‘Nice new selection for the crime section. Happy to sort these out, Heather? Heather? You awake?’
There’s a thud as a box of books is deposited on the counter beside me, and I turn to see Kwee with a quizzical expression on her face.
‘Sorry. Off in my own little world for a minute. No problem,’ I say quickly, and she grins and gives me a thumbs-up.
‘Cheers. I’m just heading upstairs. Milly’s floating around somewhere but it’s pretty quiet this morning so you should be OK for a bit.’
‘Course we will. See you later,’ I reply. She smiles again and heads off towards the back of the shop and the door to the stairs leading to her cosy little office. I watch her go, realising she’s had her hair done. It’s freshly cropped almost to the scalp at the sides, her trademark dark brown curls on the top of her head looking even bouncier than usual in contrast. I hadn’t even noticed until now, and I’m usually excellent at spotting even the smallest change in someone’s appearance.
Am I that distracted?
Obviously I am…
It’s been nearly two weeks since my first phone call with Nathan Dixon. And tomorrow, I’ll be visiting Amber in prison. Every time I think about it, I feel a little frisson of nerves and anxiety.
It took a while to organise. A prisoner, it turns out, has to add you to their visitor list before you can start the process, so I had to phone the prison and ask them to pass on my request, following which I spent a sleepless night worrying she’d refuse to see me and at the same time half hoping that she would, so I could walk away from this whole farcical business. But then I got a message saying she’d agreed to let me come, and so now it’s all arranged. Tomorrow I’ll be walking into HMP Downhall, a women’s closed category prison in Surrey. I’ve never been to a prison before – why would I have? – and I have no idea what to expect, which is only adding to my trepidation, so for now I’m focussing on what I can control. The journey, for a start, is already carefully planned; approximately half an hour on the London Underground from Chiswick to Victoria, then an hour’s train ride.
‘It’ll be fine,’ I whisper as I take the new books carefully out of the box Kwee left and stack them neatly on my trolley. ‘Just visiting an old friend. Reconnecting, building bridges, having a chat. Nothing to worry about…’
My little self-directed pep talk isn’t working though, and as I make my way across the shop floor to the crime section – usually my happy place – my stomach flutters. It’s just after ten, and I’d normally have a coffee and maybe one of the delicious flapjacks from the bakery down the road around now, but hunger seems to have deserted me.
I’ve thought, more than once, about trying to visit Amber in prison since she was convicted last year. But I’d always come to the same conclusion: she wouldn’t want me to. Our final argument had been so bitter; so many nasty things were said. It really had felt as if our friendship was absolutely, irrevocably over. She hadn’t reached out to me either – not when she was arrested and charged, nor at any time during her trial. And yet now, I’ve been told by this brother and sister duo who’ve suddenly invaded my life, that Amber does still think about me, and wishes we’d never fallen out. Quite frankly, the whole thing is doing my head in.
‘OK, Heather?’
I’m adding the new books to a display almost robotically, my hand moving automatically from trolley to table-top and back again, and I jump as Milly sweeps past, a customer scuttling behind her. She winks at me, clearly amused she’s startled me, and I clutch my chest theatrically as she beams and heads off round the corner into non-fiction, her perfume, a scent of peaches with a hint of vanilla, still lingering in the air around me as she vanishes.
I love Kwee and Milly. They own the store together; they do everything together, really. They bought the beautiful Meadow Bookshop a year before I joined them. They married two years ago in the most wonderful ceremony at Old Marylebone Town Hall, the rock-and-roll register office which in the past has seen the likes of Paul McCartney and Liam Gallagher tie the knot. Kwee is Irish, and her real name is Caoimhe, which apparently is pronounced “Kwee-va”, but which virtually nobody can ever get right.
‘I gave up ages ago. Kwee is grand,’ she told me when she interviewed me. I liked her immediately, and I loved her look: her cool hair, her dark yet somehow intensely sparkly eyes, her signature striped cotton shirts teamed with paper-bag trousers, braces, and leather brogues. Milly, a born and bred Londoner, couldn’t look more different, with her short, sassy blonde hair that always looks windswept even indoors, and a penchant for floaty, floral dresses and ankle boots. Together they’re a formidable team – we won Independent Bookshop of the Year last year, against stiff competition from all over the UK – and I count myself extremely lucky to have them both as true friends now, as well as employers.
