by LK Chapman
‘I didn’t really do catwalks.’
‘You know what I mean. You’re going to look so beautiful…’ She clapped her hands together. ‘I’m just so excited.’
‘Well, where would you recommend to me? If I was one of your clients?’
‘Firthwight Hall.’
‘That place is massive! And it costs a bomb–’
‘I know, I know. Look, you’re my sister-in-law, I’m allowed to make a fuss of you. But if Silverdale House is what you and Josh want, we’ll make sure that’s what you get.’
Natalie smiled at her. Verity’s enthusiasm was infectious. ‘Thank you, V,’ she said.
Verity smoothed down her shirt primly. ‘Right, that looks like Yvonne across the street. Remember, we’re all about presenting solutions, not problems. By the time she walks out of here, she needs to feel like this new photographer is the best thing that could have happened.’
9
‘Nat, what’s up?’ Josh asked.
She paused for a moment, still reeling. Should she tell him? The comments she’d just seen on her last video were so bizarre she needed a second to process them. ‘Nothing,’ she said hurriedly. Putting her phone away, she sat down on the edge of the bed and Josh joined her, moving aside some of the items she’d laid out.
‘What is all this stuff?’ he asked, as he took in the heap of clothing, makeup, shoes and hair products.
‘My autumn essentials,’ Natalie said. ‘I do a video every year where I reveal my favourite high street buys for wearing every day. Well, it’s some essentials and then one luxury. I’m just narrowing the last couple of things down.’ She picked up a pair of chunky knitted tights. ‘These definitely need including, and a nice pair of boots to go with them.’ She smiled at Josh’s baffled expression. ‘Believe it or not, some people enjoy having more than one outfit.’
‘I have more than one outfit!’
‘Yes, but they all look the same,’ she teased him, trying to be light-hearted, though her voice fell flat as the strange comments came to mind again.
Josh looked at her closely. ‘I can tell something’s bothering you,’ he said. ‘I can hear it in your voice. You sound a bit distant.’
She swallowed hard. Her babbling about the clothes hadn’t fooled him for a second. ‘It’s … well, it’s probably better if you just look for yourself.’ She took out her phone but paused before handing it to him. ‘It’s just a load of nonsense, though. Don’t let it get to you. I’m not. Sometimes people who call themselves fans act like they’re anything but.’
Josh read through the comments and a crease formed between his eyebrows. ‘Natalie–’
‘I know. It’s a bit twisted. That’s what freaks me out about it. People do say odd stuff sometimes, especially about my scars, but this is just – it’s kind of sinister.’
Natalie read it again, the words sending a shiver through her.
Love everything you do Nat but you can do better than marrying a murderer.
‘Some people really have issues,’ she said. ‘I feel sorry for whoever this is.’
Josh gave her a half-hearted smile and she put her arms around him, adding, ‘I said not to let it get to you. I shouldn’t have even shown you, I know you hate this kind of crap that goes on online. I don’t know what happens to some people’s brains when they get a bit of anonymity – I’d like to see someone say this to my face. No one even knows who I’m engaged to. It’s not like I said your name.’
‘It’s not that hard for someone to find things out if they’re determined.’
‘Well, yeah, but they’ve clearly got it wrong.’
‘Of course they have,’ he said, his voice strained. ‘But, Natalie–’
‘Just forget it. Please. Let’s go out tonight, let our hair down a bit. I’m not in the mood to do this video now anyway.’
***
By the end of the evening, Natalie had almost forgotten the comment from earlier that day, and it wasn’t until she was getting into bed that she looked at her phone again.
Josh Sparkes is a murderer.
Why don’t you ask him what happened all those years ago?
Ask him about Mikayla.
Ask him about the lake.
Natalie’s skin prickled as Josh came into the bedroom. His hair had the floppy, messy look it usually developed by the end of the day, and he shoved it back from his forehead as he watched her. ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’ he said. ‘Have they said something else?’
