Guilty Innocence (13 page)

He suspects the reason for his exclusion lies in his connection with Adam Campbell. The other boy isn’t liked, not at all; instead, he’s feared. Joshua is tainted by association, a stain difficult to wash off. By the end of the week, he’s no further forward in establishing any meaningful links with the other boys; loneliness starts to seep back into the fabric of his life.

Adam doesn’t attempt to rekindle their association during this time, which surprises Joshua. He’s fearful the other boy won’t let go now he’s laid claim to him, worried there’ll be a repetition of the knife at the throat incident. Nothing happens, though. Adam watches him, shooting cool stares of appraisal his way, but without attempting anything in the way of conversation. No mention of bunking off together or hanging out down town. The reason clicks into place in Joshua’s brain. Adam’s waiting for his sidekick to return by his own volition, realising Joshua won’t be accepted elsewhere. When he comes back to Adam, as he will, the bonds will be a lot tighter. Stronger by far than if the other boy tries to force him back through overt dominance.

It doesn’t take long. Worn down by his failure to break into any of the school cliques, tired of eating alone every day, weary of having nobody to hang around with, Joshua caves in. He spots Adam watching him one day and the dam of loneliness inside him bursts. Any company seems better than none, given how emotionally sterile his home environment is, and he finds himself walking over to Adam, despising himself for his weakness but desperate to end his solitude.

‘Want to hang out down the park?’ he asks. Adam nods; a grin, a smug and self-satisfied one, forms on his mouth, sealing with it Joshua’s role in their double act.

A few days later, it’s the weekend. Adam’s parents have gone out; he’s sprawled with Joshua on the floor in his bedroom, swigging Coke and talking football and girls. Adam’s room’s a tip, of course; dirty laundry strewn around, drawers open, plates with toast crusts turning green shoved under the bed. The smell of furtively smoked cigarettes and unwashed bedding pervades the room. Adam’s banging on about tits again and Joshua’s attention wanders to his chest of drawers, one of which is pulled open and half-full of clothes. His eyes go to something tucked underneath the mess, something distinctly out of place. Sugar pink, a colour far removed from Adam Campbell’s tastes. Either thick cardboard or plastic, a right angle shape peeking out from under some socks.

‘What’s that?’ The words are out of Joshua’s mouth before he has a chance to consider whether they’re wise. Adam glances over, and a smug grin etches itself on his face. He reaches towards the item and pulls it out, his fingers caressing it.

It’s a girl’s diary, the current year embossed in gold on the cover, matched by a flimsy lock on the side. A flowery pattern sprawls across the front. Joshua’s bemused. Adam’s an only child; he’s never spoken of any female cousins and certainly doesn’t have any girls as friends. All females are stupid, weak and ripe for abuse, according to the law of Adam Campbell. So who…?

‘Whose is that?’ he asks.

Adam sneers. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

Joshua waits. He’s familiar enough by now with the way Adam operates to realise the other boy’s dying to tell him. He’ll have something to boast about in connection with the diary, some story to demonstrate how strong and powerful he is.

Adam grins. ‘Ran into her a while back. Got bored with being dragged along every time my parents visit my uncle. Went off by myself, had a mooch around.’

He tosses the diary across the floor, where it lands beside Joshua, open. The flimsy lock has long since been broken. At the front, someone’s written a name, the exotic syllables of which sink into his memory. With a surname like Abruzzo, the diary’s owner is clearly Italian. He flips the pages, puzzled. Childish handwriting, the entries often doodled around with hearts and stars. Joshua can decipher the more obvious ones, despite the fact they’re all in Italian.
Cinema con Gina. Dentista. Vacanza in Sicilia
. He doesn’t have much interest in it, however strange Adam’s possession of it is, but then he notices the expression on the other boy’s face. His grin bears a smug hallmark of satisfaction, and Joshua twigs the diary’s owner must be another child who’s fallen foul of Adam’s need to be top dog.

Joshua fingers the diary, picturing a young Italian girl, someone even smaller and weaker than himself. All the more attractive to Adam for being less able to fight back. The girl to whom the diary once belonged.

‘Took myself a little something to remember her by,’ Adam says, his mind clearly roaming in the past. A sigh of satisfaction escapes him. Joshua sets the diary down on the floor, switching the conversation back to who has the best midfielders, Manchester United or Liverpool. They swig more Coke and Joshua lines up his opinion with Adam’s. Far safer that way.

