Praise for C J Skuse

‘This darkly comic novel…has the potential to become a cult classic’

DAILY MAIL

‘This isn’t a book for the squeamish or the faint-hearted … think Bridget Jones meets American Psycho’

RED

‘Filthy and funny… a compulsive read’

SUNDAY TIMES

‘You MUST read this book especially if you like your (anti) heroes dirty-mouthed, deadly dark, dark dark. I adored it’

FIONA CUMMINS, AUTHOR OF RATTLE

‘This anti-hero is psychotic without doubt… incredibly funny’

SHOTS

‘Brutal, bone-crunching, enthralling and entertaining… as brilliant as it is shocking, and marks a fascinating turning point for a young and vibrant author’

LANCASHIRE POST

‘If you like your thrillers darkly comic and outrageous this ticks all the boxes’

SUN

‘Makes Hannibal Lecter look like Mary Poppins… this is going to give me a serious book hangover’

JOHN MARRS, AUTHOR OF THE ONE

C J SKUSE was born in 1980 in Weston-super-Mare. She has two First Class degrees in Creative Writing and Writing for Young People, and aside from being a novelist works as a Senior Lecturer at Bath Spa University.

Also by C J Skuse:

Sweetpea

In Bloom (Book 2 in the Sweetpea series)

For Young Adults:

Pretty Bad Things

Rockoholic

Dead Romantic

Monster

The Deviants

The Alibi Girl

C J Skuse

ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright © C J Skuse 2020

C J Skuse asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © January 2020 ISBN: 9780008311407

Note to Readers

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

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 Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008311391

For my excellent friend, Laura Myers

Alibi Clock (n):

a clock which strikes one hour,

while the hands point

to a different time,

the real time being neither one

nor the other.

E. COBHAM BREWER 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Present Day

Chapter 1: Ellis

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

24 Hours Later

Chapter 16: Foy

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

December 23rd One Year Later

Chapter 28: Ellis

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

Extract of Sweetpea

About the Publisher

Present Day

Curl Up and Dye,

Spurrington-on-Sea,

North-West England

1
Ellis

Monday, 21st October

I can’t read this Hello! magazine again. There’s only so many times I can admire Brooklyn Beckham’s left armpit. It’s not as though there’s anything else to read either. There’s a Vogue with dried snot on the contents page. And Charlize Theron is on the cover of Cosmo so I can’t even touch that one. I’ve been afraid of her since Snow White. Keep thinking she’ll come out of the page and bite me.

So, in the absence of reading material, I’m squinting at a cockroach scuttling across the floor with a clump of shorn hair on its back like some tiny game show host. My own hair sits lankly around my ears – it can’t wait another day. I’ll give it another five minutes before I go back to the flat and dye it myself over the bath with a kit.

And now the baby’s grizzling. I’ve tried sticking my knuckle in her mouth but she’s hungry. I’m not feeding her here. How can you talk to a perfect stranger quite politely one moment and then flop your boob out the next? How do women do that? And what is the stranger supposed to do? Not look at it? A boob is my third most private part after my feet and my noo-noo. I’d look. Not for long, but I would look.

After fifteen-and-a-half full minutes, a short Roseanne Barr-ish woman scuffs through the beaded curtain. She has Hobbit feet wedged into mint-green flip flops and tattoos up and down both forearms – Tom Hiddlething as Loki all up her right, Chris HemWhatNot as Thor all up her left.

‘Hiya, I’m Steffi. Is it Mary?’ Her eyes don’t smile.

‘Yes. Mary Brokenshire.’

Steffi’s in a washed-out Gryffindor T-shirt and her hair is spare rib coloured, parted and shaved severely up the side.

‘If you’d like to come this way …’

Steffi leads me through the beads, across the glittery black floor tiles and through a grubby woodchip archway, towards the sinks but not quite at them. We swerve over to a side chair with a mirror in front of it and she sits me down and places her hot hands on my shoulders. She gives me an unnecessary chat about what I want done even though she already knows because I came in last week for a patch test and we went through it all then.

‘Right, black it is then. Have you been offered a tea or coffee?’

‘No.’ I don’t like tea or coffee. I’d prefer a juice but they don’t have juice, only some value squash which I only have to look at to feel my teeth rotting at the roots. Even I know asking for a milk would be too childish in this environment so, for appearances sake, I say, ‘I’d love a tea, thanks.’

Steffi disappears and returns with a cape but no tea. She waits for me to take Emily out of the papoose and transfer her to the pushchair, hoping to catch a glimpse. I get it: people love babies. I tuck her into the buggy and drape a muslin over the opening. I don’t like people looking at her, or me, for too long. Just in case.

Steffi sweeps the cape around my body, rendering everything but my head invisible. I used to like wearing a cape. Or an oversized bath towel. There’s nothing quite like that feeling of getting out of a hot bath, wrapping the big bath towel around you and pretending to fly up the corridor with the towel flapping along behind. Me and my cousin Foy used to do that all the time after our baths. Or was it only once?

‘How are you coping with the little one?’ Steffi asks.

‘Fine, thanks. She’s our fifth, so we’re used to being tired all the time. You know what it’s like, I’m sure!’

‘Oh yeah,’ she says, face brightening. ‘We’ve got four and it’s chaos. We love it though. Love the chaos!’ We share the laugh only parents can share as she begins pasting on my colour. ‘Have you got anything planned for the rest of the day?’ I get the impression she’s asked this question 11,000 times. There’s no inflection. No real note of interest. I still answer.

‘Not really. A bit of shopping. Pick the kids up. I’m still on maternity leave from my practice so it’s nice not to have such a rigid timetable.’

‘What sort of practice?’

‘I’m a doctor. A GP.’

‘Oh right. Where are they all today then? At a friend’s house?’

I’m momentarily confused. ‘My children? They’re all at school.’

‘They not on half term?’

‘They’re all at private school,’ I say. ‘Their half term was last week.’

‘Oh,’ she says, with more than a hint of lemon juice about it. ‘You’ve got four of them at private school?’

‘Yeah,’ I tell her proudly, rocking the buggy. ‘Apples of their daddy’s eye. We’re stopping at five though. I’m having my tubes tied in January, I’ve told him already. He’d have a football team, given half the chance.’

‘Yeah, I think mine would!’

‘It’s our anniversary today so my mum and dad are going to have the kids tonight so we can go out for a meal.’

‘Ooh, where are you going? Anywhere nice?’

What a stupid question that is. No, we’re off to a complete dive with a one-star hygiene rating and a chef who wipes his bum on the lettuce. ‘The China Garden. The one with the gold dragon hanging from the ceiling? His treat.’

‘What does he do then, your bloke?’

I ignite when she says ‘Your bloke’. It’s lovely to have a bloke who belongs to me. ‘He’s a personal trainer.’

‘Nice. I wish my old man would take me out. Do you know I don’t think we’ve had a night out since our Livvy was born. And she’s starting Reception next month.’

‘Oh really?’

‘Yeah. We can’t afford it anyway. Rich’s been laid off from the airport.’

‘Oh right,’ I say, with the hint of gloom she seems to expect. ‘What did he—’

‘—baggage handler at John Lennon. Twenty years he gave them. Went in on his days off when they were striking and everything. And he caught a terrorist.’

‘Oh gosh.’ Cockroach Game Show Host scuttles back along the skirting board. I pretend to have a coughing fit and Steffi asks if I’d like some water, which is when she’s reminded about the tea she hasn’t made me yet and scurries off to see ‘where it’s got to’ like tea has a mind of its own.

I’m finally brought my tea and two Custard Creams – one with a corner snapped off. I remove the top of one biscuit and scrape out the cream with my bottom teeth. I put the two sides back together and munch it until it makes a neat circle of spitty biscuit between my thumbs, then I put it in my mouth ’til it dissolves. I don’t realise until I swallow that Steffi has been watching me. My cheeks flame as red as my roots.

But then my phone pings in my handbag and I rifle around to find it. ‘Probably Daddy, checking in on his girls.’

‘Ahhh,’ says Steffi, all misty-eyed.

It isn’t Daddy. It’s an email from eBay, letting me know about their half term sale on personalised school stationery.

‘Was it him?’ says Steffi, combing my colour through.

‘Yeah. He’s asking if I want anything brought in. Bless him.’

‘He sounds like a keeper.’ I hold up my iPhone screen to show her his photo. She takes it off me and squints. ‘Blimey, he’s gorgeous.’

I know what she’s thinking – that a woman like me couldn’t have possibly ‘got’ a guy like him. ‘I’m very lucky.’ She returns me the phone and I put him away safely in my bag. ‘We were childhood sweethearts.’

‘You started early then. I thought you looked young to have five kids.’

‘I had the first one at fourteen.’

‘Blimey.’

‘Then the twins, then Harry. Wasn’t easy with the medical degree, but we managed. Then this little surprise came along.’

‘I met my Rich on a hen weekend.’

I hadn’t asked and it’s not interesting to me but I pretend it’s the most interesting thing because for some reason I’m happy in her company. Two married mums together. ‘I love a good knees-up.’

‘Yeah it did get a bit rowdy,’ she laughs. ‘He did karaoke to “Once, Twice, Three Times a Lady” and pointed at me when he was singing. I knew then he was The One.’

I smile at the mirror. ‘The One. It’s a nice feeling, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, don’t get me wrong, we have our moments. He woke up yesterday with a cold, right? And his breathing has become all like that Darth Wossit. And I said to him “Rich, I swear to God, if you breathe like that anymore, I’m gonna ram your head in the bacon slicer.” He was winding me up that much.’

I don’t get that. Why stay with a person whose breathing makes you want to commit actual murder on their head? So I ask her.

‘So you don’t love him anymore?’

‘Oh, course I do,’ she laughs. ‘I were only joking. Just wish he worked on an oil rig or summut, so he’d leave the bloody house once in a while, you know?’

I don’t get that either but, before I can ask, she hands me the same magazine I read six times in the waiting room and I’m treated to another glimpse of hairy Brooklyn and interviews with Liam Payne’s mother and the Britain’s Got Talent failure who’s had twenty facelifts and still hates himself.

We used to play Britain’s Got Talent at the pub. It would be after the kitchen had closed for the evening. Auntie Chelle would be helping Uncle Stu in the bar and the boys would be upstairs and me and Foy would sneak down for midnight feasts of still-warm chips from the fryers and leftover baguette ends dipped in salad cream. We’d take it in turns to come through from the utility room, telling a sob story to the panel of stuffed toys on the breakfast bar then screech ‘Flying Without Wings’ into a vinegar bottle. Miss Whiskers and Thread Bear always put us through to Bootcamp.

After half an hour, Steffi returns. ‘Let’s get you washed. Leave her with Jodie.’

The one called Jodie, with the shoulder tattoo of moons and stars and the white DMs, appears beside the buggy, all smiley and young. ‘Yeah, I’ll watch her for ya.’

‘Don’t let her out of your sight, will you?’ I say.

‘No probs. Can I have a little hold if she wakes up?’

‘No, I’d rather you didn’t. Thanks. She’s better left to her own devices.’

Steffi leads me back across the glittery floor to the sinks. I must get some glitter. I don’t know what for yet but I don’t use nearly enough of it. It’ll be November soon so I could get a head start on decorating for Christmas. Steffi’s pressing buttons and running water before I’ve even sat down. As I do, a bizarre kneading sensation begins in my lower back, rising up my spine and into my shoulder blades.

