I expect Ash to berate me for destroying something that might be evidence. But he doesn’t. Instead, he takes a deep breath. I sense he’s about to tell me something. Whatever it was he went to the trouble of driving out to Crooked Oak Cottage on his lunch break to share with me.
‘I picked up the roach of the joint the two Knoll brothers smoked,’ he says. ‘I gave it to Roly to … for the crime scene … their fingerprints, you know … I just wanted something to send the investigation in a different direction. Away from Iris. I know it wasn’t her, obviously, but I’m scared they’ll come after her.’ He looks embarrassed. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’
I do. I’m also terrified that Iris will come under suspicion. But now I’ve found the tissue, I’m starting to suspect her myself, whereas in Ash’s head, there’s not even a sliver of doubt about her innocence. As usual, though, when it comes to our offspring, Ash and I are working in tandem. I’m bent on destroying evidence and he’s trying to plant it.
‘Roly wasn’t having it, of course,’ Ash says when I don’t say anything. ‘Listen, I’ll ask Iris about the necklace, OK?’
I nod mutely. I can’t speak past the lump in my throat.
‘Have you told Dandruff about it?’ Ash asks. ‘Sorry, I meant Dan.’
I shake my head.
‘Good. Don’t. Don’t tell anyone else. About the necklace or the joint. Especially not Jo.’
Ash gets up, comes round to my side of the table and squeezes my shoulder. He’s about to leave and I desperately want him to stay, having jettisoned any notions I had of getting any work done today.
‘I’ll ask Iris about the necklace,’ I say, finally finding my tongue. I think it’s better if it comes from me. She’ll get mad if she discovers I talked to Ash about it before talking to her.
‘OK,’ he says. ‘Keep me posted.’
‘Ash, what if the police end up suspecting Iris?’
‘We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it, but we won’t,’ Ash says with a lot more confidence than he can possibly be feeling.
Chapter 13
Iris
THEN
Later, Iris found it ironic. She’d been sitting cross-legged on her bed, making notes on Deborah Tannen’s theory of ‘genderlects’. Basically, the idea that men and women learnt different ways of communicating through socialization. Or, in other words, that men and women could walk away from the same conversation with completely different interpretations of what had just been said.
She was really into the linguist’s book,You Just Don’t Understand, which Mr Lawton, her English teacher, had recommended as background reading, when her phone beeped with a text. She smiled, knowing it would be Josh.
Wanna see how you make me feel?
J x
She thought he’d just send her a selfie. He’d be grinning in it, showing off his perfect teeth, one of the perks of having an orthodontist for a father. She fired off a quick text in reply.
Sure x
Her phone pinged again. She was about to highlight an important bit in the book. But if she didn’t reply immediately, Josh might get salty, so she stopped reading, picked up the phone and looked at the screen. She gasped. Not what she’d been expecting at all. Girls and boys definitely didn’t speak the same language. So, yes, ironic. A little disturbing, too. This wasn’t a selfie that showed off Josh’s perfectly aligned, white teeth. It was a dick pic, a zoomed-in close-up of Josh’s hand on his erect penis.
At first, she felt a bit irritated. She was trying to study and she hadn’t signed up for this. But somehow, she couldn’t tear her eyes from the screen. If she was honest, she was feeling a bit turned on.
It didn’t occur to her straightaway that he was expecting a similar reply. She was still staring at the photo when another message came in.
WTTP?
She dropped the phone on the bed, as if it had burnt her, squealing out loud. No! She deffo did NOT want to trade photos. She reached for her phone and typed out an answer. It took her a while to get the wording right – she wasn’t going to send a nude selfie, but she didn’t want him to sulk or ghost her. When she was satisfied, she added kisses and exclamation marks to keep him calm and sent the message.
Thx for the pic!!!
Doing homework right now.
Some other time, maybe.
