Emily Francis said goodbye to Flora’s mother at the door and headed towards the Lower Richmond Road. It had been a difficult hour – hours with Flora always were – and she needed a drink. Still, at least Fran was free. A couple of spritzers with her in The Spencer were just what she needed before heading back to her parents’ house in Putney.
Going through a past GCSE paper with Flora had, as ever, been challenging. A familiar blend of stupidity and teenage truculence, Flora found concentration difficult and took every possible opportunity to side-track Emily into red herrings. Such red herrings were usually welcomed – chatting with her student was much easier than trying to teach her – but tonight Emily was more conscious than usual of Flora’s mother hovering within earshot by the open door and felt under pressure to keep on task.
At the end of the lesson Flora’s mother took Emily aside. This was usually her opportunity to voice her concerns about Flora’s doubtful prospects and the inadequacies of her teachers (one a direct consequence of the other) but tonight all she wanted to talk about was Giles Gallen. Having discovered that Emily had been with him on the night of his 143murder, she assumed Emily must be privy to information unknown to, or as yet unrevealed to, the media and pressed her for details.
There was nothing Emily could tell her. She had no idea who could have murdered Giles and was still struggling to take it in. The idea that a young graduate working as a tutor and living at home with his parents, in other words a person in exactly her position, could meet such an end, brought home to her the slenderness of life’s thread, especially her own.
Emily shivered, turned up her collar against the evening chill and picked up her pace as she walked towards the pub, unable to stop herself reflecting on where she was in relation to what she liked to call her life plan. Was she kidding herself that she would ever become a journalist? Was she wasting her time flooding commissioning editors with ideas for articles, sending off speculative reviews and features, trawling her world for connections and opportunities? Loads of people out there were doing exactly the same, cherishing the same dreams and ambitions. Was she kidding herself that she had something they didn’t? Was there anything about her ideas and her prose that marked them off from the rest?
It was the old insecurity, that competition-fuelled fear of failure that had been with her since her schooldays. Its shadow had accompanied her to university and had now followed her into the world. It wasn’t the world she’d hoped to join – living in her parents’ Putney home and working as a tutor wasn’t what she had imagined on graduation. She’d always seen herself living in a flat in some youthful edgy postcode far from Putney’s tepid gentility, working as a journalist and with a long-term boyfriend, and that’s still how she liked to see herself, especially when her mind 144wandered, as it so often did, in tutoring sessions with the likes of Flora.
The boyfriend thing shouldn’t be a big deal, but she knew it was. There had been boyfriends at school but nothing serious and there had been Phil at Cardiff – something that had seemed serious but had proved itself flimsy in post-uni life – but there had been nothing for the last few years apart from some ill-judged one-night stands and dating app disasters. She was always on the lookout, and maybe that was the problem. Maybe she came across as too keen, too anxious. That evening of the Forum party, for example. She hadn’t meant to flirt with Giles, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself, and as the evening passed her flirtation had become more and more outrageous. But it wasn’t as though it was all down to her – Giles had been doing exactly the same. If anything he’d been worse.
Of course she regretted it, but given that she could see no possible connection to Giles’s murder, she’d seen no need to tell the police. Giles certainly wasn’t going to say anything, so why should she? They need never know.
Lost in reflection, Emily was unaware of anything around her. It was only when she shook her head to clear her thoughts that she heard the footsteps behind. At first she thought nothing of them. Plenty of people walked along the Lower Richmond Road at this time of night. But something about these steps unnerved her. Sometimes they came so close that she thought whoever was behind her (and the weight of the steps suggested it was a man) was about to overtake, but then they receded as if they had deliberately retreated.
Emily kept telling herself that it was all her imagination. Thinking about Giles had made her see, and in this case 145hear, danger where there wasn’t any. All she needed to do was turn round to see who it was. She’d then see there was no threat and could give whoever it was a friendly smile and step back to let them pass.
But something stopped her turning. She picked up her pace again and sensed the steps behind following her pattern. Here they came again, getting closer. She tensed, and the steps receded. It was as if they were playing some game, taunting her, tempting her to turn. Maybe that was why she wouldn’t – she refused to play their game.
The pub was within sight. She would be safe there.
‘Emily!’
The voice came from the other side of the road. She turned towards it.
‘Fran!’
Never had she been more pleased to see her friend. She stopped and waited for Fran to cross the road. As she did, she watched her follower walk past. It was, as she had thought, a man. He looked harmless enough – puffa jacket, jeans, trainers and a peaked cap. She had imagined it all.
It was good to catch up with Fran. Whenever they met they regressed to their days at Lady Margaret’s, almost as if the years that had followed had never happened. And the good thing was that Fran was in a similar position to hers. No boyfriend, living with her parents, and still looking for the job she really wanted. Being with her didn’t make Emily feel like some kind of failure, and she was in a much better mood when she left the pub and walked towards Putney Bridge.
It was when Emily turned into her road that she heard them again.
The steps. 146
The same pattern, the same approach and retreat.
This time, maybe emboldened or maybe befuddled by the couple of drinks she’d had in the Spencer, she decided to turn.
It happened in a flash. She saw the peaked cap under a hood but nothing of the face as a hand covered her mouth and an arm tightened round her neck. She was almost lifted off her feet as she was pulled into a side road. Suddenly she was up against a wall, the man’s body pressing against her back. The arm pulled itself tighter and she gasped for breath.
Was this it? Was this how it happened?
The hand stifled her attempted scream, muffling her desperate grunts. She wriggled against the gripping arm and kicked back with her heels. One caught a shin.
‘Listen!’ came a voice. Half-snarl. Half-whisper.
The arm released its grip as the body pinned her closer to the wall.
He pulled her away from the wall, the hand pushing harder against her mouth and she heard a zip.
‘Feel this?’ he said.
What was happening? Had he unzipped his flies?
The arm came back into the gap between her face and the wall and she felt something sharp against her neck.
‘Feel this?’ he repeated, his mouth close to her ear.
Emily felt it. A sharp steel edge.
‘It’s a knife,’ said the man. ‘Remember Giles?’
Emily grunted.
‘If you don’t keep your mouth shut the same thing will happen to you.’
The knife pressed harder against the neck. Had it cut her?
‘So keep your mouth shut. Understand?’
Another grunt. 147
‘When I let you go, keep facing this wall and you’ll be OK. If you turn you get this.’
Another press of the knife.
‘Understand?’
The weight of the body lifted. Emily thought of turning but she was frozen, unable to move.
She heard him running away. By the time she turned he was out of sight.