One of Us Is Dead

6 October 2021

Shannon Kendall was twenty-four. She was looking good right now and she knew it, but that hadn’t always been the case. She had come on a long personal journey since her dark university days that had, on the one hand, given her a first-class honours degree, but on the other hand stripped her of so much.

During the few years between finishing university and meeting Paul, she had had very few friendships and no other boyfriends. She lived in a small flat close to Hove seafront, never accepting invites to parties, and with just her cat for company. A stray, ginger moggie, a chunk of its fur missing down one side, along with half of its left ear, who two years ago had walked in through the cat-flap left by the previous tenant and decided to stay for a while, until he’d eventually moved on.

She’d called him Chancer, because it felt like he’d taken a chance on her. Sometimes she looked into his eyes and asked him how he had got hurt. ‘Have you been in a fight? Did you win or lose?’

He’d always just look back at her, and she could swear he had a smug grin on his face, as if replying, I’m not telling.

She liked that. She was the same, she wasn’t telling either. Not even her best friend Tara knew the story — not the full story, not the bit that actually mattered. She had told no one that she was damaged goods. Vulnerable. Afraid. Angry.

Maybe she’d have confided in her father, Don. He would have listened and understood and kept the secret. But he was dead. He’d been dead for four years, killed in a stupid avalanche while climbing a stupid mountain in stupid Switzerland.

She had not spoken to her mother, Holly, for seven years, not since the day she had left her father, breaking his heart. She had vowed never to speak to her again, and so far had resisted replying to any of the endless barrage of texts, emails and Facebook messages from her.

For her primary job, she was buried away in a computer research laboratory, called SQLMT Ltd, on an industrial estate near Shoreham Harbour. She loved the work but hated the workplace, where all her colleagues were assholes, most of all her line manager, Derek Northrup. He was the computer geek equivalent of Ricky Gervais in The Office. The groups of programmers working in silos with dimmed lighting were discouraged from socializing with each other, and even from chatting — not that there were any she remotely fancied socializing with.

No one knew what SQLMT stood for. There was a rumour the lab was funded by Microsoft. But another rumour that it was funded by Elon Musk. A geeky guy, with a furtive voice and a stupid man bun, who Shannon had met at a watercooler, told her with a wink that it was the Chinese government who secretly owned the company.

That kind of fitted, she thought. The CEO was a smart Chinese-English woman. Not that it mattered to Shannon who owned it. She only stayed there for three reasons. Firstly, because she liked the anonymity of the job: no one apart from Derek Northrup ever attempted to engage her in conversation and she’d long developed the art of dismissing him quickly.

Secondly, being a part-time post, the job allowed her to take on other freelance work as she pleased, and she’d helped a few clients selling merchandise through the dark web — mostly cannabis and cocaine, but also, on a couple of occasions, high-profile stolen works of art that were too well known to ever be sold on the open market. She’d found homes for them in China and Russia.

But the main reason she stayed — quite apart from the big monthly paycheque — was that she was genuinely intrigued by the work she and everyone there was doing. It was cutting-edge computing science, creating artificial intelligence algorithms to spy on people and companies operating on the dark web. At times her role totally consumed her, often working long hours into the night. It enabled her, if not to forget, to at least park for a while what had happened over three years ago, refusing to recede into a past where everything else in her life had faded like a photograph left in the sun.

But not this.

It would never fade.

She’d been encouraged — after much reluctance — to register on a couple of dating apps by Tara, who was concerned about the way she’d retreated into her shell since leaving university, turning almost into a recluse. Tara and the others in her friendship group were having fun; two were now engaged, with weddings on the horizon next summer. And she had been just so damned lonely. But not any more. She had struck lucky after swiping right on her fifth attempt, after she’d gingerly put a toe in the water of online dating. Paul Anthony had used one of his privileged swipe ups to indicate he was super keen. He was sitting opposite her now.

Being with him had awoken something inside her that she had thought was gone for ever, and since meeting him she had felt secure and safe in a relationship like never before. She was completely enamoured and had actually come really close to telling him her secret, but so far had protectively held back. She planned to tell him someday soon. If there was one person in the world she would share this with, it would be him.

There were so many things about this charismatic man that captivated her. He was tall and good-looking if not exactly handsome. He was damaged goods, like herself, but in a different way. Her damage was psychological, his was physical and a lot more superficial. A big scar above and below his right eye from a car crash in his teens, leaving his eye slightly misaligned, gave him a raffish look, accentuated by his straight, dark hair that hung at a slant across his forehead. Dead sexy, actually, she thought. As was his very slight limp.

He was strictly pescatarian, borderline vegetarian, borderline vegan. Another box ticked.

She felt seen by him, like he really understood her. A rare tick.

He was intensely interested in her and curious about her. A big tick.

It took him three dates before he’d made any sexual advances towards her. Biggest tick of all.

Right here, right now, after those three years of being single, she felt she could be falling head over heels in love with Paul Anthony.

But there was a negative. Of course there was.