Killing You Softly
Page 26
I followed his gaze. Jack was crossing the canal, eyes fixed on Hooper. He was ten metres away, appearing out of nowhere, out of the black silence.
Hooper saw him and panicked. He shoved me to the ground, face down, then knelt on the small of my back. I saw out of the corner of my eye that the hammer was raised over my skull once more.
Jack broke into a run. Hooper smashed the hammer down but I scrambled clear. Jack reached us and swiped him with the back of his hand, sending him sprawling. More figures sprinted towards us out of the darkness – Zara, Connie and Will. But it was Jack who snatched at Hooper’s jacket when he tried to crawl away, Jack who stopped him and turned him over then sat astride his chest and punched him in the face, mad with anger until Will yelled for him to stop or else he would kill Hooper. Will grabbed Jack’s raised fist, which threw him off balance and gave Hooper the split second he needed to wriggle free.
Hooper crawled forward to the edge of the canal and peered at his own reflection in the dark water – a pale oval disc in a liquid mirror. He twisted round to look at me and all I could think of was Narcissus, in love with his own image, who got separated from his beautiful reflection and died of grief. He smiled at me then rolled sideways and toppled into the canal.
chapter sixteen
They wrap you in silver, heat-retaining plastic, the kind they give to runners at the end of a marathon. And they sit you down, tell you to take deep breaths.
‘Breathe, Alyssa,’ Ripley said as I sat propped against the canal steps with Jack beside me.
They were all there – police cars, ambulances, Will, Connie and Zara.
And don’t worry about Hooper – they weren’t going to have to dredge the canal.
He rolled over the edge. There was a splash. I held on to Jack’s arm to stop him jumping in as well.
Hooper vanished under the water, which swirled with oily eddies.
Connie would have jumped in after him too. ‘The shitty little bastard doesn’t get away that easy!’
But Zara and Will held her back.
Anyway, Hooper came back up to the surface and struck out in an untidy crawl towards the bridge.
‘Idiot,’ Zara muttered. ‘Not even worth getting wet for.’
Hooper struggled through the water, clumsily flailing his arms and slowly sinking. Well, you wouldn’t expect him to be a good swimmer, would you?
‘Are we going to let him drown?’ Connie asked, as if it was a serious possibility.
Anyway, we heard the sirens and saw the blue flashing lights so none of us had to make a decision about fishing Hooper out. The cops did it for us.
‘Deep breaths,’ Ripley insisted after they’d hauled Hooper back on to dry land and driven him off in an ambulance. They handcuffed him and walked him up the steps. I didn’t look at him as he passed by and he didn’t look at me.
Personally, I’d done all the looking and talking with Hooper I ever wanted to do. Now the system – police interview, charges, remand, trial, sentence – could roll on around me.
Jack sat shivering inside his silver cape, knees hunched to his chest.
‘He has two broken ribs and a perforated lung,’ I told the paramedics.
‘We know,’ they said. ‘He discharged himself. There was nothing the hospital could do.’
‘He called to warn us what he was up to,’ Zara explained. ‘We tried to stop him.’
‘But he was too worried about you to listen,’ Connie added. ‘So we said we’d come over to Ainslee to meet him. He said to check your room first, make sure you hadn’t snuck back to school. That’s when we found everything smashed up and in chaos – phones, that ceramic head from Jack’s room, a candle, a lipstick heart …’
‘Plus, by this time, Will had come across to the girls’ dorm to tell us you’d paid him a visit, Alyssa, and that you were looking for Hooper.’ Zara filled in more gaps. ‘One minute Hooper was with me in my room, talking to you on the phone. Next thing, he’s vanished and his car is missing from the car park.’
‘We’re saying to each other, what’s this with Hooper? Why is Alyssa risking coming back to St Jude’s and taking stuff from his cabinet?’ Connie went on. ‘None of it is making sense, but all we know is we have to get into town to meet Jack.’
‘You swore you’d stay where you were,’ I reminded him, reaching out to take his hand. ‘He has a perforated lung,’ I said again to whoever would listen.
A paramedic squatted down beside Jack and did routine medical stuff – pulse and blood pressure for a start. ‘Careful, mate,’ she murmured when he tried to stand up, and she made sure he didn’t move until the stretcher arrived.
‘Is that why you didn’t answer my calls?’ I asked. ‘Because you knew I’d try to stop you leaving the hospital.’
‘Anyway he did pick up my call, thank God,’ Connie said. ‘Zara called 999 to tell them what was happening, then the three of us met Jack outside the train station before the cops got there. Then at that point we were stuck. Where were you and Hooper? What should we do next?’ She turned to Zara. ‘Over to you, Dr Maxwell Stirling.’
‘First I had to get over my shock,’ Zara said.
Connie nodded. ‘I mean – quiet, reliable Hooper, for God’s sake. Who’d have thought it?’
Zara picked up her thread. ‘I tried to get inside Hooper’s mind. If I was right about his type of mental illness, I knew he was on a major power trip. He’d want every single thing to be under his control, like he’d scripted the scenario and was forcing you to play it out.’
‘That’s exactly right,’ I murmured.
Hooper takes me down to the lake, down Memory Lane. The black reeds rustle and rattle in the wind. He forces me into his car.
‘Thank heavens …’ No, ‘ … Thank goodness for child locks,’ he says as he drives me away from the school grounds.
‘Don’t!’ I beg. ‘Please, Hooper!’
