I wonder if Richard knows. I conclude that he doesn’t when he picks up his phone and starts scrolling through endless pictures of two pretty little blonde girls. He seems eager to share what he thinks I’m missing out on.
‘They’re beautiful,’ I say, and mean it.
His smile widens.
‘They take after their mother in the looks department.’
I feel winded again. I can’t remember Richard ever mentioning his wife before, not that I didn’t know he was married. And not that there is anything wrong with a man loving his wife and children. I suppose having a family does push some couples closer together, instead of pulling them apart. Right now, this all just feels like another reminder of what I don’t have.
‘Well, goodnight,’ I say, standing to leave. ‘For the record, a drink was all that was on offer.’
I manage a smile and he does too. Never good to leave things feeling awkward with a colleague, especially someone who gets to decide whether you look good or bad on-screen to an audience of millions.
I raid the excuse of a minibar alone when I get back to my room. It doesn’t have the biggest or best selection of nightcaps, but it will have to do. Then I sit on the bed, eating overpriced chocolate bars and drinking miniatures while wondering how I got here. Forty-eight hours ago, I was a BBC News presenter. My private life may have been in tatters but at least I still had my career. Now, I’m literally back where I started, in the village I grew up in, reporting on the murder of a girl I knew at school. A girl who hurt me, and who turned into a woman who tried to hurt me again, years after the night that ended our fragile friendship for good.
Rachel called me out of the blue quite recently, I still don’t even understand how she got my number. She said that her charity was in trouble, and asked if I would host an event to help. When I said no – suspecting that if the charity was in trouble, it was most likely the result of her being in charge – she turned up at the BBC. She sat in main reception waiting for me, then hinted that she had something that would damage my career if people ever saw it.
I still said no.
I go to get myself another drink, but the minibar is already empty, so I decide to get ready for bed. I need to be on-air again in a few hours; best to get some sleep if I can.
I take a shower. Sometimes, on stories like these, it can feel as though the stench of death gets on your skin and in your hair. I need to wash it all way, with water so hot, it burns. I don’t know how long I am in the bathroom, but when I come out, the empty bottles and chocolate bar wrappers have been put in the bin, and the bed covers have been pulled down, ready for me to get into.
It’s strange, because I genuinely don’t remember doing it, and this isn’t the kind of hotel to have a turn-down service.
I must be more drunk than I thought.
I climb beneath the sheets and turn off the lights, blacking out almost as soon as my head hits the pillow.
Him
Tuesday 23:55
The house is in complete darkness when I pull into the drive and I’m glad; the last thing I need after a day like today is to have to face an interrogation when I get home. I open the front door as quietly as I can, careful not to wake anyone, but it soon becomes apparent that I needn’t have bothered. The lights might be off, but the TV is on, and when I walk into the lounge I find Zoe watching my ex-wife on the news. I drove past the woods on the way home, and the media had all packed up and left for the night, so I know it isn’t live. It’s just a rerun of her earlier package, but it still feels strange seeing Anna in my home.
‘What the fuck is happening?’ Zoe asks, without looking up.
She’s been texting and calling all day, but I didn’t have the time or inclination to get back to her.
‘If you’ve been watching that, then I expect you already know,’ I say, unable to stop myself from sighing.
‘One of my best friends gets murdered, and you didn’t think to tell me about it?’
‘You haven’t been friends with Rachel Hopkins since you left school. It must be twenty years since you even spoke to her.’ Zoe’s face twists into a rather ugly pattern of fury and hurt, but I’m not in the mood for one of her tantrums tonight. ‘Not everything is about you, Zoe. I’ve had a really long day, and you know I can’t talk about my job, so please don’t ask.’
I’ve never wanted to pollute her world with my problems.
‘You’re wrong about that. Rachel and I spoke quite recently,’ she says, turning off the TV. Then she looks me up and down, as though making a formal assessment and reaching a negative conclusion. ‘Why is your ex-wife here, reporting on the murder of your latest girlfriend?’
I’m too shocked to find a suitable response, because I had no idea that she knew I was sleeping with Rachel. I thought nobody knew. I consider the possibility that she might not know for sure.
‘I don’t know what you mean—’
‘Cut the crap, Jack. I know you’ve been banging her for the last couple of months, though God knows why, of all the people! Were you with her last night?’
I don’t answer.
‘Well, were you?’
‘You’re not my wife, Zoe. And you’re not my mother.’
‘No, I’m your sister, and I’m asking you if you were with Rachel last night?’
‘Are you asking me if I had something to do with this?’
She shakes her head and starts to rearrange the fake fur cushions on the sofa, something she always does when she is most upset. She makes them herself – the cushion covers – and sells them online. It’s a far cry from the fashion design job she dreamed of when we were young.
I notice that she’s dyed her hair bright red again, probably one those DIY box kits she likes so much. She’s missed a bit of blonde hair at the back; last month’s chosen shade. Her pink pyjamas would look more appropriate on my two-year-old niece upstairs than her thirty-six-year-old mother, but I keep my opinions to myself.
‘When I said you could move in with us for a while after the divorce, I meant for a couple of weeks, not a couple of years…’ she says, without looking up.
‘And then how would you have paid the mortgage?’
I moved in with my sister when I moved out of the London flat I shared with Anna. This used to be our parents’ house before they died, and I feel like I have as much right to be here as Zoe. Firstly, she didn’t have a clue about inheritance tax, which meant re-mortgaging the house in order to keep it. Secondly, our parents died rather unexpectedly. To my dismay, and Zoe’s surprise, there was no will. Although our parents were highly organised in life, their death was not planned for at all. At least not by them.
The only reason I went along with my sister treating the house as though it were hers was because she had a daughter. They needed a place to call home more than I did, and besides, I never had any real desire to come back to this town then. Like my ex, I would rather leave the past where it belongs.
Zoe barges by me and storms out of the room. She doesn’t look, or smell, like she washed or dressed today. Again. My sister doesn’t have a real job. She says she can’t find one, but that might be because she hasn’t bothered looking for ten years. She relies on cushion covers, benefits, and selling our dead parents’ belongings on eBay – which she thinks I don’t know about – and insists that being a parent is a full-time job, even though she acts like a part-time mother.