An hour passes. It’s nearly time for Joshua to head back to Joanna Barker’s frosty maternal care. Scrambling up from the floor, he forgets his half-empty can of Coke. The tin topples over, flooding dark streams over the pink diary that’s open beside it.

‘Hey! Watch what you’re doing, you clumsy motherfucker!’ Adam seizes the diary, shaking rivers of Coke from it. The cheap cardboard cover is already puckered, the pages stained a dirty brown.

‘Fucking ruined now, that is.’ Adam turns the diary over in his hands, before tossing it into the nearby rubbish bin, clearly judging it unsalvageable. Whatever fond memories he harbours about its acquisition, Joshua seems to have sullied them with his clumsiness. The other boy’s expression is dark and shuttered. Joshua realises what’s coming.

The first blow slams into his belly, folding him in two as he doubles over, bracing himself against the pain and the other punches that follow. Adam smashes his fists against Joshua’s arms, his chest, wherever he can land a blow. Not his face, something that strikes Joshua later with its significance. Even in the midst of his rage, Adam exerts control. Joshua doesn’t return home that day with any obvious signs of having been in a fight. Nothing to arouse questions. Given Joanna Barker’s maternal indifference, it’s simple enough for him to conceal the livid bruises covering his body.

Later on, when Joshua’s banged up in Vinney Green, he has time to think over every nuance of his relationship with Adam Campbell, and the pink diary slides back into his brain, worrying away at him. Only one interpretation comes to mind, and it doesn’t bode well for the young Italian girl who records her life between the diary’s garish covers. The thought tortures him, tugs at him, making him wonder: is she Adam Campbell’s first victim? Has he killed before Abby Morgan?

Is that why Adam explodes into rage when his cheap souvenir gets damaged?

Once the idea takes root in his head, it worries him constantly. Something about the way Adam’s face oozed smug satisfaction tells Joshua the Abruzzo girl came off badly in her encounter with Adam. If he’s killed another child, he’s obviously got away with it. Joshua doesn’t recall ever hearing about a missing girl with such an unusual surname, although what with being preoccupied back then with football, Adam and pleasing his mother, he’s likely to have missed such an event anyway. The fact Adam took her diary disturbs him; the other boy clearly gets off on seizing trophy items from his victims. Abby Morgan’s green hippo proves the point. Joshua attempts furtive searches at Vinney Green whenever he gets Internet access, searching for missing children with the surname Abruzzo and slamming hard against a dead end. Reassuring, he supposes, but his obsessive-compulsive nature won’t let the matter drop. The whole thing boils around in his head whilst he’s in detention until it becomes vitally important to find out who the Abruzzo girl is and what happened between her and Adam Campbell. Until he finds her, he’ll always be uneasy, wondering if he shouldn’t have realised what the diary signified, what Adam was capable of doing. He’ll perpetually fret over whether it was a warning of what would happen to Abby Morgan, a sign he should have heeded.

After he’s released, his obsession with the Italian girl fades in comparison with his immediate priority to adjust to life outside. Gradually, though, the old fixation returns. He needs to dispel, finally, his anxiety over the Abruzzo child, but fear of rocking his newfound stability holds him back initially. A long time passes through Mark’s life before he makes a promise to himself. He’s going to find out, once and for all, what Adam did to the little Italian girl and whether she survived.

11

HER SHAME REVEALED

Rachel doesn’t hear from Mark for a couple of days, during which time every one of her insecurities kicks in. She’s too pale, too skinny, too unattractive for him to fancy her, the way she does him. She logs onto Facebook obsessively, her hopes crashing each time she doesn’t find a friend request from him.

When she eventually does, she’s ecstatic. Her first priority is to scan his profile. Relationship status: single. Rachel’s pleased, but not surprised; Mark carries an air of solitariness about him, good-looking though he is. She’s prepared to bet he’s not had many girlfriends. So far, she’s his only friend on Facebook. Again, no surprise. She’s already sensed a certain isolation about him, as if he doesn’t make friends easily, something she can identify with.

Should she send him a message? She’s debating whether to risk it when Fate decides for her. Mark is now online.

‘Hi how r u thanks for friending me on fb,’ she types.

He takes a minute or so before he replies, and when he does, she notes he’s definitely not into text speak.

