Cruel Summer

by James Dawson

  Roxanne picked up on Katie’s awkwardness. ‘Oh, you don’t mind, do you? I saw it on your dresser.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Katie replied, but it looked very much as though she did mind.

  ‘Thanks. I thought it went well with my ensemble!’

  Ryan looked at Alisha, certain a ‘you’re used to taking things that aren’t yours’ comment was about to be forthcoming, but, although she glowered, Alisha kept her mouth shut. Her self-control had improved.

  Dinner was less successful under Greg and Erin’s watch. Perhaps they really did eat at Nando’s every night. If the fish was a little soggy, the vegetables were sponge-like. Still, they were all ravenous and plates were cleared.

  Small talk ping-ponged across the table. Tonight was cooler, so they ate inside but kept the patio doors wide open. Thankfully, Roxanne mostly looked on in silence, allowing Ryan to take centre stage. He was determined to show her that her spiteful little game on the beach hadn’t scared him. Tonight’s topic of conversation was how crazy actors are, and the lengths they go to for roles.

  ‘It’s insane!’ Ryan concluded. ‘I mean, this one girl, Freya, she eats one cracker a day. And don’t even get me started on my roommate. He has chicken and cabbage every single night of the week. I mean, he looks great . . . but the smell . . .’

  ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels!’ Erin giggled.

  ‘That’s utter rubbish,’ Alisha said. ‘Only some cotton-wool-eating psychopath could think that.’

  ‘I know a ballet dancer who actually does eat cotton wool,’ Ryan said, nodding like the oracle of gossip.

  ‘You can’t live like that.’ Greg played with the rim of his beer bottle. ‘You gotta put the fuel in if you want the machine to go.’

  Ben chuckled next to him. ‘Dude, the fact you just called your body a machine is as depressing as eating cotton wool.’

  The table laughed. Ryan was finally feeling relaxed.

  A knife tapped on the side of a wine glass. It was Roxanne. She was making a snatch for his microphone. What an attention whore! The table went quiet.

  ‘I’d like to say something . . .’

  ‘There’s a surprise,’ Alisha muttered.

  Roxanne pretended not to hear. She smiled a saccharine smile. ‘I just want to say, thank you for having me. Thank you, Katie, for inviting me.’

  Katie tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled demurely. ‘That’s OK.’

  The penny dropped in Ryan’s head. Roxanne hadn’t been sitting quietly. She’d been waiting for her moment. His heart started to pound.

  ‘You all obviously hate my guts,’ Roxanne continued, ‘but they say your school friends are the ones you keep for the rest of your life, and I just think you guys are the best. It’s so lovely to see you all laughing and joking like nothing happened.’ Her voice was drenched in sarcasm.

  ‘Rox, is this going somewhere?’ Greg asked as politely as he could.

  ‘I just thought it would be nice to raise a toast to Janey Bradshaw.’

  A groan ran around the table.

  ‘You’re too late, Rox.’ Ryan shot her a dirty look. ‘We did the big Janey talk last night.’

  Roxanne laughed. A proper, she-found-all-this-hysterical laugh. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Yes,’ Katie said with some conviction. ‘Everything’s out in the open.’

  ‘Oh, really? So you admitted it then?’

  ‘Admitted what?’ Alisha spat. ‘There’s nothing to admit.’

  ‘Oh, Alisha, honey, don’t tell me you believed that whole “suicide” story? I thought even you had more common sense than that.’

  The table became a merry-go-round, spinning around Ryan. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Roxanne was airing his innermost thoughts. At once he felt validated that he wasn’t alone in his suspicions, and gutted that Roxanne was ruining the party just as he had been starting to enjoy himself.

  This was the last straw for Ben. ‘You know, I’ve bitten my tongue all day, but I’ve had enough of your sh—’

  But Roxanne cut him off mid-sentence. ‘Didn’t they tell you, Erin? One of them killed Janey.’

  SCENE 13 (CONT.)

  You’d have to have a break there, Ryan thought. If it was TV, that’d be the end of the episode, or, at the very least, a commercial break. He didn’t know whether to kill Roxanne or shake her hand. This was kind of what he’d been planning to say at the beginning of the week, so she’d saved him the embarrassment, but she’d also stolen his limelight. Again.

