Not Bad People

by Brandy Scott

  ‘So what happened?’ she called. ‘Don’t tell me you lost your temper and walked out.’

  Lou was wandering around the dining table, flicking through papers. Melinda set the plate down. ‘Sit,’ she said. ‘Tell me all about it. Did you finally tell Rex to shove his Post-its up his arse?’

  ‘I didn’t, no,’ said Lou, not touching the toast. ‘He fired me.’

  ‘Never!’ Melinda made a shocked face, wishing Aimee was there to hear this. She’d call her now, get her to come over, but Aimee liked an early night. And Aimee was properly angry with her, unlike Lou. Lou was too busy being angry at the world to hold an individual grudge for long. ‘How come?’

  ‘My attitude, apparently,’ said Lou.

  ‘Well that doesn’t make any sense at all,’ said Melinda. ‘He’s put up with your attitude for years. It’s not like he didn’t know you had one.’ She tore a piece of toast in half. ‘Was there something specific?’

  ‘Nope. I think I just upset the wrong person.’

  ‘Oh, you can totally sue for wrongful dismissal then,’ said Melinda, munching toast. ‘Use the company lawyer if you want. Or Dad would give you a hand, I’m sure. He’s known Rex for years. Want me to ask him?’

  Lou gave a small snort. ‘No thanks.’

  Something was wrong here; Lou wasn’t ranting and raving, threatening to burn the council building to the ground. She wasn’t even blaming anyone, which was totally unlike Lou. She sat fingering a little button on her blouse, staring at Melinda’s chandelier as though making her mind up about what to do next. Shock, Melinda thought again, as she finished off the toast. But Lou could easily get another job. She wasn’t stupid, she was just a bit lazy. The fact she’d stayed in that silly office role for so long was testament to that. Lou complained about her lack of qualifications and options, but the only thing she really lacked was ambition. Look at Richard Branson! Melinda always told her. He’s dyslexic! Steve Jobs was a dropout, and so was the Facebook guy! Getting fired could be a gift, if Lou looked at it the right way.

  ‘So let’s talk about what you’re going to do next,’ said Melinda, sucking crumbs off her fingers. ‘I’d say come and work for LoveLocked, but I don’t want you to take the easy option. This could be a real chance to grow, Lou. Do something different, make some real money.’

  ‘I didn’t actually come here for advice,’ said Lou.

  ‘But this could be the start of something big,’ said Melinda. ‘Your next chapter! I’m so excited!’

  ‘I came to show you this.’ Lou pulled a crumpled bunch of papers out of her handbag.

  AVIATION SAFETY INVESTIGATION REPORT, the mangled top sheet read. Her hands shook slightly as she handed them over.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Melinda. ‘Where did you get this?’ She flicked through the pages, ominous phrases jumping out at her. Warning systems. Stall speed. Emergency checklist. Impact fire.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Lou. ‘The bit you’ll be interested in is on page twelve. Halfway down.’

  It was only a short paragraph, but Melinda read it three times.

  ‘Pretty definitive proof, don’t you think?’ said Lou. ‘That we were involved?’

  No wonder she looked shell-shocked. Melinda read the paragraph a fourth time, walking around her living room. ‘Only if you were us,’ she said finally. ‘This wouldn’t mean anything to anyone who wasn’t with us that night.’

  ‘True. The only people that would mean anything to is you, me and Aimee.’

  Aimee. Melinda could only imagine the panic attack if Aimee were to find out about this. There weren’t enough sedatives in the world. ‘Please tell me she hasn’t seen it.’

  ‘Nope, just us.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’ Melinda let out a slightly shaky breath. ‘Fuck. Well, if we’re the only two who know about it, or at least what it means, then we’re safe, I guess.’

  Lou stared at her, looking uncharacteristically nervous.

  ‘What?’ said Melinda. Don’t freak out on me now, Lou, that’s not going to help anyone. ‘Do you expect me to do something? I think the best thing here is that we do absolutely nothing. Say nothing. I’ve thrown everything out, anyway.’ God, this was the kind of conversation you had when you’d actually committed a crime. ‘Don’t worry. There’s no way they’ll associate what they’ve found with us. Why would they?’ Lou still wasn’t speaking. ‘What are you looking at me like that for? What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you to pay me,’ Lou said quietly.

