She does this for a long time, then after coming to some understanding with the universe, tells him there is no doubt. It’s there to see in his palm. He will soon come into great wealth. Her brown eyes are filled with kindness and wonder. She smiles at him and he smiles back.
When the door finally closes he gets up, pulls out a briefcase from under his bed, and pops the two number locks. Inside is a red exercise book that his dad bought for him. On the front is written: Property of Rupesh Desai, Keep Out Please.
Using a biro that holds the page of his last entry, Rupesh writes down the date, then: WINDOW 5 MINS, PALM 20 MINS. Then he returns the book and the briefcase, and starts getting ready for bed.
Winter, 2015
Armed with a bottle of fizz for Mum and a flower that squirted water that had been in a sale bin at the petrol station for Dad, I rapped at the door despite knowing it wouldn’t be locked. How many times over the years had I heard that Blythe was statistically one of the safest villages in the UK?
Dad answered wearing a red jumper with a reindeer pattern. “Oh darling, it’s you.” He swept me into his arms, so bony beneath the wool. “Come in, the Queen’s speech is on soon. You know how your mum loves the Queen’s speech.”
She was sitting right in front of the television with a blanket over her lap.
“Hi, Mum, Merry Christmas,” I said, handing over the bottle of Prosecco.
“Oh,” she said. “Well, give it to your dad. I can’t drink it at the moment with the meds I’m on. Thank you, though, I’m sure we can think of a use for it, can’t we, Paul?”
“I’m sure we can,” Dad said, and took the bottle from me. In a voice Mum wouldn’t hear, he said: “Two presents for me then.”
The Queen began her yearly message with textbook regal professionalism. It was just as dull and irksome as I recalled, but how long could it be? Ten minutes? Fifteen? God, what if it went on for an hour? It couldn’t be an hour, surely?
“You don’t normally do the royals,” Mum said.
This was exactly the kind of test I needed to face down. Such comments were the missiles that Mum threw without even thinking, and they inevitably ended any peace between us—so often hitting the perfect, reaction-provoking targets in the past. But at some point, if there was ever to be lasting peace, one party, the stronger party, had to be bigger and rise above it. I wasn’t fifteen any more.
“They’re sort of interesting.” This was me, rising above it, though I did have to add, “In their way.”
Later in the evening Dad made me dinner and offered sherry. Seizing the opportunity, I declined the drink, bemoaning having to go and locate a cheap bed and breakfast so that I could spend more time with my friends.
Dad took the bait. “You should stop here, love.” He’d already poured me a shot, and was out of breath from the short walk to the kitchen and back.
“The spare bedroom’s full of rubbish,” Mum said.
“I can sort that,” I said. “But I don’t want to put you out. I don’t know how long I plan to stay for, to be honest.”
“You can stay as long as you need,” Dad said.
Job done, a glass of sherry in hand, I climbed the stairs, hearing Mum say to Dad: “Are you not going to sort that room?”
“Adeline’s doing it,” he said.
She would kill him; it was just a matter of time.
After clearing the boxes, curtains and blankets from the bed in my old room, I took out my tablet and tried to find Xan online. When I couldn’t, I decided on an early night.
I didn’t sleep much. I never slept well in strange rooms, especially ones with spiders on the ceiling. Alone behind closed eyelids, the idea that gangly, drippy Will might actually have been serious started to take root. Suppose he had really murdered two people? And if he had what was next?
My phone had been off the whole afternoon, so when I plugged it in the next morning all the backed-up messages began to ping. The others had agreed to meet at Rupesh’s at lunchtime. Jen had uncovered something interesting that she wanted to discuss.
While I ate breakfast I Skyped Xan.
“Addy,” he said, his face taking a moment to come into focus on the screen as his camera got to grips with the light levels. Just the sight of his big bald head and bushy beard made me grin. He grinned back.
I could tell from the posters on the wall behind him that he was in the studio not at home—probably yet another argument with his boyfriend—no doubt editing their Temple of Doom podcast. He was nothing if not predictable.
