I glance out of the window at the rooftops of Bristol. I can see the cathedral’s spire from up here and the buildings that cluster around College Green. I can tell it’s raining by the sea of colourful umbrellas obscuring the pavements, moving almost as one. A line of traffic chugs up Park Street and a double-decker bus belches smoke as it heaves itself up the hill, like an unfit runner.
Ever since I spoke to DCI Ruthgow this morning I’ve not been able to get the interview out of my head. His words are eating away at me. I’m dying for a cigarette but I daren’t leave my desk until I’ve filed this story. I glance across at Jack, my smoking companion. He’s hunched over his computer, tapping at his keyboard, a phone cradled between shoulder and chin. Sensing me watching,he lifts his head and pulls a silly face. And then, in a placatory voice, he says into the receiver, ‘Yes, yes, I quite understand, Madam. No, I didn’t realize they would use that photo of your cat … I agree, quite inappropriate given his untimely demise … Uh-huh, yes, not Fluffy’s best side admittedly but, no, I didn’t think he looked fat.’
I can’t help but smile and turn back to my computer, studying the words on the screen again, trying to push away the thought I’ve had since speaking to DCI Ruthgow earlier. But it won’t budge.
Is itmyHeather?
Tilby is a small town. I should know: I grew up there. And this Heather Underwood would be the same age as the Heather I went to school with. The Heather I wasbest friendswith. We lost touch when we left school, but for a while – for a good couple of years, in fact – we were inseparable. As far as I remember, there was only one caravan park in Tilby, and it was owned by Heather’s family. The surname is different – she was a Powell back then – but it’s too much of a coincidence, although not beyond impossible. Heather isn’t that unusual a name. I flick back through my notebook, trying to decipher my shorthand. Yes, in our interview Ruthgow confirmed that, after killing two people, Heather Underwood went back to the caravan park where she lives with her husband and young son and tried to take her own life.
Heather always wanted to leave Tilby. Would she really still be living at the same address after all this time?
‘Haven’t you finished that yet, Jess?’
I turn to see Ted standing over me, his breath smelling of coffee and cigarettes overlaid with a faint hint of mint. He runs a hand over his beard. It’s the colour of a tobacco stain, the same as his hair.
‘Yep. I’m just about to file it.’
‘Good.’ He peers at my screen. ‘Didn’t you go to school in Tilby?’
‘I did.’ I don’t remember telling him that, although it’s on my CV. But the man’s like a bloodhound.
‘You’re about the same age, aren’t you? Did you know this girl?’
I take a breath. ‘I’m … Actually, I’m not sure. I was friends with a Heather. But …’ But the Heather I knew would never have been capable of something like this, I want to say. The Heather I knew was sweet, quiet, kind. She always had so much time for people. The old woman with the beginnings of dementia whom we’d bump into in the corner shop: Heather would help her home when it was obvious she couldn’t remember the way. Or she’d pilfer blankets from her house to give to the homeless man who slept beneath the underpass when it was cold. She was always polite and well-mannered, remembering to say thank you to bus drivers and shopkeepers when I always forgot, desperate to eat my sweets or get to my destination.
Yet there was another side to her, too. I remember the last time I saw her: her green eyes had blazed, her fists clenched at her sides. That was the only time I’d ever seen her in a rage. I had been scared of her sudden unpredictability, like a horse I’d always thought placid that was now about to rear and buck. But it was towards the end of ourfriendship, when everything went wrong and she was angry with the world. With me. It was understandable.
I’ve tried not to think about Heather in recent years, but now a picture of her forms in my head, like a reflection in water, slowly sharpening and gaining focus. Dressed in a long, floaty skirt and DM boots, twirling around on the lawn, singing along to ‘Charlotte Sometimes’ by The Cure; the tinkling sound of the many bangles jangling on her arm; cantering on her little black pony, Lucky, her long dark hair cascading down her back.
I take a deep breath. I really need a fag.