She held her phone out to him, and he took it with a frown. She watched his expression carefully as he read the words. He was clearly upset, and confused. He looked up at her helplessly when he’d finished, his eyes troubled.
‘Josh, I don’t believe any of it,’ she said before he could speak. ‘But they know your name. They know this girl’s name, whoever she is. You must have some idea what this is about. Why is somebody saying this?’
The day of Mikayla’s death
Josh
10
The air was so hot it was like a physical wall he had to push through. His footsteps were loud in his ears; the whole area around the lake was quiet, so quiet, like everything was asleep in the drowsy heat. The small lakeside clearing, hemmed in by trees on three sides, had an odd energy to it as soon as he got there. The water was shimmering and inviting, yet sinister. It was so still, and dark. There had been a big sign in the car park where he’d been dropped off by his mum the day before, warning people not to swim in the water. He gave a shiver, in spite of the heat.
Making his way further along the path, he stopped in his tracks when he saw a small pile of fabric abandoned near the water. Clothes! A bright pink t-shirt. Was it hers? She’d been wearing something like it the day before – the pink like a bright jewel against her dark skin. He’d been mesmerised by her. His pulse raced. Surely she hadn’t…
He glanced all around him. He was being ridiculous. There was some other explanation. He couldn’t see her. This was probably something to do with his stepbrother, Toby. Was it a trick, to make him go into the water? He picked up the t-shirt. It was hers. He was sure it was hers.
‘Mikayla?’ he called out tentatively. Then louder. ‘Mikayla? Are you okay?’
Silence.
He stared out at the lake, scanning it carefully for any signs of movement or struggle. Everywhere, it was still.
Swallowing hard, he made his way towards the shore. She probably hadn’t swum far, in which case he would surely be able to find her. Filled with urgency, he pulled off his shorts and t-shirt, and stepped into the lake. Adrenalin was pumping now. Mikayla was in danger. He knew it instinctively.
He threw himself into the water. God, it was cold. Gasping, he swam out further, and then stopped for a moment to look around. No sign of her. Heat was being sapped from his body. Heart pounding, he stretched his feet down until his nose barely cleared the surface, but he couldn’t touch the bottom. He tried to call her name. Fuck! What could he do? Which way should he swim? His body felt all wrong. This was bad. This was properly bad, and he was scared. He had to turn around. He had to give up.
The cold sapped the life out of his very bones. Unable to catch his breath, he thrashed uselessly in the water. Above him, the sun beat down relentlessly, the day so hot that the air shimmered, an ironic contrast to the cold that was consuming him. He had to stop. He had to give up trying to find her, or he would drown.
***
His eyes snapped open. The room was dark, Natalie breathing softly by his side. He lurched out of bed and into the en-suite, where the sudden bright light made him wince but helped to snap him back to reality. I couldn’t have looked any longer than I did. I would have died too.
He took several deep breaths, trying to calm down.
‘Josh? Are you okay?’ Natalie’s voice reached him, still slurred with sleep. He went back to join her in bed.
‘I’m all right.’
‘Is it because of what we talked about?’
She snuggled up to
him and he put his arm around her. He’d told her exactly what had happened. About the weekend away at the lake with Gareth when he’d been sixteen years old. About how Toby and his friends gatecrashed, along with Mikyala and some other girls. About Mikayla’s pile of clothes on the ground, and the water, and having to give up. But the pain of going through it had left a cold feeling within him – that guilt again, the feeling of not having done enough, and apparently that feeling had followed him into his dreams.
‘I haven’t really thought about it for years. Not in detail, anyway. I’ve never forgotten her, but I haven’t gone through what happened that day minute by minute. I just dreamt about it, but it was like I was there. I could feel the heat on my skin as I stood in that clearing, then the way the cold water hit me and sucked the air from my body. I felt all the panic again, and the desperation.’ He closed his eyes, though the room was dark anyway. Mikayla. He couldn’t bring her face into his mind any more, but he could still remember the way her laugh had sounded, the way her hair flowed silkily around her shoulders. How at the time she’d seemed like the whole world to him, and her indifference had been excruciating.