  ‘Are you blackmailing me?’ Melinda stared at Lou, open-mouthed.

  ‘I guess so,’ said Lou, hardly believing it herself. She’d come up with so many euphemisms on the short drive over. I’m asking you to help me. I’d like you consider a kind of permanent loan. I’ll sell the report to you. She’d sat in her car outside Melinda’s building, and tried to do the visualisation exercises Melinda had been pushing on her for years. Tried to picture a conversation in which she’d hand over the report and Melinda would say, unprompted, ‘You know, I’d really rather this didn’t get out. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but could I maybe give you something, to keep this between ourselves?’ And Lou would graciously accept, and they’d both go off to bed, friendship intact.

  ‘But why?’ Melinda said, in disbelief. ‘Why would you do that?’

  Lou tried to focus on the sculpture behind Melinda’s shoulder, tried to get angry that Melinda was able to buy tasteful modern art while her daughter thought she needed to abort a baby to stop their television from being repossessed.

  ‘You’re my friend,’ said Melinda.

  Lou had to grip her little pin just to keep her nerve. You’re not my friend, she told herself. You’re Tansy’s aunt. And you write countless cheques out to your no-hoper brother and never give a thing to us. Although that wasn’t true, and she knew it. Melinda tried to give them things all the time — hand-me-downs and furniture and fancy toiletries she’d bought extra of ‘by mistake’ — but Lou didn’t want to take anyone’s charity.

  Because blackmail and being paid off were fine, but charity would go against her upstanding moral code.

  ‘Lou.’ Melinda walked towards her but stopped at the end of the dining table. She grabbed the top of a chair. ‘Come on. You don’t want to do this.’

  But the brief moment when Lou could have laughed and said, ‘Don’t be silly, I’m only joking,’ had passed. Stay angry, she reminded herself. This woman spends more on her gym memberships — plural — than you do on groceries. Lou took a deep breath and felt a small spark of rage she tried mentally to fan. And don’t forget whose family is responsible for the fact that you no longer have a job.

  ‘I want you to pay me,’ she said again.

  ‘But pay you for what? This is a public document, or will be.’ Melinda was struggling for composure, Lou could tell. She was putting on her ‘confidence cloak’ — shoulders back, head high. As though she was wearing a garment that made her invincible. It was something Melinda did before meetings; she’d told Lou all about it. Which meant that Lou could see straight through it, and see that Melinda was completely naked underneath.

  ‘You need to pay me not to tell anyone what that section really means,’ said Lou. ‘And not to tell Aimee. Which is the same thing really.’

  ‘But we don’t even know what would happen. What the consequences for what we did even are.’

  Lou shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘It’d be the same for you.’ Melinda tried again. ‘You let off the lanterns as well. If I’m guilty or liable or whatever, then so are you.’

  ‘Except I’m at an interesting stage in life where I have nothing to lose.’

  Melinda eyeballed her. ‘You wouldn’t say anything. You wouldn’t drop yourself in it. You’re bluffing.’

  Lou stared back. This was the second Baker she’d faced down in less than twenty-four hours. ‘Try me.’

  Had they ever really been friends? True, proper friends? Melinda was Ai
mee’s cousin, and Aimee had been in the same class as Lou, and their parents used to get on, so they’d all been conveniently thrown together. But would they have chosen each other? There’d always been that age gap, Lou told herself, except that she’d been five steps ahead of her own year group, and Melinda had liked bossing them all around, and none of it mattered once you left school anyway. They didn’t have anything in common, she thought, except for the same sense of humour and three decades of shared history. Melinda kept judging her, she tried again, kept trying to fix her, with all her helpful little ‘suggestions’. When there was nothing wrong with Lou or her life. Although if that was true, what was she doing here?

  Melinda dropped her gaze first. ‘How much would you want?’ she asked, looking at the table.

  ‘A hundred thousand dollars.’ Enough that she’d never have to bother any of the Bakers again.

  Melinda gave a barking laugh. ‘That’s crazy.’

  ‘You’ve got it.’ Lou waved her hand at Melinda’s designer living room. ‘Sell a painting or something if you have to.’

  ‘This is ridiculous.’ Melinda shoved the chair she’d been holding towards the table; the sound of banging wood was harsh and loud in her minimalist apartment. ‘We’ve been friends for nearly thirty years. You used to sleep in my bed. I helped bury your parents. I don’t understand why you’re doing this.’

