Things We Have in Common

by Tasha Kavanagh

  Even though I’d thought it might be on telly, actually seeing it – seeing the presenter I’d watched for years suddenly saying Alice’s name and the name of our school – it was frightening. It was like in horror films when you realise the creepy person on the telly isn’t talking to everyone – just you.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Mum said. I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me come in, but then she turned to me. ‘That’s the Taylors,’ she said. ‘That girl goes to your school.’

  ‘She’s in my class,’ I said. I got a bowl and spoon and the Crunchy Nut Clusters, remembering Alice showing Katy the HTC Smartphone she’d got for Christmas at the start of term.

  Mum turned back to the telly. ‘Gary did a job for them only a few weeks ago.’

  I sat down and shook some Clusters into the bowl, shocked that Mum was being so dramatic. She was making me feel even more freaked out than I already was, and it wasn’t as if she even knew them. She’d seen them at parents’ evenings, that’s all.

  She lowered herself onto the chair next to me, gripping the edge of the table. ‘Did you know?’ she asked.

  I poured milk on my Clusters, trying to keep my hand steady. ‘The police were at school yesterday,’ I said. ‘They told me.’

  ‘They spoke to you?’

  ‘It’s alright, Mum, they spoke to everyone.’ I started shovelling in the Clusters so I could finish quick and get away from her.

  ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

  My mouth was full. I held my hands out to say, I’m telling you now, aren’t I?

  ‘I’m taking you to school from now on,’ she said decisively. ‘And you mustn’t go anywhere after on your own. You come straight home.’

  ‘She probably just ran off somewhere,’ I said.

  ‘They said on the report it was totally out of character,’ Mum said. ‘And her phone . . .’

  ‘Parents don’t know anything about their kids,’ I said.

  Then the doorbell rang. Mum got up to answer it.

  I thought it was the postman, then heard voices and Mum saying, ‘Come in,’ and a second later the kitchen door was opening and Mum was looking at me all worried, and DI Burke was coming in behind her, with a man that wasn’t the one at school. This one was older – tall and skinny with a pointy face. He was wearing a dark grey suit and tie.

  DI Burke said, ‘Hello again, Yasmin. Sorry to barge in on your breakfast.’

  ‘No, not at all,’ Mum said. She was being all smiley and false, but threw me a meaningful look. ‘Please, sit down,’ she said. ‘Can I get you a coffee? Tea?’

  ‘Tea would be great,’ DI Burke said, ‘just milk,’ and the tall one nodded like he’d have the same.

  They sat the other side of the table. I could smell the cold morning air on them.

  ‘This is DI Grayson,’ DI Burke said. ‘We just need to go over a few things with Yasmin. It shouldn’t take too long.’

  I saw Mum behind them glance at her reflection in the oven door and plump her hair up. Then she turned the telly off. ‘Do you want a tea, love?’ she said.

  I said, ‘No thanks,’ and pushed my bowl away, even though there was still some left. It’s not nice eating with two police officers ogling you. I didn’t think it was very considerate of them to just come barging in. I mean, they could’ve phoned. And Mum was embarrassed because she was still in her old tracky bottoms she wears for making breakfast and her face wasn’t on.

  I thought she might go up to get ready after giving them their drinks, but she said, ‘I’d like to stay if that’s alright?’ and sat at the end of the table.

  DI Burke smiled and said, ‘We’ll need you to stay in any case, Mrs Thornton.’

  I was glad. I didn’t want to be left on my own with them.

  Then DI Burke turned her smile on me, only now it was a kind of OK, we’re about to mash you for information sort of smile. ‘Sunday,’ she said and wrapped her hands round her mug of tea. ‘The day Alice went missing.’ She sounded like she was narrating a play or something, setting the scene. ‘We’d like you to go over what you did that day.’

  I shrugged. ‘I was here,’ I said. ‘Then at about six I went to the chip shop.’ I glanced at Mum, wondering if she knew I’d really gone out earlier than that, but if she did, she didn’t say anything. She was looking at DI Burke.

  ‘Which chip shop?’ DI Grayson said. It was the first time he’d spoken. His voice was hard like his pointy face and his lip had a curl to it like he could be really mean if he wanted to.

