Sincerely, Yours

by Charlotte Barnes

  Connors laughed. ‘Yes, Landon’s quite right.’

  ‘If anyone is an asshole, though…’

  ‘I know, Lan.’ I flashed a tight smile. ‘I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Damn right you will.’ He gave me the same gentle arm punch again. It was probably the most physical contact he and I had had since we’d lost our virginities to each other the summer before. We’d been so desperate to shed childhood that we rushed through it one evening when no one was looking, only to swiftly go back to normal the following day. Little did we know that adulthood on the other side of our virginities would look like grief, formal meetings, and lack of sleep. I would have held on to my hymen a summer longer if someone had warned me.

  After another ten minutes of emotional safeguarding, Connors released us into the outside world so we could walk to our lockers in stoic silence. I got the textbooks I needed and slammed the door closed. ‘Jesus, someone talk.’

  Tyler laughed. ‘How normal do you want us to be?’

  ‘Just – I don’t know, just a normal amount of normal.’

  ‘Why the fuck are you wearing make-up?’ Landon asked.

  A surprised laugh erupted from me; my first in a while. ‘That amount of normal.’

  ‘Okay, but really?’

  ‘Fuck off, Landon, she can wear make-up,’ Jessie chimed in. ‘I think you look really good, Sarah, it suits you.’ She slammed her locker closed. ‘Of course, make-up is a construct of a patriarchal society and you absolutely don’t need it to feel either beautiful or validated by a male-dominated community such as a college setting, because–’

  ‘My Christ,’ Tyler muttered.

  ‘What he said but louder.’ Landon rolled his eyes while he tugged his backpack on. ‘I get it, men are tossers, blah blah, women would be better off without us, yada yada. Take a day off, Jessie. You’ll bore us to death.’

  ‘Better than being strangled.’ The eruption came from somewhere behind, and all four of us shot round together to find the source: Nathanial Evans. At some point we’d all been friends and there’d been a fallout; one of those that people can’t really remember the details of, but they hold the grudge all the same. One or all of us would have the occasional disagreement in a corridor and nothing more ever came of it. But this.

  ‘Evans–’

  ‘Come on, Landon,’ he carried on, ‘Sarah can take it. At least that’s what I’ve heard.’ He closed the gap between us and stood level with my ear as he dropped his voice. ‘Or maybe you’re more the type to watch.’

  Connors called Madison to collect me early, which she dutifully did. There was an adult meeting that I wasn’t present for; it made me wonder whether I had more of my childhood left than I’d realised. She left the room but Connors stayed in the office, and with a head nod Madison guided me out into the car park. We were both buckled into our respective seats when she let out a heavy sigh and dropped her head back.

  ‘A brawl in the hallway, Sarah.’

  ‘It wasn’t a brawl.’

  ‘Quite right, a brawl involves two people.’ She leaned across to open the glovebox and pulled out a battered packet of cigarettes. ‘My understanding is that you thumped the kid in the cheek, so hard that he hit his head on the locker behind him. That sound about right?’

  I looked out of the window. ‘Yes.’

  The cigarettes came into my line of vision; Madison was holding the lid open for me to take one. ‘It sounds like the prick deserved it anyway.’

  ‘I can smoke?’

  ‘Only in emergencies.’ She handed over the lighter. ‘And for celebrating minor victories.’ While I lit a cigarette – something I’d only ever done in secret before then – Madison rolled down her window. ‘I’m glad to have a kid who can stick up for herself. Your mother would be too.’

  6

  College was difficult. To begin with no one had wanted to say the wrong thing for fear of offending me. After Nathanial, no one wanted to say the wrong thing for fear of a black eye. Although, given a choice of the two, the second seemed the safest for me – particularly given that another week had rolled by with no news from the police, neither about Mum nor the woman who came before her. The weeks knocked together and I became aware of a near tangible worry sitting between me and everyone around me: wedged on the dining table while Madison and I ate; puffing out clouds of black fury while Landon and I tried to be the cool smokers. No one was saying it, but collectively everyone wondered what the weeks would mean; if he waited the first time, how long might he wait for a second?

