Dead Jealous (2 page)

Carefully, she scrambled up the side of the gravelly bank. She was so caught up in trying to stay upright that she didn’t see the lone figure standing looking out over the lake. Only the glint of the sinking sun in the bottle dangling from the young woman’s hand caught her eye.

The figure spun around, her eyes wild, furious. She pressed a hand to the pale skin between the lapels of her studded leather jacket.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ Poppy said. ‘Wasn’t expecting anyone to be up here.’

The young woman’s face relaxed into a smile. She tucked her bobbed black hair behind her ear. ‘You didn’t. I’m just keeping out of the way of the celebrations. Not really my kind of thing.’ Her voice was low, with a lilting Scottish accent. ‘Fancy a drink?’ she asked, shaking the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

‘If this isn’t your thing, what are you doing here?’ Poppy asked the girl, who’d introduced herself as Beth. They sat down on the stubbly grass and Poppy opened the white polystyrene container, releasing a tantalising whiff of steamy vinegar.

‘Ah. Now there’s a question with a long and complicated answer. Why aren’t you down there, dancing naked around the fire?’

‘I don’t think they allow skyclad,’ Poppy replied, shoving a soggy chip into her mouth.

‘More’s the pity.’ Beth cast a glance at Poppy from under thick fake eyelashes. ‘You got a boyfriend?’

Poppy shook her head.

‘Girlfriend?’

Poppy inhaled the chip she was chewing. ‘No!’ She coughed and discreetly tried to wipe away the potato sludge that dribbled down her chin.

Beth smiled.

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound—’

‘—Like it’s the plague? That’s pretty much how my parents feel about it.’

Poppy’s cheeks burned. She glanced across the field to where the opening ceremony was in full swing. The crowd had formed a large circle around four bonfires. White-robed figures stood around the wicker man, their hands outstretched to the twilight. It looked like a scene from a seventies horror film.

‘How about you? Do you have a…
girlfriend?
’ Poppy asked, in an attempt to recover her live-and-let-live credentials.

Beth’s blood-red lips stretched into a smile. ‘Aye, well, I have a habit of falling in love with people who are never going to love me back.’

A sympathetic ‘hmmph’ escaped Poppy’s throat.

Beth unzipped her leather jacket and leaned back on her elbows. ‘A fellow sufferer!’

‘No, not really.’

‘You’re gonna have to try harder than that to convince me. Who is he?’

Poppy picked at a chip but then dropped it and wiped her fingers on her jeans.

Beth laughed. ‘Wow! Y’really do have it bad.’

Bad? Yeah. The secret had squatted in her chest for years. Some days it got bigger with every breath she took. She was petrified that one day the secret would burst and she’d say something – or worse, do something – that she’d never be able to take back. And that would be it. Finito. Her and Michael’s friendship would be over. Forever. And she wouldn’t let that happen. So much for her being finished with thinking about it!

Tariq, she reminded herself. Actual flirting with a cute, single guy. Probably single. Jesus, he’d better be single. Not like...

‘Michael,’ she murmured.

‘And you’re in love with him, but he doesn’t love you?’

Poppy pressed her lips together, unable to deny it, but not wanting to admit it either. She couldn’t deny the ache that sat in her chest. A throbbing, howling boil of self-pity.

Beth turned her face to the sky. The heavens were closing in purple. The only light came from the pinky-orange glow that hovered like a celestial fried egg over the lake, and the newly dawning stars that drew in the night. Beth closed her eyes and smiled, as if she could feel the heat of those distant suns on her skin.

‘I should tell you to walk away. Forget him if you can. But love’s not like that. Love’s a bitch that doesna let you go.’ Beth fell silent. Her kohl-lined eyes remained closed. Her shiny black hair fell around her shoulders like shards of onyx.

She wasn’t exactly pretty but she had strange angular features that reminded Poppy of a face from the cover of
Vogue
. And for a fleeting moment, she wondered what it would be like to kiss a girl. Was it so very different from kissing a boy? Were girls less hassle than guys? ‘Who is she? Your—’

‘—Maya.
My Maya
.’ Beth sang the name like it was a love song. ‘She was my best friend.’

‘What happened?’

‘Last year she came to this bloody place with her bastard boyfriend and I never heard from her again.’

‘Is that why you’re here? To find her?’

