Cloud 9

by Alex Campbell

  Hope stops dead outside the library doors.

  ‘And worse,’ Imogen continues, her voice becoming paper thin, ‘they think I put Tom in touch with a man masquerading as John! What’s Tom been saying?’

  A knife twists in Hope’s guts. She leans against the wall next to her before she falls down. Dad’s failed her test.

  ‘I don’t understand what’s going on,’ she answers honestly. She can hear Benny in the background singing happily to himself. ‘I’m just so sorry, I told –’ she swallows back a confession and asks instead, ‘Who are the people at PharmaCare telling you these things?’

  Her stomach tenses in anticipation of her dad’s name as Imogen answers quietly, ‘PharmaCare’s Operations Director, Nina Mitchell. She’s been watching me like a hawk since John died.’

  Hope’s ear burns hot. She switches the phone to her other. Nina Mitchell, Fran’s mother’s. Dad’s contact.

  ‘I’m scared. I should never have spoken to Tom,’ Imogen is saying. ‘It just threw me seeing Matt’s son like that.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘You’ve got to tell Tom to back off asking questions. It’s dangerous … he can’t …’ Imogen’s voice drifts off – she talks softly to Benny – then, ‘Tom doesn’t understand the dangers.’

  ‘I think he does,’ Hope says quietly. ‘He just wants the truth about his dad.’ Her voice catches in her throat. ‘Please don’t be scared. I’ll help you,’ she adds, staring hard down the corridor as if she can conjure up Tom amongst the groups of smiling girls walking towards her. I need you, Tom.

  ‘Please, listen! Just tell Tom: stop asking questions.’

  Benny’s voice comes closer. ‘Can I say hello … can I say hello?’ and then the line goes dead.

  Hope taps the phone against her chest. Her breath is coming hard and fast; a heady mix of emotions rising in her like dough. Emotions that Leata no longer seem able to suppress. Guilt and fear; sadness; anger. Regret.

  Her route from those crossroads suddenly appears even clearer in her head.

  She thinks of Slicer stalking Imogen. Of Tom burying his dad.

  She has to find a way to make this right. She starts walking. But not to English. She heads straight to the main doors.

  Him

  I can’t even close my mouth yet. I can hardly speak. My fingers are frozen in the spilt sugar on the table. My heart’s pumping slowly, as if it’s suddenly laden with weight.

  Hope betrayed you darts through my mind, sticking out its tongue, taunting me. I stare down at the shapes I’ve made in the sugar.

  ‘You’re saying Hope’s been spying on me?’ Hope’s in it with her dad? With PharmaCare? I’m torn between fear – I’m being watched? – and pit-of-my stomach hurt: Hope never really wanted to be friends again? Stupid fool – that’s you. She wanted you out of her life five years ago – why would she want you back in it now?

  ‘If it’s you they were talking about – then yes.’

  I spread my fingers out as if I’m in pain. I think of DS Miles turning up on my driveway yesterday. Was it Hope’s dad who called the police on me? Because Hope told him we’d visited Imogen?

  I glance back up at Fran. She’s staring at me with sad eyes.

  ‘I need to know more about what Jack Wright and your mum were discussing. Can you access your mum’s emails?’ I say urgently.

  Fran pulls a surprised face, as much as her face muscles move. ‘I dunno.’ She licks her lips nervously. ‘I mean, maybe. Wasn’t today supposed to be about fun?’ she asks uncertainly.

  ‘Sure,’ I say. I need a new tactic. ‘But I need a drink for fun.’ Not any more I don’t. I have enough adrenalin coursing through my veins. But I need a way to get back to Fran’s house. ‘Do you have anything to drink at yours?’

  Fran smiles coyly at the suggestion. ‘Yeah, okay.’ Which is when it hits me like a ball in the stomach: the nervousness; why she keeps looking at me from under her eyelids, the way Daisy at school does.

  As if to prove my suspicion right, Fran adds a shy, ‘I always regretted that we lost touch, Tom.’

  I fix my mind against caring. Maybe it’ll prove useful. All that matters is finding out the truth. Right, Dad?

  Her

  Good. Her mum’s car’s not on the drive. Lunch, golf, shopping. Pick one of the three and that’s where she’ll be. Which suits Hope – it’ll be easier to search her dad’s study in an empty house.