I beg, I flatter. I hit the brick wall of his psychosis.
‘I’m writing your life story and I can’t stop short of the satisfying ending, can I?’ He tells me I have to be tomorrow’s headline. ‘Second Body in Canal’.
‘So in a way he made it too predictable,’ Zara continued. ‘For a start, he’d probably put a cord round your neck like he did with Scarlett.’
Jack held my hand more firmly. He mumbled to the paramedic that he was able to stand and walk to the ambulance without help.
Zara waited until Jack had listened to professional advice and settled back down beside me, then she picked up where she’d left off. ‘I figured Hooper would use some sort of workshop tool.’
‘A hammer.’
The grip tightened again. I whispered to Jack that I was OK.
‘And he’d bring you to a familiar place to act out his final scene.’
‘Then it was over to Jack.’ Connie was determined to give Jack the final credit. ‘He said two words – “the canal!” It was his idea for us to come here.’
Young bones heal quickly, though minds may take longer.
Jack was back in hospital for three more days then they let him out with a programme of physio and gradual rehab.
‘No major exertion,’ they warned. ‘Give it time and you’ll be back to normal fitness.’
Back to playing tennis, working his way up the international rankings. I grinned, but had to be careful how hard I hugged him.
I forgot about this once we were back at school and I overdid the embrace.
‘Ouch!’
‘Sorry.’
I was visiting in his room at night-time, breaking the rules. We were heading for the half-term break and everything was back to normal.
‘Do your ribs still hurt?’ I asked, tracing my fingertips across his chest.
‘No. I got cramp in my leg, that’s all.’
‘Liar!’
‘OK, yeah. They hurt a bit.’
‘Is that better?’ I murmured, leaning over to kiss him.
Still without Jack in their team in the first
week after half term, St Jude’s five-a-side football team lost three–nil to Ainslee Comp. Alex scored the first goal, followed by two from Jayden.
Ursula was Jayden’s biggest fan. Dropping her über-cool image, she cheered every time he got the ball, jumped up from her seat in the mezzanine coffee bar each time the ball hit the back of the net.
‘How are things?’ I asked her after the match, while the teams were showering.
‘Good. But you want to know something funny? Last Tuesday Ripley finally got around to asking me if I needed to speak to a victim support officer after Hooper wrecked my flat.’
‘You said no but Hooper would need one if you and Jayden were let loose on him,’ Connie quipped. She’d been cheering for the losing team, Luke especially.
We laughed. We’d already agreed to stop thinking too hard about Hooper and what he’d done.
‘No,’ Ursula grinned. ‘I asked, what about my telly? I’m not insured so who pays for that?’
‘But it wasn’t broken,’ I reminded her.
‘So?’ she challenged. ‘The cops don’t need to know that.’
‘Oh, OK – no, yeah. I mean, I get it.’
We laughed again.
‘I do deal,’ Galina told Ursula.
Yes, our Russian heiress was still in school, forging her own way without family support like she said she would. Her lip was healed and she’d just signed a modelling contract with Storm – Cara Delevingne’s agency – branching out from designer bags.
‘What kind of deal?’ Ursula wanted to know.
‘I give you bag from new season collection. You sell online. Take this as thank you for helping Alyssa.’ Then Galina turned to me. ‘And, Alyssa – I show agent your picture.’
‘You didn’t!’ I protested.
‘No. Tomorrow, I show her.’
‘Tomorrow I will show her,’ Zara corrected.
‘Tomorrow I will show her. You will be model too.’
‘You will be a model … Oh, I give up.’
‘No,’ I told Galina. ‘I can’t see me as a model.’
‘We can!’ my mates cried.
Zara, Ursula, Connie and Galina all tried to convince me that I would be fabulous, darling.
‘You are fabulous.’ Jack and I walked through St Jude’s wood. Green shoots of early daffodils held out a promise of warmer days.
If two people can walk with more physical contact than we were managing, square centimetre for square centimetre, I’d like to see it.
Our arms were entwined round each other’s waists, our hips and thighs touching, and we were perfectly in step.
‘But can you see me in front of a camera, day in day out? I mean, come on!’
Jack stopped and turned to face me. ‘That’s the only thing about you that I don’t get, Alyssa.’
‘What? What did I say?’
‘I don’t get the false modesty. You’ve got the height, the hair, the figure – any modelling agency would bite your hand off!’
‘It’s not false – it’s genuine. I honestly don’t have the confidence …’
‘Exactly. I don’t get it.’
‘So now we’re arguing about my confidence or lack of it. We’ve been here before, remember?’
Actually, come to think of it, during my first few weeks at St Jude’s it had practically scuppered any chance I had with Jack.
‘Don’t,’ Jack said.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t start with the total recall.’ He walked on and pulled me with him. The woods and the fields beyond were beautiful. The sky was blue. ‘Live for the moment, Alyssa. Live now.’
Books by Lucy Carver
Young, Gifted & Dead
Killing You Softly
First published 2014 by Macmillan Children’s Books
This electronic edition published 2014 by Macmillan Children’s Books
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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ISBN 978-1-4472-4805-7
Copyright © Lucy Carver 2014
The right of Lucy Carver to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Table of Contents
Title page
Contents
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
chapter eleven
chapter twelve
chapter thirteen
chapter fourteen
chapter fifteen
chapter sixteen
Books by Lucy Carver
Copyright page