The Text

by Claire Douglas

  Claire Douglas

  * * *

  THE TEXT

  Contents

  The Text

  Follow Penguin

  I send the text without thinking. I’m distracted, stabbing away at the keys on my phone while sounding off to Yasmin as she drives down the rain-drenched streets. My fingers won’t work fast enough. They feel unusually clumsy and I nearly drop the phone into the footwell.

  I’ve been planning my long weekend to Edinburgh with the girls for months, and tonight, just as I was about to leave the office, my boss Andrew announces that he’s not sure if he can let me have the time off after all.

  ‘What an arsehole!’ I rant to Yasmin as I thump out the text message to my boyfriend Stuart. ‘Andrew says he doesn’t know if he can “spare me”. He just wants to keep me hanging on for a whole week. Another one of his mind games.’

  ‘It won’t be the same if you can’t come,’ Yasmin sulks, her thick brows drawn tightly. There is something wolf-like about her, with her long sharp nose and thick dark hair that spills over her shoulders. I’ve always admired her looks. I’m so pale and uninteresting in comparison, Stuart calls me the Milkybar Kid. Even in the summer I never tan. Yasmin works in a different department to me. Human Resources. Her boss, Tracey, is fun and fair and would never pull a stunt like Andrew has just to prove herself. Tracey even allows her team flexi-time.

  The rain slashes down and the wind shakes Yasmin’s little Fiat so that she has to clasp the wheel tightly, her knuckles turning white. Despite being in her mid-20s she only passed her test a few months ago and is still a nervous driver, especially now the nights have drawn in. She jokes that she’s always been a late bloomer, not even kissing a guy until she was nineteen.

  ‘I’m bloody furious,’ I say as I press send on the text. ‘Just because he has no life.’

  I hear her phone bleep in her coat pocket and she’s momentarily distracted, her eyes flickering downwards and then back to the road. We are now in the suburbs, not far from my street and I’m suddenly desperate for a sympathetic hug from Stuart.

  ‘I heard today that Andrew’s wife has left him. Finally.’ She looks delighted to be the one to impart this piece of office gossip. I think of Andrew’s wife – a slight, timid woman with big, frightened cow eyes who, very occasionally, meets him for lunch. Caroline, or Carolyn. Something like that. I can’t imagine her striking up the courage to walk out on Andrew.

  ‘Apparently he’s been shagging Lucinda,’ I say. ‘Maybe she found out?’

  A shadow passes across Yasmin’s face. ‘Lucinda? That can’t be right. She would have told us, surely?’

  I shrug. ‘Who knows? Anyway, imagine shagging Andrew, with his middle-aged spread and his receding hairline. I bet he’s crap in bed!’

  Yasmin chuckles, although it sounds forced. My anger sits in the pit of my stomach, like a stodgy meal. Stu will be secretly pleased. He was never keen on me going away without him. Not that I’ve said as much to Yasmin. I don’t want her to think he’s controlling.

  ‘Will Stu be home yet?’ she asks as she pulls up outside my house, a small two-bedroom new build that Stu already owned when I met him nearly four years ago. He’s practical like that, is Stu. Sensible with money, unlike me. He’s always saying I spend too much. He promised to put my name on the mortgage too, considering I’m contributing, although he hasn’t got around to doing it yet. It’s a big step I suppose.

  The street is deserted even though it’s only 6pm. Our dustbin has fallen over in the wind and is rolling around on the pavement like a drunk. The house is dark and unwelcoming.

  ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ I say.

  I glance down at the phone in my lap. There’s no reply from Stu. He’s probably still on the train. I imagine him hunched over his laptop, trying to cram in a bit of extra work on his commute home. Always so diligent. He’s a microbiologist for a drugs firm. He has a PhD, a career, he’s going places. I thought I was too until Helen was replaced by that misogynist Andrew and now the atmosphere in the accounts department is heavy and oppressive, as if we are sitting under a grey cloud, waiting for the storm.

  I don’t like coming home to an empty house. I prefer it when Stu arrives first. When he is pottering in the kitchen, making a start on dinner, pervading the place with the comforting smells of cottage pie, his signature dish, which usually signifies he’s in a good mood. That I can relax.