Ted makes a smacking sound as he chews gum in my ear, reminding me he’s still standing beside me. ‘You better get your butt down to Tilby,’ he says, in his Essex accent. He’s lived in Bristol for years but has never managed to pick up the West Country twang. Although, when he’s had a few, he likes to rib me about mine. ‘And take Jack with you. See if it’s the Heather you knew at school. She’s unconscious so the police can’t charge her yet.’
The subtext being that we can print what we want until they do.
Ted doesn’t often show excitement or happiness or any other emotion apart from grumpiness. Unless he’s had a few beers, when his humour shows through like a slice of sunlight beneath a grey cloud. Most of the time he wears a harassed expression and, when he’s not smoking or drinking coffee, he frantically chews gum, his jaw going nineteen to the dozen. But now his small blue eyes shine with rare delight, as though he’s a pitbull about to be given a slab of raw meat.
‘I was about to look on the electoral roll – see if she still lives with Leo or Margot.’
‘Don’t worry about that now. Even if it isn’t the Heather you knew, you still need to be there. Interview whoever she was living with. Describe where she shot herself for colour. You know the drill.’
I do indeed. I could do it in my sleep. Yet before, when I worked in London, I never knew the people involved. Now, if it’s my old friend Heather … I shake my head, not allowing my thoughts to go there. I have to treat it as any other job.
I stand up and pull my sheepskin coat from the back of the chair. It’s heavy and warm (it’s always so cold in here – the heating rarely works properly) and I wrap it around myself gratefully. I got it in the charity shop on Park Street, where I buy most of my clothes, and it’s the colour of toffee with a shaggy cream collar and cuffs. Jack’s still on the phone so I scrawl a quick note, saying I’ll meet him outside.
‘Nice coat, Jess,’ calls our receptionist, Sue, as I scurry past, shoving my notebook into my bag. She’s in her late fifties with a crop of silver hair and twinkly eyes that crinkle when she laughs. She’s like a lovely cuddly aunt who always refers to me as ‘a girl’, asking me about my life and my boyfriend, as though living vicariously through ‘my youth’ even though, at thirty-one, I’m not particularly young. Some days I feel very, very old. And very, very jaded. Like today.
‘Thanks,’ I call back, taking the cigarettes from my pocket as I head out of the reception area. ‘Got it for a bargain in BS8.’
‘And I’m liking the new fringe,’ she adds. I touch it self-consciously, although I know it frames my face, softens my blunt bob, and the platinum blonde contrasts with my chocolate-brown eyes. ‘Very Debbie Harry.’
I laugh off her compliment – although I’m secretly delighted – promising to bring her back a coffee (the machine stuff in the office tastes of plastic), then shoulder my way through the door, down the stairs and onto Park Street.
Our offices are in a red-brick building directly above a newsagent’s. There are only six of us who work out of here – two snappers, two reporters, including myself and a trainee called Ellie, Ted and Sue. Our headquarters are on a trading estate a few miles out of town. We type up our copy, then send it down the line to the subs at HQ. Jack and I often joke that our office is where the dregs are sent. The staff they don’t want to get rid of, but don’t want hanging about the main newsroom. I can’t understand what Jack’s done to warrant such a situation. How could anyone dislike him? I tell him that he’s only here because he was the last in. As soon as a snapper leaves HQ (and it’s amazing how high the turnover of staff is there, how quickly they jump ship to a daily like theBristol Daily News), Jack will have left before he can say ‘digital camera’. I doubt the other photographer, Seth, will ever go anywhere else. He’s long past retirement.
I can’t allow myself to wonder how I’d cope without Jack if he left. I know it will happen eventually. Jack pretends otherwise, but underneath his easy-going persona he’s ambitious. It’s only a matter of time before he moves on. I, on the other hand, am happier here in our littleoffice, away from prying eyes and ears. And Ted is a good boss. Despite his grumpiness, he trusts us and leaves us to make our own decisions (and most afternoons he leaves early to slope off to the local pub). I don’t want to be stuck out on some soulless industrial estate. I like being able to walk out onto Park Street. I love the hustle and bustle, the shops, the cafés, the buskers. It reminds me of London. Not to mention that I can walk to work from where I live.
I’ve been given a second chance and I’ll always be grateful to Ted for that. He took me on when nobody else would.
