Page 31 of A Face in the Crowd
‘That poor girl,’ she adds. ‘I thought she’d done a runner on her rent. That’s what Lauren was saying. I didn’t think it’d be anything like this…’ She glances towards her own flat and sighs. ‘I’ll have to keep the boys inside. No letting them out by themselves after this.’
‘How do you mean?’
Karen cranes her neck slightly and stares at me as if I’m stupid. ‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ she says.
‘What is?’
‘They said they’d found a body and wouldn’t give any other details. It can only mean one thing.’ She pauses for breath and then adds: ‘Someone round here killed her.’
Chapter Eighteen
Tuesday
I seem to spend much of my life fretting over the amount of space I have on public transport. I’ve caught myself dreaming about the number 24 bus in the past, where I’ve got on and found it empty. Then I’ve realised there’s no driver and that I’m naked. If I were to seek out a therapist, I’m sure it would be a signal for some sort of mental anxiety – that’s what dreams always seem to be. I wake up panicked and confused, before cursing myself for being so stupid. It’s only a bus.
On the train this morning, I have a double seat to myself. There’s someone talking far too loudly on his phone across the aisle, but there’s always one. He’s telling someone that he’s not going to be effing walked all over by that effing slag and her effing husband. The woman in the seat in front of him catches my eye and we share a silent moment of knowing. I remember Ben having shouting fits like this when he’d had a bad day at work.
I worried about this journey for so long. The price of train tickets seems to be harder to figure out than quantum mechanics. Apparently, they are cheapest exactly twelve weeks before a travel date, so I poached them online for the lowest price as soon as they went live. It seems so silly now, with all those thousands of pounds in that envelope.
The train chunters into a tunnel, thrusting the carriage into darkness as the rattling of the rails thunders up a gear. The sound eclipses the bellowing of the man, who has probably lost phone signal anyway. I close my eyes and listen to the bounding thump of the wheels rushing across the rails. This isn’t the first time I’ve been on a train since what happened to Ben. I wondered if it would be hard, if I’d break down and demand to be let off at the nearest station, but it wasn’t like that at all.
I felt nothing. I wasn’t scared, or emotional. I didn’t associate being on a train with what killed him.
There’s a rush of air and then I open my eyes into the blinding light as the train rumbles out of the tunnel. The man across the aisle is staring angrily at his phone but doesn’t try to make the call again.
I push back into my seat and turn to look out the window. The blur of green flashes past, with only the hint of a distant village on the horizon. The sky is a wash of greys.
With everything the police told us about Jade, I’d almost forgotten about the money stashed away in Karen’s drawer. There was a mix of ten- and twenty-pound notes. It could be her own savings… but would she really have it in cash? In a drawer?
It doesn’t feel right. If she’d won it in some lottery or bingo, she’d have surely said something when I told her about my own invented scratch-card win? She must have a reason to keep it to herself – and I’m hardly one to talk, given I’ve been hiding my own haul for days. We’re two people with very little to our name. She’s never quite got into what happened between her and her former partner, other than that he left her for someone else. I get the sense they were both left with debts.
My phone starts to buzz and I fish around the envelope of money in my bag to dig it out. I’m expecting to see ‘Unknown’, but there’s a local phone number flashing. I answer and there’s an enthusiastic-sounding woman on the other end. I’m always a little suspicious of people who show a great deal of gusto for their work. She’s from one of the job agencies with which I signed up and talks me through a questionnaire that goes over much of the same ground I covered when I filled in their online form. It’s almost a relief when the line starts to crackle as the signal gets close to cutting out. She says she’ll be in contact if they find anything that suits and finishes with a cheery ‘Ciao’ and then she’s gone.
Ciao?
I wonder if this is who the man opposite was having a conversation with because, if so, I can somewhat understand his tone.
The rest of the journey passes uneventfully and by the time we slide into Reading, the carriage is almost empty. I head out of the station and past the row of taxis until I spot a familiar face leaning on a wall at the edge of the car park. She’s typing on her phone but looks up as I get near.
‘’Ello stranger,’ I say.
Annie beams and then promptly bursts into tears. She almost throws herself at me, tucking her head onto my shoulder. Her entire body shakes as she sobs tears onto my neck. There’s little else I can do other than pat her on the back gently.
I think I can make out a series of ‘I’m sorry’ grunts through the snuffles, but it’s not easy to tell. When she pulls away after a minute or so, her face is a smeary mess of drizzled mascara and her reddened hair is so tangled that it looks like she’s been walking in a hurricane.
‘How are you?’ she manages.
The fact that she’s a tear-stained wreck and I’m a slightly bemused onlooker is not lost on either of us as, from nowhere, we each start to laugh.
‘I’ve had warmer welcomes,’ I say.
She coughs another laugh and then fishes a tissue from her pocket and blows her nose long and loud.
‘Sorry,’ she repeats. I tell her it’s fine and then she uses her phone’s camera to help clear herself up. ‘I told myself I wouldn’t cry,’ she says.
‘How long did you last after that?’
‘That was when I pulled into the car park, so roughly seven minutes.’