  The engine ticks over but I don’t get out the car. It’s warm and cosy in here with Radio One playing quietly in the background and the rain drumming on the roof and bonnet like an amateur pianist plonking out a tune. I rummage in my bag for my umbrella, stalling, not wanting to be alone with my anger and resentment.

  I sense rather than see Yasmin reach into the pocket of her wool coat.

  ‘Oh, Em, you’ve sent me a text,’ she says, and I turn to see her frowning over her mobile. I haven’t sent her any text. I grab the phone from her, my eyes scanning the words as a cold, sick feeling creeps over me.

  Hi babe. Andrew’s being difficult about next weekend. I’m so angry! He said he’s not sure he can let me have the time off to go to Edinburgh. What an arsehole. I SO hope he dies!

  It’s the text I was meant to send to Stu.

  Yasmin gasps. ‘Blimey, Em, that’s a bit harsh isn’t it? Wishing him dead.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to write that. I was typing too fast. I meant I hope he does. As in, I hope he does let me have the time off. How did I send it to you and not Stu?’ And then I see. At the top of the text there is a row of names. Seth. Yasmin. Lucinda.

  I gasp. ‘Oh, shit. I haven’t only sent it to you. I’ve gone and bloody sent it to our work group.’

  ‘What? Let me see,’ she takes the phone from my hand, her lips twitching. ‘Oh, Em, only you could do something like this.’

  ‘What if Lucinda tells him? Or shows him? I’ll lose my job.’

  Yasmin, who usually has an answer for everything, falls silent. Eventually she pipes up, ‘Lucinda wouldn’t do that though, would she? She’s our mate.’

  ‘She’s crossed the line.’ I reach for the door handle. ‘And she kept it a secret. She’s no longer one of us. How can we trust her now?’

  I wake up the next morning with my stomach churning. I can’t face breakfast. Stuart is in the shower. I can hear him whistling to Ed Sheeran and it irritates me. How can he be so jolly after what happened last night?

  When he got home from work, crumpled-looking and late – as was becoming the norm – I told him about Andrew. He’d shrugged, seemingly unconcerned, and I’d accused him of being secretly pleased that my weekend away might be scuppered. We rowed and he stormed out, slamming the door so hard the frame shook. He rolled in at 1am, smelling of alcohol and kebabs.

  We get dressed and head downstairs in brooding silence. Then he plants a perfunctory kiss to the side of my head and stalks out of the house with his briefcase in one hand and a piece of toast in the other. I lean against the sink, sipping a black coffee to try and revitalise myself as I watch for Yasmin out of the kitchen window. She only lives a few streets away in a studio flat, so we take it in turns to drive to work. She’s still single. She always says she likes her independence but personally I think she’s too fussy. Nobody is ever good enough for her. A few minutes later her little red car pootles down the road and stops outside my house.

  I’m grumpy and on edge as I slide into the passenger seat. I’ve hardly slept, worrying whether Lucinda has told Andrew about the text. Will he humiliate me in front of the department like the bully that he is? Or sack me on the spot?

  ‘I’m sure Lucinda won’t tell him,’ Yasmin tries to reassure me as we park around the corner from the office. ‘And he can’t just sack you. I should know.’ She gives me a wry smile, r
eferring to her role in HR. ‘There are procedures in place. The most he’ll give you is a verbal warning.’

  The sky is grey and there is an icy wind in the air, but at least it’s not raining. I wrap my scarf further up my neck and Yasmin links her arm through mine. She seems surprisingly chirpy this morning. I tell her so and she throws her head back and laughs. ‘It’s Friday, thank goodness. And a week today, Edinburgh.’ Then she glances at me, remembering, and her face falls. ‘I bet he lets you have the time off, Em. He surely can’t be that much of a bastard.’

  ‘Oh, he is,’ I say darkly.

  We travel up in the lift together and she preens in the mirror, fixing her hair and wiping the lipstick from her teeth. I stand morosely beside her, my stomach contracting as the doors open. I dread walking through the open plan office to the Accounts department.

  ‘See you at lunch then, yeah?’ says Yasmin, waving her fingers at me and hitching her bag over her shoulder. I nod, unable to speak. She lowers her voice, ‘Good luck,’ and then saunters off in the opposite direction to her lovely department with her kind, fair boss.

