone seems nice and does nice things, that doesn’t necessarily make them a good person.’
‘Right,’ she says.
In the end, forty-five minutes pass before the glass door wings open and the members of the games club begrudgingly file out of the room.
‘I know, I know,’ Rand tells them, ‘but we’ll pick up right where we left off next week. And Ryan?’ The little kid in glasses turns back. ‘Great job today!’ Rand gives Ryan a half hug, a hand briefly slipping around the little boy’s shoulders.
‘Thanks, Mr Rand!’ Ryan chirps, then he walks off down the corridor, grinning to himself.
Seems like the librarian was right. The kids really do like him.
Rand waits until the last of the children are out of sight, then turns to us and his smile falls away. ‘Come in,’ he says, and we follow him into the room where he snaps a few pictures of the game board on his phone, then begins tidying, sweeping the little figurines into a box and folding the gameboard into quarters.
‘Thank you for giving us some space,’ he says. ‘Some of the children can be a little nervous around strangers.’ He moves around the table, collecting notebooks and pencils. ‘And they’re especially fragile at the moment, seeing as one of their friends is no longer with us. Now …’ He puts both hands in his pockets and perches on the edge of the table, the way a teacher about to lecture his pupils might. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘We have a few more questions, if you don’t mind,’ I say.
He sighs. ‘All right. Make it quick. Like I said, I’ve no problem with journalists, or filmmakers, per se, but I already told you everything there is to know about my friendship with Evan the last time we spoke.’
‘Whatever you say … Alex,’ says Chloe.
His head whips in her direction and he fixes her with a flinty look, but I watch his Adam’s apple rise and fall as he dry-swallows. I can see his thoughts behind his eyes: Where did you hear that name?
‘Why didn’t you tell us that you grew up here?’ I ask.
Rand pulls a confused face. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He lets out a small laugh, as if it’s a ridiculous question, and I take the picture of the school photo from my back pocket, unfold it and hand it to him.
‘Second row, third from the left. That’s you, isn’t it?’
He looks at the photo, then back to me. ‘What is this?’
I don’t say a word, and neither does Chloe – we don’t mind silence – and eventually Rand throws up his hands.
‘Fine. Fine,’ he says. ‘If you must know, yes, I lived in Westhaven when I was a kid. I moved away when I was twelve, and moved back at the tail end of …’ His eyes flick up and to the left. ‘I think it was 2018, not that it’s any of your business.’
He says this like it’s an unimportant detail. But if that’s the case, why does he suddenly look so nervous? And why is he taking deep breaths through his nose, as if trying to keep his emotions in check?
‘And can I ask why you moved away?’
‘Because I was having a difficult time, that’s why,’ he says.
‘A difficult time?’
He’s blinking rapidly, engaged in some internal struggle that is bringing a sheen of sweat to his top lip. Finally, he slumps his shoulders and takes a seat at the head of the table. He clasps his hands together, bounces them softly against his lips, like he’s trying to pray but has forgotten how, then looks over to me.
‘I remember you from school, and your friend Amy,’ he says. ‘You and her were always together. You were inseparable. I tried talking to you, several times, actually, but you looked at me like I was from another planet.’
I shake my head. I’ve no memory of this, and it would have been nearly twenty years ago, but I feel a pang of guilt. Kids can be so cruel sometimes, even unintentionally.
‘I don’t expect you to remember me,’ Rand says. ‘Nobody does.’ He picks up the printout again, takes a closer look. ‘You know some people say their schooldays are the best of their lives? Well, for me they were the worst.’
‘You don’t look like you were having a bad time. In the picture, I mean,’ says Chloe.
‘No, I suppose I don’t,’ Rand says, with a forlorn chuckle. ‘I was very good at hiding it. Until I wasn’t. Until, at eleven years old, shortly after this photo was taken, I tried taking my own life.’
‘Jesus,’ I say, softly, and I hear Chloe gasp behind me.
Rand goes on, ‘Fortunately, my parents found me in time, got me to hospital, got me the help I needed. In the end, they decided it would be best if we moved away and made a fresh start, in a new school, in a new town. And that’s exactly what we did. We moved to Bristol, and I got better. Everything got better.’
‘But you came back?’ I say.
‘Hmm.’ He nods. ‘My grandmother died and left me a house. I thought I’d stay here for a few months, do it up, then sell it on, but it turns out I’m not nearly as good at DIY as I thought I was. A few months turned into six months, then a year. I decided if I was going to stick around, I might as well do something useful, so I started the games club, to help kids who were like me. Outsiders.’
‘But you didn’t come back as Alexander?’ says Chloe.
Rand shakes his head. ‘I said goodbye to Alex a long time ago. You see, people didn’t like him very much. They thought he was a strange little boy, someone who you should not, under any circumstances, be friends with. And if enough people tell you something enough times, you start to believe them. So, it got to the point where I didn’t like Alex very much, either. I hated him, in fact. So I left him behind when I left Westhaven. I had to, to move on with my life, to make a fresh start.’
The idea of any child being made to hate themselves so much that they want to take their own life is appalling. And it’s made all the worse by the fact that while Alex was going through hell, Amy and I were giggling away to each other on the row behind him, that we didn’t help, that to us, he didn’t even exist. Back then, Amy and I were so wrapped up in each other, nobody else mattered. It was as if the world, and everything in it, was divided into two. On one side, there was me and Amy, and on the other, there was everything, and everybody else.