‘No problem. Been looking at the page for the fun run.’

‘U free? Gonna join me?’

When he doesn’t reply, Rachel’s insecurities kick in again, intense and insistent. After a couple of minutes, she types another message.

‘Wld be gd to c u again and hv sum1 to do run with. Can u make it?’

Eventually he replies. ‘Not sure at present. I’ll get back to you.’

His closing words soften the perceived blow a little. ‘Will be in touch. Bye for now. Good to catch up with you.’

Hmm. Far too brief a chat for her liking. Does he fancy her? He’s certainly made a strong impression on her; an unspoken bond seems to have sprung up between them. She can’t name it, but it exists, and she wants to deepen it, strengthen it. Mark seems familiar to her in some strange way, as though she knows him somehow, although she’s sure they’ve never met before.

Mark Slater. Not exactly handsome, but his hair has finger-run-through appeal, his mud-brown eyes are soft and warm, and his athletic build is definitely attractive. So, too, is the dark tuft she noticed peeking over the top of his sweatshirt when they last met. She goes for hairy men, always has. The rugged masculine look. Don’t get your hopes up, she warns herself. He may already have a girlfriend, no matter what his Facebook status proclaims. The gremlins of self-doubt within her start shouting.
You’re too small, too ginger, too freckly. Too tainted, what with your murdered sister and your alcoholic father. Who do you think you are, setting your sights on Mark Slater?

He’s back on Facebook the next evening, as promised –
will be in touch
– saying how he’s still unsure about the fun run, mentioning a prior tentative arrangement for the Sunday in question, how he won’t know until nearer the time whether he’ll be free. He doesn’t elaborate and Rachel doesn’t press the issue, too frightened of scaring him away. By the third time they chat, he’s more forthcoming.

‘You free this weekend? Fancy meeting up?’

She agrees straight away. He suggests lunch in Exeter on Saturday. Thankfully, Rachel doesn’t have any events booked for her catering business that day. She punches the air in triumph before typing in: gr8 idea. Then: I no a gd pub we cn go 2.

Will leave choice of venue up to you, he replies. They decide on a time, swap mobile numbers, chat some more. Rachel’s ecstatic when she eventually logs off.

She buzzes through the next two days on a fantasy-driven high. The time drags unbearably, despite the fact she revels in the anticipation. Saturday arrives at last. Rachel wakes up early, shot through with excitement. Today she has a lunch date with Mark Slater. She turns his name over in her head, approving of it. It’s solid, permanent, strong. The name of somebody who could make his mark on her emotionally, and Rachel’s ready for such a man, she really is. Mrs Rachel Slater. Sounds good, she thinks. The gremlins of self-doubt invade her thoughts immediately, ordering her not to set her sights too high. Don’t get your hopes up
,
they shout.

Is it so wrong, she wonders, to want normality, a boyfriend, children? A stable home life? One without rows reverberating through a house that is supposedly a home but isn’t? A marriage in which the husband doesn’t stagger through the door late at night incoherent and stinking of beer?

Rachel sighs. She understands why she needs these things. They’ve been noticeably lacking in her life, all twenty-four years of it, so far.

She breathes in deeply, willing her nerves to subside. If only their initial meeting had taken place under different circumstances. Sometimes - no, often - it’s as if her life is ruled by the abduction and murder of her sister. Recently she’s had to endure the anniversary of Abby’s death along with the dreaded annual vigil. Not to mention dealing with her mother. Thank God for Shaun. He’s been there for her, as he always is. Her brother, her rock. Every year, Rachel contemplates not attending the vigil. She forces herself to go, terrified that if she doesn’t, her mother will disown her completely. A thought too painful to bear. In order to cope, Rachel always performs her own private homage to Abby the night before the vigil. Something of which only Shaun is aware.

Enough of dark thoughts. Rachel turns her attention to what she’s going to wear today. Something stylish that’ll emphasise her figure; although slim, Rachel’s curved like a Coke bottle. She’ll go for smart casual, as befits a lunchtime pub date. Her new jeans, teamed with black suede ankle boots. She dithers over choosing a top, eventually selecting a slash-necked one with long sleeves in pale mint. It skims her hips, hugs her waist. She twists and twirls in front of the mirror, frowning. Her head tells her she looks good, before self-doubt rushes in to tell her she’s plain, ordinary, nothing special.