‘Oh my god!’ I jerk forwards and I realise it’s one of those massage chairs.

‘Is it too hard for you?’ she asks.

‘Um, no, sorry. I just never tried one before.’

‘Do you want me to turn it off?’

‘No, it’ll be fine. I think.’

‘It’s supposed to help you relax,’ she says. ‘But some people don’t like the feel of it. Let me know if it gets too much.’

I lie back again and within moments I’m letting out involuntary grunts at the luscious deep kneading all over my back. I’m making noises people usually only make when they do naughties. Luckily, there are too many dryers on for anyone to hear me.

‘I’ve recently started selling Avon on the side actually,’ says Steffi out of nowhere. ‘Would you be interested in a catalogue?’

‘Uh—’

‘And I’m organising a party at my place on Saturday night if you’re free?’

I’ve done nothing to warrant this invitation but I’m imagining she gets the smell of money off me, knowing I have four children at private school. ‘It would be difficult,’ I say, between grunts. ‘Saturdays are our family days normally.’

‘Bring ’em all along. Our kids’ll be there. They can watch Disney in the family room. The blokes usually go down the pub.’

‘My Kaden doesn’t drink. He’s more into his coconut water and plankton shots.’

‘Well he can sit in the other room watching Ant and Dec, can’t he? Go on, it’ll be a laugh. I can’t promise any food but people usually only want Pringles and Prosecco at these things, don’t they? Bring a bottle.’

‘Well I can’t drink at the moment because I’m breastfeeding but it sounds great. I’d love to come. Thank you.’

And while my lips are saying I’d love to, I know I won’t go. I’m breaking into a sweat thinking about it. I’m like Ariel in The Little Mermaid. I’m ginger and I want to be with them – up where they walk and run and play all day in the sun. But I can’t be part of that world. And I absolutely cannot be ginger. That’s just how it is.

But I say no more and after divulging her address, Steffi doesn’t ask me again. She vigorously rubs my head and I’m in ecstasy. By the time we’re on the second shampoo I’m used to the sensations and I just want to feel the pressing of her fingers into my scalp; the rubbing and rinsing and smoothing; the kneading into my back and shoulders. I want to lie in this synthetic coconut paradise forever. I crane my neck through the archway and see Jodie rocking the buggy while scrolling her phone.

The salon’s getting busy now and the radio blares out ‘Despacito’ which one of them has turned up because ‘this was all we danced to on our holidays’. They went to Spain together, I gather, three of the staff. They spent most of the time ‘paralytic’ but it seems to make them very happy hearing the song again. They’re obviously a close bunch. Natalya with the Princess Leia buns knows all the words and whisks her hips in time to the music. Steffi and Toni are behind me, bitch-chatting about their ex-husbands. Meg with the topknot is folding towels and chit-chatting to her client about her own disastrous holiday to ‘that place where Maddie went missing’.

‘It rained most days. And there were all these turds in the sea. Then we got robbed and came home.’

The taps go off and the water stops to a drip, drip. The chair stops massaging and I keenly feel the loss. A grey towel stinking of cooked mince wraps around my head and I’m led back across the glittery floor to get dried and styled. Jodie’s disappeared to make coffee. The baby’s still sleeping, no thanks to her.

Any softness in Steffi’s face from the conversation about kids has skinned over. She’s concentrating now – brushing me roughly as the burning air from the dryer sets about my head. She scrunches, ruffles and shakes me until I’m dry before straightening it into a jet black bob with my parting once again located.

She affords me a few more seconds of bliss as she rakes it through, shielding my eyes while caking it with Elnet. Before I know it, she’s holding up the mirror. Black bob. Brown eyes. The red is dead. Nobody would know it was me.

‘That alright for you, Mary?’

‘That’s perfect, thanks so much.’

‘You’re very welcome.’ She removes my cape and I flick off the brake on the pushchair and wheel Emily over to the desk to pay. I’m expecting her to mention the Avon party again but she doesn’t.

The radio waffles on – an advert for a conservatory firm, twenty-five percent off windows and doors, some aquatics company are giving away fish and it’s Kids Eat Free at the Jungle Café – none of which I can take advantage of but I pretend like it’s all very reasonable.

Then the door opens with a little jingle and three men file in, one after the other. There’s no rush to their movements. The first two wipe their feet on the mat, the third wipes his nose on his sleeve. And my entire body floods with ice – I can’t move. They are loud and unapologetic. All laughter and smoker’s coughs.

My breath catches – I know that laugh. The short, straw-haired one with predatory eyes and a cheeky-chappy smile, like his face is at odds with itself. He carries the air of someone with power. Power over the other two. It’s them. I know it is.

Think rationally. Think logically. Breathe. Scants is always telling me I’m paranoid. It’s not them. It’s too much of a coincidence, them being here, me being here. Deeper breaths. Act normal. It’s three ordinary men. Three innocent customers.

Steffi holds out her chubby mitt with the gold rings, her fingers like strangled chipolatas. ‘That’ll be £32.00 then Mary, thank you.’

I can’t concentrate on anything but the three men. Three little pigs blowing my house down. I can smell their thick layers of aftershave. Aramis, unless I’m mistaken, and something else. Lynx or Old Spice. I can’t breathe.

The short, stocky one with straw-coloured hair and brown camel coat starts in with an anecdote about a crash on the motorway which meant they were late for something. Late for what, I can’t figure – my brain’s too busy careening around bends. And the music’s too loud – screechy punk guitars now. The brown-haired one in the leather bomber jacket, skinny jeans and trainers does a selfie with the one they call Natalya – old mates? – while the third, built like a tank, is all knuckles and chins and seems happy to stand there, the limelight firmly on the other two. He’s the heavy. They’re all pally – Meg joins in, selfying with the brunette for Instagram. Two others join in – Jodie and Toni. Fawning like the men are rock stars. But I know them. I’ve seen them in my nightmares. And I know that laugh.

I pay Steffi and tell her to put the change in the charity box. On the counter is a box of hand-knitted animals – lions, tigers and bears – all with a Halloween Scream Egg sewn inside the head with googly eyes stuck on. I want one but I also want to leave.

‘A customer makes them for the donkey sanctuary,’ Steffi explains, posting the coins in the tin. I know I’ve got to get out but I can’t decide which animal I want – a lion, a tiger or a bear. Bomber Jacket is coming towards the desk. He’ll stand beside me. He’ll see my face. I fumble for a knitted lion.

‘Thanks,’ I say, no more than a whisper. ‘Bye.’ I wheel the pushchair awkwardly towards the door.

Steffi calls out, ‘Oh, and that Avon party I mentioned…’

I’m forced to be rude and not answer her. Unbeknown to me, The Tank has followed me to the door and opens it for me before I can get there.

I daren’t look up. But at the last second, before the door closes, I thank him briefly and we lock eyes. A shadow of a frown that’s either confusion or recognition.

‘Mind how you go now,’ he says, and his deep voice sends a freeze through me. Was it a Bristolian accent? Could have been. He only said five words but I caught a definite twang. Tears come and there’s nothing I can do to stop them. All I can think about is getting back to the flat and locking every door and window.

‘How are they here?’ I mutter to myself, trying to catch my breath, pushing the buggy back along the road until I’m practically running, back along the high street and onto the seafront. As I pass, the doughnut man sticks his head out of his van and calls out, ‘Charlotte! Charlotte! I saved you some fried doughnut holes!’ But I pretend like I haven’t heard him and keep running, looking behind every few steps to see if anyone’s following. They’re not, they’re definitely not, and there’s salt and sand in my eyes and my throat because it’s windy, but I don’t stop until I’m nearly back.

I cry wee wee wee, all the way home.

Through the gate and down the steps, and finally we’re inside the flat. Patio doors locked tight. Main door locked and bolted. Lounge curtains drawn. The cats are all in and accounted for. I take Emily out of the pushchair and she grizzles but I hold her against me, warm and tight so she’s safe. Only then does my breathing slow. I notice the answerphone flashing. You have one new message. I press Play.

Silence.

Crackling.

Breathing.

Click.

Dead tone.

‘Wrong number. Means nothing,’ I reassure Emily, though my heart pounds.

Taking her into the bedroom, I draw the blind and slump down onto the springy single bed the landlord said he’d replace soon. I hold Emily against my neck, skin to skin. Safety. My heart beats in my ears. It’s the only sound.

I stare up at the walls, almost bare apart from the Frida Kahlo print the previous tenant hung there in a glass frame. I don’t even know who Frida Kahlo is but the landlord said the picture was called ‘Time Flies’ and the guy who’d left it was an artist who died of an overdose. Frida’s wearing a white dress in the picture. And there’s a little aeroplane above her head. And a clock on a shelf. Her eyebrows scare me. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what any of it means.

2

Wednesday, 23rd October

My name isn’t Mary. It’s Joanne. Well, that’s the name they gave me. I can’t tell anyone my real name. I might be free now but I still have to imprison parts of myself. And that’s the big part. I don’t have all the children I told the hairdresser about, either, or a successful career in medicine. Or a personal trainer husband called Kaden. I have a new neighbour with that name, and a man’s sweatshirt I got from a charity shop sprayed in a free tester of Paco Rabanne that I pretend belongs to him, but that’s all. Mary is an act. One of my many acts to keep them at bay.

But they’ve tracked me down, haven’t they? They’ve found me again.

No, I tell myself, no they haven’t. Maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe Scants is right, as always, and I’m being paranoid. Or maybe he just says that because he’s paid to look after me and this is what he’s supposed to say. If it was them, The Pigs, this is still a big town and at the moment it’s flooded with tourists, families on half term, coach loads of people on outings. I’ve been swallowed by all that. They could think I’m staying at a hotel or one of the B&Bs. So while I’m in the flat, I’m safe.

As a precaution, I haven’t been outside in two days. I told work Emily has a bug. She doesn’t. I’ve just been playing with her and the cats, making the odd cake, having the odd bath, trimming up far too early for Christmas and watching DVDs – mostly Disney movies up to the sad bits, then I fast forward or switch off. I decided as soon as I was old enough that I didn’t have to watch the sad bits if I didn’t want to. So, in my world, Mufasa’s still alive, Nemo doesn’t even go missing and the Beast never turns into that disgusting prince.

I’ve ordered a few things off the internet – a new rug to cover most of the hideous old lino in the kitchen that the landlord won’t replace, a board game for my paper boy, Alfie, that I was telling him about the other day and found quite cheap on eBay, these really cute hair slides, and some silver glitter. I don’t know what the glitter’s for yet – a Christmas something I expect. I know I can make use of it somehow.

I’ve done some research on Frida Kahlo, too. She was a bisexual feminist Mexican painter and her portraits ‘allow a deeply intimate window into the female psyche’. So says the internet. She was also in an accident when she was eighteen which left her unable to have children. And she kept spider monkeys. I like the picture in my bedroom of her a lot more now. Her eyebrows don’t scare me as much.

And I’ve had another message on the answerphone. More silence. And crackling. And breathing. Then the Click. Then the dead tone. Another coincidence? I have to believe that. It’s a ‘little nothing’, that’s what Scants will say. Unless it’s a viable threat, I cannot pester him about it. That’s the rule.