  As soon as I walk into Accounts I’m hit by an air of euphoria that’s spreading around the department like a Mexican wave. Seth is by the drinks machine chatting to Lucinda, Martin is flicking through a copy of the Sun and Lorraine is gossiping on the phone, her feet up on the desk, her big toe poking through her flesh-coloured tights.

  ‘What’s going on? Where’s Andrew?’ I call across to Seth.

  He shrugs and pulls a face. ‘Not turned up for work.’

  Lucinda’s eyes are round and overly made up, the lilac eye shadow nudging her fine eyebrows. Her hair is in a poker-straight bob that curls under her chin. I wonder how early she must get up in the morning to style it. ‘Yeah, can you believe it?’ she says.

  ‘No. Not really,’ I say shortly, dumping my bag beside my desk. I’m still cross with her for hiding the fact she’s been shagging Andrew. Was she going to tell me in Edinburgh? Andrew isn’t quibbling over letting her have the time off, I notice.

  I glare in the direction of Andrew’s empty office. It is unheard of for him to be absent. In the whole eight months he’s been at Newton, Smith and Co he’s never had a day’s sick leave. He doesn’t even go on holiday. Me and Seth like to joke that he’s not actually human but an alien or a robot because he’s so devoid of emotion. We call him Android between ourselves.

  I sit down heavily and turn my computer on, shrugging off my coat and draping it on the back of my chair. Lucinda shifts over to me, cupping her coffee mug between her fine boned hands. Her lips twitch. ‘That text you sent last night, Ems. I suppose it wasn’t meant for me?’

  Seth joins her. He’s so lanky he towers over us both. ‘I pissed myself when I read it. Imagine if you’d sent it to Android by mistake?’

  ‘I don’t have his mobile phone number, thankfully.’ I shoot a glance at Lucinda. ‘And you better not mention it to him. I was just angry, alright? I’m over it now.’

  Lucinda rolls her eyes. ‘You certainly look it,’ she says sarcastically. ‘You said you hope he dies.’

  How many more times am I going to have to explain myself? I sigh. ‘I was supposed to write does. DOES. It’s a typo. I don’t want him to die. Obviously.’

  Seth looks unconvinced. ‘Yeah, right. Whatever you say,’ he winks.

  When Yasmin pulls up outside my house that evening, there is a man and a woman standing on my doorstep. The street is dark and eerily silent around them.

  ‘Who are they?’ I say, pressing my nose against the glass as Yasmin reverses behind my Renault.

  ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses?’ offers Yasmin.

  ‘I … I think it might be the police,’ I say, noticing their officious stance, their long trench coats, their sensible shoes.

  ‘Shit, why do you have the cops at your door, Em?’ Yasmin sounds panicked.

  My heart races. Has something happened to Stu? An array of possible scenarios flash through my mind; his train has derailed, he’s fallen on to the track, he’s been knocked over by a bus on the way to the train station, he’s been attacked, robbed, stabbed.

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ she says pulling her handbrake on and turning off the ignition.

  I can only nod. We get out the car and walk towards the house.

  ‘Emily Latimer?’ asks the woman officer, holding up her police identification. She’s older than her colleague. Hard-faced with dyed red hair and piercing blue eyes. She doesn’t look particularly sympathetic, she doesn’t look as though she’s about to break it to me that my boyfriend has just been killed. If anything she looks annoyed, suspicious. My first feeling is one of relief, quickly replaced by dread.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, warily. ‘Is everything okay? Is it Stuart?’

  She ignores my question. ‘I’m DS Simpson and this is DC Grey.’ She indicates the man standing next to her. Blond, tall, and about my age. My eyes dart between them, my heart racing. ‘We would like to ask you some questions. About Andrew Burton.’

  ‘Andrew?’ I’m immediately thrown. Why would she want to talk to me about Andrew?

  She clears her throat. ‘Can we come in?’

  They step aside to allow me to the front door, Yasmin close at my heels. They follow me into our small living room and I’m conscious of the smell of rotten vegetables and last night’s salmon emanating from the kitchen. The dustbin needs emptying in readiness for tomorrow’s collection. Stuart will be cross if I don’t do it. He hates mess.

