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She moves a hot-water bottle off an easy chair in the dining area and suggests Imo sits down. The vinyl upholstery makes a fut sound when Imo lands.
“What’s that?” She points to the drink on the coffee table, flinching at the smell.
“Hangover remedy,” Phoenix explains. “Amber left it there for me. Tastes like candle wax.” She’s never tasted candle wax, but she knows it would be like this.
“Where is Amber?” Imo yawns.
“Must have gone back to bed, said her leg was hurting.”
When Phoenix got up, she’d been surprised to find Amber stretched across a chair and the coffee table, hugging a hot-water bottle. When she saw Phoenix, she pressed it against her knee. Phoenix offered to make an ice pack for her leg, but Amber declined.
Imo leans over to the table and sniffs the waxy drink. “Have you even got a hangover? I didn’t see you drinking.”
“Cider. My mouth’s like a Portaloo.”
Imo holds her head. “I’m going to lie down.”
“Haven’t you got a library induction session?” Phoenix asks. She passed Tegan on her way out, looking fine in designer jeans and another broderie anglaise top. “Tegan mentioned a library talk for Business students.”
“I’m totally dead.” Imo puts down her cup and lurches out of the kitchen.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_283138c9-d165-5db5-8626-df684e45ebea)
Tegan
Tegan’s app directs her from her parking space in front of the geography tower to the university library. It looks like a giant greenhouse, several storeys of tinted glass. She makes small talk with other Business students who are waiting for the doors to open. It’s an investment; no time to pitch to them now, but her saleswoman’s instinct tells her to schmooze.
Amber, one of her three blonde flatmates, walks past with a group of weird-looking students – duffle coats, combats, tie-dyed scarves that look as if they’ve been in an autopsy. Tegan waves. It might pay to be neighbourly. But Amber looks away, ignoring her. Bloody cheek. Tegan catches the tail end of a story she’s telling the gaggle around her.
“… Cumberbatch is great to work with.”
Tegan looks at the ground and shakes her head.
After a few minutes, a man in an un-ironed shirt, with a beard to match, appears inside the library entrance and releases the glass doors. He holds up his hands. “If you’re expecting an induction, it’s in Lecture Room 2.”
“Are you sure, mate – library induction?” one of the boys asks.
But the man goes back indoors. No one knows where the lecture room is and they drift off in different directions. Tegan and a few others search but find only Lecture Room 1 in the Business Studies block, with no sign of another lecture theatre.
“Stuff it,” Tegan mutters and returns to her car. She’s not that bothered anyway about using the library. When her business takes off, she’ll pay someone to do her research. She opens the roof of the car and gazes up at the geography tower. All the parking spaces are designated disabled but hers is the only car here. Where to now? The first Business Studies lecture isn’t until tomorrow. There’s time for a drive around the town centre to see if any of the independent shops will stock her jackets.
Her fists clench as a thought makes her shiver. She’ll show him. People make it big in business all the time through hard graft and a good idea. She’ll be a success without her father’s tainted help.
Something glints at a third-floor window. The glare from the sun is too bright for her to see what it is. Maybe someone’s looking out, and so what if they are? They’re hardly going to slap her with a parking fine from up there.
Light glimmers again. It’s bloody binoculars. Some doddery old perv of a geography professor is spying on the campus, gawping at fresher totty from his ivory tower. Her fingers form a V. She points them at the window, making clear she’s eyeballed him. The figure steps out of sight but is too fleet of foot for an ancient academic. Tegan grows cold and notices that her hands are shaking on the steering wheel.
Suddenly her passenger door opens and Amber gets in, disturbing the air with cheap, fruity scent. “Take me to the flat.”
“Try asking nicely before you scare the crap out of me.” Tegan’s heart races, thoughts of the watcher still rattling.
Tears streak Amber’s face and clumps of mascara look set to dive off her lashes. “Social anxiety,” she gasps. “Sometimes crowds get too much for me and my leg’s hurting.” She pants, rhythmically, as if she’s going to hyperventilate.
“That must make it hard during a show.” Tegan’s heartbeat has calmed, and settled on sarcasm.
The panting stops and Amber stares at her. “Show?”
“On stage, with you being a drama student. Acting all the time.” Acting right now, if Tegan’s any judge.
Amber breathes out. “I’m more of a director, behind the scenes. I have to keep my anxieties under control.”
Tegan starts the engine. Cumberbatch my eye.
As she pulls away she glances up at the tower once more. And catches a glimpse of a tall shadow at the window. A face stares down at her. And her hands shake again.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_71a138b1-23b3-5c55-b08b-bc68c6444f09)
Amber
The fragrance in the car is subtle but expensive. Half like its wearer – Tegan’s definitely on the pricey side but there’s nothing subtle about her silent disapproval. The more Amber sees of her, the more she resembles her sister, Jade. Not only her dark hair and freckles, but also her stance. Straight back, manicured nails on the steering wheel, hard eyes.
No doubt the last thing Tegan wants is Amber occupying her passenger seat, but Amber had no choice. Couldn’t walk another step after the shock she’s just had. It was only the trick of the light, but she had turned and fled, barged people out of her way, panic rising in her throat, stomach crippling in pain.