I’ve eaten nearly everything in the flat. Even the Findus Crispy Pancakes I keep in for emergencies. I’m like the Tiger Who Came to Tea – there’s still water in the tap, but I bet any minute there’ll be a cold snap and the pipes’ll freeze. Emily’s getting ratty. She needs fresh air. I will go out soon. Maybe I could nip across the road and get some doughnuts from the van? But it’s not healthy, is it? Doughnuts for tea. I counted fifteen sugary paper bags in the recycling box this morning. Fifteen. Plus the one on the table I’ve doodled all over. I pick it up and admire the curly handwriting:

Ann Hilsom

Melanie Smith

Claire Price

Joanne Haynes

I feel greasy. I’m going to have a bath.

I settle Emily in her bassinette by the chest of drawers and she’s happy enough lying there looking up at the mobile I’ve fixed to the side. She’s so small. Sometimes I wish she was bigger so she could hug better. And then I realise what I’m thinking – the bigger she gets, the more she’ll stop being my baby. The more she’ll learn. I want her to stay small and unknowing and thinking the world is a charmed place where imagination is real and everyone thinks you’re fascinating. Being an adult looked so much more appealing when I wasn’t one.

A bath, I’ve found, is the nearest thing to a hug. You get fewer hugs as you get older but we had loads as kids. Auntie Chelle was always wrapping me and Foy inside her arms and squeezing the breath from us. I can’t hug you two tight enough, she would say. It’s scientifically proven that baths help depression in the same way a hug does. Something to do with balancing our bodily rhythms. As a kid I used to eat the foam. Spread it out on a sponge like a little waffle loaded with squirty cream.

Scants is funny about hugs since he got mugged in a pub in 2008. He’s funny about a lot of things. I can’t think about him – he’ll visit when he’s next in town, that’s what he said: ‘Don’t pester me’ – and he said it in his Serious Voice so I knew he meant it. I must not call him unless it’s an emergency. It’s three random men and a couple of wrong numbers. That’s all. I’ll leave the flat soon. Everything’s normal.

I sink down in my warm bath and allow the water and essential oils to hug me all the way up my body and back down again. I picture all my worries as a kite on a string, and imagine letting go of it, watching it float up to the sky as I count backwards from ten. Gradually, the panic disappears, though I know it’s only a temporary break from a world that feels so wrong all the time.

The door creaks open and The Duchess saunters in. I roll over to tickle her head.

‘Hello Duchess, how do you do?’

She sits proudly on my bath towel, butting into my hand, her white fur soft as clouds beneath my fingertips. She’s looking tubby today – I think I’m overfeeding her. I’d rather that than underfeeding her, though, or any of them. They’re my other babies. The Duke of Yorkums and Earl Grey sleep all day on my bed while the other girls are more inclined to wander. The latest one, Queen Georgie, doesn’t get on with Princess Tabitha Rosynose or Tallulah von Puss, though. She’s taken up residence on the couch on the blanket. Prince Roland won’t come near any of them – he prefers it at the back of the wardrobe guarding all my jumpers from Jumper Pixies who bite holes in clothes to make their little hats. But The Duchess always comes to play or say hello. Of course, I’d never tell the other cats this, but she’s my favourite.

My dad used to say cats were cursed kings and queens in hiding. That’s why they’re all so aloof and it seems like they don’t care about anything. It’s not that – it’s because they have royal blood. It goes against their protocol to get too involved.

I wish I could stay in the bath forever, the water lapping against the sides, The Duchess still butting my hand. I wish this was my bath. My bathroom.

Suddenly, an awful buzzzzzzzzzzz resounds through the flat and my chest tightens – it’s my door buzzer. It’s not Scants – he always calls ahead. There’s no one else it could be. Maybe it’s a relative of the people in the middle flat. Or Kaden, the guy who’s just moved into the top floor flat. Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe they have the wrong number altogether.

Maybe they don’t.

I scramble out of the bath and yank out the plug, grabbing my towel from under The Duchess and she protest-reeeaaaawrs, but moves out the way. I wrap myself up and wait – it’s a mistake. Or the postman? No, he’s been. It can’t be for me. My rhythms are all to cock. What if it’s them? What if they hear the bath gurgling? What if Emily starts crying?

Buzzzzzzzz, buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz it goes again.

She’ll cry and then they’ll know for sure where I am, where I live.

Buzzzzzzzz buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I fumble for my robe on the back of the door and slide it over my now-freezing wet body. Panic has taken over and I can’t think in a straight line. I stumble into the bedroom, pull on my boots and lace them up as best I can though my brain has temporarily forgotten how to do laces.

‘Bunny ear, Bunny ear, Bottom Bunny ear over Top Bunny ear, tie and pull.’

Buzzzzz buzzzzzzzzzz buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

‘Oh no, oh shitake mushrooms.’ I want to cry. How do I run with a baby? And what about the cats? If I go through the patio doors and up the front steps they’ll catch me. I’m soaking wet, in my dressing gown, wearing no knickers and badly tied DMs. They’ll be shooting slow, fat fish in a tiny barrel.

I need to be brave, be rational, and take a look before doing anything stupid. Before I can change my mind, I run to the kitchen and grab the Flash bleach spray and a bread knife. I go to my door and scramble the chain off, opening it slowly onto the hallway. I’m at such a high pitch, I’ve broken out into a sweat and my mouth is so dry my lips stick to my teeth. My tongue feels like an invader.

I see the shadow behind the glass. One shadow. It’s only one of them.

‘WHAT DO YOU WANT?’ I force myself to wobble-shout.

‘Hi, it’s Kaden from upstairs. I think the bolt’s on? I can’t get in.’

Relief floods through me. I deflate and the tears start pouring as I pull back the bolt and release the Chubb to find the guy from the top floor flat standing there in his leather gear with his motorbike helmet under one arm, a bag of shopping in his hand. I can’t stop shaking.

‘Oh god, are you alright?’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve been away for a couple of days, and came back and my key wouldn’t work… I didn’t mean to get you out of the bath. I definitely didn’t mean to scare you. It’s Joanne, isn’t it?’

NO, I’m NOT Joanne, I want to say. I have an alarming urge to tell him my real name. I want him to help me. Tell me he’ll fight the Pigs away with his strong arms. Not very Frida the Feminist Icon, but then I’m not Frida – I’m me. And not a very convincing me either. I sit on the stair, dropping the knife and spray gun to the carpet.

The front door closes. He puts the bike helmet on the shelf and there’s a creak of leather as he kneels down. ‘Hey. It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you.’

And I pull him into me and he wraps his arms around my back and we’re hugging like two lovers. Lovers who’ve only previously shared Hellos and door openings for the past two weeks since he moved in. I blush every time. Because in one of my newest lies he is of course My Husband. The Father of My Five Children. The screensaver on my phone, from when I followed him to the gym at the other end of the seafront where he works, and took a photo of the picture of him behind reception – Kaden Cotterill, Certified Personal Trainer. How sad is that? Now that he’s here, holding me, I can see how sad it is. Here he is real and perfect and my tears chase down his leather jacket. The back of his neck is sweaty and he smells of the sea breeze.

‘I’m sorry, I really am,’ he says. We pull apart, his face packed full of concern. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ I shake my head. ‘Did you think it was someone else?’ I nod. ‘Do you wanna talk about it?’ I shake. ‘Do you wanna be on your own?’ I shake again. ‘Okay, well I need to go and shove some of this in the fridge,’ he says, indicating the carrier bag. ‘Why don’t you go and put some clothes on and when I come back down we’ll go for a coffee and unwind a bit, yeah? There’s a nice café I’ve found on the seafront. They do my favourite roast.’

I sniff. ‘I don’t like coffee.’

‘What do you like?’

‘Strawberry milkshakes.’

He touches my head and his hand comes away with a chunk of white foam from the bath. He smiles and it lights up the dark, damp hallway. It’s a glowing lamp in the fog. A flame in a cave. A lifeline. All I can do is smile back.

I sit in the coffee shop – Full of Beans – stroking Emily’s head in the papoose, watching Kaden’s grey T-shirted back as he orders our drinks – a Columbian Granja La Esperanza roast with hot milk for him, and a milkshake with cream and paper straw for me. I can’t believe I’m here with him. I imagine we’re Man and Wife. He’s on paternity leave and we’re out showing off our new baby. An older couple look across at us in sweet recognition. A woman in a peach overcoat stops by the table and bends down to peek at her. I instinctively pull away, covering the top of Emily’s head with her blanket. I hear her grizzling.

‘Sorry, she’s a bit under the weather today.’

‘Aww, how old?’

‘Five weeks.’

‘Ahhh, she’s gorgeous.’

She can’t even see her properly but the woman is right, Emily is gorgeous. All babies are. The woman thinks me and Kaden really are a couple with a baby and that’s a lovely feeling. A warm, huggy feeling. Perhaps it really is Our Anniversary, like it was Mary Brokenshire’s. Perhaps we Met Here.

When he returns with our drinks, I snap out of it – he’s here because he’s a nice man and he’s concerned that he scared me. And something is clearly wrong in my life if I’m terrified of my own door buzzer. That’s the truth. And the truth always stings.

He sets my milkshake down before me with a ‘There you go.’

It’s only when he sits down with his cup and saucer and biscotti that it occurs to me how childish my drink choice is. He’s changed his motorbike gear for a T-shirt and jeans and white trainers, and the back of his neck is still slightly sheeny with sweat but he doesn’t smell badly at all. I’m close enough to smell his aftershave properly now – not Paco Rabanne as I’d initially thought. It’s that one in the blue man-shaped bottle. Le Male by Jean Paul Gaultier. Oh it’s lovely. My cheeks heat up. Foy and I used to go mad in the fragrance department in Boots, spraying them all up our sleeves.

‘Think it’s going to be a nice day today,’ he says, staring through the window. ‘You can see the Lake District from here.’

I look out in the direction of where he points. Blurry mountains. ‘Cool.’

‘Have you ever visited the Lakes?’

‘No. I’ve been to Scotland.’ I can’t tell him about that, so I hurry on. ‘Have you?’

‘Yeah, I used to go hiking in the Lakes all the time with a couple of mates from Uni. It’s really stunning. It’s good to inflate your lungs with a long walk every once in a while. You could take the little one to the Beatrix Potter house.’

‘Emily’s only five weeks old. I don’t think she’d be that impressed.’

‘No, maybe not,’ he laughs.

‘I like Beatrix Potter though.’

‘Oh right.’

‘I mean I did when I was a kid,’ I clarify. ‘Tom Kitten’s my favourite story. And the one with the frog. And the patty pan one. I still don’t know what a patty pan is.’ I’m losing him. Men don’t talk about Beatrix Potter. I need to talk about more grown up things, more manly things like motorbikes and wrestling. But I can’t think of anything I want to know about motorbikes or wrestling. I push my drink away. ‘How long have you lived in the flats?’ I say, even though I already know the answer.

‘Nearly two weeks,’ he says. ‘You?’

‘Two months tomorrow,’ I say. ‘I don’t think people live in our flats for long.’

He smirks. ‘Yeah, the landlord gave me that impression as well. What do you make of him, old Sandy Balls?’

I laugh too. ‘He hasn’t exactly got people skills, has he?’

‘Have you met the junkies in the flat between us?’

‘No, they keep to themselves.’ The flat between us. One flat away from us living together. One floor of separation. I wonder if his bed is directly above my bed. I wonder if he lies on top of me at night. My cheeks go warm at the thought.

‘Where were you before?’ he asks.

