JEN
We’re standing at the top of Kite Hill, our figures silhouetted in front of the London skyline. Me, Jamie Blackwood and his Weimaraner, Ayesha Ahmed, Steven Walker, and Julia Jones. Once strangers, we’ve returned to the spot on Parliament Hill Fields where we all met. Each of us has a particular memory of that day, and what we witnessed will shape us for the rest of our lives. Penelope is sitting on a bench reading a newspaper, waiting for the shoot to finish so she can take me out to lunch to apologise again. I’m waiting for the moment when she turns the page to read a short news item about the discovery of an unidentified woman’s body on the Heath. I wonder what she’ll think when she learns the news.
Rory, the photographer, shouts out various requests: could Jamie come to the front, with his dog? Yes, perhaps he could kneel in the middle of the group? Could Julia please turn her head so she’s looking directly into the camera instead of gazing into the distance? And could Jen not look quite so nervous?
‘Don’t be so worried – it will all be over soon, I promise!’ jokes Rory.
Of course, he can’t guess what’s going through my mind, or what Julia is thinking. He hasn’t a clue about what happened two days ago. I imagine him studying us through his lens, examining our faces, our faults. He wants to get the best photo to accompany my piece, but the resulting image will only tell one story, and a superficial one at that.
From simply looking at us you’d never guess what lies beneath. Jamie appears as glossy as ever, but he’s just broken up with the man he was going to marry, partly because he’s in love with a ghost. Steven’s youth, his vibrancy, serves as a protective sheen – no one would surmise that he’d witnessed three violent deaths. Ayesha, dressed in a suit that must have cost her between £1,000 and £2,000, looks every inch the professional doctor she is – and yet both Penelope and I know something about her that would ruin her reputation. And Julia? I remember her daughter’s words to me about how Julia shielded herself by wearing a disguise of toughness; underneath that shell was insecurity, vulnerability, pain, and an increased dependency on alcohol. No one would know she had recently committed a murder.
The pain in my wrist is a tangible reminder of what happened. It didn’t take long for Bex to die. But still, her death was a horrible one. Painful. Ugly. I thought I should have felt some sympathy for her as she lay on the ground, a hand reaching out to me, her lips mouthing my name in a silent goodbye. But I felt nothing for her.
I had considered trying to explain my actions to Julia – after all, she must have seen me press that knife to Bex’s throat – but I knew I didn’t have time. I was conscious that we needed to act fast before we were discovered by a random pedestrian or runner. Luckily, Bex – in her sick way – had thought of everything. From her backpack I took out a new top and changed into it, pushing the old one, covered with drops of Bex’s blood, back into the bag. Julia pulled on the replacement top that Bex had stashed away for herself.
‘Harry,’ Julia had said.
Her son. But what had he to do with Bex?
‘She was the one who had gone on holiday with him – in India. I saw her that day – on the Heath. Do you remember that I was sick – on the grass? Everyone must have thought I was vomiting because of the shock – after witnessing the murder, the suicide. That hardly helped, of course. But really it was because I saw her. Soon after the police arrived, she came to help you, and I realised then that she was your friend. I recognised her from some of the photos that Harry had sent me. To begin with I tried to convince myself it couldn’t be her. But I kept looking at the photos, and the more I looked at them the more I knew. It was her. She was older, naturally, and a little dowdier than she’d been in 2000 when …’
I remembered with a sickening realisation that this was the year that Bex had travelled around the world. When she’d returned I’d always thought it odd that she never liked to talk about her experiences. She didn’t have any photographs either – she’d told me that her camera and all her film had been stolen.
‘I suppose that’s one of the reasons why I agreed to do the interview with you. I knew you were friends. I thought you might lead me to her. And you did. I started to follow her from her flat. I watched her as she walked or ran across the Heath. That was why I was late to do the interview at Penelope’s house on Monday. On more than one occasion I did notice that … that it seemed as though she was shadowing you. I don’t know what she had planned, but it seems—’
‘I’ll tell you everything later.’