  ‘The one on Belmont Road.’

  ‘Walk there?’ he asked. I didn’t like him. He looked like a crow.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘See anyone on the way?’

  ‘No.’ I glanced at DI Burke. ‘Not till I got there. Then I saw that boy, Darren.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right,’ he said casually, as if he’d heard somewhere that I’d said that. ‘Can you take us through that again?’

  I shrugged. I said, ‘I walked there, then saw him standing outside with his bike. He was talking to three other boys.’

  DI Grayson nodded along as I talked, then narrowed his eyes. ‘You went straight there?’ he said.

  I hesitated. I could feel he was trying to trick me. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘From here.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He looked up, pushing his tongue against the inside of his cheek and thinking. ‘Hmm,’ he said, ‘that’s odd . . .’

  Mum cleared her throat and said, ‘I don’t really see how—’

  But DI Burke cut her off. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘This is just police procedure, Mrs Thornton. In the circumstances, I’m sure you understand.’

  Then DI Grayson leant forward. ‘We spoke to Darren,’ he said and instantly I felt my face burn, even though it was obvious they’d have spoken to him. ‘And he said he saw you too.’

  A high-pitched ringing started in my ears. I knew any second he was going to say something about Bea, about Darren saying I’d been there with a dog. That’s why they’d come to the house, wasn’t it? Why else would they have come?

  ‘Only he said you were coming from the direction of the park.’

  I swallowed. Mum was looking at me. ‘I went round the back way,’ I said.

  DI Burke started twisting one of her gold stud earrings, rolling it in her fingertips.

  ‘Up Chancery Lane,’ I said. ‘That way.’

  DI Grayson tilted his head. He narrowed his eyes. ‘But you said you went directly.’

  ‘Will this take long, officers?’ Mum said. ‘Only Yasmin has to get to school and I’ve got work. I haven’t rung in.’

  DI Burke said, ‘No, not long,’ like she didn’t want DI Grayson interrupted.

  I wished I’d said yes to tea or asked for a water because I didn’t know what to do with my hands and my face was still burning. ‘I did go directly,’ I said. ‘I just went the long way.’

  DI Grayson shook his head, wrinkling up his nose and grimacing, acting like he just didn’t get the logic of that, like he didn’t believe me.

  I bit my lip and looked down at my hands. ‘I’m trying to lose weight,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t supposed to be eating chips.’

  Mum leant across and put her hand on my arm.

  ‘I walked that way to burn some calories,’ I said.

  ‘She’s been having a hard time,’ Mum explained. ‘We’d had a row about it, hadn’t we, Yaz?’

  I looked back at her, nodding, but I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about Darren. I was thinking, please, Darren, don’t have seen Bea . . .

  I could feel DI Grayson’s crow eyes on me, studying me. Then he pulled a small black notebook out of his jacket pocket and said, ‘Mind if I take a look at your phone?’

  It was on the table. I unlocked it and pushed it across to him. The only messages on it were to Mum – Wen u home? Wat’s 4 dinner? – or from Mum – Home by 6. B a luv and get sausages out of freezer. Not exactly incriminating.

  ‘What’s your phone number?
’ he said, pulling a tiny pencil from inside the spine of the notebook.

  I told him and he scribbled it down, then looked at Mum, swivelling the book round and pushing it across the table towards her. ‘Could you note your number in there for me too, Mrs Thornton?’

  When she was halfway through writing it, he said, ‘Oh, and your husband’s if you could. Plus email accounts.’

  I don’t think Mum liked him either because she stopped writing and gave him a look, but he didn’t notice. He was leaning back on two chair legs and squinting at my phone screen, scrolling with his thumbs.

  DI Burke waited till Mum had finished. Then she said, ‘Were you at home Sunday evening, Mrs Thornton?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mum said.

  ‘And your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He was home the whole evening? You’re sure.’

  I thought Mum might say about me getting in late, but she didn’t. She closed the notebook and slid the pencil back into its spine. ‘Yes, he was. Well, most of it, anyway. He had to go and pick up some piping for a job, but he wasn’t long.’

  ‘What time was that?’ DI Burke asked.