‘Nottingham,’ I tell him. This is true, but I was only there for a few months, less than a year. I can’t tell him any more than that. And I can’t tell him about Liverpool or Dumfries, or Manchester or Scarborough… certainly not Scarborough.

‘Ah, fancied taking in the sea air, did ya?’

‘Mmm. I prefer the flat here to the one they gave me in Nottingham.’

‘Who’s they?’

‘The council,’ I lie. ‘That one was awful. I never got a full night’s sleep. Drunks would spill out of the clubs below every hour through the night. And the fridge had slugs in it.’

‘Nasty.’

‘Yeah. The one drawback here is that it’s a basement flat, not top floor, so I often get a drunk peeing in the front garden or a can thrown over the wall.’

‘Better for the little one here though, I’d have thought?’

‘Yeah. Much.’ I kiss the top of Emily’s fluffy head.

My god I can barely look at him. In anyone’s storybook he is stunning. He’s every Disney prince only four-dimensional and with smell-a-vision. I could look at him for the rest of my life. His eyes sparkle like the sea and he has faint freckles on his cheeks. If I get to know him better, I’ll count his freckles. I’ll lie next to him counting them, waiting for him to wake up in the morning. I wonder if he sleeps naked. I blush again, furiously, and it goes all down my neck too. I pretend to focus on Emily.

‘Do you have any family?’ he asks. ‘Apart from Emily?’

I shake my head. ‘No.’ I think about telling Kaden the well-rehearsed lies that Scants gave me, but I don’t want to lie to him. I want him to know as much of the truth as possible. So I leave out the untrue stuff. ‘I live alone.’

‘Oh right,’ he says. Is that pity in his eyes?

‘How about you?’

‘No, I’m here in the short term for work. My family all live in London.’ Family, he said, not girlfriend, not boyfriend, not fiancée. That’s good. That means a mum and a dad. Though it could mean a wife and kids. I’m not going to think about that right now. ‘I’m a PT at Sweat Dreams on Tollgate Road, at the end of the seafront?’

‘Yeah, I know it.’ There’s a plunge of dread in my chest as I take in what he said before. ‘So you’re not staying here permanently?’

‘No, it’s a temporary contract. Six weeks’ cover. My predecessor broke his leg doing an Iron Man, so I’m filling in for him until he’s back at work.’

‘But you’ll definitely go back to London after that?’

‘Yeah, as things stand, though they might keep me on longer. It depends.’

It’s not enough hope to cling to, but it’s small comfort. I want him to stay as long as I stay. I want to know every inch of him, even the hidden inches. Thank god he’s not looking at me, I can feel yet another blush coming on. I stroke Emily’s back. ‘How are you coping with her on your own?’

‘Fine. She’s a very good baby so I must be doing something right.’

‘Are you on maternity leave then?’

‘No, I don’t get any. I managed to find a childminder who takes them from new-born so I could still work. I’m a housekeeper at The Lalique.’

‘Do you like working there?’

‘No, it’s not really a job to enjoy. My colleagues all hate me for some reason. There are some parts of it I like. The views from the top floor over the bay. And there’s a lavender air freshener we’ve got in the lobby at the moment that’s really nice. And the porter, Trevor, he’s okay. Well, he gave me a mint once. I love meeting the children who stay there as well. I adore children.’

‘Me too,’ he says, and I have a sudden vision of our children buying him a Best Daddy in the World mug for Father’s Day.

He’d be a good dad. I’d watched him for two hours walking around the pool at the gym, giving swimming lessons to the St Jude’s kids then tidying up the floats afterwards and chatting to parents. He was so sweet with them all. I knew it wasn’t an act. By the time I left I knew more about him, more clay I could add to the statue of him I sculpted every night in my mind to get me to sleep. The shape of his torso, the muscle pattern of his back, what his feet looked like in flip flops. He has a tattoo of a snarling tiger on his right shin. I imagined what Us would look like. Us on our wedding day. Us getting the keys to our new home. Us wheeling a trolley round Ikea, choosing crockery. Us at the hospital, me in labour sucking on the gas and air, him scrolling his phone for funny videos. Stroking my face. Telling me he’s proud of me.

My heart thumps abnormally.

‘Are you a member of the gym then?’ he asks over the hissing of the coffee machine and the clanking of cutlery as a waitress clears a neighbouring table.

‘No.’ His face flattens. ‘I was thinking about joining though.’

‘You should. Or come along for a class, if you like. We’ve got Ladies Only Pilates, Ladies’ Boxercise, Fight Klub, which is like a self-defence class but to music…’

He’s staring at me – the way he said ‘self-defence’ was loaded with meaning. He wants to ask me more about my hallway hysteria. There’s nowhere to hide. His eyes hurt me – green like ponds, flecked with tiny pennies. He touches my arm. Fingertips to forearm. Skin to skin. My thoughts are scrambled egg.

‘I rescued a duck last week,’ I tell him. ‘On the beach. Its wing was broken.’

‘Oh right,’ he frowns.

‘And one of the cats caught a little bird once, brought it to the door. I rescued it. Took it to the RSPCA centre in town.’

He looks at me. ‘Is it her dad? The one you’re afraid of?’

I bite down on my lip. I give him a nod that barely registers. He says no more about it. ‘I love animals, do you?’

‘Yeah, but I couldn’t eat a whole one,’ he winks. ‘I’m gonna get a refill,’ he announces. ‘Won’t be a minute. Do you want anything else?’

I shake my head, smile flickering where it won’t stay on my face. He disappears up to the counter and I feel it this time – the ache. I resent the easy way he chats to the barista. The adoration in his eyes when he looks out towards the Lakes. I’m jealous of mountains. Of the half-eaten biscotti on his saucer. Touched by him.

When he sits back down, I know he wants to address the hallway thing so in a rush of confidence, I beat him to it.

‘I can’t really tell you very much about it, why I cried and panicked earlier.’

‘It’s alright,’ he says. ‘I can guess.’ He offers me his new biscotti. I take it.

The smoke alarm goes off – a forgotten cheese toastie on the grill by the looks of it – and the chef spends a good minute flapping the ceiling with a tea towel.

‘I’m not a weirdo,’ I say. ‘That’s the truth. I’m just a little messed up right now. I’m a newly single parent and I’m struggling but I will be okay. Her dad – isn’t a part of her life anymore. He can’t be. That’s all.’

‘I get it, Joanne. Really I do. You don’t have to say anything else.’

I deflate. I wish he’d call me by my real name. I wonder how it would sound in his mouth. But for now, I am Joanne and Joanne will have to do. ‘Thank you.’

He checks his Fitbit. He’s going to leave soon and I’m dreading it. ‘Listen, I’m two flights up. You get scared again, or anyone visits who you don’t wanna see, call me. If I’m not home, I’ll be at the gym. I can put my number in your phone, if you like.’

He gestures to take it from me, but then I remember the picture of him as my wallpaper. ‘I’ll make you a new contact,’ I say, fumbling. ‘What’s your number?’

I punch it in and switch it off. ‘Thank you. For listening. And for the drink.’ It doesn’t look like I’ve drunk very much of my shake – I can’t suck the thick cream up the flimsy paper straw but since plastic is not so fantastic anymore and I don’t want to pig great spoonfuls of cream in front of my Future Husband, I reluctantly leave it.

‘I better go – I’ve got a client in twenty minutes. Come along later and check out the facilities at the gym if you like? I can give you the grand tour. First month’s free.’

‘Okay, I might do.’

He stands up, gathering his wallet, phone and keys. ‘See ya, Chickadee,’ he says to Emily’s covered head, tickling the top of her hood.

He’s touched her. He’s touched my baby. They have a connection now. He’s growing to love her like his own, I’m sure of it.

Long after he’s left, I’m still staring out at the distant mountains he’d watched so lovingly. We’ll go there someday, Kaden, Emily and me. We’ll go there on holiday. Be one of those fit families that hikes in North Face coats and big boots. Emily will sit in one of those baby backpacks, peeking out over her daddy’s shoulder. Our Family.

‘Helloo, Earth to Genevieve?’ A voice filters through my private imaginings. Vanda from work stands beside my table, face full of make-up, big red lips and carrying two large shopping bags. She’s surrounded by children all whining for ice cream.

‘Oh, hi Vanda. Hi boys. And girl.’ They’re not interested in saying hello – they race to the counter and start choosing Freakshakes from the menu.

‘I saw you from outside. Why you not work yesterday and today?’

‘I called in. I told Trevor that Emily had a bug.’

She frowns at the papoose. ‘She got bug now?’

‘Uh no. She’s much better today thanks.’

‘So you be in tomorrow, yes? I need to know or else I get cover. You don’t let me know again, I give your job to someone else.’

‘I’ll be in at eight, I promise.’

She bats her enormous spider-lash eyes. ‘You better be there or I come down on you like ton of fucking bricks, yes?’

‘Yes. Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Her children are obstructing two paying customers at the till but as Vanda shrieks ‘Kids move!’ at them, they quickly disperse and fall into line in silence.

3

Thursday, 24th October

I leave a little tube of Smarties behind the front gate for Alfie the paper boy and drop Emily off at the childminder’s on my way to work, passing by the arcades to see if Matthew’s there at the bus stop, playing the grabbers outside while waiting for his school bus, but he’s not. It’s half term, of course. He’ll be with his family.

Being outdoors with Kaden yesterday has made me feel braver, bolder, and the three men from the hairdressers seem a distant memory now. I’m expecting a normal day at The Lalique. The past fifty-odd days have been excruciatingly normal – bed-changing, vacuuming, bleaching, replacing creamers, sugars, sachets of tea. Then back along the seafront to bed and waking up again and it starts all over. The highlight of any shift is usually when I catch a child coming back to the room by themselves to get something. Then we have a chat and they tell me what they’re doing for the day.

But today, there are no children about and Vanda’s in an awful mood. She’s always in an awful mood with me. She’s like a Russian Cruella de Vil and she scares me twice as much. I’m hanging up my coat in the staff office when she storms in. No Hellos or How are yous, just: ‘There’s a shit in the pipe Genevieve, so you lucky I don’t throw you through fucking window today. Floor 2. Go help Trevor.’

‘A “shit in the pipe”?’ I say.

‘A blockage. A stiff in Room 29. Means we’re going to cordon off whole floor so the police can come and then we have to wait around and clean when they have gone. We’re short-staffed as well because Fat Faith’s brat has the conjunctivitis.’

‘Okay.’ I’m not quite sure what she means by ‘a stiff’ at this point but if it’s Russian for poo, I better make sure my plunger’s on the cart.

‘Baby not got bug today?’ she says as I wheel to the service elevators.

‘No, she’s fine today, thanks. The doctor said it could be colic.’

‘She tit or bottle?’

‘I’m breastfeeding her.’

‘So she may be allergic to you.’ It’s not a question.

‘She seems okay. Thanks.’

‘So you express when you’re not with her?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s young to be left with childminder. What is she, a month?’

‘Five weeks. I can’t afford not to work, Vanda.’ The lift finally bing!s open.

‘How much she charge, childminder?’

I’m in the lift and the doors close before I can answer. I always breathe a sigh of relief after Vanda’s firing squad of questions. She interrogates where other people enquire and is always picking me up on what I’m doing right and wrong for Emily, just because she has four children herself. She thinks she knows everything there is to know about anything, she’s one of those people. Anything you have, she has double. You have a kid, she has four. You have money worries, she’s broke. You have a row with your boyfriend? Her ex-husband stabbed her. Twice.

