Rachel
By an unspoken consensus, we’ve hardly left the house since Saturday morning – just Matt escaping for an early morning bike ride on Sunday – and Lucy has hardly emerged from her room the whole time. But the Family Fun Day is a village tradition, every May Day weekend, and in all the time our family has lived here, we’ve never missed it. In a brief fit of optimism this morning, I said that the tragic death of a teenager shouldn’t keep us locked away forever. And when both girls responded with a flat no, I made it compulsory.
But now that we’re here, I wish I’d listened to them. Milla found a few of her friends soon after we arrived and skulked off, and Matt has disappeared to the bar, so it’s just Lucy and me, huddled together as though we need to protect each other from some unknown enemy. Everything looks the same as normal – the tombola and face painting, the steel band at one end and beat the goalie nets at the other – but there’s a charged atmosphere, as though the low buzz of gossip is creating a menacing new energy.
And I can’t help wondering how much of that gossip is aimed at us.
‘Mum,’ Lucy murmurs, pulling on my sleeve like she did as a child. ‘I don’t want to be here.’ Even though it’s warm today, she’s wearing a big baggy hoodie.
‘Just give it half an hour,’ I coax. ‘We can get some hotdogs, and the raffle draw is soon. I bought us a strip of tickets each, so we might win something.’
‘But everyone’s staring at me,’ she continues, looking down at the ground. ‘They know Amber’s dead. They probably think I killed her.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I snap, masking my distress with hostility. I exhale, soften my voice. ‘I’m sorry, that came out wrong. I just mean that no one would ever think that. If anyone is looking in our direction, it’s because I found her body.’ The images fly back – shoulder, blood, matted hair – and I swallow down a rush of nausea. ‘Just ignore them,’ I add weakly.
A few minutes after I read the message from Charlotte on Saturday morning, Annie responded. There were lots of omfgs and sad-face emojis, but the main part of her message was a detailed explanation of what the two of us had been through at the nature reserve. She’d ended with the inevitable finale – could the body be this Amber girl? – which caused a frenzy of new messages, and they haven’t slowed down much since. I might not have left the house all weekend, but I still feel up to date with the police investigation. At least, how it’s rumoured to be progressing based on village gossip.
The victim has been confirmed as Amber Walsh. Apparently Molly Wainwright was so distraught, she had to be admitted to hospital after hearing the news. At first, the messages said that she’d suffered a heart attack, causing another wave of alarm, but a few hours later that was downgraded to a flare-up of her angina. The victim’s sister – Jess – was reputed to have shut down completely and had been moved to stay with a trained crisis foster carer in another village for a couple of nights. Someone even reckoned she’d been put on suicide watch.
The cause of Amber’s death was said to be blunt-force trauma to the head – although I don’t know whether that had come from anywhere official. It could just have easily been someone who watches a lot of crime programmes making assumptions based on Annie’s account of what she saw. Would they even do a post-mortem this quickly? Theories about who could have killed Amber were rife too, with suspects ranging from her biological father to a wandering serial killer. But when gossip about Amber dealing drugs filtered through, the belief that it must be someone gang-related became the mainstream view.
And I think it was that development which gave me the confidence to suggest attending the fun day. I can’t know for sure that people haven’t been gossiping about Milla’s late-night roaming, or Lucy’s connection with Amber, on WhatsApp groups I’m not part of. But a drug-dealing gangster is a much more likely killer than my daughter, and I’m sure it’s not just me who thinks that. As a social worker, I’m trained to help everyone irrespective of what they’ve done, but it also means I know the statistics. Stereotyping can be dangerous, so we always try to avoid it at work, but it’s true that its origins are based on fact.
‘What if someone asks you about finding her though?’ Lucy presses, bringing me back to the fair. ‘And what if the stress of the conversation makes me look guilty?’
