13 Minutes-9780575097407

by Sarah Pinborough

  Perhaps it was as simple as: no one cared about their side of things. It could wait until their trial.

  Still, Becca scoured and trawled through the myriad local and national items. Some were short, just a paragraph, others longer. She hadn’t looked at the papers in the aftermath of it all. Her mum wouldn’t have them in the house, and as far as Becca was concerned, she’d lived through it – why would she want to read about it? It was strange to see her own tearful face staring back at her, captured by some press man outside Hannah’s funeral. Loads of photos of Tasha. None of Hayley or Jenny. Not even their names were mentioned. She scrolled and scrolled until the articles began to blur into one. The best she could find was a statement from a lawyer saying that the two teenagers charged would not be pleading guilty to either the murder or the attempted murder charges and neither had made a full confession.

  She was about to give up entirely when, finally, it landed in her lap. She stared at the article from some local rag, written a few days after the arrests. Before Hannah’s funeral.

  . . . the mother of one of the teenage killers accused of the murder of Hannah Alderton and attempted murder of Natasha Howland, who for legal reasons cannot be named, posted the following status on Facebook (subsequently deleted) after her daughter’s arrest.

  ‘[Name redacted]’s version of events is very different and the truth will out and then you’ll be sorry. Yes they went to the woods but it wasn’t the way everyone’s saying. There was a film. It was blackmail. My little girl didn’t kill anyone and right or wrong she loved him. Screw all of you for believing that bitch. My baby is the real victim here.’

  It is believed that the 16-year-old’s mother developed issues with alcohol after the breakdown of her marriage, in which a local source claims both the accused and her mother were subjected to abuse. It is unknown whether this will form part of her defence. The girl, who also cannot be named for legal reasons, is currently being evaluated to ascertain if she is mentally fit to stand trial. A police source told this reporter that no film of a relevant nature was found in Natasha Howland’s possession.

  Becca read it over and over until the article was burned into her mind and then she jotted down key phrases in her notes.

  A film.

  Blackmail.

  It wasn’t the way everyone says.

  She stared at that for a long time. Blackmail. A film. If events that night hadn’t gone as Natasha said, maybe that’s why Hayley and Jenny kept quiet. This film. Did Natasha have something on them? But what? And why didn’t the police find it? What could have happened during the time Natasha didn’t remember? She thought back to Hayley and Jenny in the hospital. Were they upset or nervous? She hadn’t spent long with them, and then they’d gone to collect some stuff for Tasha. Her mind whirred. They went to Tasha’s house alone. Had they really been looking for this film rather than wanting to fetch music and books?

  She gathered up her stuff and put the computer to sleep, her head pounding. As the shower kicked on in her parents’ en suite, she ran downstairs yelling a goodbye and headed out into the fresh air to make her way towards school.

  It still didn’t make any sense, though. How else could it have played out, if not the way Natasha claimed? How did Hannah fit in? It had so clearly been a second attempt to kill Natasha, after they’d convinced Jenny and Hayley that Tasha’s memory was coming back. They’d tried a second time because they were afraid she’d remember what they’d done to her, surely? It must have played out as Tasha said. It must have. They’d taunted her, drugged her, tied her up and then she’d nearly died. It was bullying gone badly wrong.

  The pieces floated around her mind like a jigsaw, nothing slotting together properly. But if everything was exactly as Tasha said, why would Tasha worry about what Becca was thinking? Why set her up to go crazy after seeing her and Aiden together? And why couldn’t Becca stop thinking about that ruined green dress? When she got to school, she didn’t go to the sixth form room or whatever lesson she was supposed to be in, but went to the theatre instead.

  She hadn’t been near the place since Hannah’s death and as she walked down the cool corridor she felt sick, her mouth drying and head spinning a little. She almost turned around and ran at one point, but she needed to see where it happened. She needed to remember clearly what happened to Hannah. If she couldn’t make sense of it then the bracelet lie and the green-dress memory and the She used Becca, too all meant jack shit. They were just leftover pieces of a puzzle she couldn’t quite put together and she’d be stuck forever with the feeling that everything was very, very wrong.