‘You see, I suspected that she might be dangerous. Anyway, I followed you both here today. I don’t know what I thought I’d do to her if I came across her. But when I saw you, when I saw that knife on the ground. I’m sure she would have picked it up and …’
‘But what – what had she done to Harry to make you want to—’
‘Harry wrote me a series of letters, some of which I only got …’ her voice cracked before she sniffed back the emotion and continued ‘… after his death. He wanted to be a writer, you see, and thought that the writing of letters back home would be a good discipline. He talked to me about this girl who had joined him on his travels. I’m not sure how they met. In one of the hostels out there, I think. He was really keen on her at first, he said. In one of the letters he enclosed a photo – Rebecca she was called. Nice-looking young woman with dark hair, English graduate. I never knew her surname, so I was unable to find her. Of course, this was in the days before I was an MP – I was still in social work – so I had significantly less clout.’
I wiped the knife clean on a couple of tissues before strapping it back under my top. I checked Julia again for any signs of blood, dabbed her face with another tissue, and put everything back in the bag, all of which I planned on disposing later. As I worked, Julia continued to tell me about the past.
‘The letters seemed to get more desperate as they went on. He was at the end of his tether with this girl. He wanted to end it. He’d thought the relationship was just a bit of fun, a holiday romance. But she thought it had been much more serious. And she threatened to kill herself if he finished with her. I was desperately worried about him and, in our last telephone conversation, I told him to come home. But he didn’t listen. I even said that I’d fly out there and bring him back. But … I was too late. I didn’t hear from him. I rang the hostel, but they said that he’d left. They didn’t know where he’d gone to. Then, one night, I got a call from the British High Commission in India to tell me that a body had been found at the bottom of a gorge. There had been a terrible accident. He’d been trekking in the Hampta Pass and it seems he must have slipped, fallen to his death. But then, a few weeks later, I got his last letter …’
I knew what she was going to say next. She swallowed hard as she remembered its contents.
‘He wrote about how Rebecca’s behaviour was getting more and more unpredictable. He was worried about his own safety. She now said that she would kill him if he left her. She started to follow him everywhere, turning up at bars and different hostels. He told me that in order to try to get rid of her he was going to trek the Hampta Pass by himself. That’s the last thing I heard from him.’
‘So you think …?’
‘Yes – it was her. I’m sure of it.’
She looked down at the body and then at me. The reality of the situation suddenly hit her. She had actually killed someone. ‘What will happen now? To my job? My husband. My daughter. What will Louisa think of me? Shit. Will you call the police?’
I shook my head. A cold breeze was blowing in from the east and I could feel a light drizzle on my face.
‘Let’s start running, but in separate directions,’ I said. ‘You go home. I’ll phone you. Don’t say anything about this, about what happened – to anyone. Do you understand?’
‘Okay, but—’ Her tough facade crumbled and she was finding it hard to hold herself together.
‘Don’t worry,’ I added. ‘I won’t tell a soul.’
On Kite Hill the shoot is coming to a close. After posing for what seems like the best part of an hour I’m exhausted from trying to appear normal. The group begins to split apart, but none of us move that far from the spot. We’re all tied to the viewing point on Parliament Hill Fields, as if each of us understands that a part of us has died here, and we don’t want to stray in case we lose something more of ourselves. But the fact of the matter is we’re lost already. This place will continue to haunt our dreams, our nightmares. Especially for me, for Julia.
I’ve felt Julia’s eyes on me throughout the photo shoot and I know she wants to talk to me. But now is not the time, not the place. We had a brief chat on the phone last night when I reassured her that she would not be linked to the crime. When the police put out a request for information, she was to contact her local force and tell them that she’d been out jogging nearby at that time, but she had not seen the victim; neither had she come across anything suspicious.
When the police came to question me in detail, as I’m sure they would, I would tell them how Bex and I had started our jog together, but as she was a much more experienced runner – a fact that could be verified – she had sprinted on ahead. We’d been due to meet up at the flat after the run. When she hadn’t returned by ten o’clock I’d repeatedly called her mobile (which I’d already destroyed by that point, along with all the other evidence) and then reported her missing. Bex’s body had been discovered the next morning by a dog walker.
Penelope lifts a hand in the air and waves me over. She wants me to sit by her. As I approach I can see the newspaper is closed on her lap. She doesn’t say anything, but I can tell she’s read the story about the discovery of a body. She narrows her eyes ever so slightly as she looks at me. She knows.
The question is: will she ever tell?