Dead To Me

37

‘I’M SORRY,’ JANET said as soon as Marlene opened the door.

Marlene held a hand up to stop her. ‘No problem. There’s always one, isn’t there? Come in. I’ve told Amy and Samantha that you’re coming and that it’s in connection with Lisa’s murder. Do you want me to sit in?’

‘Entirely up to you,’ Janet said.

‘I’ll leave you to it, then. I’m drowning in paperwork, third-quarter accounts.’

Sooner you than me.

Janet spoke to the girls individually in a ‘quiet room’ at the back of the house. It looked out on to lawns and another play area, as well as a fenced-off vegetable plot.

Amy was a lumpen girl, who chewed gum and answered Janet’s questions in an adenoidal whine. Her eyes watered and she seemed to be upset about Lisa, though she had very little to say. Lisa was OK, according to Amy, but she didn’t really bother with the younger kids. She got into fights sometimes, Amy remembered the fights, but they were with different people, no one in particular. She remembered Sean too, and a faint blush coloured her pasty cheeks when she said his name. Had she had a crush on him? Amy hadn’t ever seen anyone else show interest in Lisa, or cause her bother. Janet asked her if any of the boys were known to hassle girls or act out of order.

‘Like rape ’n’ that?’ she said simply.

Out of the mouths of babes. ‘Yeah,’ Janet said.

Amy shook her head.

Samantha, tall and dark-haired, wearing tons of make-up and the latest trendy clothes looked like a wannabe model. She was fifteen and remembered Lisa well. They had even shared a bedroom for a couple of years when Samantha first moved in.

Her answers echoed Amy’s, though she chattered more and kept interjecting to say how awful it was and ask questions about the murder and the investigation that Janet couldn’t answer.

‘We’re going to the funeral,’ Samantha said. ‘You know when it is?’

Janet shook her head. ‘No date yet.’

‘Be a school day, though, innit?’ Hopefully.

Sweet Jesus, Janet thought, some girl’s dead and all it means is an excuse for a day off school.

Janet had been to so many funerals for murder victims. The worst, without doubt, were when a young person had died. Parents, friends and family crazed with grief or frozen with shock. Kids nowadays were more often included in the ritual. Or the school would hold a special assembly, plant a tree, initiate an award in the young person’s name. There’d been nothing like that for Veronica. Janet and the rest of her schoolmates not even aware the girl had died.

Parents burying a child. So very wrong. Joshua’s funeral had been intensely sad. Janet and Ade had got through it by clinging to each other. She had felt brittle and weak, as though she was made of thin glass, ready to shatter, but she had also felt a great depth of emotion behind the glass. Love and pity and sadness and anger that heightened everything: the colours of the flowers, jasmine and hyacinth and tiny narcissi, the breath of wind on her face and the smell of earth and fresh-mown grass. As though her senses were over-compensating for Joshua’s lack of them. Her life swelling, too bold, too bright in the shadow of his silence, his absence.

As she was leaving Ryelands, she got a call from Rachel. No hellos or intros, just, ‘I’m at Angela Hambley’s, there’s something you need to see.’

The term mouthy could have been invented for Angela, who on seeing Rachel at the door immediately gave a theatrical sigh. ‘’Aven’t you got nothing better to do?’

‘Than what? What do you think I’m doing?’

‘Wasting time, innit. Wanting to know who robbed the offie, did I see anything. Well, I didn’t.’

‘I’m not here about that,’ Rachel said. She’d noted the off-licence opposite, the windows covered in sheets of plywood.

‘Well, what then? I have got a life to lead, you know.’ Angela had a sharp little face, pointed nose, streaked hair pulled back in a ponytail, a Langley facelift. A stud in one nostril. And skin burnt orange, the colour of wood-stain. Rachel could smell the yeasty fake-tan smell on her.

‘Can I come in?’

Another big sigh. ‘Can I stop you?’ She stood aside, forcing Rachel to squeeze past. ‘On the left.’

