Her

Wednesday 06:55

‘Put the phone down,’ says the female detective.

She stares at me as though I just committed a hideous crime. Patel, I think he called her, and she’s not being nearly as nice to me as she was the first time we met. It was pretty easy to win her over in the woods yesterday. I didn’t really care about the shoe covers I asked to borrow, I just needed an excuse to talk to her. It’s amazing how much information I was able to extract. I may have repeated some of it, I suspect that’s why she is cross.

I swear she saw me reaching for the landline on the desk long before she said anything. I wouldn’t have picked it up in the first place if she’d told me not to, but I put the phone back down without further argument. I was never good at disobeying people in authority, even small ones. The two of us are cocooned inside the school secretary’s office, for reasons that make very little sense to me.

‘I’m due on-air in ten minutes. Your boss has taken my mobile, and I need to make a phone call to let someone know where I am,’ I say.

‘DCI Harper took your mobile because you said that someone called you on it, tipping you off about the latest murder. I’m sure you can understand the reasons why we need to check out that call and who made it.’

I regret giving Jack my phone, but didn’t want to come across as being unhelpful.

‘Fine, but I need to tell my newsdesk where I am.’

‘It’s been taken care of.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Your cameraman is aware that you’ve been delayed.’

‘Delayed or detained? Am I under arrest?’

‘No. As I have already explained to you, you’re free to go at any time. You have been asked to stay here for your own protection, and to assist with our investigation.’

I stare at her and she doesn’t look away. She might be small and young, but she is surprisingly confident. No wonder Jack likes her. I can feel myself falling in hate. It’s a lot like falling in love, but tends to happen harder and faster and often lasts a lot longer, too.

She steps outside the room, leaving the door open. I can hear her talking to someone further down the corridor, so I reach inside my bag, open a miniature brandy, and down it. Then I find my tin of mints and pop one in my mouth. When I look up, the detective is standing in the doorway staring at me. I don’t know how long she has been there, or what she has seen.

‘Mint?’ I ask, rattling the tin in her direction.

‘No, thank you.’

‘You do know I’m Jack’s ex-wife, don’t you?’

Her smile looks out of practice.

‘Yes, Ms Andrews. I know who you are.’

I’m not sure what makes me more uncomfortable, her words or the strange expression on her face. I told them both how scared I was when I got the call this morning, but it’s as though neither of them believe me. The fact that I contacted the newsroom before I notified the police didn’t go down particularly well either. I’m a journalist, so of course I followed up the tip-off and drove to the school. In hindsight, I can see how it might look a little foolish, dangerous even, but some stories are as addictive as success. Individual murders don’t make or save careers, but a story about a serial killer could keep me on-air for weeks.

I’ll never forget seeing Helen’s lifeless body for the first time though. The girl I went to school with had grown into a woman I barely recognised, but of course I had known who she was. Same hair, same cheekbones, for all I knew it might even have been the same stapler she used on the school newspaper sitting on her desk. It’s the kind of mental image you can never erase, and the sight of all that blood first thing in the morning would make anyone want a drink.

The young detective continues to stare at me, as though her big brown eyes have forgotten how to blink. I look away first, and feign interest in the pictures on the office walls. Staring at them brings back memories of being summoned to this room as a teenager. I was never in trouble at my first school, but when I moved to St Hilary’s everything changed. Not that it was my fault. It was almost always down to Rachel Hopkins or Helen Wang, both of whom are now dead.

Rachel took me under her wing when I first arrived at the school, and I was so grateful. She was the most popular girl in our class, which made sense, because she was beautiful, clever, and kind. Or so I thought. She was always doing things for charity, even then – sponsored runs, bake sales, collections for Children in Need. I didn’t think it at first, but after a few weeks, I soon started to wonder if she just saw me as another one of her little projects.

She had invited me to her home, let me borrow some of her clothes, and taught me how to do my make-up. I’d never bothered wearing any before. She liked to paint my nails when we hung out together, a different colour every time we met. Sometimes she would draw letters with varnish, one on each nail to spell out a word on my fingers: CUTE or SWEET or NICE were her favourites. She was always calling me nice. It’s still the word people use most often to describe me now. I’ve grown to detest it. The sound those four letters make translates from a compliment into an insult inside my ears. As though being nice is a weakness. Perhaps it is. Perhaps I am.

Rachel also bought me small presents all the time – lip gloss, scrunchies for my hair, sometimes tops and skirts that were a tad too tight, to encourage me to lose weight – and she even took me to her hairdresser’s one weekend, to get my hair highlighted the same way as hers. She knew I couldn’t afford it, and insisted on paying for everything. I did wonder where the money came from, but never asked. Rachel also let me sit next to her and her friends at lunchtimes, and I was glad about that too. There were some people who sat alone and I didn’t want to be like them.

Catherine Kelly seemed nice enough to me. She was always eating chocolate or crisps, and she looked a little strange – with her white-blonde hair, braces, and scruffy uniform – but she didn’t do or say anything to upset anyone. She didn’t say much at all really, just sat quietly reading her books. Mostly horror, I noticed. I’d heard that her family lived in a strange place in the woods, at the edge of town. Some people said it was a haunted house, but I didn’t believe in ghosts. I thought it was a shame that she didn’t seem to have any friends at all, and I felt sorry for her.

