‘Who is the fifth girl?’ asks Priya.
‘I don’t remember her name.’
It’s obvious she doesn’t believe me – I’m starting to doubt myself – but I have to try to get Priya on my side. I panic when she starts to turn away.
‘Wait. Please. I don’t think the other girl was very popular, and I’m surprised they were friends with her, to be honest. Three out of the five people in this picture are dead, and my sister wrote Anna’s name on the wall in blood. Don’t you think we should at least try to find her?’
‘I do, but perhaps not for the same reasons as you, Jack.’
I think I preferred ‘sir’ after all.
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘As you say, three out of the five girls in this photo are dead. We only know the identity of one of the others. I think maybe Zoe was trying to write a warning when she spelled out Anna’s name, and that your ex-wife might be in danger.’
‘What are you saying?’ I ask the question already knowing the answer.
‘I think Anna might be next.’
I’ve always been rather fond of the number three, and hoped it might be my best work. I waited until Zoe disappeared upstairs to put the child to bed, then emptied the crushed sleeping tablets into the glass of wine she had left behind. My GP had been prescribing them for months, so I had plenty to spare. I’d thought about swallowing the lot myself last Christmas. The pain of spending it without her almost killed me, but I changed my mind.
A lot of people grow old, but they don’t all grow up. Zoe was a child trapped inside a woman’s body, despite having a little girl of her own. She needed her parents far more than I ever did, always, for everything, and when they were gone she got lost. No job, no partner, no ambition, no hope. Just an inherited house she couldn’t afford, and a daughter she didn’t know how to love. I think it will be better for the child in the long run.
I had a sip of Zoe’s drink before adding the drugs. The wine was as cheap and unpleasant as the woman who had poured it, so I doubted she would notice any change in taste. I was right. I watched her take the glass and the rest of the bottle upstairs. Then she removed her clothes, climbed into the bath, finished her drink, and closed her eyes.
It was strange seeing her naked again. The shape of her breasts, the vertebrae of her spine, her exposed collarbones. I’d seen her without clothes when we were both a lot younger of course, but it was oddly fascinating to see the skin she wore now, the woman she had grown into. When we are young, we think we know more than we do. When we are old, we think we know less. I tend to remember people as they were in my earliest memory of them. I will always think of Zoe as a little girl. A spoilt, selfish, evil one.
Her deciding to have a bath was a real stroke of luck; much less messy. I watched and waited until she had been still for so long, I was sure she was dead. But when I used the knife to cut into her left wrist – the proper way, not like they do in the movies – Zoe opened her eyes. She looked surprised to see that it was me.
She struggled a bit, thrashed about, spilling some water over the side of the bath. It was both a shame and unnecessary. The drugs must have drained her at least, because she was soon still again. There was no repeat performance when I slit her right wrist, but I turned my back too soon to wash my hands in the basin afterwards. When I looked at my reflection in the mirror, I saw her writing on the wall. She stopped breathing halfway through the S, so that an ugly trail of blood ran from the tiles to the tub. Some people make a mess in death as well as in life.
There were two keys for that door due to an incident when Zoe accidentally locked herself in the bathroom as a child. She was such a creative little girl; always acting or drawing or making things. Perhaps that was why I decided to get a little creative myself.
Her eyes were still open and I don’t like people staring at me.
I found Zoe’s sewing basket next to a pile of the ugly cushion covers she sold online, then I selected a needle, along with a nice thick black thread. Her eyelid bled a little while I was sewing it closed, so that it looked like she was crying blood. But it was no worse than the things she had done to innocent victims. Things nobody else knew about except me.
I left one key in the bathroom, before locking the door with the other. Then I crept back downstairs. I put the photo of the girls in the kitchen, and marked a black cross over Zoe’s face, before letting myself out of the house. I’d turned off the security system earlier, so that wasn’t a problem. I planned to take a shortcut through the woods to get where I was going, but the old shed at the end of the garden distracted me. The door was slightly open, gently banging in the breeze. When I looked inside, I saw that the scratches on the wood were still there. Twenty years after they were made. I’ll never forget how Zoe locked them in that shed.
She left them in the cold, damp darkness, ignoring their cries for help.
They must have been so afraid.
She deserved to die much sooner for what she did.
I locked the shed door and tried to forget what happened there.
Her
Thursday 00:15
Richard locks the car doors as we drive in the darkness.
‘Why did you do that?’ I ask, trying not to sound as scared as I feel.
‘Don’t know. Instinct? Driving through these woods late at night tends to creep me out. Doesn’t it do the same to you?’
I don’t answer at first.
‘You said you knew somewhere we could stay—’
‘Yes, I think trying to find another hotel when it is already so late is going to be impossible. My wife’s parents used to own a house not that far from here, ten minutes tops. They died a couple of years ago, and it’s the kind of place an estate agent would say was “in need of modernisation”, but there are beds and clean sheets and I have a spare key. Want to risk it?’
It doesn’t feel like I have many options. I don’t want to take him to my mother’s house, and it seems a little selfish to insist we drive all the way back to London now; by the time we got there it would almost be time to come back.
‘OK,’ I say, too tired to form a more elaborate response.
He switches on the seat warmers, turns on the radio and, hard as I try not to, I find my eyes closing for a bit.
I should have learned to be more careful where and when I fall asleep.
One of the last things that I remember clearly about my sixteenth birthday party was Jack taking a photo of the five of us. The rest of the night has always been a bit of a blur at best.
We drank a lot more after he left, I remember that much. Then we all did each other’s hair and make-up. Zoe had brought some of her latest fashion creations that she had made on her sewing machine for us to try on: skimpy dresses, low-cut tops, and skirts so short they looked more like belts.
Rachel went to work on Catherine Kelly’s face, as though it were a project in art class. She applied a thick layer of make-up, filled in Catherine’s bald eyebrows with a pencil, then stuck false black lashes to the blonde ones around her eyes. Zoe lent her a dress, and Helen did her hair – squirting it with the water bottle my mum used for ironing, before blow-drying her whitish-blonde curls straight. She said there wasn’t time to comb out all the knots, so cut them off instead. I remember random clumps of hair discarded on the carpet.