“Have you jumped Cusack’s bones yet?” he said.
I laughed. What was there to say? Nothing really, not yet anyway. I redirected the conversation by telling him about all the Will stuff, which I’d known he’d get a kick out of.
“Fuck, Adeline,” Xan said. “Can you imagine the press we’d get if you solved a bloody murder? We could do a whole separate podcast about it. Like Serial, right? But with a proper ending. I mean, everyone knows someone who, if the police turned up at their door and said, ‘Do you know such and such person because they just killed a bunch of people?’ they’d say, ‘Yeah, I do, and, you know what, that doesn’t surprise me.’ Once in a while, one of them must actually be the real deal. Someone must have been Fred West’s mate and thought, Bloody hell Fred’s a crack, but I wouldn’t leave the kids with him. Hey, and maybe if we do a crime podcast and it takes off, you won’t leave me for the BBC.”
And there it was. He’d managed a full minute without mentioning it. Since November we’d been in discussions with some enthusiastic BBC commissioners who wanted to make the podcast into a half-hour radio programme: a more streamlined Nostalgia Crush. But Xan, the least cautious of us usually, had been sceptical, predicting they’d want a generic film review show using our brand. Right down to some of the words they chose, Xan was right. But in the pub afterwards, when Xan got up to get a round in, Jon and I had started mulling over some of the other things that had come up in the meeting. Contracts. Wages. The possibility to work on other BBC programmes.
“I’m not leaving you for anything yet,” I said to Xan. “You’re the one who’s made a decision.”
“I can read the writing on the wall, Adeline,” Xan said. “And it says monogamy, mortgage, babies, all in your lovely handwriting.”
“Monogamy and babies?” I said, feigning disgust.
“Your words. Especially when you’re drunk. Come on, don’t tell me there’s another reason you went back for this reunion?”
It was my own fault for drinking with him. He had a way of unpicking me. I wasn’t anti those things, it was more that I wanted them alongside other things—and specific versions of those things.
“I don’t want babies qua babies,” I said. “You make me sound so conventional saying it like that.”
“Qua? Did you just Latin me? Listen, Cambridge, there’s nothing wrong with being conventional about a few things. You breathe air, don’t you? You drink water? You travel by car and not on a hobby horse. Some conventions are fine, they’re a good laugh. And the BBC is a good convention. They’re long standing. Reliable. I just don’t think that’s why I do podcasting, you know? I’m just not that interested in making a career of it if it’s not what I want to be doing.”
“It’s the art for you, yeah?” I bit my tongue about the fat inheritance he’d been living off that no doubt kept the wheels of individual freedom lubricated. “I’m not that keen to go back to working in an open-plan office making tea for people I barely like, so I just want to think on it. We can still do the BBC thing and Nostalgia Crush. It’s not out of the question. You’re the one making it a choice.”
“You’d have split priorities, and that’d be unfair to the donors.”
“Well, Jon thinks we could make both work, and that you’re just doing this to spite us because you haven’t liked a film since American Beauty.”
“If I am doing that I’m doing it unconsciously,” Xan said. “But really, who wants another contemporary re
view show? I mean, I just don’t see the point. Decent opinions take time to form, you can’t just watch a film once and have anything meaningful to say about it. The social-media age is so fucking present-obsessed.”
“Woah, hang on,” I said. “The whole point of Nostalgia Crush is that these old classics aren’t always as great as—”
“Oh shush, you,” Xan said. He cast a dismissive hand across the screen at me. “I knew you’d say something like that. Weren’t you meant to be turning your brain off?”
A soft knock on the door was followed by Dad peeking into the room.
“There’s a man here for you?”
“Me?” I said. I wasn’t expecting anyone, but could it be Steve? “Thanks, Dad,” I said, and with a nod he began to retreat. “Xan, I have to go.”
“Is it your man?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to hang up now, but it doesn’t have to be like this whatever Jon and I decide.”