‘I don’t blame you for ignoring me back then,’ Rand says. ‘You were just a kid, too young to understand the impact of your actions.’ He stops, tips his head. ‘But I’d hoped you might be a little more self-aware now, that you might understand the impact your documentary had on Evan, how it ruined his life.’
‘That’s not fair!’ says Chloe, and I wave a hand to signal that I’ve got this.
‘If Evan’s life was made difficult because of a documentary I made that told the truth about his uncle, then I’m sorry about that, I truly am,’ I tell Rand, keeping my tone calm and measured. ‘But Evan didn’t take his own life. Someone killed him.’
‘And you think that someone was me, don’t you?’ Rand says. ‘That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, because the idea of a grown man being friends with a young boy doesn’t sit right? It triggers an alarm, makes you think I must be a weirdo, or a pervert? Am I right?’
I don’t reply.
‘I was running a game at the café on the night that Evan …’ He trails off, doesn’t want to say it. ‘The CCTV is already with the police, but if you give me your email address, I’ll send you a copy. Then you can leave me alone.’
‘Oh,’ I say. Bill told me they’d already spoken to Rand, said he’d been helpful, but I thought he was just fobbing me off.
‘I became friends with Evan because I knew what he was going through,’ Rand says. ‘I knew how hard it was for him, what the teasing and name calling was doing to him, what it could lead to. Did you know that a boy broke Evan’s arm a few years ago, and Evan was so scared, he wouldn’t even tell his teachers who’d done it? He pointed the boy out to me once—’ Rand’s comes to a stop, his voice choked with tears.
Chloe mentioned this attack on the night we first spoke. Perhaps it was a playground fight that got out of hand, but given what Evan was going through, it strikes me that perhaps it was more serious than that. A deliberate act of harm.
‘Did Evan tell you the boy’s name?’ I ask, and Rand shakes his head.
‘I don’t think so,’ he says, scratching at his beard. ‘Maybe he mentioned it once, in passing; it was a long time ago.’
‘He probably didn’t want to say,’ Chloe jumps in. ‘He told me that even if he did want to tell, he didn’t think his teachers would believe him.’
‘Exactly,’ says Rand. ‘That’s what happens. Victims are disbelieved, the crimes against them minimised. They’re told that it’s just boys being boys, that it was just a game that got out of hand and before long they begin to feel isolated and helpless. That’s what happened to me, and I could see it happening to Evan. He was desperate to be listened to, to be believed. So forgive me for being there for a young boy who needed somebody to talk to. And if you think there’s something wrong with that, then that’s your problem, not mine.’
He wipes his eyes on his sleeve of his jumper, and I don’t blame him one bit for feeling emotional. He tried to save Evan, to give him the help he himself had so badly needed as a boy, but Evan still ended up dead.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I know this must be really difficult for you.’
He sniffs, nods. ‘You have no idea,’ he says.
I suppose I don’t.
‘We won’t bother you again,’ I tell him. ‘But if you think of anything else that might be useful, please get in touch. And I know it probably doesn’t mean much now, but I’m sorry, for ignoring you back then, when we were kids. And for interrupting your game.’
‘Yeah, sorry about the game,’ Chloe adds.
I take a card out of my bag, put it down on the table and push it towards him with a finger. ‘If you think of anything else …’
Rand picks it up, scans the name on the front. ‘Huh,’ he says. ‘Do you know, I did have one friend back then.’ He looks up at me. ‘You married him, as it happens.’
Martin? I’m taken aback, but I suppose it makes sense. They were both victims of bullying. No doubt they sought each other out, clung to each other. Safety in numbers, perhaps. Plus, Martin has always been kind. Unlike me and Amy, if Alex had tried to talk, he wouldn’t have looked at him like he was from another planet.
Rand goes on, ‘But even he turned against me at the end, joined in the with the rest of them, teased me, called me names. I don’t blame him. He was just trying to find a way to survive, like the rest of us.’
This, I find very hard to believe. Martin, a bully? His own schooldays still haunt him, so I can’t imagine for a second he’d have ever wanted to inflict a similar torment on someone else. Rand must be mistaken. I wonder if the trauma of being victimised made him ultra-sensitive, unable to distinguish between mean-spirited name calling and good-natured banter between friends – not that Martin has ever been in the habit of poking fun at people. Because the way he talks about Westhaven High, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a brutal, dangerous place, more like the prison yard than a normal school. It wasn’t that bad, even for him, was it? I think. Then I recognise in myself the very behaviour he has just outlined: minimising, disbelieving. Maybe he’s right about Martin, that he turned against his friend to save his own skin. God knows, we all do regrettable things when we’re young.
Rand is slumped down in his chair with his head in his hands. He looks drained, and I feel bad for having dredged up old, no doubt painful, memories. Worse, because I believe him. I believe every word.
Chloe and I leave him to it, and walk back through the library and to the car in silence. As we put on our seatbelts, she gives me a look, sending me a message without moving her lips, the way Amy used to: This is bad, isn’t it?
I nod. It is. Because if Peter Rand is out of the frame, the only person left in it is Connor.