by Naomi Joy
‘Of course,’ she replies calmly, guiding the woman to the patient seat. ‘How can we help you this morning?’
‘I’ve always been like this,’ the woman explains, peeling back her sleeves to reveal a coat of thick, dark hair. ‘And I need it all gone. Permanently.’
Bella runs through what will happen next, hiding how awful she’s feeling behind a mask of professionalism. She tells the woman she’ll need to shave her arms first then, once they’re smooth, she’ll fire a laser deep into her hair follicles, destroying them. She tells her to expect a bit of discomfort. ‘But please don’t worry, you’re a fantastic candidate for this procedure. I’m confident we’ll achieve a really good result.’
She says that to all the impatients.
‘Will there be any scars?’ the lady asks.
‘No, but the area will be very sensitive to sunlight afterwards. You’ll have to wear a high factor SPF outside but, ideally, you need to keep your arms covered.’
Bella looks over at me and I offer the woman a razor. The patient hurries out to the customer toilet, and returns to the chair moments later, ready for the main event.
‘Here we go,’ Bella says on autopilot as she administers the first hit. I watch as the patient’s hands turn yellow as she squeezes the armrest. ‘The first one’s always the worst,’ Bella assures her, then aims her conversation towards me. ‘It’s really important the area is clean and smooth before you start IPL, it also helps if the room is cool – although on a day like today we can’t always control that.’
I nod, taking it all in, learning from the best. It’s my dream to follow in Bella’s footsteps and become an aesthetic nurse one day. I must admit, since I’ve been speaking to the doctor, that my desire to be more like her – not just professionally – has intensified. I find myself staring at our respective reflections in the mirror opposite. Wisps of peroxide hair cling to my forehead, my pink lipstick long melted, electric-blue eyeliner smudged across my eyelids. I am the kind of person who longs to look groomed and polished but always comes off a little scruffy, even when I’m not cripplingly hungover. Rushed, that’s how Rick described my Valentine’s Day outfit last year. Bella, in contrast, though she’s paler than usual, shines in a way that I never do. Her jaw is fine and chiselled, created by a top cosmetic surgeon, her pouty lips subtly plumped with filler, her eyes a deep, mysterious aqua-blue. She is the very picture of perfect. No wonder Alex Daniels has fallen for her.
I look deep into the reflection of my friend, feeling guilty. I still haven’t told her my secret. Mainly because I know what she’d say: that I’m being stupid, that I need to walk away, that I need to stop.
But I can’t.
I turn away and check my phone, swiping my keycode over my love-heart screensaver.
No new messages.
My heart sinks and my brain wanders. Where is he?
I blink quickly to hide my disappointment, my mind looping to thoughts of alcohol and escapism, to another night trying to forget the person who’s already forgotten all about me.
Annabella
Now
A branch snaps in two beneath my right foot, invisible in the dark that engulfs the back garden.
I’d accessed it through the garden gate to the right of the property. I’d noticed during my weeks of surveillance that it’s often left open overnight on a Tuesday after the gardener has been to tend to the weeds. It’s the kind of detail that meticulous people like me pick up on. I’d smiled as the circular handle had given way freely, the swing of the hinge silent, the click shut barely perceptible.
I slip into a gap in the hedge, my breath coming quicker at the sound of the branch breaking beneath my weight. To me it had sounded like a gunshot, a fork of lightning kissing the earth, but to the world it had gone unnoticed. As much often does. I look up once I am sure I have not been caught: the windows of the house remain dark, glass-like, reflecting the sway of the trees in the park beyond. I pull the black balaclava down over my face, my eyes my only visible feature, my breath panting into the material. I do not have props, or tools, just a bag with a change of clothes and a simple plan, a clear purpose.
The man inside this house needs to face justice.
Rick Priestley: arrested in connection with the disappearance of Tabitha Rice. Rick Priestley: accused but not charged. Rick Priestley: the cheater. The liar. The narcissist. The partner you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy let alone your best friend.