  Then Mum suddenly held her hands out, like to stop them. ‘Look, hang on,’ she spluttered. ‘Really. I’m not sure I like this. You’ve come to my home without any warning, frightening my child and asking about Gary as if he could know—’

  ‘We have good reason,’ DI Grayson interrupted lazily, still rocking on our chair like she was boring him or something, like it was his chair to break.

  Mum’s mouth fell open.

  His eyes flicked to mine. He set the chair legs down and put my phone on the table. ‘We spoke to Beth Porter,’ he said. His face was slack, like this was the deadly serious bit, the bit they’d really come to see me about. ‘She told us about an argument you had with Katy last Monday. In the lunch break. She said Alice was there too.’

  I shifted in my seat. I knew exactly what argument he meant and I didn’t want to talk about it, not with Mum there, and I couldn’t see why he’d want to know about it anyway. ‘It was nothing,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not what Beth said. She said it got quite nasty.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I’d like you to tell us about it.’

  I glanced at Mum. There wasn’t any way DI Grayson was going to drop it. I had to tell them. ‘They came out of lunch behind me,’ I said. ‘Like, on purpose.’

  ‘Who was there, do you remember?’

  ‘Katy, Sophie, Beth and Alice,’ I said. ‘They were saying I’d followed them in town.’

  DI Grayson raised an eyebrow and leant on his elbows. I wished DI Burke had been on her own or with the officer at school that just wrote things down and didn’t say anything. I wished Mum would go away too – go and get dressed, so at least it looked like we could leave for school.

  ‘Beth seemed to think it was Alice you were following,’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t following anyone,’ I said. ‘I was just in town.’

  ‘She said Katy spat in your face,’ he said.

  ‘Yaz, is that true?’ Mum said, horrified, looking from me to the officers, then back at me.

  ‘That was a spiteful thing to do,’ DI Burke said. ‘I told Katy as much when we spoke to her and her parents got to hear about it.’ She was only saying that because Mum was there – trying to make out like she cared, but I knew it was an act. She hadn’t cared about my bruised arm.

  ‘Just before that happened,’ DI Grayson said, his voice quieter, ‘Beth said you mentioned a man. She said you told Katy you were trying to protect Alice from a man.’

  I felt the blood drain out of my face. I didn’t think any of them had heard me say that. I’d forgotten I’d even said it.

  I shook my head, pulling the corners of my mouth down too far and my shoulders right up round my ears like I had no idea what they were talking about, even though I knew they could see I did. ‘No,’ I said.

  DI Grayson looked at DI Burke, then back at me. ‘So . . . you didn’t say anything about a man?’

  I struggled to swallow, shrugging again. ‘No.’ I could feel Mum staring too now.

  Then he reached out a bony hand and held it over his mug like one of those metal claws in arcades that drop down and close round a prize. He picked the mug up by the rim and turned it a bit, let go, then did it again. ‘Well, that’s odd,’ he said and he stuck his tongue in his cheek again, moving it round so it looked like an alien trying to push its way out. ‘Because when we asked Sophie Albright and Katy Ellis to tell us about it, they said you’d said that too – that there was a man and that you were trying to protect Alice.’

  I felt paralysed. I couldn’t move a muscle. I couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Yaz?’ Mum said, only she didn’t sound like normal. She sounded dazed.

  There was a long silence.

  DI Burke twisted her earring again. ‘Look,’ she said eventually, ‘even if this man you mentioned is just an idea you have, a person you’re not sure about but maybe suspect, you must tell us, Yasmin. If he’s innocent, you have my word he’ll be cleared.’ She paused to see if I was going to say anything, then when I didn’t, she went on. ‘But you should know that we have to follow this up.’

  Then DI Grayson pinned me with his crow eyes. ‘Because if we feel you’re perverting the course of justice,’ he said, ‘we’ll get written statements from these girls. Girls that say they’re happy to swear by what they heard, if need be, in a court of law.’

  I didn’t get into school till halfway through History. Everyone kept looking at me. I suppose they’d heard Sophie and Katy and Beth’s story about what I’d said and wanted to know all the details. I’d had enough of the whole man-thing already. Mum’d been at me the whole way to school, asking me over and over, ‘What man? What man?’ And I’d told her over and over, ‘There is no man,’ and ‘I never said there was any man,’ till I was shouting it.