‘That’s what I told myself. But I knew—’ Beth clawed chipped red nails to her chest, like she would rip out her heart if she could. ‘—I knew in here that I wouldn’t find her.’ Her eyes flashed open. They were glassy with tears. ‘I fucking knew.’ She grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, swigged back several gulps and swiped the back of her hand across her mouth, smudging the edges of her lipstick.

Down below they were singing now. A happy-clappy Pagan number. Lines of bodies danced in concentric circles. Drums beat, keeping time, keeping them in line.

‘So this guy, he straight?’ Beth asked, eventually.

‘Yeah.’

‘Girlfriend?’

A billboard image of Julia nuzzling up to Michael filled her head. Her perfect blonde hair, her perfect little upturned nose. Poppy screwed her eyes shut and forced the image away.

‘Have you kissed him?’

‘No.’

‘Have you tried?’

‘No! He’s my friend. I can’t – can’t risk losing him.’

‘Seems to me that’s exactly what you’re risking.’ Beth sat forward. ‘Look, I’m in no position to tell you what to do. But what’ll happen if you do nothing? If you say nothing? Watching him with someone else, it’ll eat you up, Poppy, until there’s nothing left. Love is like fire: unless it’s channelled it destroys everything.’

Beth got to her feet and glared at the lake, so flat that it could be a sheet of glass. With a grunt, she launched the bottle into the sky. Droplets of whisky formed an arc, a perverse black rainbow. The bottle hit the water with a splash, sending shockwaves towards the shore.

Beth raked both hands through her hair and sniffed. She turned to Poppy and laughed, but there were tears in her eyes.

‘Y’know, when I first saw you, I thought I was seeing her ghost, or sommat. But it was just this place playing games with me.’

‘What will you do?’ Poppy asked.

Beth didn’t seem to hear. She stared down at the festival ground where lines of people were snaking around, to a reel of fiddles and drums. If it wasn’t for the flickering bonfires and the smell of burning, it could have been a kids’ fancy dress party.

‘They’d like this place to be about peace and the earth and all that crap. But something stinks,’ Beth muttered.

‘Yeah, it’s called self-delusion.’

‘No. They believe something. I can respect that. Maya was into all this stuff. Was always going on about me being psychic.’ Beth snorted and shook her head. ‘But this place, don’t you feel it? It’s a dark place.’

‘I’m not sure I—’

‘—Stinks of shit. And the thing about shit is that eventually some of it floats.’ Beth zipped up her jacket and stuffed her hands into the pockets. The attitude vanished and suddenly she looked small and exposed. ‘What would you do?’ she whispered. ‘If it were you looking for this Michael? Would you keep looking, even if you knew he’d never love you back?’

Michael. With his slightly turned-down mouth that always made him look so damned sullen. Eyes so steady, so knowing, that they sometimes frightened her. Would she ever be able to let him go?

Beth glanced out at the dying rays of the sun and nodded. ‘Aye. I reckon I’ll keep looking.’

CHAPTER TWO

The air smelled of burning.

Whispers of smoke rose up from the scorched remains of bonfires. At the centre of the crescent-moon field, the hollow body of the wicker man remained tall, untouched by the flames of the night before, and monstrous in the half-light. There’d been a stay of execution. But Saturday they’d be celebrating Lughnasadh and Big Willy would burn.

Poppy shivered. Bloody barbaric. Even if it was just an effigy.

Zipping her hoodie against the chill, she crept past Mum and Jonathan’s tipi, towards the lake. It had been a long night. The drums and tin whistles had kept her tossing and turning. Along with thoughts of Michael, and Tariq, and Beth, that seemed to play on an endless loop in her head.

Only a few half-conscious bodies stumbled around the makeshift village, most of them heading for the foul-smelling chemical loos and then straight back to their tents. Understandable – it wasn’t even five-thirty and last night had been a late one for most.

Up on the bluff overlooking the lake, at the place where she and Beth had sat, a lone figure was silhouetted against the dusty orange and purple sky. At first she wondered whether it was Beth, but the outline was too solid, too thick to be her. She wondered whether Beth had found her friend.

Friend – ha!
That word hid so much.

The campsite seemed uneasy, as if the whole place was holding its breath. A shiver tickled her spine and she thought about slipping back inside her tent and zipping up the flap until more people were around. But there were people all over the place, she reminded herself, just hidden by canvas. And this was the middle of the Lake District, not the middle of a city. What was there to be frightened of? Rampant foxes?