  There was a chorus of disapproval but, before that, almost undetectable to an outsider but noticeable to Ryan, was a split second of horror. It flashed across every one of their faces. That, thought Ryan, could be interpreted in two ways: most of them were probably simply appalled at what Rox had said, but maybe one of them was terrified that they’d just been outed as a killer. What if Ryan’s suspicions had been right all along? What if one of them had . . .

  ‘You know what, Rox,’ Greg laughed it off, interrupting Ryan’s thoughts. ‘You’re such an attention seeker!’

  ‘It’s all shock tactics with you,’ Ben agreed, glaring up at her from under his heavy brows.

  ‘It is a bit mental, Rox,’ Ryan said almost pityingly. Her speech, while nicely dramatic, did verge on cringeworthy. His confrontation would have had much more finesse.

  ‘Like, seriously? Do people not look at you enough, Roxanne? Do you want your own reality show or something?’ Alisha asked. She seemed to be finding this quite funny.

  Roxanne didn’t even flinch. She repelled the comments like oil on water. ‘Did I want to shock? Absolutely. I wanted an honest reaction. I wanted to see your guilty little faces.’

  Katie closed her eyes for a moment like she was counting to five to temper her thoughts. ‘Rox,’ she said, ever the voice of reason. ‘This is insane. We didn’t kill Janey. We didn’t.’

  ‘Actually, one of you did,’ Rox told her emphatically.

  ‘Give it a rest!’ Ben slammed his knife onto the table. Plates jumped. Ryan had never seen Ben like this. It unnerved him – but it was kinda sexy. Ben did brooding well.

  Roxanne tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘Let’s talk about that night, shall we?’

  ‘I’m not listening to this.’ Greg pushed his chair away from the table.

  ‘You’ll sit down, Greg.’ Roxanne’s tone didn’t give the option of refusal. ‘I’ve got a few more I Have Nevers that you don’t wanna miss.’

  Greg shot her a venomous glance but did as instructed. Ryan had forgotten how fiery Greg’s temper could be; now he noticed how he balled his fists until the knuckles were white before lowering himself back into his chair.

  Roxanne reclined in her seat, making sure her audience was ready for the show. Ryan hadn’t seen her like this before, and he had to admit he was impressed. This took some guts. ‘Don’t any of you think it’s a little odd that there was no suicide note?’ Rox asked.

  It was super odd, no doubt about it. The question hung over the table. Ben finally answered as he peeled the label off his bottle of beer, trying to look uninterested. ‘Rox, we know why there wasn’t a note. Janey went to the cliff angry and drunk. I don’t think she was thinking straight, do you?’

  Roxanne paused, making the most of her coup de théâtre. ‘Yes, she was drunk. Yes, she was angry. But this is Janey Bradshaw we’re talking about. Let’s say for a second that she did want to kill herself . . . it would have been to make you feel guilty and she would have had the last word. She’d have wanted you to suffer that for eternity.’ Rox pointed an elegant finger at Ben. ‘But, more than that, what about her poor mum and dad? What about her place at Warwick? What about her little brother? Janey had a lot to live for. In fact, I don’t think Janey would have jumped at all. I think she’d have totally bottled it.’

  ‘Well, obviously, she didn’t.’ Alisha rolled her eyes.

  ‘It’s not obvious to me,’ said Rox. ‘I think she was pushed.’

  ‘What?’
Ben tried to laugh it off, but didn’t quite convince. ‘Roxanne, this is a new kind of crazy. Are you on meth or something?’

  ‘I have proof.’

  That shut everyone up. In fact, it felt as though everything was on pause. It was so quiet, Ryan could hear the clock ticking out the seconds on the upstairs landing. It ticked in time with the cogs in his brain. He’d been right. He’d been right this whole year. Someone had killed Janey. One of them.

  ‘Well, who did it then?’ It was Erin. It was the first time she’d volunteered to speak since Rox had started her little announcement. Her face was grim, her eyes determined. ‘You know, I don’t even know you but, where I come from, you don’t turn up at other people’s homes and start accusing people of murder.’

  Roxanne rolled her eyes. ‘Lighten up, honey. You wanna hear the way they talk about me. That’s what always pissed me off.’ She glared round at them all. ‘When I first moved to Telscombe Cliffs, I wondered how I was ever going to be as good as you lot. You were like these perfect, gorgeous Abercrombie & Fitch people. Then I realised you were as bad as everyone else – just with bigger, faker smiles.’