  I watched Mr Caplin’s mouth as he read from the textbook. I thought, so what if they’re saying I said something about a man? What can anyone do about it if I say I didn’t? And if I have to, I’ll say OK, I did say it, but I made it up. I started to feel better then, because I knew no one could prove anything even if they didn’t believe me. And the police hadn’t mentioned Bea. That was the most important thing. Darren hadn’t seen her.

  The second the lesson finished, Chelsea came over. ‘Why were you so late?’ she said, like she had a right to know. Avril and Laura and a few other girls came over too and they all stood looking at me.

  I wasn’t going to tell them anything. It was none of their business anyway. They can all just pee off, I thought. But when Laura said, ‘Did the police speak to you again?’ I looked down, pulling at my cardigan cuff and then I nodded. Don’t ask me why. I’m weird like that. Sometimes I do things when I’ve decided I’m definitely not going to do them – like going back to see you after I had more than enough on you to tell the police.

  ‘God,’ Chelsea said, looking around to check everyone had seen me nod. ‘Is it about the man? D’you know who’s got Alice?’

  ‘She doesn’t know anything,’ Avril cut in nastily, as if I was an idiot. As if I wasn’t even there. ‘You know what she’s like.’

  Laura ignored her, though. She said, ‘Oh my God,’ in a half whisper, her eyes going wider and wider. ‘It’s Mr Faraday, isn’t it?’

  They all went quiet then, waiting for my answer – even Avril – and I suddenly felt like I was going to cry. I think it was the stress of the police and Mum and now everyone’s eyes on me. A tear went down my cheek.

  ‘Oh my God, it is!’ Chelsea said, and because more people had come over now, she looked round at them all, saying, ‘Mr Faraday took Alice.’

  Everyone started gasping, saying it was so obvious it was him and how he was always lusting after her, then asking why he was still in school teaching . . .

  Laura bent down to look me in the face, her hand resting lightly on my arm. ‘Are we right?�
�� she said. ‘Aren’t you allowed to say?’

  I stared at my cardigan sleeve and shook my head and thought about Alice’s hair that day in the drama studio, slipping like water through my fingers and then, before I even knew what I was doing, I was saying, ‘We were really close.’

  There was a sudden silence. Laura took her hand off my arm.

  Then Avril said, ‘What, you and Alice?’ like it wasn’t even possible that we could’ve been close. Like it was more likely I was close to Mr Faraday than to Alice.

  When I burst into tears, though, and said, ‘I was the last person to see her,’ Laura reached out again – put her hand on my shoulder.

  ‘God,’ she breathed, ‘poor you.’

  And Chelsea said, ‘Jeeesus.’

  It didn’t take long for that to reach Katy. She marched into the art room after break with Sophie and Beth behind her, even though none of them do Art, and said, ‘What the fuck?’

  I knew she’d find me the second she heard. I was expecting her. What I wasn’t expecting was how she looked – so tired – the skin round her eyes red and dark, and there was a weakness in her voice. She’d have to have looked a whole lot worse for me to feel sorry for her, though. She’d have to have been dead. I carried on bulldog-clipping my sheet of paper to the board underneath and said, ‘Can I help you?’

  She gripped her books tighter to her chest. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything about it being Mr Faraday,’ I said, knowing that it wasn’t Mr Faraday she’d come about.

  ‘I’m not talking about that,’ she spat. Then, when I didn’t say anything, she did a nasty voice: ‘“I’m protecting Alice . . .”’ she said. ‘“We were really close . . .”’

  I looked at her as calmly as I could, aware that people were coming in after break and watching us, hoping something big was about to kick off. I waited. I wanted as many of them as possible to hear. Then I said, ‘Well, maybe there’s some things you didn’t know about Alice,’ and I bit my lip and lifted my eyebrows. ‘Things she never told you.’

  There were a few gasps and shocked laughs round us while Katy blinked helplessly, speechless as she tried to compute the idea that Alice could have had anything to do with me – and maybe a whole lot more than just anything. It was priceless. Worth it even though I knew she’d tell the police or Alice’s parents what I’d said and I’d have to admit later that I made it up – the bit about being the last person to see her, anyway. There was no one to say the rest wasn’t true.