“You think about it.”
I ended the call, and went downstairs. Steve was probably at a loose end, maybe wanting a private meet-up before seeing the rest of the gang.
Only it wasn’t Steve. Instead, standing at the door, was Will’s brother.
Jen, 1997
It’s early afternoon and Jen is trying and failing to nap on her bed. Her sister, Andrea, is back from university and dominating the house. Her music channel blares in the lounge, “Stupid Girl” by Garbage now. While Mum and Dad are at work there is absolutely no escaping her—in any room. Jen’s shattered. Last night Andrea was on her phone to her boyfriend until three in the bloody morning. It wasn’t only the jab jab jab of her ha-ha-has that kept Jen awake. It was also the festering anger over her lack of consideration.
There’s no chance of her sleeping now either. But revenge will at least make her feel better. She sneaks into Andrea’s room, steals two pocketfuls of vodka miniatures from her bedside drawer which she decants into her trusty Volvic bottle, then heads out into the sun to find a drinking partner.
The gang haven’t really spent much time together since the brick incident, and she hasn’t seen Adeline at all. But over the road, Adeline emerges from Dead Man’s Alley. She doesn’t see Jen, and walks straight past her own house towards the mouth of Elm Close.
Where is she off to? Only two people live that way: Will and Rupesh, and it’s not going to be Will, the only one that appears even a little bit immune to her charms. What is she up to?
Jen calls her name, and catches up with her at the corner of Elm Close. “Where have you been?”
“Grounded,” she says. “I just tried calling on Steve. Has he been around?”
Jen understands now that Adeline doesn’t know about Steve’s Dad coming home. It’s rare Jen knows something Adeline doesn’t these days, and it makes her stand a little straighter.
“You mean you don’t know,” she says, watching her face for a reaction.
“I don’t know a thing. I was going to go and ask Rupesh if he knew.” Adeline’s caterpillar eyebrows draw together. She’s genuinely worried. “Where is he?”
Putting aside the fact she is going to Rupesh first instead of her, this means that Steve didn’t go and say goodbye to her properly, which actually is quite slack—especially given what they’d seen Steve and Adeline getting up to out in the fields. As much as Jen is enjoying being in the know, she does like Adeline. Okay, it is a bit annoying that she just swooped in and knocked Steve off his feet so quickly. And that the whole group, especially Rupesh, has been affected by her, and without making any effort, just by looking different and being a bit opinionated, she won them over. But there’s no pleasure to be taken from Steve’s coldness. She sympathises. Boys can be so thoughtless sometimes. Bloody girl power.
“Well, his dad had to fly back to meet the police,” Jen says, “because, you know, I suppose legally Steve shouldn’t be left on his own as he is. And he was really annoyed, so he paid for Steve to go back to school early.”
She can read her expression and now something else dawns on Jen. Adeline didn’t know about his school.
“He’s gone back to King George’s.”
“King George’s?” she says.
“The boarding school.”
“What? He boards?”
It’s all there to see in her expression, all the pieces falling into place. There will be no after-school or weekend meet-ups. Not now she lived here, out in the middle of nowhere. She’d be thinking about all the girls at his school that might fancy him, how he’d forget all about her. She is undoubtedly feeling what Jen has been feeling all summer.
“Poor Steve,” she says. “At my last school we had boarders. We all felt really sorry for them, abandoned like that. Why didn’t he tell me?”
It doesn’t surprise Jen that Adeline went to posh school too—she couldn’t even fix a bike chain—although it is the first time she’s mentioned it to her. A bit shameful given she is supposed to be a punk or something.
“How did you find out?”
“He told me before he went. Sorry.”
Adeline shakes her head, sighs, looks like she might start crying. Neither of them say anything for a while. Jen then says, “Aw,” and takes Adeline into her arms. “He’s an idiot.”
If she is crying, she does so quietly and without moving, although her mascara hasn’t run when she pulls away.
