Things We Have in Common

by Tasha Kavanagh

  She got herself together enough to splutter, ‘The only way that you were the last one to see Alice, Doner, was if you were the one that took her,’ but she was too late. Everyone had seen her falter.

  ‘Yasmin took Alice?’ Robert said. He’d only arrived in time to catch Katy’s last comment. ‘I can’t keep up. I thought it was meant to be Mr Faraday?’

  ‘Shut up, Rob,’ Katy snapped.

  ‘So, how’d she do it?’ he said, laughing as she pushed past him. ‘Eat her?’

  It was on the main news at 6 o’clock. The Senior Investigating Officer was on – a man with a big bulbous nose and red cheeks, surrounded by loads of hands pointing microphones at him. He said all leads were being followed, CCTV being gathered. He said he was appealing for anyone who saw Alice on her route home between 6.15 and 7.20 p.m. – particularly on or around Rectory Road, where two witnesses had already come forward to say they’d seen a girl matching Alice’s description, and where Alice’s phone had been found. Gary and Mum were glued to it. Gary was hunched forward in his armchair, shaking his head and stating the obvious, like, ‘The poor kid,’ and, ‘You don’t expect it, do you?’

  I went up to my room before the report finished. I knew if I stayed Gary would start asking me all sorts of questions, like how was everyone coping and did any of us kids have any ideas at all about where she could’ve gone. Like he was a cop.

  He came up anyway, knocking and waiting for me to say he could come in. ‘The reporter said there’s searches going on for her,’ he said. ‘Something about a web page.’

  I was looking at it. I turned my laptop round on the bed for him to see and he came and sat next to it, pulling it onto his knees. It was weird, him sitting on my bed because he never comes into my room.

  ‘Christ,’ he said, looking at all the photos and shaking his head. ‘Poor kid.’

  ‘There’s a search at 7,’ I said, ‘meeting at the Bull’s Head.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’m going.’

  ‘Should I go too?’ I said, faltering a bit because I didn’t want to, because I knew Katy and Sophie and a whole load of others would be there and that they’d round on me, telling everyone what I’d said at school.

  He looked at me for a second like he was thinking about it, then he said, ‘It’s not really the place for a teenager, love. And it’ll be getting dark soon.’

  A few minutes later I heard him go out of the front door and helicopters going overhead.

  I didn’t know where I was when I woke up. It was pitch dark and I could hear rain whipping in waves at the window. Maybe that was why it took a few seconds to figure out what was real and what wasn’t, because it’d been raining in my dream. I’d been stumbling through woods in the dark, holding up the sodden skirts of my long crimson dress, crying and calling out for you, even though I couldn’t see you. Then I was turning, looking into an endless maze of tree trunks, till I caught sight of your white shirtsleeve. You were digging with a spade and spattered with soil. You only looked up when I got close. I was crying and laughing at the same time, going, ‘You’re OK, thank God you’re OK,’ my hands reaching out to you, but then you weren’t there anymore. I swung round, blinded by the rain, but you’d disappeared. ‘Where are you?’ I was calling over and over and then I looked down and Alice was there in the ground, half buried, rain filling her open mouth, her hair all splayed about and sinking into the black, liquid mud.

  There was a strange atmosphere those last days of term. People were talking and being almost normal, but not quite. They talked a bit quieter, they sat a bit stiller. I think Alice was on everyone’s mind, and because term was ending it felt like, if she didn’t come back now, before we broke up, she never would.

  I kept seeing her. I’d catch her out the corner of my eye, then look to see some other girl there, and the seat she should’ve been in for morning register was so empty it was like it was shimmering with her gone-ness. When I stared at it, a faint outline of her face appeared, then a bit of pastel blue cardigan, hovering in the air till I blinked.

  Words kept drifting into my head too; weird phrases that seemed like they didn’t come from me but from Alice. Things like ‘Don’t worry about it, Yaz’ and ‘There’s nothing you can do now’. Then I’d hear your voice going ‘Steady’ and I’d get this rush as if I was with you in your front room again, swaying to the music and looking into your shining black-hole eyes.