  She took a deep breath and pushed open the door. The space was empty. Mr Jones was teaching in a different room and with the play cancelled the theatre had the air of a place forgotten. People avoided booking it for anything, and events were being held in the Sports Hall instead. No one wanted to be reminded that a girl died in here. For a while it had been locked up while the police inspected the lights and the whole rig got a new safety check, and then to keep the ghoulish Year Sevens away, but kids’ interests moved on fast and, at some point, the Head must have decided the facility should be available for students and teachers to use. But of course they didn’t.

  The ghosts of the past flickered like an old film in front of her as she stood in the doorway. The memories came in and out of focus.

  Snapping at Hannah and then storming to the control box.

  Natasha feeling sick. Hannah taking her place.

  The light falling.

  She could almost see her own face through the viewing glass of the control box, horror and shock registering as Hannah crumpled.

  The shades of their past selves shifted backwards, to that lunchtime. Jenny snapping. Becca and Tasha locked in their pact to try and unnerve their two former friends. The light needing to be moved. Hayley shimmying up the ladder. Jenny, high and edgy, snapping at Hannah. The fight that ensued. Jenny telling Hannah that Becca had been at Tasha’s. Everything was exactly as she remembered it. There were no secrets to be revealed here. She turned to leave, half-afraid that Hannah’s ghost would materialise and beg her to stay because she was lonely, and then paused. It came to her then. Clear as day.

  She hadn’t taken the caretaker’s ladder and tools back.

  Natasha had.

  They’d all gone to lessons – everyone but Tasha. She’d hugged Becca and thanked her for being such a good friend and said she’d take the tools back.

  She’d left Tasha alone with the light, and the ladder, and everything she’d need to loosen the bolts and take the safety chain off.

  The only reason Hannah had been standing there was because Tasha said she felt sick and dizzy. Had Tasha made sure she wasn’t standing there? And then Hannah, sweet, eager-to-please Hannah stepped in. Maybe Tasha had wanted it to look like Hayley and Jenny had tried to hurt her – she hadn’t suggested leaving the scene for another day – but then Hannah put herself under the light and suddenly, just like that, it became much more serious.

  It was only supposed to fall, Becca thought, her legs trembling. It was only supposed to look like they tried to hurt Tasha.

  But why?

  She turned and let the heavy door slam shut behind her before leaning against it. Why would Tasha frame them like that? Tasha had lost her memory. At that point she didn’t remember about Jenny and Mr Garrick. She couldn’t remember anything from Thursday lunchtime onwards. And she had been pulled out of the freezing river, dead to all intents and purposes, and so lucky that Jamie McMahon had been there and found her.

  Becca felt sick. Accidentally or not, she was convinced that Natasha had caused Hannah’s death. More pieces of this strange puzzle that didn’t fit. If they were pieces at all. Becca had no proof that Tasha moved the light. Maybe she didn’t. But that look on Tasha’s face through the Starbucks window kept coming back to her. As if Becca had done exactly what Tasha expected her to.
For a moment, the veil slipped and someone else shone through. But that was hardly evidence. And evidence of what? What was Becca missing? What game was being played?

  The bigger question was had she been played? Right from the start.

  And then another question struck Becca, one that made her head spin some more.

  When had it started?

  The bell rang and she pushed her way through the sudden rush of students towards her English class. Emily didn’t sit with her any more, and as she walked into the small room, she could feel them all sniggering at her.

  ‘You need to get yourself a bit of pride,’ Emily said, voicing what everyone else was no doubt muttering. ‘What’s happened to you? Who does crazy stuff like stalking their exes? Get over it!’ A few giggles at that, but Emily wasn’t laughing. ‘You’re going to turn into one of those women who cuts her husband’s dick off.’

