She and I Read online

  For KP

  A girl’s first love is her best friend

  And if the world were black or white entirely

  And all the charts were plain

  Instead of a mad weir of tigerish waters,

  A prism of delight and pain,

  We might be surer where we wished to go

  Or again we might be merely

  Bored but in brute reality there is no

  Road that is right entirely.

  Louis MacNeice, ‘Entirely’

  Contents

  Prologue: 1st January 2020, morning

  Linda: 1st January 2020, morning

  Jude: 1st January 2020, morning

  Mack: 1st January 2020, morning

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 1st January 2020, morning

  Jude: 1st January 2020, afternoon

  Linda: 1st January 2020, afternoon

  Keeley: 1st January 2020, afternoon

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 1st January 2020, afternoon

  Keeley: 1st January 2020, evening

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 1st January 2020, evening

  Jude: 1st January 2020, late afternoon

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 1st January 2020, evening

  Keeley: 1st January 2020, evening

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 1st January 2020, evening

  Mack: 1st January 2020, evening

  Jude: 2nd January 2020, morning

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 2nd January 2020, morning

  Keeley: 2nd January 2020, morning

  Linda: 2nd January 2020, morning

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 2nd January 2020, afternoon

  Mack: 2nd January 2020, afternoon

  Jude: 2nd January 2020, evening

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 2nd January 2020, evening

  Keeley: 3rd January 2020, morning

  Jude: 11th July 2018

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 3rd January 2020, morning

  Jude: 3rd January 2020, afternoon

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 3rd January 2020, afternoon

  Keeley: 3rd January 2020, evening

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 3rd January 2020, night

  Mack: 3rd January 2020, night

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 4th January 2020, afternoon

  Jude: 11th July 2018

  Mack: 4th January 2020, afternoon

  Linda: 4th January 2020, afternoon

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 4th January 2020, evening

  Jude: 4th January 2020, evening

  Detective Inspector Chris Rice: 4th January 2020, evening

  Jude: 4th January 2020, evening

  Keeley: May 2022

  Epilogue: Jude: 1st January 2020, early morning

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  Prologue

  1st January 2020, morning

  ‘I told you to turn your bloody alarm off,’ she mumbles. ‘We’ve nothing to get up for today.’

  She raises a hand to her head and lets out a groan. I know without looking that her nails are still perfect: long, well-filed, shiny. Not a single chip in the black polish. Her nails are all her own, she’ll remind anyone who listens. How can her nails still be perfect?

  ‘I feel terrible,’ she says. Her voice is gravelly, though from lack of use or smoke, I can’t tell. ‘What even happened last night?’

  I don’t answer. I’m shaking too much to form proper words, only partly from the cold. I don’t think my voice will hold. My breath fogs in front of me in wisps and clouds and I cannot stop watching it. In through the nose and out through the mouth, as controlled as I can.

  ‘My head seriously bloody hurts. Whose idea was it to have a New Year’s Eve party anyway? I distinctly remember asking if we could have a quiet one with pizza and films. Turn that alarm off, would you?’

  I move my hand to the coffee table and turn off the alarm on my phone, my fingers numb and heavy. When I take my hand away, there’s no mark on the screen. The blood on my hands has dried.

  For the first time, she opens her eyes and faces me. I don’t look at her, I just know. The uneven surface of the leather sofa will have made an imprint on her cheek, two deep lines that will look like scars. Her eyes will be squinting and her face puffy. The cushion she has been hugging to her chest will fall to the floor.

  ‘Why are you sitting like that?’ She is more abrupt now. She doesn’t like that I am not answering.

  She sits up, letting the blanket fall between us, and, yes, the cushion tumbles to the floor. I try to remember when I put the blanket over her. Somewhere between 6 and 7 a.m., I think. I have a vague memory of tripping upstairs, dizzy and sick, to fetch it. Though that might have been a different time, years ago. It might have been a bad dream.