  ‘Serial killers usually have shorter cooling off periods the more murders they do.’

  Madison choked on a mouthful of mashed potato. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘It’s three weeks tomorrow.’

  ‘Who said anything about a serial killer?’

  I shrugged. ‘You think he’ll kill two women and stop?’

  ‘I think he’s a deeply disturbed individual–’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I cut across her and she looked relieved. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘Sarah, you’re allowed to say anything here.’ She set her cutlery down even though she was only halfway through the meal. It was something I’d started doing, ruining the most basic daily events for people. A lot of my friends couldn’t get through a meal in front of me either, with me shuffling food around my plate, thinking about how Mum would never eat again. ‘Where did you go?’

  I looked up. ‘What?’

  ‘You looked like…’ she paused to think. ‘Never mind. I’ll wash up while you find trash on television.’ She stood. ‘You’re off college tomorrow, too, I meant to say.’ She said it like it was nothing.

  ‘Why? I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Police interview. They’ve got some questions about your mum.’

  I’ve got some questions about their police work, I thought as I pushed back from the table. But Madison and I were learning the different ways to navigate each other. If she were prepared to talk about it, she would. The rest of the evening passed without mention of the visit, until she lingered in the living room doorway for a second too long on her way to bed.

  ‘We have to be there for eleven tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay.’ I didn’t look away from the screen. I stared at that episode of Drag Race with the intensity of a hostage at gun point. ‘I’ll be ready.’

  ‘Sure you’re okay down here on your own?’

  ‘Course.’ I gestured. ‘They’re talking to the judges now. I’ll be up soon.’

  It could have been the same interview room they’d placed me in the first time; in the hours immediately after it had happened. It was hard to tell. And I wondered how many interview rooms they had, dedicated to witnesses and victims. If this room could talk. I looked from corner to corner and spotted three different cameras, discreetly flashing their red eyes. Madison came with me and she, too, sat in silence for the wait. There had been two bottles of water on the table in front of us, one of which she’d cracked open within seconds. The sound of it slowly exhaling back into shape was the only noise that passed between us. When the door opened she and I jumped in synchronicity, as though we hadn’t been ready for someone to enter – but after everything, I suppose, we should have always been ready.

  ‘Sarah, Madison,’ DS Laing said, taking a seat opposite us. Brooks sat alongside her and flashed a thin smile in greeting. I desperately wanted for one of them to accidentally say it was nice to see me, just so I could use the back-pocketed retort of how unpleasant it was to be there – again. ‘Thanks for coming in today. I realise it eats into your college time, Sarah, so we appreciate you helping us.’

  ‘I’m helping myself, really,’ I replied. Madison squeezed my hand, and I couldn’t tell whether it was in support or warning. ‘Mad said there were some things you wanted to talk to me about – about Mum.’

  ‘Of course.’ Laing shuffled her papers like she had during previous visits and I wondered whether it was a nervous tick. ‘We’re currently looki
ng for connections between your mother and a victim from another crime.’

  ‘The earlier woman?’

  She looked put out. ‘It’s hard to say for definite what the connections are–’

  ‘The same murderer, I imagine.’

  ‘Sarah,’ Madison cautioned me.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Laing said, even though I hadn’t apologised. ‘We’re looking for areas in their personal lives that might tie them together and we’re hoping you might be able to help us with that, Sarah, if you feel you can.’

  I wanted to be a petulant child about it. But I also wanted them to find Mum’s murderer. It was a hard balance between the two mindsets. ‘What do you need to know?’

  She signalled to Brooks to take notes. ‘Did your mother have any hobbies or social events that took her out of the house on a regular basis?’

  ‘Thursday night yoga. Is that the sort of thing you’re looking for?’