“Do you want to do something?” Jen says, holding up the plastic bottle. “I have alcohol.”
“Thanks. But I think I want to lie down. I saw Will around in the fields somewhere,” she says, with just a hint of sarcasm.
“Cool. See you at school maybe?” Jen says. Although she doubts this, because her lunchtimes are always busy with either choir or drama club. She’s sure she’ll see her around, though. And if not she’ll make friends easily enough, although she couldn’t count on Rupesh and Will because they both went to Arden school in Knowle. Did she even know that? She’d have to start from scratch.
“Hopefully,” Adeline says.
She heads over to Rupesh’s in the hope that maybe he wants to get drunk. At the start of the summer she’d hoped to get off with him. Now time is running out. There’s always been a spark between them, though she never would have thought it might take this long. Adeline has somehow messed things up, though in what way is hard to say exactly. Like when Jen had offered him the vodka after that stupid dinosaur game—usually he’d say yes to that, but because Adeline had said no so had he.
Her mood’s not improved one bit when Rupesh answers the door and says: “Hey, Jen. Where’s Adeline?”
Why does she bother?
“How would I know?” she says.
“I saw you both from the window.”
“Oh,” she says. “She felt ill. I’m bored—do you want to do something? I’ve got some more vodka, we could…” He’s already shaking his head.
“I have to do chores tonight,” Rupesh says.
“Fine,” she says. “I suppose I’ll see you around.” Although she doesn’t suppose this at all, because if last year was anything to go by they might not see each other until next summer.
She ambles home, in no rush to spend all night being ignored while Andrea and Mum talked about all the great times Mum had when she was at uni.
Is Rupesh not interested in her at all now that Adeline is around? Or is there a way to win him back? Her usual tricks—starting thumb wars, playfully touching him on the shoulder when they’re joking around—aren’t working. Her friends at school wear more make-up than her, and maybe that’s what she needs to try. Adeline doesn’t wear much more than whatever she does to her eyes, though.
Or maybe it’s not her fault at all. This is Rupesh’s mistake. He doesn’t realise what’s staring him in the face. Well, forget him. She’d go to school, get with a boy there. A different sort of boy, one that noticed her the way Rupesh used to. That boy Dan Evans is always smiling at her. He’s big, and she doesn’t like him the way she does Rupesh, but there’s a sort o
f dangerous quality to him, and if Rupesh found out somehow maybe he’d realise—
She screams when Will steps out from Dead Man’s Alley just as she is about to cross the road.
“Sorry,” he says. He’s amused by her reaction.
“You scared the life out of me,” she says, laughing herself.
“You scared me,” he says, although he doesn’t look scared. He looks the way he always does, calm and like part of him is elsewhere, particularly his milky blue eyes which in clear daylight give the impression they’re not connected to a person.
“Do you want to do something?” he says. “Flatten stuff at the tracks?”
She hesitates a moment, then decides, yes, she doesn’t mind doing something with Will. He’s spoken more to her this summer than anyone else has.
He almost looks quite cool today, tufts of his blond hair poking out from his Nirvana beanie. Almost handsome in a funny way.
“Do you want to get drunk?” she says.
He shrugs. “Always.”
Trusty Will. His lips are a deep red, in need of some lip balm maybe. What would it be like to kiss them? A swirl of confusion and curiosity passes through her at that fantasy. One thing is for sure, it would definitely get Rupesh’s attention.
The two of them find a bald spot in some long grass up on the embankment set back from the railways tracks, much further down from where Steve found Obi. Behind them a pathway appears to head off into the weedy jungle in the direction of the pylon’s base. They sit close enough that their shoulders touch and get through half the drink in a few delightful minutes.
Will points to a dead animal a little way up the track. “I’ve been watching that squirrel, right, and it doesn’t move at all when the train goes over. I always heard the suction would pull you up, but it obviously doesn’t. I reckon you could lie under a train and it’d just pass right over you.”
The Killer You Know Page 9