  She is about to say something else when she catches sight of my hands. She doesn’t gasp, rather she whimpers. A shocked, high-pitched sound like a dog whose tail has been stepped on. Her feet scrabble and slide on the leather as she readjusts herself for a better view of me.

  She whispers my name. ‘What’s happened? You’re bleeding.’

  I look at her for just long enough that she meets my gaze, and then I direct her eyes to the floor. The words still won’t come.

  It is one minute and seven seconds past nine in the morning. I know because Mack insisted on installing a digital clock on the longest wall of the Den. He put it on the same wall as the projector screen, so when you’re trying to watch a film, you’re really just watching your life tick by in seconds through your peripheral vision. The clock is a burnt orange colour, rectangular, and the digits glow a sickly green.

  Sick, I think, is the perfect word.

  A thin rod of pale morning light creeps into the room from the bottom of the door that leads to the kitchen. The pane of clear plastic behind her head makes a window of sorts, and some more light from the kitchen comes through that, illuminating the sofa and her half-clad form in front of me. She wears no pyjamas over her underwear. It is the dead of winter and she is almost naked, long limbs pale and goosebumped, white teeth chattering around in her pink-smeared mouth. I haven’t thought of the ridiculousness of it before now, though I have watched her most of the night.

  The rest of the room is pitch black, and I am thankful that she cannot see into the furthest corner.

  The knife at my feet glints, nonetheless.

  ‘What have you … ?’ Her voice is croaky and I can tell she is scared. I’ve seen, heard, watched her scared a hundred times, but when I tear my eyes away from the blade, I see something in her face I have never seen before.

  It takes a moment before I realise she is scared of me.

  Linda

  1st January 2020, morning

  As soon as I wake, I know that something is not right. According to Roddy’s watch, it is just after nine.

  Something is not right.

  I get out of bed, put on my slippers and pad down the hall to Mason’s room.

  I tap on the door and open it without waiting for a reply.

  He sleeps soundly. His chest is moving up and down. How many hours should a thirteen-year-old boy sleep each night?

  I know we went to bed after 1 a.m., after the countdown and the champagne and the New Year’s resolutions. What had mine been? … To do some more gardening? No, that hadn’t been it. To use my gym membership? I can’t remember, though I’m sure I only had one, maybe two glasses of champagne. Perhaps I’m not used to the fizz. The music and laughter from across the road had been very loud at one in the morning, but Roddy – and Jude – had made me promise not to make any fuss or, God forbid, make Jude come home.

  ‘She’s right across the street, Lin,’ Roddy had said just before midnight. ‘If you got
Mason’s binoculars out, you’d be able to see her! Linda, I was joking, don’t go and get them.’

  Though I’d smiled at him weakly, I hadn’t drawn my eyes away from the window. Both my thumbnails are chewed ragged now. I can feel them, uneven and brittle against my palms.

  I leave Mason to sleep and tiptoe downstairs, slippers tapping softly off the mahogany staircase.

  I cannot shake the feeling that something – what? – is not right.

  As I load fresh beans into the coffee maker, I run my brain through the night before. Yes, I blew out all the candles before bed. If I hadn’t, one of the smoke alarms would have warned us of a rogue flame; we checked the batteries last week. Yes, both garages are locked, so that’s not it either. Looking around the kitchen, which is beginning to lighten with the first rays of the day, everything looks as it always does. Pretty, clean and homely.

  The air feels peaceful, and I can hear nothing but the birds outside.

  The coffee maker clicks, finished, and a steaming cup stands in front of me. I take it with me through the hall, past Roddy’s study and into the front living room.

  Careful to stand the cup on a coaster, I fold my legs up underneath me on the sofa that faces the window. I am thankful that the living room is so warm. Roddy always sets the timer before bed, and usually I like nothing better than to sit with a cup and watch a winter’s morning unfold from here, as if someone is gently turning a dimmer switch and lighting up the day.