  Inside, the house echoes with silence. She goes straight up there, down the landing, past black-and-white studio photos of the family taken a couple of years ago. Lily and Rose clambering over Dad like puppies. She and Mum more sedate in the background. She’s never liked those photos. It’s just the first time she’s admitted that to herself.

  Opening the study door, she inhales the scent of Dad, of hard work and seriousness. Where it usually comforts her, suddenly it seems stifling, clawing at her nostrils. Keeping little Benny and Imogen front of mind, she turns the computer screen on. She knows the password. She overheard Rose ask for it a while back when she needed to print something. It stuck in her mind – though she never let it get to her. Happy thoughts! Now it gets to her. LilyRose0106.

  She sits up poker-straight as she clicks onto the folder she saw last week. The one with Matt Riley’s name on it. The thumbnail photos attract her first. She enlarges them. Photos of … Imogen. Kissing Tom’s dad.

  Were these the photos that Slicer took?

  Hope presses a hand against her stomach to stem the queasy feeling growing there.

  She opens another file. It’s untitled, but seems to be a trail of pasted emails. Between her dad and Nina Mitchell and one other: sblythe@btinternet.com. Blythe.

  Wasn’t that the name from the gated house they visited Sunday?

  She rubs at her eyes before she reads the content; her insides pricking with fear at every word.

  squeezing Matt Riley until he runs scared.

  arrange it so Matt Riley owns a weapon?

  John Tenby is at home 3pm. Thursday

  She bolts up at the last one – she has to get to Tom; warn him – when she hears the creak of the door behind her.

  Him

  The house couldn’t be more incongruous with Fran. Modern, mostly glass, protected by a sentry-like circle of trees. Inside, it’s as minimalist as a hotel foyer, with some cloying, clinical bleach smell. The only pictures lining the walls are framed posters of Leata campaigns.

  ‘You don’t take Leata but you have to look at these every day?’

  ‘Mum uses them like a mirror.’

  ‘So what does that make you – Snow White?’

  Fran laughs girlishly, leading me on into a sparse, shiny kitchen that looks unused. She clocks my expression. ‘We mostly eat takeout.’

  ‘What about your dad?’ There’s a tug in my stomach just at the word.

  Fran shakes her head. ‘No dad.’ She collects glasses out of a cabinet, a bottle of the brown stuff, like I requested, from another, placing it all down with a clatter on a round, glass table. ‘I’m adopted. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mum’s already filed for a refund. It’s just not doing what it SHOULD do!’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, unscrewing the bottle.

  I pour the whisky out as Fran gets a tray of ice from the freezer cabinet. Dropping cubes into the glasses, they crack and fizz. ‘Lemonade?’

  ‘Neat,’ I say. ‘You should try it that way.’

  ‘Okay.’ She smiles eagerly at me and takes hers.

  ‘So you hate your mum?’ I ask. Maybe that’s my way in.

  Unfortunately she shakes her head. ‘No – we just fight a lot. We used to get on okay – well – when I was little. When she could dress me like her mini-me and I believed she was as real as the tooth fairy.’

  ‘My brother, Nathaniel, reckons my dad wanted us to be carbon copies of himself.’ I knock my drink back, grimacing as the sweet burn scorches my throat like never before. It must be the really good stuff.

  Fran copies me, coughing and spluttering bu
t nodding as I shake the bottle for more.

  ‘I’m sorry about your dad. It must really hurt,’ she says.

  I frown, looking down into the whisky; I wish she hadn’t said that. I knock it back. Fran does the same. Coughs again. Her head’s swaying a little. It’s not even hit my sides yet. Good. I need to start snooping. I lean across and refill her glass again. ‘I want to hear more about your mum.’

  ‘What d’you want to know? That I disappoint her hugely for not popping her precious pills?’ She makes a sharp cackle of a laugh, sounding half-stoned already. ‘That the best thing she’s done for me, is not forcing me into a Health Farm like she wants.’

  I pull a sympathy face. ‘What about the work she does for PharmaCare. Why would they be interested in me?’