  Usually there’s awards for commendations and sport announcements and that kind of stuff at the end of term assembly, but there was none of that this time. Miss Ward said that Easter was a time of suffering what with Jesus on the Cross, and that this year his suffering had come into our lives – to Alice’s family, to our school and to the community as a whole.

  She told us she was going to say a prayer for Alice that would be followed by two minutes’ silence and that in that time we should think our own thoughts about Alice and say a personal prayer for her safe return. We all stood up. She said:

  Dear Lord,

  We ask of you,

  Keep Alice safe and sound,

  Let no harm come to her before she is found.

  She is lost from her family,

  From the ones she loves,

  Return her home,

  And protect her from above.

  Amen.

  I don’t remember the prayer, obviously, but because it was so good and I wondered if Miss Ward had written it herself, I did a Missing person prayer search on Google and found it.

  Anyway, I did think about Alice in the two-minute silence. I thought about how she’d looked that day you were watching her from the path, walking backwards across the tennis court with her light, bouncing steps. I thought about her pale cheeks turning pink and her green eyes watching me. Then I looked along the row in front and saw Katy. Her eyes were screwed shut and tears were rolling down her cheeks.

  Mum was waiting outside school in the car. I lobbed my bag on the back seat.

  ‘Hi, love,’ she said, but I could see straight away something was up. She pulled out into the road before she told me. ‘The police took Gary in.’

  I got a nasty acidy taste in the back of my mouth. ‘What?’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘They asked to have his van too.’ She glanced across at me. ‘They said CCTV showed a Ford Transit on Rectory Road when Alice disappeared. They said they only got a part index on camera, but it’s the same as Gary’s.’

  ‘What’s a part index?’ I said.

  ‘Just part of the number plate. The last two letters, I think Gary said. That’s all they could see on the CCTV, but they match Gary’s.’

  I was stunned. I didn’t really know what that meant – how unlikely it’d be for a van to have the same last letters as another van.

  ‘They can’t say how long they’ll have it, either. He’s furious, Yaz. They told him about what those girls are saying you said. I think he thinks that’s the real reason they pulled him in. I told him you didn’t say it, but he’s not listening. It’s shaken him, that’s why. It’s being questioned, it’s not nice.’

  I tried to swallow the acid. ‘Is he still there?’

  ‘No, he’s at home.’

  ‘So he’s OK then? I mean, they let him go. They don’t think he did anything?’

  She took her hands off the wheel to shrug. ‘Well, I don’t think so. But they kept his van. He won’t be able to work.’

  ‘But you said he went to pick up piping. The police can check it, can’t they?’

  ‘He said the bloke he got it off wasn’t there. He’d left the pipes out for him.’

  We pulled onto our drive. Mum switched the engine off, undid her seat belt and turned to me. ‘Are you OK?’ she said. ‘You’re not getting any trouble off those girls?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I’m fine.’

  Her eyes were searching mine, full of worry.

  I flipped the door handle. ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

  Gary was standing in the sit
ting room doorway when we came in, leaning against the frame with his arms folded like he’d been waiting there for us.

  I didn’t like the way he was looking at me, his face set like he hated me, so I just said ‘Hi,’ then started up the stairs, even though I knew I wouldn’t get very far.

  ‘Yaz,’ Mum said, putting the keys on the hall table. ‘Come back down.’

  ‘Why?’ I said, even though it was obvious.

  ‘We need to talk.’

  Gary turned and went into the sitting room. Mum waited for me, then followed me in.

  The TV wasn’t on and there was a bottle of whisky on the table next to a full glass and his phone. Gary was standing in front of the fireplace, his arms still folded, watching me.

  Mum sat on the sofa and patted the cushion next to her. I sat down.

  ‘Feeling guilty, are we?’ Gary said. His voice was tense, like he was trying to control it.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ I said.

  ‘Sloping off to your room, when, because of one of your elaborate little fantasies, the police have taken my van.’