There is something hypnotic about being this close to him, about being in the confines of his garden finally taking action after years of none. But I must be careful. He’s dangerous. I check my watch, wondering what it is that I am waiting for. It has to be now. Mandy’s routine is erratic and she spends most of her time at home. I’d wanted to break in during the day when the house would be empty but I couldn’t take the chance of Mandy coming back and raising the alarm. My teeth chatter, goose bumps rising along my forearms, dotting their way down my legs. The cold of the grass seeps into my skin and chills me further. I look up once more into the dark windows, checking for the slightest of movements. I imagine them lying in bed, side by side, sleepy limbs stretched across the mattress. I think about their routine, a perfunctory kiss before bed, then a synchronised roll to their respective sides. Mandy’s hair will be tied back, her face washed and scrubbed clean, her eyes covered with a fluffy mask, chest rising and falling. He’ll be snoring. noisy, grunty. My heartrate quickens as I imagine being near them. What if I am caught?
I close my eyes and pull on the gloves – gardening ones I’d found in their shed – clammy palms fitting the space. My mouth is dry, parched, every sense heightened, every sinew tense. I know already what I have to do, I just don’t want to do it. It will be worth it, I tell myself. He’ll have been careless, there will be something in that house which proves his guilt. It will be hidden, probably, something he can’t risk throwing away. I just need to build up the courage to go in there and find it, whatever it is.
I rise gently from the undergrowth and take a few silent steps towards the back door, leaving my bag by the exit. I move the plant pot up, drag the spare key from its hiding place and fit it into the lock.
I take my first tentative step inside, towards a man who should be seeing bars for the rest of his life, and wonder if he’s proud of himself.
Not many people get away with murder.
*
I wait until silence has engulfed the house once more, until the hands of the hallway clock are the loudest noise, tick-tick-tick, mirroring the beat of my heart. Only then, when I am calm, do I press on. I must hurry.
I pad through the hallway, hearing my own muted footsteps, and crack open the door to my right which leads to the living area. It’s a plush open space, the chrome and marble of the kitchen sweeping to the creams of the lounge, a Jacquard print rug on the floor. I scan the room, my eyes landing on a white-gloss cabinet, photo frames, and a small stack of mother-of-pearl boxes on top, pushed up against the far wall. I fumble with the handle-less drawers, realising eventually that you have to press them to open them, the latch mechanism inside the drawer rather than out. I depress, then open, all three.
But there’s nothing inside.
I open the boxes on top, spending too long fiddling with the clasps. All empty. I turn, spot a bookcase pressed up against the opposite wall, and hurry over to it, levering out multi-coloured spines one by one. But I don’t find anything I can use. Dust whips the air and I stifle a sneeze into the sleeve of my black windbreaker. A muffled squeak, as though I’ve just stepped on a mouse, carries through the house and I freeze once more, waiting to be caught, my heart beating so loud I’m afraid it will give me away.
When I’m sure that the coast is clear, I move faster, to the kitchen, into the silver edges I’ve been observing for so long, the surfaces near-vibrating as I run my excited fingers across them. I duck down and scatter the kitchen with bills and manuals and scrap pieces of paper shoved into drawers and forgotten about.
But still nothing grabs my attention.
I’ll have to go upstairs.
I sneak from the kitchen to the hallway, the glass window of the back door reflecting my macabre image back at me, all black, my pupils sparkling as they pick up the glow of the moon from beyond. I hardly recognise myself. Which is a good thing. I do not want to be recognised.
I take a deep breath, fill my body with oxygen, the peachy, floral scent of their home thick in my lungs, and tell myself I’m ready for what’s next. I grip the wood of the handrail and place my foot on the first step. I take each more quietly than the next, attempting to glide over the carpet rather than step on it.
Three doors greet me when I reach the landing, standing one after the other in a line, the corridor reaching long to the back of the house. I tiptoe towards the first and press my ear to the frame. Nothing. I twist the handle: porcelain features sparkle back. A bathroom. White subway tiles, a matte-black basin, a house plant with green tendrils curling round the windowsill. I must keep going. I leave the door ajar and move on to the next. The sound of slumber rolls from within – it must be their bedroom – so I slip past it, but a loose plank betrays me and squeals beneath my weight. Sweat trickles from the nape of my neck.
‘Rick?’ Mandy’s voice seeps through the door just ahead.
I stop. Confused.
I hear her ask again.
‘What?’ Rick grunts from the door behind me, annoyed. Separate bedrooms. Mandy’s room is in front of me, Rick’s behind, me in the middle.