‘I can’t believe some spiteful person dragged this up again when they must know full well her death was accidental,’ Natalie said. ‘There was an inquest and everything. There was no doubt about it. You tried to save her life, at risk to yourself.’
‘I never even thought about the risk to myself. It was just adrenalin. I couldn’t stand there and do nothing.’
‘Still, you tried to save her and people started saying this horrible stuff about you.’
Josh winced as he remembered it. He’d told Natalie how the rumours had started not long after Mikayla’s death, and how much they had hurt him. ‘It was because I was the first person to realise anything had happened to her,’ he said. ‘It started out as a horrible joke, people saying it was something to do with me. But mud sticks. Even if no one official believes it. Or anyone important. Her parents thanked me for trying to help her. And they were the ones I really cared about. I cared about that even more than what the police thought. Although, I admit I was terrified about the inquest. I started thinking I was going to go to prison. That – that’s a lot of the reason I tried to kill myself.’
Natalie stroked his cheek gently. ‘You should never have been put in that situation,’ she said. ‘It was a horrible, horrible thing that you went through. And whoever is spreading these lies is clearly too spineless to ever do something as brave as what you did to try to help Mikayla. That lake is lethal – I remember going up there when we were kids sometimes – not that we ever went in the water. It’s deep right from the edge and absolutely freezing. People have drowned there before; that’s why they have signs telling you not to go in.’
Josh couldn’t answer straight away. He’d had nightmares every night before the inquest – dreaming that somehow they’d conclude Mikayla had been murdered and that it was him. Never mind that it wasn’t the truth, or that rumours about his involvement were just a cruel joke that got out of hand. He’d have stood no chance in prison. He swallowed hard and shook that old fear away before it took hold of him.
‘I’m just so thankful that Toby found you in time when you took the overdose,’ Natalie said. ‘I know you and him didn’t get on, but I can’t help but feel grateful to him. If he hadn’t saved you, you wouldn’t be here with me. And you don’t deserve any of what you’ve been through.’
Josh hovered on the verge of correcting her about Toby’s role in his suicide attempt, but held his tongue. After all, what would it achieve? No good would come out of upsetting Natalie.
‘We should go and see Toby and his family,’ she continued. ‘Perhaps the two of you could build some bridges. I know you’re trying to accept that your family aren’t great for you to be around, and yes, perhaps it isn’t you who should be offering the olive branch, but someone has to be the bigger person. And you are the bigger person, Josh. You’ve been through stuff I could barely imagine.’
‘So have you.’
‘Well, yes, but what I’ve suffered and what you’ve suffered is very different. I’ve always had my family. It sounds like yours didn’t even support you through the inquest properly – I mean, how can a sixteen-year-old be expected to deal with something like that without a huge amount of support? Let alone coping with Mikayla’s death when you obviously cared about her a great deal. I think it’s a miracle you got through it at all.’
Josh nodded slowly. ‘I’ll think about what you said about Toby. About seeing him. It’ll be difficult for me, though.’
Natalie kissed him on the cheek. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘and it’s your decision. If you really can’t see any good coming from meeting up with him, I won’t push you.’
Josh took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Toby. Could he really bring himself to have anything to do with Toby?
11
‘You can’t be serious,’ Gareth said, as he finished his leg-stretches and sat down on the bench. When Josh had said he wanted to meet up, Gareth had insisted he join him on his Sunday morning park run, ignoring all protests. ‘Why on earth would you consider having anything to do with Toby again?’
Josh tried his best to outline Natalie’s argument, while Gareth listened with obvious disapproval. ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘she doesn’t know the full picture.’
‘She’s found out about Mikayla. I should have just told her from the start – she ended up finding out from some weird stuff someone posted online.’
