‘Well, what if reincarnation happens?’ Greta asked. I loved the way her brain worked. ‘If you’re suddenly now a lion with a hankering for tourists then I don’t want to be eaten if I decide to do a safari in Tanzania.’
Greta and I had talked before about what we’d want to be reincarnated as. We went back and forth for a while, and eventually, she told me I was probably some kind of doe, which made sense: non-confrontational and all-round pretty chill. After a bit, she said she liked the idea of being a ladybird. She told me that she’d found out, while she had holidayed in Amsterdam with her dad a few years ago, in Dutch the name for ladybird means ‘the Lord’s most beautiful creature’, which sounded a little vainglorious. Imagine explaining what your name meant to a Dutch dung beetle, that had to be awkward.
‘I feel like I needsomethingfor you to talk about in my eulogy, though. Like something important; be nice to have some kind ofaward by the time I died, not something as lofty or glamorous as a Nobel Prize like Obama, but maybe something relatively mild from the Press Awards,’ I remarked. ‘Just some kind of trophy with my name etched on to show my life wasn’t a total waste, that there was some meaning to it. I don’t want to spend my life being an uncredited copyeditor for Double J.’
‘You’ll get there, Ruth, I know you will, it’s only a matter of time,’ Greta reassured me. She continued speaking but I found myself going into Ruth-mode and beginning to slip into something of a daydream.
I could picture it now, one of those glitzy, fancy award evenings, where my name would echo through the room as the winner. I’d ascend the stage, the applause thundering around me. No one would dare to say it outright, but they’d all know I’d been the favourite to win by a mile. After all, I was the woman who took down the TellTale Killer. What an accolade. How would one even try and attempt to catch the world’s most wanted man, though?
‘Would you help me catch the killer, Greta?’ I asked, abruptly interjecting whatever Greta had been saying, probably something about some bad date she had gone on. I knew my mouth had been robotically repeating, ‘right,’ for the past few minutes while she had been speaking.
‘What?’ she said, like she had misheard me at first.
‘The TellTale Killer. Would you help me try and catch him?’ I asked, almost a little bit giddy at the idea forming of us working together to take him down. Starting to visualise my route to being a proper journalist.
‘Did you not hear a single word I just said?’ she asked. I couldn’t quite work out her tone at first, it sounded a bit angry.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, did I zone out again?’ I asked, a touch dumbfounded. ‘I just think maybe as a duo, we could actually stand a chance.’
It took me a second to analyse her face. I visually scrutinised how her brows wrinkled, and her jaw started to clench. Oh no, Irecognised how her face looked when she was angry, she was definitely mad at me. Really mad.
‘You’re telling me you weren’t listening to me just now?’ Greta asked, her eyes almost bulging out of their sockets, refusing to blink as she glared at me.
I thought about lying and dredging the recesses of my memory for a phrase, or even a word I could recall, but I must confess I couldn’t think of a single thing she’d said to me while I thought about getting some two-kilo golden trophy.
‘It’s just, I think I’ve figured out his pattern,’ I said, reasoning that if I explained why I was so immersed in my own thoughts, it might justify my space-out. ‘All the people who went missing were travelling alone when he abducted them. I think he’s targeting people near Tube stations and I wonder if between the two of us – you by the station, me on standby – we could align to the killer’s system and then find a way to…’
I trailed off, I could see her eyes only further widening with rage at every word I spoke. I half expected her eyeballs to ping free and skitter across the table between us like two loose marbles.
For a few moments, Greta gently parted her lips to speak before sealing them shut again, leaving me in silence. After what felt like a taste of eternity, she finally found the words she wanted to say.
‘So, after ignoring what I just said, you’re also saying that you want to use me as bait?’
‘Well, no, don’t say it like that!’ I exclaimed, noticing the ever-deepening crease in her brows. ‘Saying,I want to use you as baitmakes it sound like I’m treating you like you’re expendable, which you’re not. I just need to find a way to draw him out, and I can’t exactly do that by myself.’
What had she been talking about that had got her this upset?
Greta let out a venomous, mocking laugh, more biting than I’d ever heard from her before; there was a callousness that I didn’t quite recognise from her. ‘Unbelievable, Ruth. Seriously?’
My mind raced. I truly hated seeing Greta upset and I hatedthe way her words pierced through the air and directly into my chest. I didn’t mean to, but I could feel my eyes begin to moisten and well up at the mere thought that Greta was angry at me. We hadn’t argued since we were eleven and I chopped the heads off her Barbies.
‘Greta, I’m sorry,’ I said, the words spilling out too fast for them to be comprehensible. ‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t listening and I’m sorry that I asked you to…’
‘Oh no,’ she shot back, her voice still rippling with rage. ‘It’s perfectly clear what you think of me, Ruth. Crystal, crystal clear. I can’t believe I just told you what I found out today, and you just completely zoned out. You always do this when I try to talk about important things, you just zone out. Clearly I’m not important to you!’
‘It’s not like that!’ I protested, stumbling over my sentences again as an effervescent sort of panic bubbled up inside me. My thoughts scrambled, desperate for a way to fix the situation that had spiralled out of control so rapidly.
‘Greta, please, listen to me—’ I tried again, but she was already shoving her belongings into her bag. She hastily wrapped the remains of her sandwich in a napkin and crammed it inside, inadvertently knocking my glasses off the table.
‘Please, don’t leave like this,’ I pleaded as she stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the tiled floor, some of the nosy patrons in Sabroso twisting their heads around to take a glance at the commotion unfolding.
‘No,’ she said firmly, her voice trembling with anger. ‘I was telling you something important. I need to get away from you right now, Ruth – I’m justsomad at you.’
She had never spoken to me like this before.
I gently tried to grab her arm just to stop her, even for a moment to calm her down, but as quick as a whip, she slapped it away.
‘Okay,’ I whispered, swallowing hard. ‘I get it, I do. Just… can you text me when you get home? Please?’ My voice cracked with desperation as I hastily used my sleeve to wipe away the tears now streaming down my face. She was already striding across the café floor. I thought about letting her go for a moment but there was no way I was letting her walk home alone to cool off – not on your nelly, not with the TellTale Killer still at large. I followed her, but the further she got from me, the harder it was to see her clearly without my glasses. I knew I didn’t have time to go back and scoop them up if I wanted to catch her. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, so I stumbled forward, trying to keep my eyes fixed on the distinctive emerald green of her coat. As I precariously pushed open the door and craned my neck in every direction of the busy London street, I couldn’t see a glimpse of that signature verdant green. It had been lost, engulfed somewhere in the crowd.