I turn to look at her. It’s true that she looks miserable. As though all the world’s problems are her fault. I love how much empathy she has, but sometimes I wish she wasn’t so sensitive. Bronwen has a similar awareness of people’s feelings, but her personality is tougher, so it doesn’t upset her in the same way. I’d often tell Lucy to watch and learn, but of course that’s not possible anymore. I’m sure they’re keeping in touch on Snapchat, but a friendship limited to messaging is so much narrower in scope.
Perhaps I need to be a bit more understanding.
‘Listen, why don’t you go home. Dad and I will stay for one drink, show our faces, then bring Milla back with us in a bit. I know she’ll hate that, but with everything that’s happened this weekend, I don’t want her roaming the streets.’ I wonder if my words will frighten Lucy – the possibility of a killer on the loose – but she seems unmoved.
‘Thanks, Mum,’ she murmurs. ‘I’ll see you later.’ She slides her headphones over her ears and flips the hood of her jumper up. As she does so, her face flinches, as though she’s in pain, but then her expression clears. She bows her head and walks slowly towards the exit. I watch a few people’s stares linger on her for a moment longer than feels natural, then they look away.
‘She didn’t last long,’ Matt observes, handing me a can of Chiltern Lager and putting the unclaimed Coke in his pocket. I listen to the dull fizz as I pull back the ring, then take a long gulp.
‘Well, you know Lucy,’ I say. ‘She’s never been great in crowds.’
Matt nods, a grave expression on his face. ‘And all this stuff with Amber must be tough for her,’ he says. ‘Going from probably wishing her dead to her actually being so.’
‘I don’t think she wished for that,’ I say spikily, my shoulders tightening. ‘Expelled yes, but not dead.’ I will hunt those bitches down. I blink Milla’s image away.
‘You’re right,’ Matt says quickly. ‘Bad choice of words. Lucy is much too kind-natured to think along those lines.’ He takes a swig of lager. ‘Unlike me.’
I shoot him a warning look, but he doesn’t back down.
‘What? Are you saying you haven’t thought it too? That Amber not being around anymore is good news for us?’
‘I saw her dead body, Matt,’ I murmur, taking another gulp myself. ‘How could I ever associate that with good news?’
Matt looks instantly contrite. ‘Of course, sorry. I must sound like a heartless shit. I suppose because I never met her – she was always just Lucy’s bully – it’s easy to think of her death as an absence rather than a loss. Does that make sense? Am I redeeming myself at all?’
I don’t speak, but I reach for his hand as a sign that it does, and we both turn our attention to the fair, scanning the crowd. Matt’s grip tightens. ‘Oh shit,’ he mutters under his breath.
‘What is it?’
He gestures to the right side of the stage. ‘Milla looks like she’s about to lamp that girl.’
My eyes widen at the sight. Milla is clearly arguing with another girl and Matt’s right, her hands are clenched into fists, and her face is scowling. We half shuffle, half run, past the stalls in Milla’s direction.
‘Milla, what’s going on?’ Matt says calmly when we get close, finding his teacher’s de-escalation voice.
‘Stupid bitch was saying stuff about Lucy.’
‘What stuff?’ I can’t help asking. I turn to look and realise it’s the drunk girl from Friday night, the one sitting on the swing and vaping. My stomach lurches as I remember our conversation, me asking if she and her friends had seen Lucy, telling them that she was missing. All weekend I’ve been worrying about people jumping to the wrong conclusions about Milla. Do I need to worry about Lucy now too?
‘Leave it, Rachel,’ Matt says. ‘It will be bullshit whatever it is. Come on, Milla. She’s not worth your energy.’
‘Sounds like the whole family’s got anger issues,’ the girl says, snorting air in a semi-laugh. ‘Not just Lucy.’
‘Shut your fucking mouth, you stupid bitch.’
‘Milla!’
‘You’re right, Dad. She’s not worth it,’ Milla says, ignoring my rebuke. Then she throws the girl a look of intense disdain and marches away. After a moment of hesitation, Matt and I follow.
But I daren’t look back, in case the girl can see the doubt on my face.
BEFORE