  DS Simpson perches on the arm of the worn sofa. I find myself asking them if they’d like anything. Tea? Coffee? But they both decline, shaking their heads gravely. I sit on the sofa next to Yasmin, who’s gone quiet, staring down at her hands in her lap.

  DS Simpson speaks. She has a hard Scottish accent. ‘Andrew Burton was found dead this morning. Extensive stab wounds to the chest.’

  Yasmin gasps and I reel as the room tilts. ‘Stabbed?’ My mouth is dry. ‘That’s … that’s awful.’ I can’t take in what I’m hearing. Dead? Andrew’s dead?

  Yasmin grips my wrist and I turn to her. She looks like she’s about to faint.

  DS Simpson notices. ‘Are you alright, love?’ she asks Yasmin.

  Yasmin nods but she’s deathly pale.

  ‘It’s … it’s a shock,’ I say, my voice sounding strange.

  ‘And can I take your name, miss?’ DS Simpson asks Yasmin.

  ‘Yasmin. Yasmin Beech. We work together.’

  DS Simpson leans towards Yasmin like an animal about to pounce on its prey. ‘So, Yasmin. You worked with Andrew Burton too?’

  She nods. ‘Yes, but different departments.’

  DS Simpson pulls a notebook from her bag. ‘We just need to ask you both a few questions. Where were you last night?’

  I sit up straighter. ‘Me? Well, I was … Why do you want to know?’

  ‘We’re asking everyone who worked with him, Miss Latimer. It’s just procedure,’ she says, yet there is something in her voice that makes me wonder if she’s being completely honest with me.

  ‘I was here. All night.’

  ‘Is there anybody who can confirm that?’

  ‘Well, yes. My boyfriend. Stuart.’

  ‘He was here with you the whole time?’

  I fidget, feeling uncomfortable. ‘Well, no, not the whole time. He came home late from work. We had a row. He stormed out and went to the pub.’

  ‘What time did he come home?’

  ‘Around 1am.’ I catch Yasmin’s eye. She looks like she might throw up.

  DS Simpson scribbles something in her notebook. Without looking up she says, ‘And you, Miss Beech?’

  ‘I was … alone. At home. But I hardly knew Andrew …’ she tails off.

  The detectives exchange glances. I know what they’re thinking. Yasmin looks like she is going to be sick. I can understand her reaction, because I feel the same. Someone we know has been murdered. Murdered. The word hovers over both of us like a spectre, shak
ing the foundations of our safe little bubble of a world.

  DC Grey speaks for the first time. His voice is deeper than I imagined it would be and his cheeks redden slightly as he talks. ‘What did you row with your boyfriend about, Miss Latimer?’ he asks.

  I meet his gaze head on, trying not to feel intimidated.

  ‘I was already upset because Andrew was being difficult about letting me have some time off. Stuart wasn’t being very sympathetic and … and it escalated from there.’

  He moves across the room in two long strides so that he’s standing right next to where DS Simpson is perched. Stuart should be home any minute. What will he think when he sees two police officers cluttering up our small living room? He’ll get cross, thinking I’m in trouble because I’ve forgotten to pay another parking fine, or had to be towed from the double yellow lines on the high street, like last time.

  He clears his throat. ‘Is it true that you sent a text message to your friends saying you wished Andrew Burton dead?’

  The text. That bloody text. I explain as quickly as I can. ‘It was a mistake. I was supposed to write does,’ I finish. How does he know about the text? Who would try and land me in it? I think of Lucinda, wide-eyed and not so innocent. Lucinda, who I thought was my friend but was shagging the boss in secret like the traitor she is. ‘Surely you don’t think I had something to do with it?’

  ‘We are just gathering information at this stage,’ says DC Grey non-committedly. ‘You said yourself you were upset with him …’

  ‘Yes, but not enough to want to kill him,’ I splutter. ‘Don’t you ever get cross with your boss?’

  He reddens and I can see he’s trying not to look at his colleague. ‘Do either of you know anybody who’d want to hurt Andrew Burton?’

  It’s out of my mouth before I have time to really think about what I’m saying. ‘He was having an affair. Apparently. With Lucinda Norris.’ I feel Yasmin elbow me in the ribs but I carry on, ‘I heard that his wife had just found out and left him.’

  DS Simpson frowns. ‘Lucinda Norris? And she’s one of your friends?’