  ‘Oh.’ Fran frowns. ‘I dunno. Were you talking to the press or something? It’s all Mum ever seems to do, fight people slating Leata.’ She leans across the table towards me; her eyes glassy, she’s drunk already. ‘I always used to really like you, Tom. I still do.’

  ‘Me too,’ I say, because I think that’s what she needs me to say. I need to give up on talk and move to a house search, now.

  Fran starts moving out of her chair, slotting into another closer to me.

  ‘Do you think you can help me?’ I say, refilling her drink and encouraging her to knock it back with me.

  She smiles crookedly, leaning in closer so our faces are nearly touching, before kissing me full on the lips.

  I try to resist pulling back. I need to do … what I need to do.

  Fran is slobbering over me like this is her first ever kiss after pillow-practice.

  I keep my arms by my side. She’s breathing heavily. A smell of incense mingling with her whisky breath.

  I start speaking in-between kisses. ‘Don’t you want to get back at your mum and Hope? Find out what they’re up to?’ I pull away, pretending to want a drink. ‘Your mum got a computer here?’

  Fran knocks hers back, wipes her mouth and leans in to me again. ‘Let’s stop talking about my mum.’ She tries to make a suggestive smile, but the drink distorts it. If I didn’t fancy her before, I certainly don’t now. But I let her kiss me again anyway – poking a sloppy, untethered tongue between my lips, like drunk kissers do.

  ‘It’s just. I need to find out what they know about my dad,’ I murmur against her mouth. ‘You understand, don’t you? I just need to see your mum’s computer.’

  I pull back again. Her red lipstick has smeared like blood down her chin. I can feel it sticking to my mouth.

  ‘If it means that much to you.’ Fran looks uncertain but she takes the hand I’m offering to her, starts leading me into a large open-plan area; more sparse, unlived-in space. A broad glass desk with a computer is surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows on one side, mostly empty white shelving units to the other.

  ‘There’s no one like you at school,’ Fran slurs behind me as I switch on the Apple screen.

  ‘That’s cos you go to an all-girls,’ I say distractedly, searching the drawers below as the computer warms up.

  ‘I hate it there.’ Fran’s leaning into me, her chin resting on my shoulder. I resist the urge to flip it off. ‘You have to look like an extra from a girly pop video, otherwise you’re relegated to the weirdo kid pool.’

  ‘That right?’ I murmur. ‘What’s the Apple password?’

  Fran kisses my cheek before she tells me it.

  I press enter, tapping away, running a search with Dad’s name first. It comes up with nothing. I’m trying John Tenby, when I catch sight of it.

  Just a little behind the computer screen. A large framed picture of Fran with her mum. She’s younger, eight or nine, the dark blonde curls I remember from primary. The kind of kid’s smile that shows pure excitement for life. Nothing like her face shows now. I pick it up to take a closer look, something nagging at me at the back of my head. Examining her mum’s face more carefully, my breath stills. The frame falls from my hands, smashing onto the dark wood floor.

  ‘What are you – ?’ Fran gasps behind me.

  Hurriedly, I bend down, picking the picture out of the shattered glass. ‘That’s your mum?’ My voice sounds faraway.

  ‘Yeah,’ Fran sways again. ‘Mum’s going to be mad with me. It’s her favourite picture.’

  ‘I need to borrow it,’ I say absentmindedly, forgetting my computer search and starting off towards the front door.

  Fran chases me, unsteady on her feet. ‘What is it? Did I say something wrong? Where are you going, Tom?’

  I say nothing, heading out the door, ignoring Fran’s cries behind me to come back. I stare hard at the photo as I climb back into the car. It’s her. I’m sure of it. The woman sat neatly, legs crossed in the backseat of DS Miles’ car yesterday. A younger version, but definitely her.

  They’d made me presume she was police. On purpose?

  Fuck – is DS Miles even the police? Did PharmaCare themselves pass the verdict on my dad’s death?

  … Because PharmaCare killed him?

  Her

  Before she can twist round to see who it is, her hair is being pulled, and yanked painfully from her head. Her scalp burns. She lifts her hands to try and pull the stranger’s grip off; scream out as she is thrust from the chair down onto the floor. A foot presses on the back of her head, pressing her face down. Her mouth and nose fill with carpet, making it impossible to breathe.