‘Should we invite Catherine to sit with us?’ I asked one day, slowly eating the lunch ladies’ interpretation of lasagne and chips.

The other girls stared as though I had said something offensive.

‘No,’ said Rachel, who was sitting directly opposite me.

‘Are you actually going to eat all of that?’ said Helen, staring at my plate. I had noticed that she always skipped lunch. ‘Do you know how many calories are in that processed crap?’ she continued when I didn’t answer.

I didn’t know, it wasn’t the sort of thing I thought about much.

‘I like lasagne,’ I replied.

She shook her head and put a small bottle of pills on the table.

‘Here, have these. Call them an early birthday present.’

‘What are they?’ I asked, staring at the unexpected ‘gift’.

‘Diet pills. We all take them. It means you can be slim without feeling hungry. Put them in your bag, we don’t want the whole school knowing all our little secrets.’

‘Why do you want to invite Smelly Catherine Kelly to join our gang?’ Rachel asked, changing the subject.

The others laughed.

‘I just know how happy it makes me to eat lunch with all of you, and I thought she looked lonely—’

‘And you wanted to be nice, right?’ Rachel interrupted. I shrugged. ‘You know, being too nice is a sign of weakness.’

Rachel stood abruptly, her chair scraping the floor. Then she picked up her can of Coke and left the canteen. Nobody spoke, and when I tried to make eye contact, they all stared at the uneaten salads on their plates.

Rachel returned a few minutes later, her smile reattached to her face. She put the can back down on the table, and picked up her cutlery to continue barely eating. The other girls did the same. They always took their lead from her.

‘Well, go on then,’ she said between mouthfuls. ‘Invite her over.’

I hesitated for a moment but then dismissed the uneasy feeling in my stomach, choosing to believe that Rachel was being as kind as I knew she could be. It seems naïve looking back, but sometimes we believe what we want to about the people we like the most.

I weaved my way through an obstacle course of chairs, tables and schoolgirls, to reach the sad little corner of the canteen where Catherine Kelly always ate alone. Her long blonde hair looked like it hadn’t seen a brush for a while. She tucked it behind her sticky-out ears, and blushed when the other kids called her Dumbo. Despite all the snacks she liked so much – crisps, chocolate bars, endless fizzy drinks – she was a skinny girl. Her shirt was slightly loose around her neck where a button was missing, and there were stains on her tie. I noticed that her navy-blue blazer was covered in chalk, as though she had rubbed up against a blackboard. Close up, I could also see that her eyebrows were almost completely bald, where she was always plucking the hairs with her fingertips. I’d watched her doing it in class, making tiny piles of herself on the desk, before blowing them away like wishes.

She pulled a face as though she thought I was joking when I invited her to join us. She stared at the girls on my table – who were all giggling at something Rachel had whispered to them after I had left – but when they saw her looking, they smiled and waved and beckoned her over. I felt very pleased with myself indeed when she carried her tray to our table, and sat down next to us all.

Until I read the scrap of paper that had been tucked beneath my plate.

Rachel made a little speech before I could say or do anything about it.

‘I just wanted to say sorry if I’ve ever hurt your feelings, Catherine. Friends?’ she said, reaching across the table to shake her hand.

The quiet girl obliged, holding out her own. I could see how badly bitten her nails were, the skin around them red and raw. I noticed a bit of lasagne had got stuck between the braces on her teeth, too.

Catherine’s cheeks flushed red as she shook Rachel’s hand, and her can of Coke got knocked over. Helen – ever the clever and practical one – immediately produced some napkins to soak up the mess, as though she had known it was going to happen.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Rachel. ‘I am such a klutz. Here, have my Coke instead. It’s still full and I haven’t touched it.’

‘I’m fine, I’m not even really thirsty,’ Catherine replied, even redder than before so that her face and the can appeared to match.

‘No really, I insist.’

Rachel slid the drink across the table, and the conversation seemed to move along with it.

I kept staring at the slip of paper, reading the words and wondering what was the right thing to do:

I pissed in the Coke can. If you tell her before she drinks it, then you’ll be the one sitting alone at lunch tomorrow.

Of course, I already knew the right thing to do, but I didn’t do it. I just sat there, looking at the plate of food I no longer wanted to eat.

Five excruciating minutes after she sat down with us all, Catherine picked up the drink. Rachel managed to keep a straight face, but Helen looked delighted, and Zoe was already giggling. I wish I could say that she just took a sip, but the girl tilted her head right back, and took several gulps before realising that something was wrong.

‘You just drank my piss!’ said Rachel, an enormous smile on her face once more.

Everyone laughed, and news of what had happened soon spread from our table to the next, until the whole school seemed to be pointing and laughing at Catherine Kelly.

She didn’t say a word.

She just stared at me.

Then she got up and left the canteen, without clearing her tray or looking back.