Mr Eliot was the one who got me into photography. From somewhere, I have no idea how, he procured my first camera, a battered old Olympus that taught me everything I needed. That Olympus was the making of me. I took a few pictures of life inside the home – surreptitiously – and he sent them off to a newspaper, which printed them as part of an exposé on boys in care. It started my career down the runway – the money got me a better camera – but the subsequent investigation got Mr Eliot sacked. I didn’t know how to thank him, or apologise properly, but I did keep in touch from time to time. He didn’t know my real career, of course, but the fake one impressed him just as much. He died last year. I miss him.
By the time that all happened, I was in my final year in care, and after a woefully inadequate briefing on life outside, I was triaged into a hostel. I don’t really think the conditions there were the council’s fault either. They were a few years into the financial crisis by that point, and it was becoming clear that the tide of money (never very high) had gone out for good. But the effect was: take a moderately self-taught boy who has lots of energy, give him a scabby room he doesn’t want to be in, and see how he gets out. Some of the building’s graduates chose drinking and fighting; I chose interloping.
It started small, of course. The first time I did it, I didn’t even stay the night; I just got into one of the posh houses in a nearby village, stood there for twenty minutes taking photographs, and left. What a weird kid. But I got better at it, and eventually I decided to take it up full-time, just until I secured enough money to rent somewhere decent. Well, that’s never happened, not with my expenses.
I pause, and glance at Elle, to see how she’s taken all this. She’s looking at me sympathetically, head still cocked at a ‘poor you’ angle. Does she believe any of it? Hard to tell. I shrug, bravely.
‘So here I am,’ I say.
16
And now we’re at the seaside. I don’t remember the last time I just hung out at the seaside with a few friends.
Not that this lot are friends, of course. But they’re not exactly colleagues, they’re certainly not family, and ‘acquaintances’ sounds a bit Victorian. Ugh. Whatever. We’re at the seaside together and that’s good enough for me.
Also, we’re not really ‘hanging out’, given our to-do list for the next few days (avoid detection by angry shaven-headed thug, avoid police, trace killer). But I’m not feeling unhappier than before we got into this mess. I expected to feel horrible after spending a few days with the same people. Very discomfiting.
Part of that is Em’s influence. I’ve never met anyone who does what I do. She’s not quite as good, of course, but it’s still interesting, like seeing yourself from outside. There’s a kindof ‘raw performer’ element about her that I’m sure I used to have, before I started twisting my ankle on short drops or leaving coasters everywhere. And if I’m honest, I’m curious about her too. Where did she and her sister come from? I don’t quite buy their ‘piscining’ story, which seems a bit semi-baked to me – the sort I might trot out to deter annoying questions. They mentioned someone called Claudia a couple of days ago, but that’s hardly a lead, and I don’t have any leverage to ask.
Worth keeping an eye on, our Em.
We know – thanks, Jonny – that Lulu Harcourt is studying textiles, and he’s somehow got into her (private) BeReal too. She goes to a lot of gigs, and she seems to spend the rest of her free time in a three-storey café deep in the Lanes. It’s one of those places where students can turn up and play a board game for five hours straight on one latte without the management throwing them out.
One other thing we know is that her mother’s alibi is watertight. On the train journey, Jonny logged in to a website he uses sometimes when he and the girls are planning their own interlopes. It’s a flight tracker for private planes, and he confirmed that Bunny Winthrop’s Embraer private jet had indeed made the journey back to the UK the day before yesterday. So Charli seems to have told us the truth there.
It’s a fair way from the King’s Road to Brighton’s Lanes. I guess in both places you’ll have your idea of what a functioning human society looks like fundamentally challenged. But the vibe in the Lanes is a trifle more laid-back, and getting served in Six Sides of Sourdough is taking a while.
The place is lined with faintly international wall-hangings. There’s a noticeboard covered in yellowing adverts for events: ‘Vibraphone lessons’, ‘Uric therapy workshop’, ‘Syndicalist crochet slam’. The terracotta tip pot by the till looks like it was thrown by an employee: on the side, glazed in wobbly writing, is the wordRESIST. It’s very, very studenty here. If I’d been to uni, I bet I’d be nostalgic now. Elle wanders off while we queue, and a few minutes later comes back excited.
‘She’s here,’ she says. ‘Upstairs, with a friend.’
‘What’s she doing?’
‘Playing a board game. Couldn’t see which one. Should I go back and check?’
‘No, Elle. No, that’s great. OK, how shall we do this?’ We talked on the way down about how we might make our approach, but we didn’t come up with the final answer.
I was all for playing student welfare officers – I could just about pass for a PhD who had taken his time over his studies, and the other three are so fresh-faced they could plausibly be doing master’s degrees and making cash on the side by asking troubled undergraduates how they’redoing. Em wanted to go in harder – pretending to be from the authorities – because she reckons that as the heiress, Lulu’s got a good chance of having killed her father, or having him killed. I said that was risky; I have a faint memory that impersonating a police officer is a crime that comes with an especially long sentence. The police don’t like it when you do impressions of them. (I find this particularly unfair, because apparently they’re allowed to do impressions of normal people and that’sjust ‘undercover work’.) In the end, we persuaded Em round to my view.
The other thing hobbling us is what we’re actually going to say. Em wanted to ask about the death; I think we should just gently enquire about Dead Man Davy and lead her onwards from there.
We head upstairs as two unconnected couples. Elle and Jonny go first, flump themselves down in the corner on a pair of beanbags, and start playing an incredibly involved board game that looks from the box like it’s about the glass-blowing industry in fifteenth-century Europe.
Once Em and I have got our teas (fennel and lemongrass for me; builder’s for her, with what the pencil-moustache and pencil-neck barista disapprovingly refers to as ‘teat milk’), we follow along. Upstairs we spot our mark immediately.Poor thing, I think.
Lulu Harcourt doesn’t look terribly sad from the outside, but that’s not what grief is like, of course. She’s nineteen years old, I know that, and although I don’t know much about textiles, you wouldn’t think she did either. She’s in a big, shapeless grey top over black leggings, capped with massive trainers the size of snowshoes.
‘Lulu?’ She looks up.
‘Hi. I’m Kiki, from Student Services,’ says Em. ‘This is my colleague, Kevin.’
I wave, awkwardly. ‘Hi.’
‘Do you mind if we have a little chat with you?’ Lulu shrugs, and Em glances at the girl with her. ‘I mean … in private?’
Lulu gives us a flat look, then looks at her friend and rolls her eyes. ‘Does it have to be?’
I nod. ‘I’m so sorry. GDPR rules. We’d go to prison if we discussed personal Student Service details in front of anyone else.’