When I get to Floor 2, Trevor the porter stands guard outside Room 29.

‘Alright Gen? Any sign of the police and coroner?’

‘A stiff?’ I say, finally realising what that means. ‘You mean there’s a dead person in there?’

‘Yeah,’ says Trevor. ‘A young lass.’

‘How?’

‘She’s in bed,’ he sniffs. ‘Shit herself too, by the smell of it.’

‘Oh my god.’

‘Oh this is nothing,’ he says, leaning on the end of my trolley. ‘I’ve been here fourteen years. Seen eleven deaths in that time. You must have seen your fair share, working in a hospital?’

My mouth is wide. I click back into Genevieve mode. ‘Oh yeah. Loads. Every shift in fact. How did she die?’

‘Dunno. No sign of pills or booze. Have a look, if you want.’

‘What?’

‘Nobody’s around. Go and have a butcher’s, before they get here.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Be my guest,’ he says, sweeping aside like the candle out of Beauty and the Beast, leaving the door open for me to enter. My mind is already whirring. Trevor hands me a white square of cloth. ‘I’d take this in if I were you. Don’t worry, it’s clean.’

I don’t know whether he means the handkerchief or the stiff, but in I go before I can talk myself out of it. I’m at the bathroom door when I smell her. I bundle the hanky against my nose and mouth. I’d only ever seen one dead body in my life. And it looked nothing like that. She looks asleep. Her sheets are pulled up to her chin.

‘Could be natural causes,’ Trevor calls out. ‘I didn’t look too hard. Heart condition perhaps?’ Even Trevor’s pungent body odour can’t mask the smell from the bed. She’s lying there, red hair all spread out on the pillow. Blue eyes open.

‘The dead can’t hurt me,’ I whisper. ‘The dead can’t hurt me.’

Trevor’s still jabbering on. ‘Can you see anything? Anything obvious?’

I momentarily lift away the hanky to answer him, then shove it straight back. ‘No.’ But when I look closer, I see that there are red spots around one of her eyes, and the white in the other one is all red. Around her neck and under her ears are fingerprint-sized bruises.

‘Do you know her name?’ I call out.

‘Tessa something,’ says Trevor. ‘She’s here for the teaching conference, so him on Reception said. Maths teacher, I think.’

I spy Tessa’s open handbag on the chair and I know I shouldn’t but I don the rubber gloves I use for cleaning and pull out her purse. I find her driver’s licence. I slide it out. Tessa Sharpe. Twenty-eight years of age. Red hair. Blue eyes. From Bristol.

Dread plunges in my chest like a descending elevator.

When I come out, Trevor’s standing with his back against the wall and his arms folded. I close the door and hand him back his hanky.

‘Vanda found one hanging on the back of a door once,’ he sniffs. ‘She’s winning the Stiff Sweepstake, aren’t you V?’

Vanda appears on her vertiginous heels with a toilet roll in either hand, her cart parked up against the wall, vape sticking out of her apron pocket. ‘I thought he was heavy coat. He was doing sex thing.’ She grimaces. ‘Lot of people die in hotels. Whitney Houston. Jimi Hendrix. That guy from Glee. Coco Chanel. Mainly drugs.’

‘I think she was murdered,’ I say.

‘Who, Coco Chanel?’

‘No, Tessa Sharpe. I think she’s been strangled.’

There’s a pause, and then Trevor and Vanda look at each other and laugh the kind of laugh that prickles me all over. The kind of laugh that stops the moment I walk into the Staff Office most mornings. The kind of laugh that followed me down the corridors all through school.

‘Head in the clouds again, Genevieve,’ says Vanda. ‘So we have a murderer in the hotel now do we? Shall we call Poirot? Or that old lady with the typewriter? Or maybe Kendal Jenner? Didn’t you say you saw her working in Greggs in town? I wonder if she knows how the stiff in Room 29 died.’

‘I didn’t see Kendall Jenner,’ I say. ‘The woman just looked like her.’

‘You said it was her!’ says Vanda.

Trevor gives it the slow blink like he’s king of all knowledge. ‘Listen, back to the matter at hand – this isn’t suspicious. There’s no forced entry, the windows were closed, she checked in alone and she was checking out alone today after the second day of the conference. Some people know when they’re gonna die and they check into a hotel to spare their loved ones. Sad but true.’

‘She’s been strangled,’ I repeat, more vehemently. ‘Her neck is bruised.’

‘What are you, a chambermaid-cum-forensic pathologist now?’ Trevor laughs in my face again.

‘She’s got bloodshot eyes as well,’ I say, willing Vanda’s face to soften and believe what I’m saying. They both keep looking at me. ‘I’m telling you, this is murder.’

Vanda turns to her trolley and counts out four creamers to take them into Room 24 opposite. A couple in flip flops flip flop past the open doorway and she greets them with a pleasant ‘Good morning, have nice day’ as they make their way to the lifts. They don’t answer and she flicks a third finger at their backs. The lift doors bing and they get in. She turns to me.

‘And you know this because you used to work in hospital, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ve seen strangled person before, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was this before or after you play hockey for England team?’

‘Afterwards. And I was in the youth team.’

She snarls, reeling back from me to grab two fresh hand towels from her stack.

‘You must think I came in on last dinghy, darling.’ She nods briefly at Trevor, then retreats back inside 24 with a stack of fresh linen. He stands there guarding Tessa Sharpe’s closed door with his arms folded. They both think I’m lying. But there’s a difference between lying sometimes and lying about everything.

Two suited men who look like police arrive on the next bing of the lift, flashing their IDs at Trevor before entering Tessa Sharpe’s room. In a flash, Vanda reappears and instructs me to begin cleaning the rooms on the third floor while the forensics swoop in and do their thing. I want to watch them but Vanda is adamant and when Vanda is adamant I have to fall in line, like everybody else.

From a third floor window, I watch them wheel Tessa Sharpe’s body out to the van parked at the back of the hotel where the deliveries come in. I can’t take my eyes off the body bag. It forced me to remember the last time I saw a body bag being wheeled up the ramp of a van. I’m about to start cleaning Room 42 but before I can knock, I realise it’s now or never and I run downstairs to Floor 2 and see one of the policewomen enter the lift with a plastic bag full of Tessa Sharpe’s belongings.

‘Sorry, love, you’ll need to catch the next one.’

‘I wanted to know – it’s murder, isn’t it? The lady with the red hair.’

‘Well I highly doubt she strangled herself.’

Briefly, I’m pleased I was right. But when the lift closes, panic sets in.

I think about Tessa Sharpe my entire shift. Everything I clean or wipe is tainted with the memory of that open-eyed stare, that picture on her driver’s licence. Her red hair. This is a quiet, mundane seaside town. I’ve only been here a couple of months but the only crimes that seem to be committed are drug- or vehicle-related. The odd lawnmower stolen from a garden shed. The odd bit of shoplifting. But this is murder. And it’s too much of a coincidence that she has red hair and blue eyes. And she was my age, almost exactly. And from Bristol.

I get my bag from the staff office and I’m on my way out again when Vanda shouts my name. Well, not my name.

‘Genevieve?’

‘Yeah?’ I turn. ‘I was just going.’

‘You were right about Miss Dead Woman,’ she says under hooded eyes. ‘Fair play. I take it you saw strangled person before, when you work at hospital?’

‘I knew someone who was strangled. I saw what it did to them.’

Vanda says nothing, looks to my feet and back up to my eyes and then nods and I take that as my cue to leave. She probably thinks I’m lying again. I wish I was.

The cleaning fluid smell has got into every cavity – my nostrils, my mouth, my eyes. I need fresh air more than ever. I head out through Reception and through the front door and I’m halfway across the front lawn when I hear young voices I recognise.

‘Mum, it’s the maid!’ says a voice and the two little girls I befriended at breakfast last week come rushing across the grass towards me. ‘Hi, Genevieve!’

‘Hi, girls!’ I say, momentarily forgetting my nausea. They’re wearing T-shirts over their swimming costumes and Kiki’s hair is wet at the very ends. My guess is they’ve spent the morning on the beach. ‘You making the most of the Indian summer, are you? Been swimming?’

‘Yeah,’ says Lola. ‘And we found a crab.’

‘No, I found the crab,’ says Kiki.

‘Wow, where is it? Can I see it?’

‘Mum made us put it back in the sea where it lives.’

‘Well that’s probably for the best. Now he can get back to his friend Ariel, can’t he?’ They both giggle. ‘How’s your knee now, Kiki?’

‘Much better,’ she says, showing off the Lion King plaster that I put on it the other day. ‘It’s not bleeding anymore.’

‘Lucky I carry those on me, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah, Mum never has any in her bag.’

‘It was a lot of blood,’ says Lola, all sheepish. ‘I didn’t like that.’

‘I was a nurse once,’ I tell her proudly. ‘I’m used to it.’

‘We found this,’ says Lola and removes a silver ring with a red heart stone in the middle of it. Costume jewellery but they’re both gazing at it like it’s Meghan Markle’s engagement ring.

‘That’s beautiful,’ I say, as Kiki places it in the palm of my hand. I turn it around and look at it for a bit and hand it back to her.

‘It’s for you,’ says Lola.

‘Oh, I couldn’t take this,’ I say, giving it back.

‘We want you to have it cos your boyfriend hasn’t given you a ring yet. So you can have that one until he does.’

‘I don’t know what to say. Can I give you both a hug?’

They fall against me and I inhale the nape of Lola’s neck – salt and sun cream. ‘Thank you, girls. That’s very kind of you. I wonder where it came from. Maybe from a shipwreck?’

‘Yeah,’ says Kiki. ‘Maybe it was a princess’s and she fell overboard—’

‘—while being kidnapped by a brutish band of pirates.’

‘Yeah!’ says Lola. ‘And the princess is in the sea, trying to swim back to her land.’

‘—but she hasn’t got there yet because the swimming tired her out so she’s stopped off on some deserted island and she’s been captured by a dragon.’

‘And the dragon—’

‘Hi, Genevieve, sorry to keep you,’ comes the voice of the infiltrator – their bouncy-bobbed mother, looming behind them. ‘Were you off?’

‘It’s fine. I’ve always got time to talk to my two friends.’

The girls beam and I want to hug them again so badly tears fill my eyes. I pretend it’s the sea breeze.

‘Thanks again for seeing to her knee the other day.’

‘It’s no bother at all.’

‘I’ve issued a complaint to the hotel manager about glass bottles on that beach. I’m not sure what they can do about it really.’ She turns to them. ‘Girls, make sure you rinse your feet before going in that pool, alright?’

‘Okay,’ they sing-song in unison.

I pull a face and roll my eyes which they both understand and giggle at the woman’s retreating back.

‘What are you two doing now? Do you want to go to the pier with me and play the slots? I can ask your mum if it’s alright?’

‘We’re not allowed any more money today cos we’re having new school shoes.’

‘We’re going to find Dad and uncle Ray at the pool and then later we’re going to the Jungle Café for dinner.’

‘Ahh, never mind. How about tomorrow?’

‘We’re going home tomorrow,’ says Kiki. ‘So we won’t see you anymore.’

I’m sadder than I want them to see.

‘Auntie Sadie’s going to do my hair in French plaits,’ adds Lola.