Maybe it was all that stuff Beth had been going on about that had unnerved her. Was there really something bad happening at the festival?

The thing about shit is, eventually some of it floats.

Poppy would be the first to admit that a fair few of the festival-goers were running some kind of scam.
Cross my palm with thirty quid and I’ll tell you everything you ever wanted to hear about your past lives!
But she figured that in the long run, it all worked out. They all scammed each other and eventually everyone got their money back. Everyone except people like Bob – her might-as-well-be-granddad – who seemed to have endless funds to give to ‘folks who were having a hard time’.

Poppy massaged her tense shoulders and picked her way through the sagging tents, passing a yurt with a door that looked like the entrance to a hobbit house. The dewy grass was slippery beneath her Converse, but was soon replaced by hard pebbles as she reached the water’s edge.

Scariswater. The lake stretched out before her like a swathe of shot silk. The ripples reflected all the colours of the morning; inky blacks and burnt oranges. A ghostly full moon graced the sky, even as the sun was stretching its rays from the east. The scene was so beautiful, so otherworldly, that she almost got it – the need to thank someone or something. She let her eyes fall closed and breathed in the fresh damp smells of the lake and hills. But in a flash, gratitude was replaced with terror. She was back there, in that other lake. The freezing water blinding her. Burning in her lungs. Drowning her.

She forced open her eyes and gasped in air.

Air, not water.

Breathe –
breathe!

The lap of water against the pebbles made a hypnotic swishing sound, the lightest of breezes lifted the hair from the back of her neck, blowing away the memory but not the fear.

She’d grown up in Cumbria. Lakes water pulsed through her veins and she couldn’t imagine ever living anywhere else and yet that day, nearly a year ago, a lake just like this one had nearly killed her.

It had been an accident. A freak fricking accident! It wasn’t going to happen again.

She leaned down, quickly undid her laces, pulled off her socks and stuffed them into her Converse. She refused to be afraid of something she loved. She just had to get over it. She’d been unlucky that day, that’s all.

The pebbles felt like dry ice cubes beneath her bare feet. She hopped around for a moment until she could stand the cold. Her jeans were skinny, and she had to yank the denim to get it past her calf muscles, but with her jeans as high as she could get them, she braced herself and edged into the lake.

The shock of the water made her gasp and then giggle. The water tickled as it lapped over her toes. Freezing, but not too bad. She’d been in colder.

As she stepped out, the feel of the pebbles beneath her feet transformed. They were no longer rough, but slippery, covered by a layer of slime. Poppy tried to concentrate on what her feet could feel instead of the frightened voice in her head telling her to get out of there. Sharp edges needled between her toes; moss tickled.

The bottom of the lake sloped gently down, and by the time the water was above her ankles, she was wondering where the inevitable shelf was, where the ground would disappear and she would find herself plunged waist deep and in need of a change of clothes.

Ahead, darkness swirled beneath the surface. It stretched out towards her like a shadow. Maybe this was it – the drop. But no, she could still see shapes beneath the water. She took another couple of steps forward and stumbled. The water hit the back of her knees, like a slap with a wet kipper, and soaked her jeans. A nervous giggle escaped her throat. Or was it a cry?

It’s OK
, she told herself. She was safe.

The water was so cold, her feet so frozen, that she almost didn’t feel it – the gentle caress against her skin.

Fish?

She peered down into the water and saw something pale move, just below the surface.

Definitely fish.

She shifted her foot, hoping to get a better look and something cupped her leg. Something even colder than the lake.

It was then she saw it: a pale hand gliding towards her.

She screamed, but it was too late. Her foot slid from under her. She plummeted backwards. Icy cold water filled her eyes and mouth.

And the sky disappeared.

CHAPTER THREE

Michael Quinn stamped on the clutch and punched the gear stick into fourth. The car kangarooed forward, raising a whimper from his back seat passenger. He glanced in the rear-view mirror. Wide black eyes pleaded with him.

‘Sorry, mate. Not used to this thing yet.’

As he turned his gaze back to the narrow country lane, he felt a large rough tongue slurp his ear.

‘Eww – no! Eugh!’ Michael yelled, nearly swerving into the hedgerow. ‘Dawkins, don’t do that! Not while I’m driving. Not ever!’

Hot doggy breath made him gag. ‘Oh God!’ He felt for the window control and held it until all the windows slid open, letting in a blast of clean fresh air.