  From this spot, I can just make out the back of the roof of the Mackleys’ house, about two hundred metres away from our own and down the slope of the grassy bank. Our house faces the quiet, residential road, with the grassy bank at the other side that leads right to the Mackleys’ back door while their house faces the main road that takes us to the town centre. The Mackleys’ is the only house in Wits End that lacks a fence or boundary of any kind. I remember now, resisting the urge to roll my eyes, that Joshua and Keeley treated the common green bank as their back garden when they were growing up, leaving their toys and bikes there for anyone to take.

  Now they’re twenty-five and nineteen, they aren’t much better. Their washing line hangs on the green, T-shirts and boxers and Keeley’s tiny little knickers all pegged up for the whole street to see. The first time they did it, I thought I would die from embarrassment. Jude does not wear underwear like that.

  I switch on the television and try to concentrate on the breakfast programmes. I can watch only half an hour before I have to switch it off again. I still feel so uneasy. My heart is beating too quickly and there is a queer, sickly feeling in my stomach. Am I hungover? It has been months since I’ve had anything but wine to drink: did the champagne go to my head? My stomach jolts and a sudden, ridiculous thought occurs: am I pregnant?

  No, I decide. That can’t be it. We are much too careful for anything like that at our age. My thoughts turn to Roddy, the thick, extra-togged duvet curled around his big frame …

  Did I even check that Roddy was breathing before I came downstairs?

  I leap up and run back upstairs, spilling the cold remnants of my coffee over the white carpet as I go.

  He is breathing, of course.

  ‘Your damn paranoia,’ I imagine he’ll say when he helps me clean up the coffee stain later. He will be smiling; Roddy is never angry.

  I place my hand on his chest, even though I can see it moving, and he breathes in deeply and opens his eyes.

  Roddy’s watch tells me it is quarter to ten.

  Before I can speak, there comes a flurry of noise from outside.

  Sirens, all pitches and tempos. Like dogs and cats barking and screeching at the same time. The sounds start off distant, then louder, then louder again, more urgent, insistent.

  It is like screaming.

  Roddy sits up groggily, looking in the direction of the window. ‘Whatsat?’ he asks.

  I am already at the window, staring towards the Mackleys’ house. A police car and an ambulance have pulled up at the back, where I can see them clearly, but I am sure there is at least one other vehicle at the front, beyond my line of sight. The flashing beams light up the tiny, crumbling house in a harsh blue light.

  My breath catches, and I have time to whisper just one syllable before my feet, working faster than my brain, race me back downstairs.

  Jude.

  Jude

  1st January 2020, morning

  Keeley hasn’t cried yet. I can’t stop myself from glancing at her face, but her eyes remain bright and dry. Every time she catches my eye, she flicks her mouth into some semblance of a smile. At one point she whispers, ‘It’s OK, Jude,’ but her leg jiggles up and down, moving mine with it as we sit side by side in the living room. This tiny sign tells me she is flustered, and it is the most unnerving thing of all.

  There is nobody else in the house. We had expected most of the guests from last night to stay late into New Year’s Day, tapping cigarette ash on to the arms of the sofa like they normally do after a heavy session, but it wasn’t as fun a party as we hoped.

  Mack isn’t here either.

  The house is so quiet. The quietest it has been in a long time, I think. I can hear the hum from the fridge, the low buzz from Mack’s amplifier that nobody thought to turn off, the splash of the cistern upstairs refilling.

  Keeley has pulled on her school hoodie – my school hoodie, maybe, it looks a little too small in the arms – and a pair of blue jeans. She has used two make-up wipes on her face and scraped her hair into a ponytail that has lumps around the base. Her feet are bare, her toes long and their nails painted. I worry she might step in broken glass, as is likely after a party, but I think, given the circumstances, it would be silly to say anything. I can’t help thinking that she has tried to make herself look … normal. Less attractive. Less Keeley. I wonder if this is just her reaction to the shock: the first unusual pangs of grief.