  And Lou couldn’t tell her. Because it felt so grubby, the way she’d snuck out of Melinda’s room, sleepover after sleepover, into the more exciting bed of her brother. They all used to joke about Matthew — what a total sleaze he was, what a sexist pig. Even as a teenager Melinda had nothing but disdain for her younger brother and the girls who hung around him ‘like flies’. ‘He’s got no respect for any of them,’ Melinda used to say. ‘The way he treats them is just gross.’ They had names for the girls as well, terms Lou was ashamed of using now. Because it was all true: Matthew was a dickhead and she’d been one of the idiots who’d fallen for it. Fucked him at the end of the hallway while her friends were asleep two doors down. A boy she’d known since she was eight, had virtually grown up with. ‘It’s all just a bit nasty,’ Melinda’s father had said, and deep down, Lou agreed.

  ‘Just do it, Mel,’ said Lou. ‘Just do it, and we can all get on with our lives.’

  ‘And how am I supposed to pay you? Assuming I’m going to.’

  She was going to, Lou could tell. ‘The inquiry starts next week,’ she said. ‘If the money isn’t in my bank account by then, I’ll stand up and tell everyone exactly why Lincoln was found lying on the charred edge of a bright-pink and gold notecard.’ The only word that had been visible on the card was happy. Any one of them could have written it.

  ‘You should have left,’ Melinda said, as Lou headed for the door. ‘You should have got out when Tansy was small. You might have had a life. You might have actually done something with yourself.’

  ‘You can talk,’ said Lou. ‘You only stay here because you’re trying to impress your father. God knows why. You make out like he’s this mover and shaker, but he’s not. He’s just a big fish, in a small, polluted pond. He’s not worth it. And neither is your brother.’

  Lou let herself out of Melinda’s apartment, heart racing, her face on fire. Bloody hell. That was . . . awful. She’d expected to feel jubilant, like some kind of warped justice had been served, or even relieved, but instead, she just felt like shit.

  Lou forced herself not to run back to the glossy cream door — three coats on that, they’d spent all weekend painting it — and ring Melinda’s bell, claim some kind of temporary insanity. Beg for forgiveness. But it was too late now. All she could do was wait.

  Hensley’s main street was deserted, not even a loitering teenager getting high in the pub car park. Lou hopped in her car and pulled down the rear-vision mirror. Hopped in her ancient Nissan Bluebird, parked next to Melinda’s shiny Range Rover. The comparison made Lou feel slightly less guilty about what she’d just done. Slightly.

  What if Melinda didn’t pay? What on earth would she do then? But Melinda would pay, Lou knew. Aimee would have gone to pieces, but Melinda could see the bigger picture. No one would invest in a company where the CEO was involved in a child’s death. And it would be the end of all those fawning magazine spreads and documentary appearances. Melinda liked being a minor celebrity, no matter what she said. She was very comfortable being a big fish in a small pond as well.

  Lou switched the light on in her car and examined her burning skin, the sensitive raw patch under her nose. Eczema. Damn. She’d had it chronically as a child, rarely as an adult, but it came back from time to time when she was particularly wound up or run-down. Lou flipped the mirror back up. Well, it was hardly surprising. They probably had some Sudocrem in the bathroom. Or she might even buy herself a big jar of something nice. Something organic, with goat’s milk. Why not?

  It was only fair, Lou told herself, as she drove guiltily down the main street. Melinda wouldn’t miss the money. She was about to make millions. And Lou was doing this for Tansy. Tansy and the baby. Melinda would do exactly the same, if their roles were reversed.

  None of it made her feel any better about herself.

  Lou killed the headlights before she turned into her driveway, so they wouldn’t shine through Tansy’s bedroom window. Crept into the bathroom and pulled out an ancient tub of cream, predictably crusty on top. She examined her nose in the mirror. Definitely eczema. Which meant she’d have it around the sides of her mouth by tomorrow, all flaky and gross. Ah well, it wasn’t like she had to go to work and see anyone.

  Lou tucked her hands under the covers so she wouldn’t itch in her sleep. Her mum had made her mittens, ultra-soft, out of an old cot sheet, to keep her face safe from her nails when she had an attack. Maybe she should run some up on the machine. But that was ridiculous. She wasn’t a child any more. She should just cut her —

  Lou flicked her eyes open and stared at the crack in the ceiling.