The promise of the great outdoors drew the giant poodle away from him and soon the dog’s nose was stuck out of the window, long white ears flapping in the wind as fields and hedgerows flashed by.

OK. Good. The bloody dog had caused enough trouble as it was without causing him to total his mum’s new car.

Or rather, Poppy had.

She could say what she liked, but he knew that the only reason she had gone to the wacky Pagan thing – and dumped him with her dog – was to get out of going to Julia’s eighteenth. She hadn’t been to one of those festivals since her mum decided she could stay home alone. Sure, there was the wedding thing, but before she’d known Julia was having a party, Poppy was all for not going. Said she’d been to the registry office, the rest was just sentimental fluff.

Sentimental fluff
– she’d actually said that.

He’d purposely not told her about the party, waiting to announce it only after she’d admitted she had nothing on. But then Julia went and sent her an invite. And that was it. Suddenly Poppy had to be with Meg and Jonathan for their handfasting ceremony. What kind of daughter would she be if she didn’t go?

A devious one. Bloody devious.

Julia was just as bad. He was pretty sure that the only early invite that she had sent was to Poppy, knowing that she’d find something else to do.

‘Women! You were better having your balls chopped off, mate,’ he shouted to Dawkins.

The dog’s long tail wagged.

The fact that his best friend hated his girlfriend, and his girlfriend was insanely jealous of his best friend, had turned his life into a minefield. Last week he’d actually found himself hiding at Mark’s, afraid that if he listened to any more of their bitching about each other he’d kill one or both of them. That wasn’t fair. Julia didn’t bitch about Poppy. She just gave him guilt-inducing looks every time he mentioned her name. His life would be so much easier if they could just get on.

A sharp bend in the road took him by surprise.

‘Crap!’ The hedgerow hurtled towards him. He braked and spun the steering wheel. The tyres bumped off the tarmac and for a second he lost control. Wheels spun. Brakes screeched. And then, as if nothing had happened, the tyres reconnected with the road and the car was sailing once again.

Michael breathed out the image of his torn-up month-old driving licence, and breathed in week-old dog biscuit. Not again. He braced the steering wheel tighter as the poodle got more intimate with his ear than Julia ever dared.

‘OK, OK! I get the hint. I’ll slow down. Just get back on the seat.’

He reached down to turn on the radio, hoping some music would take Dawkins’s mind off his ear. The speakers spat out three short beeps before the radio picked up the signal.

Dreary classical. No.

Drum and bass. No!

The news. Jesus! Was there nothing on at this time of the morning?

‘The young woman’s body was pulled from the lake at approximately five-thirty this morning. The police would not comment as to the circumstances of the death. I talked to a spokesperson for the John Barleycorn Gathering—’

Michael’s foot slipped from the accelerator to the brake. Dawkins growled. A horn tooted as a car flashed by. Michael turned up the volume.

‘—one of the largest Pagan festivals held in the UK. He said that people were shocked and upset by what had happened. They will be having discussions as to whether the festival should continue. This is Sandy Wright in Scariswater, reporting for BBC Cumbria.’

The tacky breakfast show jingle echoed around his skull like a great big funeral bell.

Poppy.

The girl who found water irresistible.

No, it couldn’t be.

He saw her face distorted by the dark waters. Her deep-set golden eyes hollow. Her coppery-blonde hair bound with lake-weed. Her mouth open. The last bubbles of air from her lungs breaking the surface.

A year ago she’d nearly drowned. Not that it had instilled in her any fear of water, not even a healthy respect. He reached a hand towards the mobile phone in the cradle on the dashboard. But that was no good. They’d discovered last year that her network didn’t cover Scariswater.

Bile burned the back of his throat. He squeezed his hands back on the steering wheel, so tightly that his knuckles throbbed.

If she was going to die before her time, this was how it would happen. In some bloody lake. Could that be it? Her life over before it had even got going, while she was still so caught up in what happened with her parents that she never really got a chance to live?

That wouldn’t be fair. But life wasn’t fair, was it? People died before their time all the fucking time.

Michael whacked the car into gear, yanked the steering wheel around and set off in the direction of Scariswater.

‘It’s all right, mate,’ he said to Dawkins. ‘She’ll be all right. It won’t be her. Poppy might be an awkward cow sometimes, but she wouldn’t die on us.’

Would she?