Why doesn’t she just tell Tegan a version of the truth instead of faking the stuff with her knee? She told Imo when they were drunk – sort of told her – so why not Tegan? Or Phoenix? She seems okay so far, better than expected. Not a deep thinker, into engineering and … Amber leans on the window as she scrolls her memory. What else does Phoenix do? Something sporty if her physique is anything to go by.
Amber bites the inside of her cheek. Maybe she should ask her flatmates questions and listen to the answers, instead of masking her secrets with babble. Instead of play-acting the part of an intellectual liberal so others will feel too intimidated to enquire about her background. A stupid role to pick as she only scraped into this university with a plea of extenuating circumstances. All lies. There were reasons for her poor A level results, but not the ones she gave.
Taking a deep breath, she continues with the disguise she’s been perfecting since she arrived. “Shall we go to the canteen?” she asks enthusiastically. “We can have a proper chat.”
“What, now?” Tegan glances at the clock on her dashboard.
“Early lunch. Please, I’d like to.”
Silence and Amber thinks she sounded too pleading. That’s always been her downfall. Begging gets you nowhere. On her knees, clinging, sobbing, screeching …
“If you’re paying,” Tegan says. She pulls into the kerb and reverses up a side road. They turn around and park in the loading bay behind the kitchens.
“Shouldn’t you …?” Amber starts, but changes her mind. She hates it when people run her life; she won’t tell Tegan where to park.
The canteen queue moves slowly. Students everywhere. Remembering who she thought she saw, her belly tugs, as if she’s being pummelled from the inside, and she keeps glancing over her shoulder. Suddenly she’s back there, in the moment. In the hours. Hurting. As a substitute for doubling over, she rubs her knee. Channels her ache into her leg. No one must see the truth. She straightens up, ignoring the funny look Tegan gives her.
As they wait, most people gaze at the TV monitors around the walls with Lady Gaga videos on repeat. Tegan uses the time to check her sales figures on her phone.
“It’s like Hogwarts.” Amber scans the busy dining hall. Tables the length of railway lines. “Where are we going to sit?”
“With Slytherin,” Tegan sneers.
After they’ve loaded their plates and poured a couple of coffees, Tegan leads the way to the clean end of a table beyond a group of older students gathered round a tablet. Postgrads probably.
Amber makes another attempt at conversation. “Are you going to the Freshers’ Fair? I’d like to join the drama club, if they have one, and maybe take up a new hobby of some kind. University is a chance for new beginnings.”
Tegan rolls her eyes. “Next you’ll be saying we’re on a journey.”
“Sorry.” Amber blushes into her salad and chips.
Tegan sighs. “I suppose I could look for a business enterprise group.”
Amber can’t think how to reply and feels uncomfortable again. Nothing in common with this girl. She shivers. Nothing in common with anyone. Her gullet heaves at the memory of what she did.
She puts down her fork and tells another lie. “I can’t eat this. I’m allergic to tomatoes. It’s the alpha solanine.”
Tegan rolls her eyes again. “Is alpha whatsit not present in upside-down pizza then?” She waits for Amber to look at her. “Remember the party in Flat 7? You tucked in good and proper.”
Amber hunches her shoulders and returns to picking tomato slices out of her salad. Found out again.
“By the way,” she says eventually, in another try at faking it. “I forgot to mention they’ve moved into the last room in our flat.”
“They?” Tegan asks. “Is it a couple?”
Amber shakes her head, puts on her persona. “One individual. I designate all humans as they; gender is a social construct.”
“Okay,” Tegan says slowly. “For those of us who are less enlightened, can you give me a clue which bits of they’s anatomy dangle?”
Amber struggles to keep a straight face. “The less enlightened would call them male.”
“A guy?” Tegan says, laughing.
“I think he, they, is from Thailand,” Amber says between chuckles.
Tegan’s laughter freezes. “Thailand?” Her knuckles whiten as she grips the edge of the table.
“They don’t speak English so I couldn’t find out their name. Don’t suppose you speak any Thai?”
“No.”
The force of the word silences Amber. The good-humoured conversation has evaporated as inexplicably as it materialized. She burns her mouth as she hurries to finish her drink.
“Thanks for the lift.” She stands up and heads out of the hall. Trying to befriend Tegan was a mistake. Imo is a better friend – and Lauren, the girl she bumped into on arrivals day. That’s a friendship Amber hopes to cultivate.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_033204db-763b-573c-8e66-ab310d4d37c4)
Tuesday 27 September
Imogen
Moonlight finds the gap in Imo’s curtain, but the room passes for dark. No thudding bass invading through the floor from another flat, no doors slamming, no traffic outside. But it’s the quiet of dread not peace. When she lies awake at home, every car she hears is the police with news, or Sophia coming home without her keys. In this silent space, her brain won’t switch off, spooling through the what-if scenarios of what might have happened and the white-hot anger of why it happened to them.
