Dead Scared

Cambridge, five year earlier

‘YOU JOINING US tonight, boss?’

The man sitting behind the desk shook his head. ‘Got a college reunion.’ He nodded his head towards the screen in front of him. ‘Have you seen this, Stacey?’

Stacey, a slim blonde in her early thirties, who’d had a secret crush on her new boss for several months now, was glad of the opportunity to walk to the other side of the desk and lean over it. This close, she could smell his cologne and the warm cotton of his shirt. See the gleam of his hair.

‘Good Lord, is that real?’ The image on the screen, for a second, distracted her even from the fantasy of pressing her face against that broad shoulder, breathing in the male scent more deeply.

‘Must be,’ he replied. ‘Her parents are kicking up merry hell.’

‘That was here, wasn’t it? She was a student at the university.’

The video clip was just four minutes thirty-six seconds long. It showed a young woman, hanging by the neck from a tree. Her legs kicked furiously, her fingers seemed to be trying to rip her neck apart, they worked so frantically at the noose around it. The expression on her face was hard for Stacey to look at.

‘I’m surprised YouTube haven’t taken it off,’ she said. The clip reached the end. To her surprise, her boss started it again.

‘They will,’ he said, ‘any day now. We’re among the last to see it.’

Stacey looked at the viewing figure in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. ‘Last of nearly a million,’ she said. ‘People are sick.’ She moved away, back round the front of the desk. She was wearing her tightest skirt but his eyes didn’t follow her.

‘That’s for sure,’ the boss said. ‘Have a good time, Stace.’

It was her cue to leave. To stay any longer would look obvious. She’d reached the door when her boss spoke again.

‘Just imagine,’ he said, but when she looked back he was still staring at the screen and she got the impression he was talking to himself now. That maybe he had even forgotten she was there. ‘If every one of those punters paid a pound for the privilege.’

As Stacey closed the door, she thought she might, at last, be getting over her childish crush.