  She can feel her heart pounding hard and fast against the floor. A time bomb telling her: do something, as her mind jumps between intruder? A burglar after money? To is it him? Slicer? She tries to get leverage from her knees; to move her head sideways so she can scream.

  But the foot on her head grinds against her skull. Panic roars through her aching body.

  Then the foot lifts. Quickly, she tries to rise up from the floor, to see her attacker, to try and reason with them, or shout out for a neighbour, readying her eyes for the possibility of a shiny tracksuit jacket.

  Too late. She is being grabbed from behind again, violently yanked up as if she were some cloth doll. She belts out, ‘Stop! Please, don’t hurt me!’ her voice catching in her throat. Behind her – the sounds of grunts and heavy breathing. Something hard whips ice cold across her cheek, stinging her skin like sunburn. Every nerve-end is now buzzing with fear. Eyes down, she catches sight of shoes, the bottom of smart trousers. Familiarity nudges at her before she is catapulted like an elastic band pinging across the room into the bookcase the opposite side. Her spine cracks against wood, the impact making her drop to her knees. Slowly she stares up; her hair covering her face.

  ‘You made me do that.’

  His face is pinched, a tight expression of detestation oozing out of every pore, his eyes alight with loathing. He might as well be a stranger attacking her. Standing there, flexing his hands as if they are itching to attack again.

  ‘How dare you.’

  ‘Dad …?’ she croaks, her throat raw from screaming. ‘Dad?’ she says again, her words thickening with tears. ‘What’ve I done?’ The last word seeping out on a long moan.

  The question must anger him. Two short strides across the room and his hands are back in her hair, coiling it round his knuckle like a boxer getting bandaged up for a fight. She shouts out, flailing at her roots as he spools it tightly back to her scalp. Her throat becomes too thick with tears to shout, to tell him: stop!

  His face rounds on hers; mouth curled and folded in a snarl as if he’s about to roar. ‘You lied to me. You not only made a fool of me, but you put me in a dangerous position. Who do you think you are? Who?’ His voice is low, vicious, but not loud. Never loud.

  ‘Let me go.’ She hears her words come out on small chokes. Her whole body is trembling.

  ‘Do … you … have … any … idea … what … you … have … done?’ He says each word as if she’s hard of hearing. Or just stupid. Stupid. And useless.

  Isn’t that what he used to tell her when the teachers would call them in to complain?
When she would sleep out all night in Tom’s treehouse or annoy the neighbours at Halloween?

  Stupid. Useless.

  Loveless.

  But it never mattered. She had Tom.

  Until he agreed with her dad.

  That stupid letter she sent Tom. That pathetic letter.

  Loveless Hope.

  Him

  Another message from Fran, asking again if she did something wrong. I should reply, put her mind at rest, but I haven’t got the head space for her right now. I press the heels of my hands hard against my head and pace the guest room. So if Miles and that bloke the Commander are PharmaCare too, then Miles must have got authority from the police to visit after Dad died? To imitate a detective?

  So where does that leave me? Where do I go for help? Who do I tell?

  I decide to ring Ralph, but Molly says he’s out. She must notice the urgency in my voice because she starts to ask if I’m okay. I tell her nothing. Suddenly I distrust everyone. Checking the time – Hari sent another snapchat to say he’d call in an hour – I get out my notepad and start writing it all down. Everything I know now. The bones of a story.

  I title it ‘Cloud 9’.

  I’ve just finished speaking to Hari, updating him on what I know now, when I hear Mum come back in from work. ‘I have pizzas, Tom,’ she calls up in a voice that’s straining to sound cheerful. I get up from the desk. I’ve got to tell her; it’s too serious to keep the truth from her now. Hearing her climbing the stairs, I head down the landing to catch her. Her bedroom door clicks shut as I reach it. I hear the usual quiet crying behind it.

  I drop my head.

  I need to get out of here. I pull Dad’s coat on downstairs and leave out the back door; jogging through the dark to the one place that used to always help me think.

  Her

  Another gasp of pain, but it’s not from Hope this time – ‘What is it? Jack, what’s going on?’ Hope’s mum is stood in the doorway. Her eyes squinting as if she daren’t look. Palms pressed against her cheeks, mouth open, like Munch’s Scream.