  ‘Oh, just fuck off,’ Becca muttered as the supply teacher, Miss Rudkin, came in. It wasn’t witty or clever, but it was the best she could do with a head full of much more serious things.

  She slid into her seat and got out her folder of notes and the book of poems, but she also pulled out her brainstorm of recent ideas. As the class got started, she let herself drift into her own thinking. Miss Rudkin never asked her any questions anyway. She looked at her thoughts laid out before her, then picked up her pen to add to them.

  There were two ways to look at this situation, Becca decided. Everything pointed to Natasha’s version of events being true. Everything fitted her version of events. Everything fitted really neatly, the evidence slotting together and pointing to Hayley and Jenny. They were pretty much wrapped up with a bow and handed to Bennett. Mainly by Becca herself. She groaned internally at that.

  Because what if you flipped it over?

  What if Hayley and Jenny were telling the truth and Natasha was lying? How much fitted together then?

  She thought about the two mobile phones which held so much incriminating evidence. The CCTV of Jenny in the shop. DI Bennett playing that game with the coat in the Head’s office. Jenny’s expression on seeing it there. She’d looked genuinely surprised. Not guilty. Surprised. What had Hayley said? Something about Jenny’s coat having a burn on its sleeve? A blonde girl in a Primark coat bought those phones. CCTV didn’t catch her face. It could have been any blonde girl.

  When did Tasha dye her hair blonde???

  It was a good month or so before Christmas, that was for sure. Half term in the Autumn? October? It must have been around then. She scribbled as the thoughts came to her in a jumbled surge.

  What if Tasha found out about Jenny and Mr Garrick’s affair before that Thursday? A long time before.

  What if she waited? And planned?

  There was a long pause before her pen moved again.

  What if Natasha never lost her memory at all?

  Fifty-Four

  I answer Aiden’s text saying I have a headache and will call later. It’s a delaying tactic and I’m annoyed at myself for not just playing along. I know I should, but I just want a few minutes’ peace. Jodie and Vicki are irritating me. Aiden is irritating me. They’re all so fucking needy. I don’t like the sound of the swear word in my head. It’s like a momentary lapse of control.

  I need to get a grip. I do not make mistakes. I am meticulous and always have been. I am a planner. Even in that stupid – but admittedly useful – diary I admitted that. People so often try and make themselves look good when they lie. That, however, should never be the point. The point should be to distract from the truth. Whether you look good or not is irrelevant. All that matters is that you sound believable.

  I always knew Bennett would ask for the notebook – Dr Harvey was bound to tell her about it, and if she hadn’t, I’d have slipped it into our conversation and then done exactly what I did – made a big fuss about not wanting to hand it over, but then handing it over all the same. Voilà.

  There’s a lot of honesty in that notebook DI Bennett took away with her. My thoughts on my family, sex and my fear of sleeping – that’s all true. As are all the conversations I wrote down. It’s easy to lie when you’ve created the situation to begin with, and the best lies are half-truths anyway.

  *

  I can hear my mother calling me for dinner and her voice reminds me that no one likes a perfect person anyway. They’re either too uptight – like my mother – or too sweet. Sweet girls have no friends. Look at Hannah. I try not to think about Hannah. She wasn’t part of the plan. She inserted herself into my plan. To be fair to me, the light was an improvisation. I plotted everything else out meticulously, but the light just presented itself and I couldn’t resist.

  And now there really is a murder charge. Poor Hayley. Poor Jenny. That wasn’t supposed to happen. I’d been angry with them, but I only wanted to teach them a lesson. Have them publicly shamed; excluded, maybe. A couple of years of counselling for a bullying incident that got out of hand. I wasn’t supposed to die. That instantly made it all more serious, but I could have kept that under control. Blamed myself.