  ‘Anything like that, yes. Anything that she did regularly, that may not necessarily be in her diary.’

  Madison snorted. ‘If you’re relying on her diary for information then no wonder you’re struggling. She hardly used it.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ I answered, ‘she would take pages out for scrap all the time.’ We swapped smiles. We’d started to have these occasional moments of remembering her; mixed in with the anger and confusion and spite. ‘She didn’t go every week but she did go to a yoga class now and then, usually Thursdays if she was going, down at the sports centre in town. She mostly worked from home but there’s a café – I can’t remember…’ I trailed off, thinking.

  ‘Monty’s?’ Madison suggested and I snapped my fingers.

  ‘Yes, Monty’s. She’d work there sometimes. I don’t know how well she knew the people. Well enough that they knew her order, but not so well that she sent Christmas cards.’

  Laing waited for Brooks to catch up before she looked back at us. ‘This is something that one or both of you might be able to help with. We haven’t found evidence to suggest this in your mother’s belongings, so we certainly don’t mean to imply it. But was she romantically involved with anyone?’

  ‘No,’ Madison and I answered in sync.

  The detective looked between us. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘She hasn’t been on a date in two years.’

  ‘Sarah’s father was Eve’s longest relationship,’ Madison added.

  ‘And that ended on good terms?’ Brooks asked, pen poised.

  ‘It certainly wasn’t bad terms. Eve fell pregnant and he didn’t feel ready for fatherhood. She said she was ready for motherhood. That was all that happened, really. He kept in touch for a while, but he really didn’t want a child.’

  Laing threw me a look to gauge my reaction.

  ‘This isn’t anything that Sarah doesn’t already know,’ Madison added.

  ‘Although, if I may,’ I said, ‘it seems unlikely that a man who hasn’t had contact with me for my entire life would come back seventeen years in to kill Mum.’ The bluntness of the announcement seemed a surprise to the room. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No,’ Laing held up a hand, ‘you’re quite right.’ She made a note of something. ‘Even in fleeting relationships, though, there haven’t been any problems?’

  ‘Fleeting relationships?’ I parroted back and Laing winced as though immediately spotting the error. ‘What does that even mean?’

  ‘Sarah–’

  ‘No, Mad, I want to know what counts as a fleeting relationship.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sarah, I only meant–’

  ‘I think it’s clear what you meant.’

  ‘Maybe we’re finished here for today?’ Madison set her hand on my arm. ‘Unless you’ve got any more questions?’

  ‘Sarah, I really didn’t mean to imply anything negative about your mother,’ Laing carried on as though Madison hadn’t spoken but when I didn’t take the bait she circled back. ‘If you think of anything or anyone who might be helpful, or of interest, then don’t hesitate about getting in touch with us.’

  ‘We’ll do that.’

  The grown-ups handled the rest of the conversation for me. Madison signed us out of the police station and led me to the car, while my arms stayed firmly crossed over my chest to form a protective stance. She didn’t force a conversation; she knew me better, I suppose. But she did let me be sad, and quiet, and petulant. Then she let me sob my heart out when we got home.

  7

  Before Mum died, I would have described kiss-and-tell newspaper stories as something reserved for footballers and other non-celebrities. But apparently claiming to have once shared a bed with a murder victim also had an appeal – at least for a handful of people who happened to have slept with victim one, whose name, I learnt from seeing it splashed across headlines, was Jada Burns. She’d been three years younger than Mum; hadn’t had any children; and she’d lived alone a stone’s throw away from our house.

  There were conflicting reports about what she did for a living; articles in the more local print papers seemed to suggest she was a finance manager but the stories that were being periodically uploaded to patches of the internet suggested everything from a maths teacher through to an insolvency practitioner. The one thing there weren’t many discrepancies about, though, was the amount of sexual partners Jada had had which, in a word, seemed to be ‘many’.

  ‘The fleeting relationships question suddenly makes more sense.’

