It’s Friday afternoon, just half an hour from closing, and I’m tidying the display tables at the front of the shop, waiting for Amber to come and meet me for an after-work drink. She had a job interview this afternoon, and she called earlier to say it had gone well, and she was hopeful.
‘They’re going to let me know on Monday, but we got on great,’ she said happily. ‘It’s a really busy little garage, and so well organised, and they’re all women too. Isn’t that cool? I’d love it, I think. Cross everything for me!’
She’s going to be an apprentice car mechanic. She did a car maintenance course in prison, apparently, and she loved it. Who’d have thought it? It’s a world away from her glamorous former life in events, but it’s what she needs now, she says. She finds it fascinating, understanding how engines work, taking things apart, putting them back together, fixing them.
‘A bit like what’s happened in my life,’ she said the other day. ‘I was taken apart, but I’m back together now, and I’m starting to work properly again. It feels so good, Heather.’
Jack’s due to be sentenced very soon, and that’s the one dark cloud on our sunny horizon. We’ve made a pact not to talk about it; it’s out of our hands after all, and we just have to hope that justice will prevail. But we’re nervous, jittery. Amber and I, and Rhona and Nathan and Johnny. We’re all so close now, and Kwee and Milly have been an incredible support too; I can’t quite believe that, briefly, I had doubts about them, when all they were doing was worrying about me being back with Jack. We’ll get through this together, this little gang of ours, whatever happens. Of course we will. But the waiting isn’t fun. That’s why Amber and I are going out tonight, to distract ourselves. We’re going to a Cuban bar, with a live band, and we’re going to drink and dance and laugh, and Jack Shannon is not going to spoil it. We’re done with him, for good. In fact, the police FLO has tried to call me twice in the past hour, and has left messages both times asking me to phone her back as soon as I can, but I’ve ignored her. It’ll be something about the case, and I just don’t want to know. Not today. It can wait until tomorrow, or Monday even. Tonight, I just want to relax. I want to have some fun and forget about it all.
‘Holy crap!’
I spin around. It’s Kwee, over at the counter, staring at her iPad, her mouth open. She looks over at me, waving a hand in a ‘come here, quickly!’ gesture. I frown, putting down the couple of books I’m still trying to find the right spot for and walking briskly across the shop floor. It’s virtually empty in here now, just a couple of people down the back in sci-fi, and I slip behind the counter and peer over her shoulder.
‘What’s up?’ I say.
I don’t see it at first. Kwee has the ITV news website open on her tablet, a photo of Madonna dominating the page. She’s on tour at the moment, and last night had a sell-out show at the O2. But Kwee is pointing to another article on the left-hand side, and to my surprise I see her hand is quivering. I lean a little closer, and then I see it. For a few moments I think my heart actually stops beating.
‘What? What?’
I gasp the words, trying to read the news piece, but the letters dance before my eyes. I can’t make any sense of it. Is this true?
‘Hey guys, what’s going on?’
There’s a waft of familiar musk-scented perfume. It’s Amber, at my elbow, looking smart in a canary-yellow jacket.
‘Look, Amber. Look,’ I whisper, and she squeezes into the small space beside me, her chin lightly resting on my shoulder as I read it again. First, the headline.
FELICITY DIXON KILLER DIES IN HORROR SMASH
And then, the paragraphs below it.
Jack Shannon, the man who confessed to killing thirty-three-year-old Felicity Dixon in Chiswick last month, and who also admitted the attempted murder of thirty-four-year-old Heather Harris at his home on the fourteenth of April, died in hospital early this morning after the car he was travelling in was involved in an accident.
Shannon (38), who was on bail awaiting sentencing, had also confessed to faking two other crimes, including one which resulted in thirty-four-year-old Amber Ryan being erroneously given a life sentence in prison. He died alongside his driver, Yuri Markovic, after their Mercedes swerved off Upper Richmond Road in Barnes and smashed into a tree. No other vehicle was involved, and initial investigations suggest the accident may be the result of a mechanical fault…
A mechanical fault?
I feel Amber lift her head slowly from my shoulder and I turn sharply to look at her, my mind whirring. She didn’t, did she? She wouldn’t. She couldn’t have…
‘Amber?’ I say softly. Kwee is still staring at the article, shaking her head.
‘Wow,’ she’s muttering. ‘Wow. That’s insane…’
Amber stares at me, expressionless, for a few moments.
Then she smiles.
It’s a small, satisfied smirk.
‘Wow indeed,’ she says. ‘What a shock, eh? Oh, well. Come on, Heather. Let’s go and get that drink, shall we?’
As I said right at the very beginning of all this, you don’t expect your life to change in a bookshop. But sometimes, just like that, one chapter ends and a new one begins.
I stare at Amber for another few seconds, letting it sink in, allowing my thoughts to settle. Then I smile back.
‘Let’s do that,’ I say.