‘Was that you?’
‘What are you talking about?’ he sleep-shouts back. I listen to him half-turn, the springs of his bed stirring with him. I pick up the irritated trill in his voice. Stupid woman, he wants to say. ‘Go to sleep. It’s nothing. You’re always hearing things.’
She is.
His mistake is not believing her.
She settles down. I don’t know why. Why does his patronisation make her feel better? It’s perverse.
I am not here to hurt her. I wish I could tell her that. Just go back to sleep, listen to Rick, let me get what I’m looking for and I’ll leave you in peace.
The final door is about ten steps away and it’s ajar, inviting me in. I could wait here, quietly, until I’m sure they’re both asleep again, or go for it. As I’m weighing it up, long before I have the chance to make up my mind, Mandy’s bedroom door handle twists and the mechanism turns slowly from inside. The movement is cautious, which is lucky, because it gives me a chance to dart to the room at the end of the corridor – my hips stretching the full range of their sockets as I leap out of sight. I flatten myself into the wall as she pauses at the threshold, my breath heavy, hers light. I imagine her sticking her neck, giraffe-long, into the hallway, checking right then left before tottering out. Her footsteps pad across the landing, then fade as she walks towards the bathroom. Mandy will be wearing grey jersey pyjamas with love hearts for buttons, her mess of dark hair wild and untamed – as though drawn by an angry child looping furious circles with black crayon on white paper. I close my eyes and try to steady my breath. Cold sweat sticks to my body. That was close.
While she’s in the bathroom, I take the opportunity to examine the shelves to my left. I don’t have long. I must hurry. I look around, deducing quickly that I’m in Rick’s study, a desktop PC resplendent in the centre, an office chair tucked neatly behind a sturdy desk. A framed certificate of his Oxford University degree sits behind it and I make a snap judgement: clearly nothing in his adult life has eclipsed this achievement, still pride of place after all these years. But then I suppose they don’t give out certificates for well-executed executions, do they?
My gloved fingers flick through papers and notepads and, just as I am losing hope, I find something: a cardboard box marked ‘OLD’. I pull off the top and, buried beneath a few books about espionage and cyber-warfare, are a collection of old passports, the tops snipped away at the corner. I open a few – they’re all of Rick – and then, right at the bottom of the box, I find something else. Bank statements. I shuffle through the top few and notice a pattern. On the first of the month, Rick transfers £1,000 to somebody. There’s no name, just a collection of letters as the reference.
I shudder, my mind looping to secrets and pay-offs and, though there must be more to find in here, I know it’s time to leave when I hear the toilet flush and, moments later, the bathroom door whoosh open. The draft glides into the study, I feel it on my eyelids, the only part of me exposed. I clutch the statements in my hands, then make the decision to leave them where I found them: they’re more powerful here, hidden in Rick’s study, waiting to be unearthed, followed up with a series of uncomfortable questions about why he’s paying someone off. Silencing someone, silencing his secrets.
Kay and I are going to get him, I think. Finally.
I stand tall, press my body against the wall once more, and wait for Mandy to leave the bathroom. I feel the drumbeat of her footsteps as they cross the landing and, just as I’m expecting her to turn and go back into her bedroom, she hesitates. She knows something’s wrong. Her intuition is telling her to investigate.
Her footsteps crescendo as she draws near, coming right for me. My mouth is chalk, my head wool, as I weigh up my options – fight or flight – in the milliseconds that follow. My first instinct is to hide behind the door, but I won’t have time to get there. My second is to hide beneath the desk, but it sits on four exposed legs and wouldn’t cover me. My third is to jump out of the window but I’m not sure it’s big enough. My fourth is to grab the paperweight on the desk, the glass mass heavy in my gloved palm, and rush towards the door. I can’t give her the opportunity to scream. I have to reach her first.
We meet at the threshold, her eyes wild and wired as I ambush her, not giving her a second to react, or for me to change my mind. I watch the paperweight in the reflection of her eyes as I lift it high, then dive it towards her skull. The sound is dull, her head absorbing the worst of the impact, her heart-shaped face broken by the hit, the paperweight still whole as it clatters to the floor. Glass beats bone.