It was a bedsit, reasonably tidy, woodchip paper, flat-pack furniture, central heating. A double bed under the bay window, sofa parallel to the hall, table and chairs at the other end. Telly bracketed to the wall. Proper curtains. Rachel had seen all sorts used to cover the windows as she drove up the street: striped sheets, beach towels, one place had a patchwork of cardboard. Angela wasn’t doing so bad. A small kitchenette, fridge and microwave, sink. A noticeboard with photos on over the sofa, too far away to make out.

‘I want to ask you about Rosie Vaughan,’ Rachel said.

‘’Aven’t seen her in ages,’ Angela said.

‘How long ago?’

She twitched her shoulders. ‘Couple of years, maybe more.’

‘Were you still in touch in 2008?’

‘No. You talking about when she was raped? I was asked about all that back then by one of your lot. Said I never seen her much after I left Ryelands, innit.’

‘I thought you were mates?’ Rachel said.

‘For a bit.’ She was defensive. Why? Because she’d jacked Rosie in, then felt bad when Rosie’s life went off track? Let her mate down? ‘You have to make do, somewhere like that,’ Angela added.

‘Did Rosie have a bloke, a boyfriend?’

Angela’s eyes went still, guarded. ‘No,’ she said, and Rachel didn’t believe her.

‘You know she’s dead?’

‘What?’ That stopped her in her tracks, some emotion rippling across her face. Fear? Disgust?

‘Thursday. She killed herself.’

‘Fuck,’ said Angela. She rubbed at her arms, they were bare, the room was warm.

Rachel couldn’t see any needle marks, no sign in either the girl’s appearance or the state of the flat that she was a hardened drug user. Maybe she was the one that got away.

‘She slit her wrists?’ Angela said.

‘Why’d you think that?’

‘She cut herself,’ she said flatly.

Rachel nodded. Her throat felt dry. ‘She jumped from her balcony.’

‘Oh, God,’ Angela said. ‘Did she leave a note?’ A ring of something in her voice and her eyes. Alarm? Anxiety?

‘I can’t tell you that,’ Rachel said, so she’d think there was one. Hoping it might be a lever to prise whatever Angela was hiding out of her.

‘So what you here for? Like I said, I ’aven’t seen her for years.’

‘You both left Ryelands in 2008,’ Rachel said. ‘See each other at all after that?’

‘A bit. We’d not much in common – she was a bit stressed, innit? Probably only seen her two or three times in all. Can’t help you.’ She made to move, but Rachel wasn’t done. ‘What about Lisa Finn?’

‘You what?’

‘Lisa Finn?’

‘She were murdered,’ Angela said. ‘I know that much. All over the telly. Is that what this is about? Is that why you’re here?’

‘You were at Ryelands with Lisa too.’

‘So?’ She frowned. ‘What you getting at?’

‘Two of you didn’t get on so well, from what I hear.’

‘She was a right pain, always looking for a scrap. I wasn’t frightened of her, not going to let her muck us about.’

Rachel said, ‘Lisa have a fella?’

‘Yes, Sean. They arrested him. Aren’t you supposed to know that?’ She pulled her lips in a sneer.

Rachel ignored the jibe. ‘Was there anyone else that had a relationship with Lisa?’

‘No, she was a junkie,’ Angela said.

‘That make a difference?’

‘Skanky, aren’t they? Dirty. Get AIDS.’

Rachel was getting nowhere fast. On the surface, Angela knew nothing, couldn’t help, so why was she so tense, why the glimpses of fear, of being found out? Rachel tried another tack: ‘Did Rosie have any enemies? Was there anyone who wanted to hurt her?’ The assault had been vicious, uncontrolled.

‘No, she was all right really.’ Angela grimaced. ‘Just a bit mental, bit of a nutter. Couldn’t help it.’ Another quick shrug.

On the way out, Rachel paused by the sofa, to see the photographs on the display-board. Centre place was one of Angela with a birthday cake, candles, 16 written in icing. The photograph had been torn in half so only two people were in it: Angela and a man, blond hair, the look of a tennis player. James Raleigh. Looking younger, but the same guy. Rachel’s scalp tightened. What the hell was he doing at Ryelands? At Angela’s sixteenth birthday party?

That’s when she called Janet.