As for this shop, well, as well as being award-winning, it’s just generally fabulous. It’s one of the oldest in Chiswick, housed in a beautiful eighteenth-century bow-fronted building, its exterior painted deep red. In the summer, we put some of our favourite books on trestle tables outside on the pavement to entice passing trade; in winter, we give away free hot chocolate on Friday afternoons, whisked up by Milly in the tiny kitchen upstairs. It’s great, all of it. But now the simple pleasure of doing a job I love with people I adore is being tarnished by the nagging worry of what Felicity and Nathan Dixon have told me, and what they want me to do. I spoke to Nathan a second time after my visit to Amber was confirmed, and the conversation left me dazed because he finally filled me in on all the details about precisely what he believes Jack did and, more importantly, how he thinks he did it. Although he made it sound plausible, by the time we ended the call my head was spinning.
This is way out of my comfort zone, way out of my league. It’s like walking into the pages of one of my favourite thrillers – but a bookseller-turned-undercover-detective? Nobody would write that. It’s too contrived, too unbelievable…
And yet here I am, the first step underway, and tomorrow I’ll be off to a prison to meet a convicted criminal. Will I take the next step, once I’ve spoken to Amber? I don’t know, I really don’t. I did do some research on Rose Campbell, though. She was the girlfriend before me, the one who called time on her relationship with Jack three years ago and ended up dead. When I googled her, not much came up; any social media accounts she might have had must have been closed after her death. But there was still a profile on LinkedIn, describing her as a senior accountant at Shannon Medical, Jack’s company. And then, the bleak newspaper report of her death.
Rose Campbell, who was thirty-two at the time, died when her car careered across the M4 from the outside lane to the hard shoulder at high speed and then overturned, sliding along the tarmac for nearly 100 metres before spinning back into the inside lane, slamming into two other vehicles and injuring three other people. It happened shortly after 2am on a wet Thursday. Rose, who died at the scene before the police and ambulance arrived, was said to have had a blood alcohol level of more than three times the legal limit for driving.
It appeared, on the surface, to be a straightforward case of a drunk driver reaping what she’d sown, but what Nathan told me about what really happened made me shiver. And on this one he’s adamant. Nathan had already left the country when the Amber thing began, so on some elements of that he’s making what he calls ‘educated and highly informed guesses’, based on what he claims Jack told him about his future plans. But as for Rose…
‘I’ve seen some of the evidence with my own eyes, Heather,’ he said, his voice husky with emotion, even though Rose was a woman he’d never actually met. ‘And it made me feel sick. And the rest Jack just told me himself that night when he was off his face. He may not have been in the car with her, but he killed her – or as good as. She’d still be alive if it wasn’t for him, that’s for sure.’
I stared at her photo in the newspaper article for a long time. Rose – her mother Jamaican, her father Chinese – was stunning, with long black hair and a glorious smile, her teeth white and even, her lips full and glossy. She looked so happy in the picture, and I felt tears prick my eyes as I tried to make sense of what Nathan had told me. I know Jack Shannon. But this? Reacting that strongly to being dumped by a girlfriend? Why? It all sounds so extreme, so improbable. I’m sceptical by nature, and I’ve started to wonder if Nathan might have some ulterior motive here. Was he fired by Jack, for instance, and didn’t really quit his job as he claims? Could this all be some sort of attempt at payback?
And yet…
‘Excuse me? Where’s the children’s section, please? And do you have the new Malorie Blackman? I wrote down the name of it but now I can’t read my own writing. What’s it called? My daughter’s going to a birthday party after school today and I totally forgot to get a present and now I’m running around like a blue-arsed fly.’
I turn abruptly to see a tall woman with a frazzled expression standing behind me, waving a piece of paper with something scrawled on it in black ink.
‘Sorry,’ she says apologetically. ‘Did I make you jump?’
‘My fault. Daydreaming,’ I say.
I find the book quickly and she hurries off, calling her thanks over her denim-jacket-clad shoulder. I wave and shout that I hope her day gets easier. Then, slowly, I make my way back to the crime section, my head still full of Nathan and Rose and Amber and Jack bastard Shannon.
If all Nathan says is true – and so much depends on what happens when I see Amber tomorrow – then I have to help, don’t I? But a speculative conversation with a stranger is one thing. If this becomes real…
An image of Jack’s face floats into my head, and I shudder violently, as if an icy finger has slipped under my clothes and is slowly stroking my spine.
Can I really do it?
My head swims. I lean on the table in front of me for support. I blink, trying to force myself to take long, slow breaths, and to focus on the new books in front of me. I try to take in their bright covers, the seductive images I normally find irresistible, that make me want to flip through their pages and discover what lies within. But today, even the books aren’t enough, and the thought intrudes again. My stomach clenches.
If I do this, it means going back.
Back somewhere I never thought I’d go. Somewhere I don’t know if I can go.
It means going back to the dark.