  ‘We don’t know that, Gary,’ Mum said, shooting him a look like she didn’t think he was being fair. She put her hand on my knee. ‘It’s not your fault, love,’ she said. ‘It’s just we can’t understand why the police asked Gary to go with them to the station like that, in the middle of a job.’

  ‘You said it was because of the van,’ I said. ‘The part index thing.’

  ‘There’s probably a hundred vans round here with those same letters,’ Gary said, throwing his arm out. ‘It’s because of what you told those girls.’

  I looked at Mum. ‘I didn’t say anything about a man.’

  ‘You didn’t say anything about a man?’ Gary repeated, nodding and pulling a face like he didn’t believe me.

  ‘I didn’t!’ I said.

  ‘Right,’ Gary said. ‘So you didn’t say anything, but suddenly I’m a murder suspect. One minute I’m under a sink, the next I’m in the back of a fucking police car . . .’

  ‘Gary!’ Mum said, ‘That’s . . .’

  ‘ . . . my van hauled off to be – Christ knows what – torn apart!’

  ‘You said you wouldn’t do this,’ Mum said.

  ‘Oh well, excuse me,’ Gary said, sarcastic. ‘But I’ve had enough of this. She must’ve said something, Jen. They pulled me off a job!’ He said it as if the job was the Holy Grail or something – the be all and end all of the universe – his voice going hysterical. ‘Mr Cummings has a bunch of pipes unscrewed and no water!’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Mum said.

  ‘OK then,’ Gary said. He unfolded his arms and held them out like a preacher calling on God. ‘Tell me why those girls would say she told them that?’

  ‘Well, clearly,’ Mum said, moving to the edge of her seat, her voice like Let’s all stay nice and calm now, ‘there’s been a misunderstanding, hasn’t there?’

  Gary threw his arms up.

  ‘She doesn’t know,’ Mum went on. ‘The police asked her about that in front of me. She says she never said anything like that.’

  ‘Three girls heard her,’ Gary said, karate chopping the air. He ran the tip of his tongue backwards and forwards along his bottom lip. ‘Not one. Three, Jen.’

  ‘That could just be . . .’

  ‘They all said the same thing! Exactly the same thing!’ His fingers etched quote marks in the air. ‘That she was “protecting” Alice from “a man”.’

  When neither of us said anything, he started to shake his head, squinting at us like What’s wrong with you people? Like he couldn’t figure out how it was possible for people to be as thick as us.

  ‘Look,’ Mum said. ‘Maybe she made a mistake . . .’

  ‘A mistake?’

  ‘Yes, Gary,’ Mum said firmly, ‘a mistake. She’s a kid for God’s sake.’

  He turned away from us then, then back again, laughing in that horrid way when it’s not laughing at all. ‘A kid?’ he repeated. ‘A kid?’

  Mum stood up.

  His teeth were pulling on his bottom lip so hard the skin kept turning white, and he was shaking his head. ‘She’s fifteen,’ he said. ‘Fifteen. I was working when I was fifteen, so don’t give me that shit, Jen. When’s it gonna stop, eh?’ He was still shaking his head, but even more nastily now, his neck craned at Mum’s face. ‘I mean, come on. She can’t be getting over Terry forever.’

  Then suddenly Mum lost it. ‘That’s enough,’ she bellowed. ‘No more! You hear me?’ She waved her hand behind her back at me. ‘Go upstairs, Yaz! Pay no attention to him! He’s drunk!’

  I went. I wasn’t going to argue, either.

  I’d never seen Gary like that and it scared me.

  As I went up, I heard him say, ‘You only have to look at her to know things aren’t right.’ I imagined him screwing his finger into the side of his head.

  I closed my door. I sat on my bed and stared out the window.

  The sky was grey with a heaviness that meant it was going to get dark any minute. I thought about going downstairs and out of the house, closing the front door quietly behind me. I imagined myself walking up the road, then along Highfield Road to a bus that was waiting just for me. I get off in town and walk up the empty precinct to Cromwell Road, over the pedestrian crossing and up the steps to the police station.