‘French plaits, eh?’ I say. ‘Well do you know what would go really well in French plaits?’ She shakes her head. I hold out my fists before her. ‘Pick one.’

She picks the right hand and I open it to reveal the packet of unicorn hair slides.

‘Ah, cool!’

‘I didn’t forget you, don’t worry,’ I tell Kiki, offering her the remaining closed fist. She pops it open and takes out the kitten hairbands with a big shy smile. ‘There you go now, you can both look pretty for your meal at the Jungle Café, can’t you?’

‘Thank you, Genevieve,’ they sing-song again.

‘You’re welcome,’ I say and yank softly on Kiki’s soggy ponytail. ‘You better go.’

It’s only when the girls are out of sight that I realise I still feel sick. I smell Tessa Sharpe again, wafting out of the window of Room 29. My aloneness feels so obvious the further I walk along the seafront. I’m completely unnerved. Every few steps I’m looking over my shoulder. I cross the road to the arcades to see if Mia or James or Carlie are in there playing basketball or driving neon cars down desert highways but there’s no sign of any of them. They must all be away for half term.

And the breeze is so sharp it cuts across my cheeks and stings my eyes. And the wind whips up my dye-blackened hair.

Not my hair.

My real hair is red, and I see Tessa Sharpe’s red hair in my mind’s eye again. Red hair and blue eyes. She didn’t arrive with anybody; she wasn’t intending to leave with anybody. Whoever killed her had seen her around the hotel. I can’t not think it. I can’t pretend this time.

Whoever killed her thought she was me. Which means I was right. They’ve found me. They know exactly where I am. And when they discover that they’ve killed the wrong person, they’ll come for me.

First day of the Easter holidays, eighteen years ago…

4

I’m on the train, little suitcase next to me on the seat, legs swinging freely. I’ve got my Jelly Tots and my books and Miss Whiskers beside me, and Dad is sitting opposite, wearing his Bristol City away shirt, playing with his phone. If I close my eyes, this could be the Hogwarts Express. We could be going back on the first day of term. I’m on a huge red steam engine roaring through the misty countryside. I’ve bought some Chocolate Frogs and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans and Miss Whiskers is a real cat, like Hermione’s cat, Crookshanks, and therefore, magical. But Dad keeps talking to me and there are no parents allowed on the Hogwarts Express so I can’t fully imagine it.

‘You excited?’ says Dad, fidgeting with his phone, turning it round and round in his hands. I nod and carry on colouring my picture. ‘What are you and Foy going to get up to this Easter then?’

‘Uncle Stu is going to do us an Easter egg hunt. And Isaac’s going to teach me to ride his bike. And Chelle’s going to do some plaits in my hair. And we’ll probably play over the churchyard and in our castle.’

‘The castle?’

‘Our castle in the trees.’

‘I thought that was Paddy’s treehouse?’

‘He doesn’t want it anymore. He said we could have it. So now it’s our castle.’

‘Oh right.’

A man with a black box on his hip stops by our table and asks to see our tickets and I get mine from my strawberry purse dangling around my neck.

‘Are you staying with me this time?’ I ask Dad when the man has passed by.

‘No, love, I’ve got to work.’

‘I thought you didn’t have a job?’

‘I’ve got a job.’

‘At the phone place?’

‘No, I didn’t like that one.’

‘With the man on the market stall?’

‘No, I didn’t like that one either.’

‘With those men who came to the house last night?’

‘What men?’ He frowns. Oops. I was supposed to be in bed. ‘Oh those weren’t men – that was the Three Little Pigs.’ I chuckle. ‘They’re my mates. They keep asking me to build them some proper houses cos the wolf keeps blowing theirs down.’

‘Liar, liar, pants in the drier.’

‘It’s true, Squish. They’re going to pay me lots of money so we can have a brilliant Christmas this year.’

‘I thought you liked working at the phone place.’

‘Nah. The boss was a bit of an ogre.’

‘What, a real ogre?’

‘Yeah, a proper ogre. She’d eat whole humans for her lunch.’

‘Urgh.’

‘And she lived under a bridge and everything.’ He checks his phone screen.

‘Trolls live under bridges, Dad.’ The train goes under a bridge and all goes to black, briefly. ‘Like that one.’ ‘How come we came by train this time?’

‘The car’s being serviced.’

‘Can I have something to eat? The lady’s coming with the trolley.’

‘Wait ’til we get to the station. Auntie Chelle will get you something in town.’

The train cannot roll into Taunton Station quickly enough and I’m already in the aisle with my case when it comes to a stop. My knees almost buckling with excitement, I look through every window, whizzing through the faces on the platform for signs of Auntie Chelle. And then I see her. She’s in a red wrap-around dress and a blue cardigan and petrol blue boots with buckles. I can’t see Foy. The disappointment comes upon me like a sicky belch. Foy said she was coming. Where is she?

And then I see her. In her blue ballet tutu and blue tights and gelled back bun. She’s swinging on the bike racks behind Chelle. That’s when my holiday begins properly – the moment I start running along the platform towards Auntie Chelle and she sees me coming and shrieks with delight and I crash safely in her embrace and she lifts me up and we hug so tightly and I breathe the familiar jasmine scent of her curls. The nearest thing I have to a mum is a perfumy waft that comes from Dad’s second wardrobe. Chelle is a living breathing mum and it’s all I can do to stop touching her.

‘How’s my precious girl?’ she cries, stroking my cheeks with her thumbs and gazing down at me with tears in her eyes. ‘Oh we’ve missed you, Ellis. We’ve all missed you so much.’ She cuddles me against her.

‘I’ve missed you too.’

And she sets me down and Foy skips over and hugs me as well.

‘Look, I got you a surprise,’ she says and then holds out her hands and I have to pick one. I pick the one that has a little cat pencil topper inside it. Then she opens her other hand to reveal a tiny fold of paper. She’s drawn me a picture of us standing on top of our castle with our swords pointed up to the sky. Standing around us are some of our army – The Knights. Monday Knight, Tuesday Knight, Thursday Knight and our Chief Knight, Saturday. Our own personal bodyguard service.

‘That’s us,’ she giggles.

‘I love it!’ I say. ‘Did the storm blow the castle down? I was worried.’

‘No, it only took the roof off so Isaac and Dad patched it up. It’s really strong now. Dad found us a sheet of wavy plastic for the top. Come on, let’s do this,’ she says and leads me over to the bike racks while Chelle talks to Dad. I don’t catch their conversation – it’s usually boring brother-sister stuff. They don’t hug like we do.

Me and Foy sit in the back of Chelle’s car and pretend we’re being chauffeur-driven by our servants. Foy is the Duchess of Fowey because that’s the place she’s named after, and I am Lady Kemp of Ashton Gate because I live near Ashton Gate. We are so stinking rich that we have our own castle and every animal you can think of. We are off into town to buy new saddles for the unicorns and bamboo for our pandas.

‘Yes, turn here, Jeeves,’ says Foy with a dismissive wave of her hand as Chelle’s car turns at the traffic lights into the road at the back of the church where we usually park. Dad’s come along to have a quick bite in town before his train back to Bristol.

‘Dad, can you come and stay at the pub as well?’ I say.

‘I can’t love,’ he says. ‘I told you, I’ve got work.’

‘What work is that?’ asks Chelle.

‘Got a job with a mate doing a bit of cash in hand.’

‘Sounds lucrative,’ she says. And they don’t talk about it anymore.

‘It’s for the Three Little Pigs,’ I say, ‘building houses for them.’ Nobody laughs.

We park up in the pay and display behind the big church.

‘Mum, can we go to Wimpy?’ asks Foy.

‘Yes, you two go on ahead and order. I’ll have a Coke.’

‘I’ll have some chips and a Coke,’ says Dad. ‘I’ve got a quick errand to run actually so I’ll meet you all in there.’

‘What errand?’ says Chelle.

He checks his phone, then puts it back in his pocket. ‘Well there’s this princess, you see, and she’s been asleep for a thousand years and if I don’t climb up this big tall tower and give her a kiss, she won’t ever wake up. So I’ll dash off and do that and I’ll be back, alright Squish?’

He yanks my plait and wiggles Foy’s bun and we both laugh and then he rides off like he’s on his horsey, which makes us laugh even more. ‘I won’t be long.’

Chelle’s not laughing.

Me and Foy have cheese burgers and chips and strawberry milkshakes and scoff them greedily as Chelle sits taking the ice out of her Coke and placing it in the ashtray.

‘How many Easter eggs have you got?’ Foy asks between red-saucy mouthfuls.

‘I don’t know. Dad packed them in my case to give to Chelle.’

‘We’ve got to buy some, Ellis,’ says Chelle. ‘He didn’t get round to it. As usual.’

‘Oh right.’

‘We’ll nip to Woolworths on our way to the car. And I must do the bank.’

‘Maybe that’s what his errand was?’ I suggest.

‘I doubt it,’ Chelle smiles, stealing a couple of Dad’s untouched chips. ‘Woolworths is nowhere near the betting shop, is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Anyway, never mind him. What would you like to do this holiday, Miss?’

This is my favourite bit of any holiday – the bit before it all begins. She leans forwards, like she’s telling us both a great big secret. ‘Everything,’ I say, licking at the dried line of tangy ketchup around my mouth. ‘I want to do everything!’

‘Right, well, we’re doing our Easter egg hunt on Sunday and then we’ll all go for a ride out in the country to that nice tea place and have poached eggs and soldiers—’

‘Yeah!’ says Foy. ‘They have a wicked climbing frame there, bigger than the castle. And they’ve got the dogs we played with last time, remember?’

I do remember, every second of it. One of the dogs had a thorn in its paw and we reported it to the lady and she gave us a free scone each.

‘And then we can go asparagus picking up the farm on Monday, cos there’ll be nothing open in town. And the boys will be around so I’ve asked if they’ll take you out flying kites again, or maybe some fishing down at the stream. How about that?’

I’m so excited I could burst but I settle for kicking my heels against my chair.

‘Can they take us to the cinema as well?’ asks Foy.

‘Yes, I’m sure they can,’ says Chelle, sipping her Coke and looking at the time.

‘We can go to that burger place they took us to last time,’ I say. ‘Where we got the free Frisbees.’ The Frisbees that kept going over the beer garden wall into the stream and Isaac had to keep climbing over the wall to fish them out.

Paddy and Isaac are the two best boy cousins I could ask for. Isaac’s fifteen and sporty, and always working out on the machines in the old stable behind the cellar. Paddy’s twelve and he’s more into art and styling his hair. Isaac’ll be starting his GCSEs soon. I hope he still has time to chase us around the car park on the bikes.

‘Can we have chicken pie and mash one night please, Auntie Chelle?’

‘I don’t see why not.’

I love it when that’s the answer.

‘And chocolate sponge and alien sauce?’ says Foy.

‘Yeah, baby! Oh that reminds me, I’ve got to nip in the comic shop and pick up Stuart’s birthday present.’

‘What is it?’

Chelle rolls her eyes. ‘His dream Tardis.’

‘Not a big Tardis though,’ says Foy. ‘A little one with a little Doctor Who inside and a Dalek and it plays the theme tune when you open the door.’

‘He’s had his eye on it for a while,’ says Chelle.

‘Can I buy him something as well?’ I ask. ‘Maybe a Doctor Who comic?’

‘Yeah he’d love that. Do you want me to look after your pocket money?’