  ‘Tell us, then, if you know. Who did it?’ Erin demanded.

  Roxanne grinned. ‘That’s the thing, Erin.’ She said the name as if it were a punchline. ‘You think you know this lot? You don’t. There are some pretty big secrets flying around. You’re only seeing what they want you to see, and here’s a bombshell – Janey wasn’t by herself on the cliffs. One of them was with her.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Rox, who was it?’ Katie snapped, her voice high-pitched and strangled.

  ‘What’s wrong, Katie? Guilty conscience?’ Roxanne asked.

  ‘Leave her out of this,’ Ben warned.

  ‘She’s full of crap,’ Ryan observed. There was a key problem with her claim to have evidence. He sat back, a triumphant look on his face. ‘If you really had proof that one of us had pushed Janey off a cliff, you’d have gone to the police last year.’

  ‘Oh, very good, detective, you found me out. Actually, Ryan, I’ve been doing my own digging this year. At first I thought Janey had jumped, but there was this little niggle at the back of my head that wouldn’t go away, so I did some research. I discovered a few things and I wasn’t so sure any more.’

  Ryan knew all about that little niggle. ‘What things?’ he prompted.

  ‘Well, that’s the problem – if I tell you, you won’t pay me.’

  The table exploded. There were some expletives, but mostly laughter. In that moment, Ryan realised that this was all scripted. Roxanne must have been working on it for months. He was almost in awe, it was so audacious. Every subtle pout and raised eyebrow had been practised in front of the mirror. He wasn’t the only one living life in a TV show. Alongside Ryan: Acting Up, Rox had her own spin-off: Roxanne’s Revenge. Tragically, hers probably got higher ratings.

  ‘I must be dreaming,’ Katie muttered, downing her wine.

  ‘You are out of your tree!’ Greg laughed.

  ‘Are you actually going to try to blackmail students?’ Erin shook her head. ‘We’re skint!’

  ‘Nice try.’ Roxanne smiled. ‘You might think I’m an idiot, but I’ve planned this very carefully. I was going to wait until we were all back in Telscombe Cliffs, but then Katie told me about this little holiday. It’s perfect! We’re away from everyone and I get you all to myself. Basically, travelling’s not cheap. I ran out of money about a month ago, and working in bars is not my idea of fun. So here’s the deal – you pay up or I take everything I’ve got to the police and the press.’

  Cue more screaming and shouting around the table. The words rattled inside Ryan’s skull. The rug had been yanked out from under him. This was a new low. Roxanne didn’t even care about the truth or justice for Janey. She just wanted another year out. The girl really was Satan in an All Saints dress.

  ‘Stop!’ Katie cried, pleading with the table to calm down. ‘Just stop! Roxanne, we don’t have any money.’

  ‘Yeah, right. This one plays Championship football,’ Rox said, gesturing towards Greg. ‘And, don’t forget, I know your parents as well. None of you exactly need the student loans you took out, so you can start by sending them in my direction. Frankly, I think that’s pretty generous; I could have asked for a lot more. I just want enough to get by.’

  ‘Lucky us,’ Alisha said.

  ‘She’s bluffing,’ Ben put in. ‘She hasn’t got anything on us.’

  That produced an even more dazzling smile from Roxanne. ‘Oh, really, Benji, you know I have. With all the skeletons in the closet, I’m surprised any of you bitches has room for clothes! The police will have to reopen the case. And think of the press! Janey was a very pretty girl. She looked great on those front pages. Won’t it sell even more papers if the beautiful girl turns out to have been murdered instead of killing herself? And your names will be all over it.’

  A grim, grave silence followed. No one looked up from their empty plates. Ryan and, he guessed, the others, knew Roxanne was right. The police wouldn’t be able to ignore new evidence and the papers would love it. Tilda Honey’s prize-winning marrows had been getting too many column inches again.

  ‘Think about the person sitting next to you. Do you know where they were when Janey went over that cliff?’ Roxanne asked.

  Ryan pondered that. They’d all told the police where they’d been that evening, but all of them had chunks of time where they’d been alone. Ryan remembered every detail of that night – the most minute details – but he didn’t know what had happened to Janey. That was why his heart was now thundering in his ears – because he’d already lost countless hours of sleep over every single word Roxanne was saying.