  In my mind, the man behind the desk isn’t too bothered about dealing with me until I say I know who’s got Alice Taylor. He eyes me then, unconvinced, but calls over his shoulder through an open door to someone out the back.

  DI Burke appears, saying Yasmin, like she’s been expecting me, like she’s relieved to see me and I let her lead me along a corridor and sit me down in one of those police rooms with a one-way mirror that looks into it. Then the young officer that was at school – DC Hill – comes in with a hot chocolate and puts a blanket round my shoulders. He asks if I’d like something to eat as well, and I nod and he brings a plate of assorted biscuits like from those fancy tins people get at Christmas.

  I tell them both I’m sorry, and I break down and cry. I say, I hope I’m not too late and I tell them about you. I tell them how you’ve got a dog called Bea and how you said she was grieving because Mrs E. Caldwell died which is why I kept going round – because I felt sorry for her. I tell them I didn’t mean to make friends with you, that it just happened. I tell them, even though you’ve taken Alice, you were always nice to me. I open my hand and show them China Bea.

  But I don’t tell the police everything, even though they’re only listening in my imagination. I don’t tell them about your dark, dark eyes or how, when you look down and smile your sad smile, it makes me want to kiss you.

  Curry for Two

  I was in my room when the doorbell rang the next evening. I heard Mum come out of the sitting room and open the front door, a man’s voice, then DI Burke’s. I recognised it straight away.

  They’ve come for me, I thought. Darren’s remembered about me having a dog and now they know about you and me and everything . . .

  Then I heard Gary shout, ‘This is crazy!’

  Someone was coming up the stairs. I grabbed my inhaler and sucked on it, looking round my room. I thought about trying to escape through the window, but that wasn’t going to happen. That only happens in films. I thought if I tried, I’d just fall and break my legs on the decking. I’d probably go through the decking. So I opened my door.

  An officer in uniform was standing there. I think she’d been about to open it because her hand was out. ‘Hello, love,’ she said. ‘Are you Yasmin Laksaris?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I’m DC Edwards. DI Burke and DC Henderson are downstairs with your parents. We need you to come with us to the station.’

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  ‘We have a warrant for a house search. You need to come immediately.’

  I turned round, looking back at my room. I saw Alice’s Manga girl on the wall over my desk where I’d Blu-Tacked her.

>   ‘You can’t bring anything, I’m afraid,’ the officer said, ‘only prescribed medication. Do you take any medication?’

  I could hear DI Burke downstairs in the sitting room talking in a low voice, like she was reading something, but I couldn’t hear what because Mum kept saying things loudly over the top of her. Things like, ‘You can’t do this!’ and ‘This is wrong, you’ve got it wrong!’

  I opened my hand to show the officer my inhaler. ‘What’s happening?’ I said.

  ‘Is it just the inhaler?’

  Then I was nodding dumbly and she was standing to one side to let me go past her and down the stairs.

  DI Burke came out of the sitting room, looking up at me, and it was like it is in films when it all goes slow motion – Gary coming out behind her, holding his arms in front of him, me seeing that he was holding them like that because his wrists were handcuffed. Me saying, ‘What’s happening?’ again. Then another officer – a man in uniform – coming out behind Gary, a hand on his arm, and Mum behind him, her face all screwed up and wet with tears, going, ‘Nooo, you can’t dooo this!’

  There were two police cars on the road across the top of our driveway, a dark grey car and a van and people everywhere – people in white overalls with hoods putting on blue gloves, people in suits, police officers in uniform. I saw one officer stop Mr Henshaw from next door coming onto our driveway, and the old couple from the next house along standing and watching everything. Gary was put in the back of one of the police cars and Mum and me were told to get in the other one. The woman that had come to get me, DC Edwards, sat between us.

  ‘Gary!’ Mum was calling even when the car he was in had driven off. Then two policemen got in the front seats and we were driving too, making our way slowly through all the people. I turned to see two men in white overalls going in through our front door.