‘Why should you have told her from the start? There’s nothing to tell, is there? Imagine what it would have sounded like if you’d started going on about Mikayla drowning on a first date.’
‘I obviously wouldn’t have done that. But it was horrible for her to find out from some troll. I wish she hadn’t been put through it.’
‘Who would start stirring up stuff like that?’ Gareth asked. ‘It’s ancient history, isn’t it?’
‘Who knows,’ Josh said, staring moodily across the park, where the trees were beginning to turn shades of yellow and orange. It was a chilly morning, and despite the fact they had just been running, he was beginning to feel the cold.
‘You know, I have a good idea who would stir it up,’ Gareth said suddenly, startling him. ‘And you’re planning on going and playing happy families with him.’
Josh stared at him. ‘Toby’s not a teenager any more. He wouldn’t post a load of rubbish online. It’s not his style.’
‘Whatever you say.’ Gareth sighed and sprawled back extravagantly on the bench, looking up at the cloudy sky.
‘Late night last night?’ Josh asked as Gareth yawned.
‘Yeah, kind of.’
Josh smiled. He could tell from Gareth’s tone what kind of a night it had been. ‘You’ve met someone?’
‘Josh, I’m always “meeting” people. Don’t try to change the subject. I guess I should have realised this Mikayla thing was going to rear its head again. Everyone knows about everything nowadays. You can’t keep secrets any more.’
‘It’s not a secret. There’s no mystery about it.’
‘I shouldn’t have said secret,’ he said, turning his head and fixing Josh with a firm look. ‘It’s not a secret. But it’s private. I can see this has all started getting in your head again. Natalie doesn’t know how much things affect you.’
‘Well, it’s done now. It’s over with.’
‘Except you’re considering inviting Toby back into your life again. You do remember what he used to do to you, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I remember,’ Josh snapped. ‘And I can’t invite someone back in who never really left. Family aren’t like friends – you can’t just cut them out of your life.’
‘You and me will have to disagree on that,’ Gareth said, ‘but if you feel you have to meet up with Toby, I can’t stop you. Just remember, you’re not a kid any more, so he doesn’t have any power over you. Maybe it’ll be good for you, if you go and see
him and you feel okay about it. I guess that takes a lot of guts.’
‘You think so?’
‘Yeah, I think so.’
Josh smiled as Gareth abruptly got to his feet again, apparently rejuvenated all of a sudden. ‘And if he upsets you and Nat, just point him in my direction,’ he said, with a grin. ‘I’ll happily break his legs for you. I hate that arrogant bastard.’
Two years before Mikayla’s death
12
Josh stared at the words scrawled across the wall behind the basins in the boys’ toilets. Gareth followed his gaze. ‘That’s your number, isn’t it?’
Furiously, Josh grabbed a pen from his school bag and scribbled out his mobile number, though he left the words that appeared above it: “For a BJ call:”
‘I can’t believe he’s done this again,’ he said.
‘Does anyone ever call you?’
Josh shot him a look and Gareth shrugged. ‘I’m just curious.’
‘No, they haven’t. But that’s not the point!’
‘He’s not going to be at the same school as us soon. He’ll move on next year.’
‘But he’ll still be in my house!’ Josh said. And in my room, he thought. Even if Toby was at his mum’s some of the week, the days when they had to share a bedroom were like a waking nightmare.
Josh stuffed the black biro back in his bag. ‘I wish he’d just–’ He wanted to say die, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to wish death on anyone, not out loud anyway. ‘I wish he’d just go away. For good,’ he said limply.
‘Maybe he will,’ Gareth said cheerfully. ‘Accidents happen all the time.’
Josh glanced at him. ‘You say some weird shit.’
***
At the sound of footsteps, Josh quickly turned, instantly on edge. Sure enough, Toby stood in the bedroom doorway, taking in the sight of Josh and Gareth playing video games. With a sigh, as though he found the whole thing very tiring, he threw his school bag down on the floor. ‘Will you two wankers get out of my room?’