  Landon knocked my phone out of my hand. ‘Why are you even reading that shit?’

  ‘To know more about her.’

  ‘But you won’t know more about her, Sarah. You’ll just know what some dickhead had to say about her, which isn’t the same thing.’

  ‘Are you a feminist?’

  He opened his packet of cigarettes and offered them to me. ‘Look at me, chivalrous and everything.’

  ‘Spark up for me?’

  ‘Fucking hell, shall I smoke it too?’

  ‘Listen to this,’ I continued, scrolling again already, ‘“Jada was always the one that got away for me. If I had my time again then I like to think things would have worked out differently.”’

  ‘I never understand why people say that.’ He made a dragon of himself, exhaling hard through his nose before passing me the cigarette. ‘Isn’t it the most redundant thing to say things would have worked out differently?’

  ‘There’s another one here who seems to think she was the best he had. Another one who said they were close friends. Another one, another one, another one.’

  ‘So, she put it about?’

  ‘You’re a real prick sometimes, do you know that?’

  ‘I’ve been told.’ He exhaled hard again. ‘There’s nothing wrong with putting it about. If anything, I wish more women would.’

  ‘Women do.’ I clicked out of the news article and opened a fresh tab. ‘They’re just not putting it about with you. Now, are you going to help me find out more about this woman or not?’

  ‘Sarah, what do you even want to know?’

  I keyed in her name. ‘I want to know what made her special.’

  Jada Burns was one of many people who didn’t give much thought to the privacy of their social media. Landon and I managed to find her Facebook and LinkedIn in the space of ten minutes, once we’d sifted through enough profile pictures to work out whether we’d got the right woman or not. From her LinkedIn, then, we managed to work out that she was in fact an insolvency practitioner.

  ‘What does that even mean?’

  ‘It means she made people bankrupt.’ I carried on reading. ‘Which presumably means there are lots of suspects.’

  ‘How do you make someone bankrupt?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  She’d worked at the same company for the last seven years, and she’d spent ten years at another company before that. Her employment history at least made her seem like a reliable person. All of her specialist skills – time management, written and spoken communication, other generic entr
ies on a CV – were endorsed by tens of people, and there were bitesize reviews at the bottom of her qualifications that explained Jada was ‘respectful, consistent and a joy to work with’, among other things. There was nothing listed that might give anyone reason to kill her. But I didn’t know whether I’d expected it to be that easy.

  ‘Good person all round then. Smoke?’ He bit down on a butt.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Sarah, haven’t we looked for long enough?’

  ‘It’s been an hour.’ I lowered my phone. ‘There must be something that made her a target.’

  ‘Any number of things could do that. Murderers aren’t known for their logic!’

  ‘Except they are,’ I snapped back. ‘It’s just working out what the logic is.’

  I pulled up Jada Burns’ Facebook page. I wondered how long it would take for them to remove the profile altogether. Is there a timeline for these things? I thought, scrolling through her most recent updates. Mum hadn’t used social media; she always said she didn’t understand the point. It was one of the few things I’d had to be grateful for; one less thing in her name to close down. Although Madison had handled most things: bills; mortgage; talking to Mum’s life insurance company.

  ‘Should I have life insurance?’ I’d asked Madison, while she was knee-deep in premium details and paperwork.

  ‘Are you planning on dying?’

  She hadn’t looked up when I didn’t answer.

  ‘Jada updated her statuses a lot,’ I said. ‘Feeling sad, feeling excited, visiting friends.’

  ‘So she had a normal life is what I’m hearing?’

  ‘She doesn’t have a relationship status,’ I added, skipping over Landon’s question.

  ‘Which makes sense, right? I mean, given everything we’ve read about her.’ Landon pulled out his own phone. ‘This is going to be easier with two of us doing it.’

  ‘What’s the point in us both reading her profile?’

  ‘I won’t. I’ll read headlines.’