  Hannah, however, has changed things. And this irritates me, too, but I can’t do anything about that now and perhaps it’s better this way. I doubt Hayley, Jenny and I could be friends again, nice as the thought is, whether I’d taught them a two-year lesson or a lifetime one. It’s all their fault, anyway. If they hadn’t been planning to discard me as if I was some nobody like Hannah Alderton instead of the one who made them, then I wouldn’t have needed to do anything. They were prepared to humiliate me. Everyone wants to be my friend. Everyone. They always have. How dare they think they were better than that? They started all this by thinking they didn’t need me any more. And as for Hannah, well, it’s not like I forced her to stand under that light. And she was never going to be anything more than a candle waiting for snuffing. I never see the point in people like Hannah.

  Becca. I wonder what is going on in Becca’s crazy jealous little head. Becca is the cause of my strange mood, I know it. I just want to get back to normal, but along comes Bex with her mentions of green dresses and lies and then this afternoon, when we were leaving school, she comes right up to me and asks when I’m dying my hair brown again.

  It’s not like you need to be blonde any more, is it?

  That’s what she said. There was a challenge in her eyes, I’m sure of it. Was she expecting me to react? To give something away? If so, then she’s as stupid as her tobacco-stinking needy ex-boyfriend.

  Or was it something else? Was she trying to let me know something? But what? How much can she know? The green-dress situation is similar – even if the outcome this time has been somewhat more dramatic. I set Hayley up to take the blame then, too. Becca remembers that. But even if she’s got suspicions she can’t prove anything. Can she? I’m not sure if my uncertainty about her intentions is disturbing me or entertaining me. It’s not like she can harm me. Not now. It’s done. The game is over. And she’s still doing exactly what is expected of her. Her jealous rage was perfect. No one will believe a word she says even if she does know something. Her reaction was so predictable.

  Everyone is so predictable.

  My mum calls again. ‘In a minute!’ I shout back. She’s mouse-like now. I see worry in her eyes all the time and I wonder how she could have given birth to me, raised me, and still not see me at all.

  But I guess she does have some cause for concern. I was technically dead for thirteen minutes and, precise as I had been in my planning, that was unexpected.

  Thirteen minutes. Maybe that’s why I see the thirteens everywhere. A reminder of how close everything came to ending. To the joke being on me. It wasn’t even my fault. I guess it goes to show – the best laid plans of mice and men . . .

  I still get angry thinking about those extra five minutes I spent in the water. If I could get away with it, I think I’d kill that dog. I remember that class hamst
er in Year One. The one that bit me and made my finger bleed. The one Hannah Alderton loved so much. How I broke its neck, even as it squealed and wriggled in my hands. I would like to do that to the dog. I still might, one day, when all of this is forgotten.

  All my careful planning. All those early-morning runs through the woods and the park, watching who was out regularly, who walks dogs, or walks to work, or is just some insomniac who can’t sleep. I had it all timed to the minute and Jamie McMahon and that mongrel dog were like clockwork. I watched them from behind the trees across the river, saw where the dog likes to nosey down by the banks. McMahon sometimes on his phone – which was perfect. I’d need him to have a working phone. Every day the same time. Apart from that day. My day. The day I needed them there. The dog hid his collar that day. When I went to give gushing thanks with Mum and had to pet it, I wanted to snap its scruffy neck.

  Still, even if it did suddenly raise the stakes for Hayley and Jenny, I didn’t die for good and it was far more effective than just feigning unconsciousness for a moment. No one questioned my amnesia. I still stuck to my plan. Even when Dr Harvey suggested hypnosis, I had an answer for that. Too much like drowning.

  I’m quite proud of the way I continued so calmly, even though I don’t really feel proud of things I’ve achieved in the way that other people do. I am sometimes satisfied, but that’s different. I did die, though, and I still woke up and got on with having everything unravel as planned, so I think a little bit of pride is allowed. I planned it all and even with the odd glitch it’s unfolded perfectly.