My heart flutters as I stand over her, the horror of what I’ve done to protect my mission, to find out the truth, creeping up on me. I stare at her brick-red cheeks, her right eye caved inwards, her lips covered in cherry-coloured blood, her throat making a horrible choking sound. I didn’t want to hurt you, I want to say, but my voice is trapped in my mouth, something glue-like keeping my tongue from moving. No, I tell myself, I can’t speak to her, I can’t risk being caught. I go to move, to run from here, but find that I can’t, something in me paralysed.
Rick’s voice trickles from his bedroom – ‘Mandy?’ – and it’s this that breaks me from the spell. I snap my neck upwards, thudding back to the present. ‘Is everything OK?’ he asks from the warmth of his duvet.
The annoyance in his tone rises to worry as she doesn’t respond, and I know I must get out or everything will be lost. I take a series of skip-like steps across the landing, fly down the stairs, yank open the door, grab my rucksack, and escape into the dead of the night.
I have what I want – proof for the world that I am right, that Rick has been buying his innocence – but it came at a cost. I run away from what I have done, from the horror of it, but the fear in Mandy’s eyes as I attacked her, plays on a loop I know I am not going to be able to forget.
PART 2
Rick
Fifteen Years Ago – 2005
Perhaps it was hard to believe, coming from someone like me, but Oxford University was never a dream of mine. Not because I hadn’t wanted to go, but because I never thought it would be an option. My family weren’t particularly privileged or wealthy, they weren’t able to buy my place with a large donation to the university’s treasury or butter up the admissions secretary via influential friends. Instead, I went to a state school and, though I was a prize-winner in maths and physics, top of the year in biology, and taking an extra A level because I wanted to, I didn’t also play e
ight different instruments and professional-standard rugby. I dropped my T’s, found it hard to make eye contact, and answered their questions with ‘Yeah’ rather than ‘Yaaaarrrhhss’.
So, it was a surprise, you see, when I was accepted. It meant a lot at the time. I got in – so I thought – for me. Off my own bat. My stellar grades, genuine interest in my chosen subject – Economics – and admissions interview enough. My ego was at an all-time high that summer, I waved goodbye to the lesser mortals from my hometown – most of them choosing to stay and study in the county they grew up in – and set off in late September, wind blowing through the slightly longer hairstyle I’d crafted during the break, a moody side-fringe batting up against my left eyelashes. I was Rick Priestley and I was going to Oxford. These were going to be the best years of my life.
My first lesson came sooner than expected. In fact, it kicked off the moment I arrived, stepping confidently into the wood-panelled corridors, poking my head curiously into the grand dining hall, breathing in the smell of old books, running my eyes across trophies and honours and the gold-plated names of previous alumni. I remember it well; it was a brutal out-of-hours seminar entitled How The World Works. A quick-smart reality check in Who Do You Think You Are?
I was stopped by a student on my way to registration. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘The college is closed for visitors today. We have our freshers arriving! Here, let me show you to the visitor entrance.’
I corrected the student, turning her cheeks grape-purple, but the way she looked at me said it all: Oh. You’re one of ‘those’ freshers.
A political storm had been brewing for a while, Oxford had been lambasted for not accepting high-flying state-school students citing their ‘lack of potential’, and the public were biting back, forcing its rusty gears into a new and reluctant action.
It quickly became clear that I wasn’t here for me. I wasn’t here because I was good enough – far from it – the only reason I got into Oxford was because I wasn’t. The place needed a rebrand, a reputation overhaul, a new kind of student to wheel out to the press when the headlines made for uncomfortable reading. I was in the right place at the right time, one of the chosen few from a splattering of comprehensive schools across the country intended to ‘prove’ that not everyone was a quiff-haired, cravat-necked, double-barrelled somebody. The university resented taking people like me – felt we sullied Oxford’s reputation as a world class institution – but needed us for the right interviews and press releases and for the pages of the matte-finish brochures, as opposed to the glossy ones heading for Eton, our dreary clothes a subliminal message that anyone could make it to Oxford if they tried hard enough. And why wouldn’t you want to go to Oxford? The question was so rhetorical no one ever thought about the answer. And this, unfortunately for me, meant I blended into these hallowed halls like a counterfeit bank note crafted by a plucky eight-year-old.