Still feeling rough from the Sunday night’s drinking, her throat’s killing her. The soreness in her mouth will be a cough by morning. Getting sick can be added to her other failure: so hungover she turned up late to the library and couldn’t find the induction talk. She walked past rolling stacks of journals, bays of textbooks, miles of computer screens. No one to ask. Sweat beading on her brow, she forced herself to take the lift to the upper library floors. Tried not to think about the broken body, how it must have fallen through the air, how it must have landed. No sign of a talk when she peered in, although she didn’t complete a full sweep; too scared of seeing the drop out of a window.
Pulling the duvet up, she turns over. Tomorrow will be no better. The Business Studies introduction clashes with the German welcome talk. Two lectures will be missed in as many days. She’s unravelling, not good enough for uni, can’t manage like the others. Maybe it’s too soon. But would another year make her stop seeing kidnappers behind every parked car? Stalkers under the trees outside her window? Will the familiar face she seeks have become so much less familiar that she’ll no longer search? And will that what-if nightmare of the dark and the cellar have faded?
She looks at the red-canister alarm on her bedside table and imagines the disappointment vying with relief on her mother’s face when she drops out. On the days when her mother still functions, she works as a nurse. The first thing she does when she gets home, after she’s checked for messages from Inspector Hare, is read the obituaries in the evening paper, to see which former patients have died. “That didn’t take long,” she says. She’ll say the same when Imo quits.
An idea about the timetable clash tomorrow comes to her, something her mum – the old version of Mum – might suggest. She fires off a text to Tegan, asking her to collect the handouts from the Business Studies talk. Lies back on her pillow, feeling lighter in her chest. Things will work out. Her first problem solved on her own. She’s a student now, not a school kid.
Ten minutes later she’s still awake. Her throat hurts and coughing threatens no matter how she turns her body.
There’s a knock at the door. She freezes. Tegan come to tell her off for texting her at this hour?
“Imo, it’s me.” Amber’s voice. “I need painkillers.”
Imo unlocks the door and Amber stumbles in, doubled over. She falls on Imo’s bed and clutches the pillow to her stomach. Her short, bleached hair has crinkled, no doubt suffering the dual effects of bed head and natural wave. She wears fluffy grey slippers and a tartan dressing gown. Without the make-up and weird quilt coat she wore yesterday, she looks younger, vulnerable. Imo lets out a gasp; she reminds her of Sophia.
“What is it?” Amber asks.
“I might have a paracetamol in my purse.” Imo recovers and reaches for her bag, feeling light-headed at the comparison she’s made.
“I’m allergic to those. There’s an all-night petrol garage outside campus.” Amber sits up, wrapping the edges of the Groovy Chick duvet over her legs. “They’ll sell ibuprofen. Our taxi will be here in three minutes.”
Imo suppresses a sigh, no desire to go out in the night and irked that Amber has given her no choice. But Amber’s anguished face makes her feel guilty, especially as Amber stayed with her when she was throwing up the night before.
“Let’s wait here for the driver’s text.” Amber curls up. “I can’t stand for long.”
After the taxi arrives, it takes them an age to get outside. Amber stops several times on the stairs to hug her belly. Imo pictures the meter ticking.
The driver, a young guy with thick, black curls, pulls a face when she tells him their destination, no doubt disappointed at the meagre fare. They travel in silence, Imo shivering in her jacket and jeans. She should have put on a sweatshirt. The faint smell of alcohol in the back of the taxi makes her nauseous and she looks out of the window to settle her stomach. The campus is deserted. A few lights on in the other halls, but no one out walking – or staggering – and no other cars. Eerily quiet. Imo imagines someone watching them drive past, someone lurking outside the flats waiting for their chance. She thinks of Sophia running for her life through dark streets.
Even out on the main road, they are alone. When they reach the floodlit forecourt of the filling station she notices Amber’s grey face, screwed up in a wince of pain. She tells her to wait in the taxi while she gets the tablets.
“Three packets, please,” Amber says softly. “I’ll pay you back.”
But when Imo gets to the counter, the woman won’t sell her three boxes of ibuprofen. “Maximum of two per customer. It’s the law.”
Back in the taxi, Amber takes the tablets and swallows four down without water. “People should be allowed to buy as much medication as they need, for whatever reason. If I want to commit suicide, it’s my business.”
Imo stares at her and feels colour draw from her cheeks.
Amber doesn’t seem to notice. She folds her arms, a cold gleam in her eyes, not doubled over any more. “I won’t, though. Not today. Suicides are determined people. You would be surprised. When it comes to it, most of us find we don’t have the guts.”
Imo’s chest palpitates against the seatbelt.
But Amber’s mood switches and the cloud passes. She seems restored within seconds of taking the medication. Leans forward to ask the driver his name. “Do you give a discount for frequent travellers? We’re interested in finding a reliable firm.”
The driver warms to the theme. “You call me, Hamid Cars. I’ll look after you. Better than Uber, better than College, or A Cabs.” He rubs his hand through his thick hair. “The thing with College Cars is they’re a rip-off. Five pounds for this, five pounds for that.”
He pulls up at their hall of residence. “That’s eight pounds fifty, please,” he says.
Still shaking from what Amber said, Imo struggles to get the money out of her purse. Amber goes back to her room, promising to refund her for the tablets. She doesn’t mention the taxi fare.