  ‘So that’s it,’ Roxanne concluded. ‘You guys all hate me anyway, so I might as well make a bit of money out of what I know. I figure you can’t hate me any more.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Alisha murmured. Her skin had turned a horrible shade of puce.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ said Katie. ‘It’s blackmail. It’s a crime.’

  Roxanne properly laughed at that, her first unrehearsed action in a while. ‘Oh, I’m literally begging you to call the police. I can’t wait to hear what they’ll have to say when I show them what I’ve got.’

  Greg seemed defeated; his head fell into his hands. ‘I haven’t got bundles of cash upstairs in a metal briefcase, Rox.’ Ryan wondered whether, if he did, Greg would happily pay right now to make the problem go away.

  ‘That’s OK,’ Rox said airily. ‘There’s a bank in Cádiz, I checked. I’ll wait until you empty your accounts and then I’ll go. You’ll never see me again, and I’ll give you back all your dirty laundry. Some of it’s pretty juicy, actually.’

  ‘Greg, what is she talking about?’ Erin stroked his arm. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Nothing! I didn’t do anything!’ he snapped, pulling his arm back. ‘You better pray I don’t see you again, Rox, or you are dead, I swear.’

  ‘All I want is the money, honey.’

  ‘You’re not getting any money!’ Ben shouted. He pushed away from the table and prowled the length of the terrace doors the way a tiger stalks his perimeter in a zoo.

  ‘Well, then, let’s see what happens when the shit hits the fan, Ben. Some of it’s gonna stick!’

  The room devolved into bright red chaos. Erin started to cry as Greg continued to ignore her. Ben and Roxanne hurled insults at each other over the table, with Ryan giving Ben a helping hand. Greg punched a fist into the wall, leaving a dent and bits of knuckle-flesh in the plaster. He cursed in pain, kissing his skinned hand.

  Ryan couldn’t have predicted what would happen next.

  Katie sprang to her feet. With a cry, she flung her arm back and hurled her empty wine glass about an inch over Roxanne’s head. The blonde screamed and ducked. The glass careered into the far wall, where it shattered, exploding into shards no bigger than dust.

  ‘Everybody, shut the ____ up!’ Katie didn’t miss t
he word out, but Ryan knew it wouldn’t be allowed on TV. He looked on in stunned silence with his mouth hanging open like a goldfish. Katie Grant so wasn’t the swearing, glass-throwing type. ‘Roxanne, I can’t believe you’ve done this. We were friends.’

  ‘Were we? You’re lovely, Katie, don’t get me wrong, but you were assigned to look after me on my first day. You only ever tolerated me.’

  ‘That’s not true. I defended you to people time and time again.’

  ‘In that case, I’m sorry. I’ve always been terrible at making friends,’ Rox told her. ‘For some reason, girls just don’t warm to me.’

  Regret. Ryan saw it – there was a flicker of regret in Roxanne’s eyes. She’d done well in her role as villainous bitch, but it wasn’t real, it wasn’t truly her. How could it be? Being one-dimensional is really hard because you have to shut off all the other parts of yourself. Ryan, at various times, had tried being cool, funny, sexy – and it never worked for long because, eventually, you get angry or morose or camp and you can’t help it. As much as Roxanne wanted to be calculated and detached, she was still a human being and Ryan could only imagine how hard this whole scene was to pull off.

  It didn’t matter, though. She’d done it now.

  Katie continued, ‘Roxanne, we are not paying you. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous in my life.’

  ‘Then I’ll go to the police.’

  ‘Roxanne, please.’

  ‘Sorry, Katie. Come too far, haven’t I? Can’t back out now. It’s way too late for that.’ Roxanne swiped the last remaining bottle of wine from the centre of the table. ‘I imagine you guys have a lot to discuss – namely, who’s gonna drive to the bank – so I’m gonna take a walk on the beach.’

  Six faces looked at her in gormless disbelief.

  ‘I’ll see myself out.’ Roxanne sauntered through the double doors and onto the terrace.

  No one said anything. There weren’t words in the English language to describe what Ryan was feeling, so he could only imagine what the others were thinking.

  Greg fell back onto the sofa. Erin hugged her arms to her body. Alisha stared at her wine glass.