His & Hers

There were no spare rooms in our house. All available space was very much taken, so Rachel slept in with me. In my room. In my bed. We brushed our teeth in the bathroom together, spitting out our toothpaste at the same time, taking it in turns to use the toilet.

My mother stayed downstairs watching the late TV news bulletin, as always. She’d earned enough from cleaning by then to buy a new one. She once told me I was named after Anna Ford, the newsreader, and I don’t think she was joking.

‘It’s warm tonight, isn’t it?’ Rachel said, starting to undress.

I watched as she unbuttoned her shirt, letting it fall to the floor, before reaching behind her back to unhook her bra. She always wore grown-up, lacy underwear. Not like me. I didn’t think it was warm at all. Our house always felt freezing. But my mother had lit the fire in my bedroom for us, and it crackled and hissed in the background.

I’ve never been very comfortable with my body, even back then when – although I didn’t know it – I had nothing to worry about. Perhaps it was the diet pills that started my paranoia. I changed into my PJs as quickly as possible, so that Rachel wouldn’t see me naked. I was only half undressed when she asked to take my picture. She was standing in the middle of the room, in just her knickers, already holding the disposable camera.

‘Why do you want a photo?’ I asked. It seemed like an appropriate question.

‘Because you look so pretty. I want to have something to remember you this way.’

It felt strange to complain about having bare legs when she was almost completely nude, so I let her take my picture. She took several, then put the camera away. Rachel didn’t seem to share my body image anxiety, she removed the rest of her underwear, then walked around my room wearing nothing at all. She took her time looking at the posters on my walls, and the books on my shelf, while the light from the fire cast a dancing pattern of shadows all over her body. I lay in the bed, unable to take my eyes off her. Until she climbed in beside me, still naked, and turned off the light.

We lay there, side by side, in the silence and the dark for a while. I seemed unable to stop myself from breathing unusually fast, and I worried that she could hear me and might think that I was strange. The more I tried to control it, the worse it got, until I feared I might actually be having an asthma attack. Then Rachel slipped her hand inside my pyjama bottoms, and I almost forgot how to breathe altogether.

‘Shh,’ she said, before kissing me on the cheek.

I didn’t move and I didn’t say anything. I just lay there, and let her touch me in a place that I had never been touched before. When she was finished, she slid her wet fingers across my tummy and wrapped her arm around my waist. She squeezed me tight, as though I were a favourite doll, then whispered something in my ear before falling asleep. The sound of her gentle snoring created a curious lullaby.

I didn’t sleep at all.

I just kept wondering what had happened and why, hearing her words constantly repeating themselves inside my head:

‘That was nice, wasn’t it?’

Him

Wednesday 08:00

It’s not nice seeing Anna so upset, but I do my best to reassure her.

A phone vibrates in the inside pocket of my jacket. I know it isn’t mine, because I’m holding that in my hand. I walk away from the team that has gathered around Anna’s Mini, and take out Rachel’s mobile. I think I’ve been in denial about finding it in my car boot, but when I read the text message on the screen, it’s a little harder to ignore:

Miss me, lover?

Rachel is definitely dead, and I do not believe in ghosts, so there is only one conclusion I can reach: someone, somewhere knows something they shouldn’t.

I put the phone away and look around. If whoever sent me the text is watching, waiting to see my reaction, I’m determined not to give it. I scan the car park and see Anna in the far corner. She’s a short distance away from everybody else now, staring down at her own mobile. It’s as though she feels my stare and immediately looks straight up at me, looking at her.

‘I thought you might need these, sir.’

Priya appears out of nowhere, and it actually makes me jump. I’m about to snap at her, when I see a brand-new packet of my favourite cigarettes in her hand.

‘Why do you have these?’ I ask, but she just shrugs.

The way my junior colleague is staring up at me makes me feel even more uncomfortable than the phone in my pocket receiving text messages from a dead woman. Unlikely as that may sound.

‘Well, thank you,’ I say, taking the packet.

I open it immediately, pop a cigarette in my mouth, light it and take a long drag.

The satisfaction is instant, spoiled only by Priya’s presence.

‘Look, it’s very sweet of you, but you don’t need to keep buying me things and being so… thoughtful. It’s about the work, right? Solving cases. You don’t need to be so nice all the time. Just do your job and we’ll get along fine.’

‘You’re welcome,’ she replies, as though she didn’t hear my impromptu speech. ‘And I think I have an update that might cheer you up.’

‘Go on.’

‘Rachel Hopkins’ phone was never found, so I told the tech team to put a trace on it.’

I inhale far harder than I intended, and start to cough.

‘I don’t remember asking you to do that?’

I continue to smoke with one hand, while reaching inside my pocket with the other, trying to switch off Rachel’s phone.

‘You didn’t, sir. But you did tell me to start showing some more initiative. The phone received a text a couple of minutes ago, and someone read it. Someone has Rachel’s mobile, and they are somewhere near here. The guys are trying to triangulate the signal now. So long as the phone stays switched on, I think they’ll get a pretty accurate location.’

She stares at Anna.

‘You think Anna has Rachel’s phone? You think she might be involved?’ I ask.

Priya shrugs. ‘Don’t you?’ She interprets my silence as an invitation to keep talking. I do my best to hide any signs of the panic I feel, while trying again to turn off the phone inside my jacket pocket at the same time. ‘We know that someone called Anna’s mobile from the landline in the school office at five a.m. But we have no way of knowing where her phone was at the time. She could have been standing right next to it and called herself.’

My fingers finally find what they are looking for, and I turn off Rachel’s mobile. I laugh and it sounds as false as it feels.

‘You had me going for a moment there! Great work on the phone trace, and good joke about my ex-wife being the killer,’ I say, fully aware she wasn’t joking.

Priya gives me a strange look, then heads back over to the rest of the team by the car, her ponytail in full swing. Someone sent that text deliberately just now, and I’m sure I’m being watched. When I look around to try and locate Anna, I can’t see her anywhere.

It was a shame to do it, but I had to smash the window on the Mini. It isn’t as though it can’t be repaired, and the car will be good as new as soon as it gets mended. Not like me. But then people do tend to be trickier to fix than things. I’ve decided that succeeding in my plan is highly dependent on misdirection, so damaging the car was a necessary act of vandalism. Not that anyone would have suspected me of doing it. That sort of behaviour goes against the idea that others have of me, but I am not who they think I am. Like most people, there is more to me than my job.