  She’d been born with eczema. Scales, all over her face and arms. Like a baby crocodile, her mother used to say. I didn’t let anyone take any pictures of you for the first month, your face was such a mess.

  There were no newborn photos of Lou. Her first photo had been taken at home, on a sheepskin rug, skin finally calm. Lou scrambled out of bed, tore through the cardboard box of work things she’d left next to the dining table, searching for the green frame. Turned on the light so she could see the picture properly. Although she already knew. The baby in the photo was red and angry, but its skin was shiny smooth. Perfect.

  Lou was not the baby in the photo.

  CHAPTER 34

  Aimee drove through Meadowcroft, head strangely calm, considering. Not particularly proud of herself, but justified, on so many levels. Look how far I’ve come, she mentally told her old psychologist, the procession of doctors and therapists who’d tried to make her well. I’m doing things I know are wrong and coping just fine. Where’s my excessive sense of responsibility now, eh?

  Although . . . she was only a few streets away from Pete’s house. Aimee felt a familiar prickle on the back of her neck, heard the car’s indicator come on almost by itself. Just a quick check, that all was well. She took a left, then a right. It was the friendly thing to do, given she was in the area. In the area, at a quarter to one in the morning. How was she going to explain that? Well, it wasn’t like she was going to talk to him. Just drive past, check everything looked okay. Almost like Neighbourhood Watch. Aimee had been instrumental in setting up Hensley’s ‘nark patrol’, as Lou liked to call it. Looking in on Pete was virtually her duty.

  Aimee slowed down as she approached the Kasprowicz house. There was no car in the driveway. No Cameron. Aimee let out a small sigh of relief. There was something dodgy about that boy. She’d already decided to check on the kids when she got home, something she hadn’t done since they were small. Paranoid, but she’d sleep better. There was a light on in Pete’s bedroom though. Now that was odd. She parke
d and trotted down the driveway, the night air alive with cicadas. Pete didn’t turn lights on; no need. Aimee climbed the steps to the front door, just to check it was locked. Pete often left it on the latch, for visitors. Aimee worried about unwanted guests taking advantage of a man who couldn’t see them coming.

  ‘Pete,’ she whispered, rapping lightly on the door. Not loud enough to wake him, just loud enough that he might hear if he was up, getting a cup of tea. ‘Pete, you good?’

  There was a crash from the other end of the house.

  Aimee rapped harder. ‘Pete!’ She scrabbled around all the usual hiding places for a spare key: beneath flower pots, under the mat. Nothing. She stepped back into the drive, triggering the security light. There was a cricket ball in the garden she could use to break the window. Drastic, but this was an emergency, a real one. Pete could have fallen, slipped in the shower, been lying injured for hours. The crash could be him trying to get her attention. Aimee was deciding between the ball and a garden rake for breaking and entering when she noticed a lawn chair pulled up next to the house. And above it, a patch of guttering rubbed free of dirt. She smiled, despite her thumping heart. Her dad had done exactly the same.

  The door was sticky; Aimee almost thought she had the wrong key. She crept into the kitchen, holding the rake for self-defence, careful not to make a noise. Although that was pointless; any intruder would know she was there. ‘Pete?’ she called again.

  There was another thump, fainter. Aimee ran through the house, dropping the rake. ‘Pete!’ He stood at the end of the hallway, startled, bent over slightly, but one hundred per cent not lying in a pool of his own blood.

  ‘Oh my God. Pete.’ Aimee clutched the wall. ‘I thought something had happened to you.’ And so she’d let herself into someone else’s house, in the middle of the night. Aimee flushed; this was exactly the sort of behaviour that had got her into trouble in the past. That made people think she was crazy. And she wasn’t, she bloody wasn’t, but she also wasn’t entirely sure how she was going to survive the soap opera that was her life now. Every day seemed to bring a new disaster. She’d lain next to Damien in that lumpy hotel bed having flashbacks of her room in the clinic. Not scary One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest–type flashbacks, but loving memories. Aimee could think of nothing nicer than sinking into a cool hospital bed, sequestered from the world and all her mistakes, and pulling the sheets over her head for at least a month.