‘Dad’s looking after it for me.’

‘Okay,’ she smiles, looking towards the door as a family with pushchairs struggle in out of the rain. ‘How is he at the moment, sweetheart?’

‘He’s okay.’

‘How much did he get for the car in the end, do you know?’

Foy dances her little unicorn pencil topper along my arm. ‘How much?’

‘Yeah. He’s sold it, hasn’t he? That’s why you came on the train.’

‘He said it was having a service today.’

‘Ah, right. My mistake. Finish your burger, love.’

All the ice in Dad’s drink melts and his chips go cold so Chelle tips them in the trash. He sends a text to Chelle that he’ll meet us at the car at 3 p.m. instead. So we do Woolworths for the eggs and Chelle banks the takings at NatWest and me and Foy steal armfuls of leaflets for our bank, which the castle doubles up as sometimes.

We’re back at the car by 2.55 p.m., but Dad isn’t there. By 3.15 p.m. we’ve played I-Spy, Yellow Car, the memory game, and Foy and me have planned all the things we’re going to do in the castle when we get back – first paint the walls, then we must clean the carpet and deadhead the window box. Then play Banks. And then we have to do a supermarket run because the dinosaurs are getting low on tins of Jurassic Chum.

At 3.25 p.m. Chelle puts another hour on the car cos there’s still no sign of him.

‘I’m sorry, hon, I know he’s your dad but he does my bloody head in sometimes. Why is he so unreliable?’ she huffs. ‘There’s nothing consistent about him at all.’

Foy picks up Miss Whiskers and makes her growl and roar around Chelle’s neck until she reacts, turning round in the driver’s seat and swatting it away.

‘Will you stop that, please? I’m not in the mood.’

Then we see Dad coming.

‘Uh-oh,’ says Foy, and Auntie Chelle slams the driver’s door when she gets out. Me and Foy laugh at first but then we see her shouting at him and they both stand in front of the car, him being barked at like a stranger at the gate. Foy winds down the back window so we can hear what they’re saying. Chelle’s patting down his jacket and she wrenches something out of his grasp and holds it up – small pieces of paper.

‘Can’t fucking stay away from them, can you? You utter loser.’

We aren’t laughing then. The F word makes Foy go quiet and then cry.

I hold her hand. She grips mine tightly.

‘She bought Stuart a birthday present,’ says Chelle. ‘So you owe me a fiver.’

‘I haven’t got it, Chelle.’

‘You spent your ten-year-old daughter’s pocket money? Jesus Christ.’

Foy buzzes the window up. ‘I don’t like it when Mum gets stressy.’

‘It’s always Dad that makes her stress.’

Chelle deep-breathes and gets in the car. He follows and she starts the engine. None of us say a word until we get back to the station. Chelle leaves the engine running. Dad pokes his head through my window and fist-bumps Foy, making the sound of starburst sprinkles coming out of his hand. He kisses me on the nose.

‘You be good, Squish, alright? Call me every night.’

By the time we get out of town and the car’s streaming along through the green countryside towards Carew St Nicholas, I’ve forgotten about the row between Chelle and Dad – my mind’s too full up with the possibilities that lie ahead. As we turn the corner down into the village and round the bend into the vast car park at the back of The Besom Inn, I spy Paddy and Isaac on their bikes, doing wheelies and bunny hops.

‘Isaac’s got a new bike!’ I say. I can’t wait to get out of the car.

‘Yeah,’ says Chelle. ‘It’s a Hellcat Something Something with front suspension and something-else splashbacks, apparently. He got it for his birthday. He said you could have his old one.’

‘REALLY?!’ I cry. ‘Ah wow!’ I spy it straight away, leaning up against the skittle alley wall, all shining silver and red with the word Apollo written on the downtube.

‘He’s pumped up the tyres for you specially,’ says Foy.

I leap out of the car and run across to Apollo, wheeling it over to Isaac.

‘Hey, Ellis. Like your new bike?’

‘Yeah! I love it! Can I really have it?’

‘Yeah, no sweat. I pumped the tyres up for you.’

‘Not you again, Smellis,’ says Paddy, wheeling over and skidding to a halt beside me. He tickles my ribs and chases me across the car park but lets me win, like always.

After an hour of wheeling around we go inside the pub and find Uncle Stu closing up the bar for the afternoon. I give him a hug and we help ourselves to crisps and cans of Rio. The pub is a rabbit warren of low ceilings, oak beams and a warm orange glow from every doorway. There’s a pervading smell of old log fire and spilled beer and somewhere a fruit machine plinks and whooshes.

Upstairs, there are four main bedrooms and two unused ones called the back bedrooms, housing old toys and various pub bric-a-brac, old tankards and unused bar stuff like beer mats and ice buckets. My hands run along the wallpaper, bumping over the little chips and dents. I want this holiday to last forever.

And once Foy’s changed out of her ballet stuff, we ride, four of us into nature, along the lanes towards the playing fields, me and Foy stopping every so often to pick up dinosaur food, or petrol for the Lamborghini or the Ferrari, or new school shoes for some of our kids. We have forty in all, but we live in a castle so there’s definitely room.

My ten-year-old self needs this. A break from worrying about Dad and his angry phone calls and disappearing acts in the night. I need weeks of itchy legs and Wham bars and cola cubes and board games played the wrong way and bare feet on cold evening grass playing Mad Rounders with leeks and sprouts. I need to run until my sides stitch and make up dance routines to Madonna songs with Foy.

I need to fly kites and make nests from cut grass in fields wider than oceans, in sunshine that warms our backs and stretches our shadows to look like giants. To jump on desert rock furniture and lava carpets and create assault courses from old fire guards and broken chairs and table cloths. To play for hours a day in our secret places where adults don’t go – the quiet churchyard over the wall from the pub, the castle, our duvet dens – places where time is decided by the colour of the sky, not clocks and watches, and my limbs are powered by fizzy drinks and melted ice lollies.

Where every morning Chelle says ‘Rise and shine, Clementine,’ when she opens Foy’s bedroom curtains and takes us downstairs for milky coffees and bacon sandwiches. And we help Stuart stock up the bar and he gives us five pounds to spend at the shop. And we buy felt tips and sketchpads and blue bootlaces and we take it all up to our castle in the tree where we draw our wedding dresses and watch over our land where popcorn fields sway in the wind and unicorns run wild and a T-Rex stalks the land, looking for half-open tins of Jurassic Chum.

And where everyone calls me Ellis. Or Elle. Or Ellis Clementine Kemp, when I’m naughty. Or Smellis or Elly Belly Cinderelly. But always, always Ellis.

If only I’d known then that everything would soon be taken from me – even my own name.

5

Friday, 25th October

Kaden is out at 6 a.m., doing little sprints up and down the seafront. I only went out to put the Smarties by the gate for Alfie but I decided to sit and watch him as it was such a peaceful, bright day. So I’m sitting on the front steps, looking across the road at the doughnut van and wondering what time he opens. I hold my glass of Strawberry Nesquik. I think about Us again. Me and him supermarket shopping, the baby sitting in the trolley seat and him making faces at her. When I’m thinking about him, I’m not thinking about Tessa Sharpe. I need him in my life. He can protect me from The Three Little Pigs. He can be my brave Saturday Knight with bulletproof shield and a lance that will pierce the hearts of my enemies.

He always seems so busy though. If he’s not jogging, he’s working. And if he’s not at the gym he’s gone off somewhere on his motorbike. I don’t like to impose.

But if I don’t impose, I’m going to keep thinking about it. About Tessa. Wondering if she knew what was happening when those big hands were around her neck. Wondering how long she panicked before the breath was squeezed out of her. Wondering if she heard Death creeping into her bedroom.

Kaden eventually appears, vest sweated through, lost in music. I call out, ‘Hiya.’

He sees me as he’s climbing the steps to the front door. ‘Oh hey, Joanne,’ he puffs, yanking out one of his earphones. His neck’s all sweaty again but the big news is he’s wearing shorts. And he has the most wonderful legs. Tanned, toned, soft blond hairs all over but I’ve never minded that. He’s never looked lovelier. Beads of sweat trickle down his forehead and into the nape of his neck.

‘How are you today?’ he puffs.

‘Yeah, I’m okay thanks,’ I say, gesturing towards my Nesquik.

‘Nice. How’s Emily?’

‘She’s fine. Thanks. Asleep, for now.’ I roll my eyes like Mums do when they’ve been up all night with their babies. ‘What are you doing today?’

‘Got to have a shower and then it’s work at nine. You?’

‘Work this afternoon,’ I shrug. ‘That’s about it.’

I feel like I have left it open for him to ask me to spend this morning with him instead but he doesn’t. One of the cats leaps up onto the wall and startles him – Tallulah von Puss. We share a laugh and he tickles her chin as she nuzzles his hand. So he’s okay with cats too. He is all kinds of perfection.

‘Saw a poster that looked like her a few streets away,’ he says, frowning to inspect her labelless collar.

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Little white patch here and everything,’ he says, stroking her chest.

‘Oh yeah, I saw that one,’ I lie. ‘That isn’t her. This is Tallulah von Puss.’

‘I think that one was called Pedro. Anyway, I best get going. See ya.’ He jogs up the front steps to the door. I wait for him to take a second look back at me, like men sometimes do in films when they’re secretly in love but they can only say it with their eyes. But he doesn’t.

And Tessa Sharpe’s dead face comes screaming into my mind again.

I hear the first notes of Emily’s cry inside so I gulp down my Nesquik, pick up my crumby plate and go to her.

Me and her. Me changing her. Me cuddling her in the middle of the night when there’s nobody else to. It’s just us. It always would be just us, wouldn’t it? And in a heartbeat I’m annoyed, my head is full of thunder and lightning. I wish, for a second, that I was Tessa Sharpe.

And then I feel awful, like my insides are rancid. How could I wish I were dead even for a second? After everything Scants has done to protect me? Because being dead means this all being over, that’s why. All this running and hiding and lying. I can just be Me. Ellis Who Died. Rather than Joanne Who Barely Existed. I don’t want to be the Me they tell me to be. The Me that Scants says I have to be. It doesn’t stick.

Today I’ve told work I’m going to be late as I have to attend a funeral. And it’s true; I am going to a funeral. June Busby’s funeral. Whoever June Busby is. I heard them talking about it at Leonard Finch’s funeral last week and I asked the vicar about it. I wonder if they’ll have those mushroom vol-au-vents again after; they were delish.

I’m not disrespectful when I attend these gatherings, far from it. And I’m rarely asked for identification. I like going because funerals are family occasions and I like being around families, even if they aren’t my own. People are usually so taken with peeking into the papoose to try and see Emily, they aren’t bothered that I’m neither family nor friend. I could be a neighbour, a work colleague, someone the deceased met down the park while feeding the ducks. Maybe I gave her a lift to aerobics. Maybe I walked his dog for him in his final weeks. They’ll never know.

I haven’t brought Emily today. I wanted to go alone. I’m all in black as I walk funereally through the fog towards the big cemetery gates. I see the coffin in the hearse. Dark brown. Brass handles. Small floral arrangement on the top with a card. A large black car follows closely behind. They both stop at the doors.

The family members get out of the car. A man with a ginger beard and blond hair. Black suit. People gravitate towards him, shaking his hand, a manly embrace. A We’ll get through this shoulder clasp. I’m handed an A5 white booklet.