  Pete is dead. Keeley’s Boyfriend. Boyfriend with a capital B. That’s what I’ve called him for the last year, if I had to call him anything. Who are you going to the cinema with? Keeley and Keeley’s Boyfriend. I have thought of him as a possession of hers, a glaring new accessory that I hoped she would tire of and discard as soon as it was no longer fashionable.

  I close my eyes and enjoy the silence with her.

  We hear the sirens at exactly the same moment and both stand up.

  ‘We both slept in my bed,’ Keeley says, though she has said it six or seven times in the last half hour. ‘I woke up first and went downstairs and found him. I came and got you. You touched him to check on him but he was already gone. We called the police straight away. Yeah?’

  When she reaches for my hand, hers is uncharacteristically clammy. She has bitten off one of her nails and I try to remember when she did this – have I taken my eyes off her this morning? I must have done.

  ‘Just keep saying you can’t remember,’ Keeley murmurs. The sirens are right outside now. We hear a door slam. ‘Jude, we’ve done nothing wrong, stop shaking.’

  Four short, sharp raps on the door. Before we can answer, it flies open and a voice shouts, ‘Police!’

  Keeley’s fingers grip my own and we turn together to face the living room door.

  In a moment, our sanctuary is shattered and the house is swarming with bodies.

  I don’t hear Keeley speak to anyone, but the majority of the bodies head for the Den, the former garage with its roll-up door, so I assume she must have directed them somehow.

  Black boots stop in front of us and a Southern female accent enquires, ‘Which one of you called us?’

  ‘That was me,’ Keeley says. Her voice is deep and steely like it always is. Her leg has stopped jiggling.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Keeley Mackley.’

  ‘Are you over eighteen, Miss Mackley?’

  ‘I’m nineteen and a half.’

  There is something in that, I think. The police officer, she will remember that Keeley said it like that. It is something a child would d
o, specifying how far away their birthday is. Nineteenandahalf.

  ‘And you are?’

  When I don’t answer, Keeley says, ‘Jude Jameson.’

  ‘She can’t speak for herself ? Are you over eighteen, Miss?’

  Then I realise why Keeley has said it.

  ‘I’m seventeen,’ I whisper. ‘But I’m eighteen on Sunday.’

  The more childish we appear, the less likely we are to be murderers.

  ‘I’m Constable O’Leary, would you mind –’

  Another voice shouts to her from the Den, and she excuses herself. Bodies continue to swarm through the house, all knowing to go to the Den, even though neither of us looks up when they come in.

  ‘Should I offer them tea?’ Keeley murmurs when she thinks nobody will hear. ‘Would it be weird if I did?’

  ‘Do you have tea?’ I breathe.

  We look at one another and for one ludicrous moment, I think we are both going to burst into laughter. Keeley’s mouth starts to curl. I notice that her lips are chapped and dry, and she has a new spot on her chin that, in any other circumstance, would have been subjected to furious squeezing by now.

  When O’Leary comes back, I find I am able to look at the constable’s face.

  She is tall and lean, maybe early twenties, a black jumper over a white shirt, a radio by her right shoulder. Her face is wary but still pretty with it, and she looks tired. I wonder if we have caught her at the very start or the very end of her shift.

  ‘Do you both live here?’ she asks.

  ‘I do,’ says Keeley.

  ‘I live across the road,’ I add, when O’Leary doesn’t respond.

  ‘Who is that man in the garage?’

  A beat.

  ‘My boyfriend,’ Keeley says finally.

  I hear her intake of breath after she says it, as if this is the first time she has acknowledged the fact. This time, I do not try and stop myself from looking at her. Her eyes seem to shake from side to side, and her hand – the one with all the nails still intact – leaves mine to flutter to her mouth. She murmurs something like oh, fuck, and lets herself collapse back down on to the sofa. It squeaks under her weight, and her foot nudges a half-empty bottle on to its side. None of us moves to lift it. The smell of wine for just a second, and then it is gone, enveloped by the stale smoke smell that has permeated this room since we were children.