Celebrating the life of June Miranda Busby.

The entrance music is listed as The Carpenters’ ‘Yesterday Once More’. I flick to the back page. The exit music is ‘Don’t Cry for Me Argentina’. Leonard Finch’s exit music was ‘Oklahoma!’ which everyone seemed to find amusing for some reason.

There’s a Welcome and Introduction by the Celebrant – Miss Gloria Andrews, whoever she is and whatever a celebrant is. Posh word for a priest, I suppose.

Then a hymn – ‘Make Me a Channel of Your Peace’. Loads of verses.

Then a Eulogy and a family tribute, read by June’s son Philip. Then another hymn. Then the Committal. Which is the bit when the coffin goes behind the curtains and, presumably, gets burned.

‘You will come to the pub for a cuppa, won’t you?’ says the son, Philip, to the man standing next to me looking over the floral tributes.

‘Yes of course,’ says the man.

‘Yes of course,’ says I. And the son Philip looks at me and smiles graciously. He doesn’t need to know who I am – being there is enough for him to know his mother was cherished.

I only started going to people’s funerals after my dad died. I couldn’t go to his – I was still in hospital and they said I wasn’t well enough. I’ve only ever visited his grave in Scarborough once, and Scants told me not to go back again. Never go back, it’s too dangerous. Keep going forwards. To where though? Where am I going?

I’ve tried to get out and about and meet people like Scants keeps telling me to, but it’s not like it used to be as a kid. Back then you’d just say Hey, do you want to play Tig or Pokémon? and they would. Adults are full of suspicion and fear. Children themselves I find very easy to talk to. When I’m down at the pier or the beach or the arcades on my mornings or afternoons off, I can strike up conversations very quickly with kids. We have similar interests. Similar goals in life. Mainly, short term happiness. They don’t think about tomorrow. I daren’t.

Scants finds this too weird. No more playing with other people’s kids, he says. It’s not friendship, it’s grooming. Join a club instead, do a course, get some hobbies. Meet people your own age.

But adults are untrustworthy and devious. Adults do bad things.

The only things I like doing besides eating and watching DVDs is going down the arcades and playing ‘Guitar Hero’ or bowling with Matthew or dressing up the cats. I don’t go scuba diving at weekends or play lacrosse on a Wednesday night or anything like that. I’m not sociable or vivacious enough to ‘join a club of likeminded people’. Who does that? What kind of Louisa May Alcott world does Scants live in where people just go out and, god forbid, introduce themselves to new people?

I’m not one of life’s joiner-inners, I am one of life’s stay-at-homers.

Except when I have to work. Or I need a doughnut.

‘Hey, Charlotte!’ comes the cheery greeting from inside the doughnut van as I’m walking along the front to work.

‘Hi Johnny,’ I say. ‘How are you?’

‘I saw you the other day. Had some doughnut holes for you. I called out.’

‘Oh. Sorry. I can’t have heard you.’

‘You seemed in a rush. Where’s your baby today?’

‘At the childminder’s. I had to go to a funeral this morning.’

‘Ah no. Anyone close?’

‘No, not close. Got a nice few hours to myself now to finish my novel. Thought I’d treat myself first.’

‘Ahhh good idea,’ he says, lowering the frying basket into the bubbling oil. ‘Give me three minutes, I’ll put a fresh batch on for you.’ He moves his batter mixing bowl to the back bench and I slip into Charlotte Mode – my spine instantly lengthening as I flick my scarf over my shoulder.

‘Thank you. I need all the sugar I can get today. Got a big rewrite underway.’

‘That’s not good,’ he says. ‘Your editor didn’t like what you’d done?’

‘No, I completely messed it up actually. Had to cut around 40,000 words. It’s fine though, I’ve had worse. Every book seems to get harder to write.’

‘Wow, 40,000 words? You must write pretty fast.’

‘Yeah I do. I can dash that off again in a week, it’s no biggy. Ooh, I’ll have a Lilt as well thanks, Johnny.’

‘Not a problem,’ he says, grabbing a can from the fridge. ‘Not seen you about much lately, Charlotte. Thought you might have found another doughnut man.’ He winks but it doesn’t feel MeToo-ey, just friendly. It’s pretty comforting in a town where nobody knows my name and offers me nothing in the form of family.

‘No, never,’ I smile. ‘I have a lot on at the moment, that’s all. I’ve just come back from a book tour and a couple of my author friends had their launches this week as well so it’s been a bit hectic.’ I sigh like it’s all been one big drama.

‘I see,’ he says, flicking the doughnuts over in the basket where they bob and glisten in the golden oil. A white flickering catches my eye – a Missing Cat poster on the nearest lamppost flaps in the wind. Suki Shortcake. Missing since July. It’s actually my Prince Roland. No wonder he ran off with a name like Suki Shortcake. The doughnuts finish frying and Johnny tips them out of the basket onto a tray covered with flattened kitchen roll, scattering their brown tops with sugar.

‘Five for a pound or, to you, four plus one free for one hundred pence.’

‘Five is good, thank you.’

He shovels my doughnuts into a paper bag and winds it up in two knots. I hand him £2 and he places the warm bag on my palm, retrieving my change from his belt.

‘They smell magnificent, as always, thank you Johnny.’ I venture a hand into the bag but they’re too scalding hot and my fingers burn on impact.

‘How are book sales for the last one?’ He leans on the counter top.

‘Good thanks. Sold it to Greece and… Belgium this morning, in fact.’

Two young lads scuff towards the van, reading their options from the board.

‘Ah, that’s wonderful! And have you met David Schwimmer yet?’

I told him a few weeks ago that David Schwimmer had signed up to be in the movie they’re making out of my book Lovers in War.

‘Not yet. I think he’s coming over in the near future so maybe I’ll meet him then.’

‘That’s fantastic. I love Ross. Could I be more of a Ross fan?’

‘That’s Chandler,’ I laugh.

‘Oh yeah,’ he laughs, louder. ‘Which one’s Ross again?’

‘The dinosaur guy. Three divorces. Someone ate his sandwich.’

We both laugh when we realise neither of us can do a Ross impression.

‘Thanks for the doughnuts, Johnny,’ I say, picking up the cold can of Lilt which soothes my overeager fingertips.

He turns to the two lads who both want doughnuts too. ‘Okay, don’t be a stranger now, Charlotte. Yes, lads, what can I get you?’

I use the doughnut man, I admit that. I use him to make myself feel better. And some days it works. But today, it doesn’t. The doughnuts are too hot to eat and he is too busy to flirt to the required level that makes me feel good about myself. I want to go back to the flat, cave up in my duvet on the bed and hide.

But I have to work. Afternoon shift.

There’s only one more byte of information I can learn about Tessa Sharpe’s death – her hands were bound with ‘reusable cable ties’. I overhear General Manager Kimberley talking to the detective sergeant with the lazy eye. She says Trevor only has single-use cable ties for the TVs in the bedrooms so whoever killed Tessa Sharpe must have brought their own.

Room 29 is still out of action and the police are at the hotel all day, questioning the rest of the staff. For some reason they don’t question me though and I wonder why until Trevor informs me they want to talk to staff members who were on shift between 7 p.m. and midnight on the night she died. This discounts me from suspicion, at least.

‘Have you finished?’ says Vanda as I’m craning my neck around the staff office to hear what she’s saying to the investigating officer.

‘No, I wondered if there were any more J-cloths? There’s none on the shelves.’

‘No. You have to open new box. And shut the door.’

So I do. Nobody tells me what is happening – not Sabrina, not Claire the temp, not Madge, and all Trevor says when I catch him lumbering through with boxes is, ‘It’s a police matter now, let them do their job.’

When was I not letting them do their job? I only asked if they knew who’d done it yet. Why won’t he tell me?

He’s mending the coffee machine in the breakfast room when I finish my shift.

‘Do they have any CCTV?’ I say. ‘You know, of anyone not staying at the hotel who sort of wandered in?’

‘Don’t know yet. The detective lassie who came yesterday mentioned an ex-boyfriend so I think they’re looking at him for it. They won’t keep us informed cos it’s nowt to do with us.’

‘Of course it’s to do with us. It happened in the place we work.’

‘Yeah, but we’re not involved.’

I bite down on my lip. ‘We might be.’

‘How?’

‘Well, what if it’s a serial killer? What if Tessa Sharpe is only the first?’

‘She’s not. I told you, they’re investigating the boyfriend.’

‘Might not have been the boyfriend.’

He stops what he’s doing and looks at me. ‘What are you saying here, Gen? You saying the murderer is still around, waiting to strike again?’

‘Could be.’

‘Well, who is it then, Miss Marple? Who you got pegged for it? One of the chefs? The guy who comes to clean the fryers? Me?’

‘I don’t know. Nobody knows. I don’t feel safe here, I know that. It said in the paper this morning that she was… raped.’

He points at me with his screwdriver. ‘A young lassie died in terrible circumstances. Everyone here feels awful about it. But you going round saying things like that will only make things worse. You’ll scare people.’

‘I don’t mean to scare anyone, Trevor. I’m telling you how I feel.’

‘Leave it alone. Let the police deal with it. The family are coming up tomorrow to talk to the police. We don’t want any hysteria.’

‘I’m not hysterical. I’m worried.’

‘Yeah well, I’m worried ’n’all. I’m worried about keeping me bleeding job.’

He had nothing else to say. I don’t know why he got so funny with me, I wasn’t accusing him. Vanda and the rest of them had obviously poisoned him against me. They all thought I was weird. I say weird things. I eat my tea break biscuits in an odd manner – Chocolate Digestives chocolate first, then halved, then quartered; Custard Creams scraped out, put back together, bitten into a circle and rolled around my tongue; Jaffa Cakes chocolate first, cake second then suck the orange disc. I’d seen how they all looked at me. It was the way a pack of lionesses look at a deformed cub before they abandon it under a tree. I don’t blame them.

On my way out through the car park, I see Lola and Kiki standing beside an estate car loaded up with suitcases and inflatables. I wave goodbye but they don’t see me. I’m still wearing the ring they gave me, except it’s on my fourth finger now. If anyone asks, I’m going to say it’s an engagement ring. But nobody’s asked yet.

I feel better once I’ve got Emily’s warm little body snuggled against me – and we walk the long way home past the gym on Tollgate Road, where I linger outside to see if Kaden’s around. He’s in reception with a new member by the looks, a young woman in a leotard with long blonde hair and very thin triceps. They’re sitting in the bucket seats, going through some form. He’s flirting easily with her. She’s smiling, tucking her hair behind her ear. My chest squeezes painfully as we walk on by.

If you get scared again, call me. If I’m not home, I’ll be at the gym.

I’m not scared right now though, am I? I’m sad. Because Trevor at work hates me now, and he was my one friend. And Scants doesn’t want me calling him unless it’s an emergency. And Kaden was flirting with that woman. I want to go home. Back to Carew St Nicholas. Back where I was known and loved.

But that’s not an option. So I go back to the flat. In the dying light I can see post in my pigeonhole. A leaflet about the new self-storage place that’s opened on the ring road. End of Summer Sale at B&M. Autumn sale at Harvey’s, fifty per cent off blinds. A circular from Vodafone about going contract rather than Pay-As-You-Go. And a catalogue. Addressed to Miss Joanne Haynes. A catalogue I know I haven’t ordered.

A coffin catalogue.

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