Hanging Hill (9 page)

Zeb Juice are going to see me!!! Can’t believe it. That’s given me a boost I can’t believe. I’m going to call some of the others too. I’m going to wear my pink heels and blue jeans. Shopping list, get Noodlehead Curl Boost, St Tropez Bronzing Mist – Marie Claire says it’s legend. £30. But, doh, brain freeze about where I’m going to get that money from. If I walk home every day and save all my bus fares and all my tuck money I still won’t have enough …

After that the pages hadn’t been written on. Instead they’d been filled with flowers and hearts and sketches of a girl – Lorne herself, presumably – dressed in bikinis and high-heeled boots. Zoë flicked through the remaining pages. There was nothing else of any interest. She closed the diary, and as she did, she noticed a small pocket on the back. When she inserted her nail she found a tiny object in there. An eight-milligram camera chip.

She sorted around on the desk until she found the camera it belonged to, plugged in the chip and began clicking through the photos. Lorne was pictured here, right in this bedroom. From the awkward position it looked as though she’d taken them herself using an automatic timer. In the first three she was dressed in a bikini – standing full length. But it was the fourth and subsequent shots that made Zoë sit down on the bed, dismayed. Lorne appeared dressed in suspenders, stockings and a basque, poised coquettishly on the floor, legs crossed. In the last two she had taken the basque off and was looking provocatively into the camera, her tongue held lightly at her glossed lips.

Zoë clicked through them twice, a huge wave of sadness coming over her. Why would a nice middle-class girl like Lorne do something like that? Lots of reasons, of course – maybe it was nothing more sinister than an impressionable schoolgirl trying to ease herself into her own sexuality. Or maybe to impress a boyfriend. But it could also be nastier than that. An old ghost came to Zoë then, going pitter-patter around the corners of her mind – thinking that it could be because Lorne had learned to dislike herself early. Maybe when she realized her brother was the star in their mother’s eyes she’d begun struggling to find a way to escape. Zoë knew what that felt like. Maybe that was what these photos were about.

Outside, the noise of Mr Wood’s chainsaw cut through the silence. She took the card out of the camera and held it in the palm of her hand, trying to decide if the photos were important – the portal to a whole separate side of Lorne that no one was mentioning. Whether they were connected to her modelling dream and just how desperate she had been to make that dream come true. No, she told herself, probably lots of teenage girls had photos of themselves like this, hidden somewhere from Mum and Dad. It would be better just to leave them in the diary, taped out of sight, never to be seen again. Or destroy the chip.

Or treat it as an investigative lead.

She raised her eyes to the window, saw the frondy leaves of a silver birch moving gently against the blue sky. Some time passed. Thirty seconds. A minute. Then she got to her feet and shoved the card into her back jeans pocket. ‘Sorry, Lorne,’ she murmured. ‘But I’m not sure. Not yet.’

16

Downstairs in the conservatory, Pippa was sitting with the liaison officer. She had a diary open on her lap and seemed to be going through her plans for the next month or so. Maybe they were discussing funerals, press conferences. Outside, Mr Wood was still thrashing the life out of the tree. When Pippa heard Zoë come down she stopped talking. She closed the book and came through into the hallway. ‘All finished?’

‘Just one or two questions.’

‘That’s OK. I want to help.’

‘Lorne had a big circle of friends?’

‘A big circle? Oh, God, yes. I couldn’t keep up with it. From the moment she hit fifteen and I gave her a phone and keys to the house I only ever saw her when she brought people back here. They’re a nightmare, teenagers, absolute nightmare. Sometimes you just want to crawl under a …’ She trailed off. As if it had just dawned on her that there’d never be another teenager to make her life a misery. ‘Yes, well …’ She rubbed her arms convulsively and glanced back at the kitchen. ‘Yes. Anyway, did you want some more coffee?’

‘That’s OK,’ Zoë said gently. ‘I’ve had enough to send me to the moon and back. Can I ask you, though, about her friends? Were they mostly from the school?’

‘No.’ Pippa shook her head. ‘No, not really. They were from all over. She was always talking to people. And I think with the way she looked she – she had lots of boys who recognized her. I don’t know where she gets it from – not me, that’s for sure.’

‘But not one special boyfriend?’

‘No.’

‘Can I ask you the million-dollar question?’

‘What? Was she a virgin? Is that it?’

‘Someone’s going to have to ask it eventually. It’s not that she’s in the defence stand here. It’s just that we need to build a better picture.’

‘Yes, I know. I’ve already been told by the—’ She glanced back to where the liaison officer was sitting, studying his laptop. ‘I know it’s an important question. He said it would be, said it could be relevant.’ She put her finger to her forehead and kept it there, as if she was concentrating very hard on something. Like keeping her balance. ‘I don’t know, is the honest truth. If you wanted me to put money on it I’d say no. But please don’t tell other people that. I don’t want it gossiped about.’

‘You don’t remember anyone with the initials “RH”, do you?’

‘No. Doesn’t ring any bells. Why?’

‘Just wondering. What about the name Zeb Juice? Does that mean anything to you?’

Pippa gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. Zebedee Juice. It’s an agency in George Street.’

‘An agency?’

‘Modelling. I told you – Lorne was under the impression she’d be the next Kate Moss, so when the agency agreed to see her I was worried – very worried. As you can imagine.’

‘What sort of modelling do they deal with?’

‘What sort? Well – I don’t know. The usual, of course. Fashiony stuff. Catwalk.’

So not the kind of modelling in the pictures. Zoë felt better to hear that. ‘What happened – when she went to the agency?’

‘They told her she wasn’t tall enough. They weren’t interested, thank God.’

‘You were pleased?’

‘Of course I was pleased.’ Pippa sounded faintly annoyed. ‘What mother wouldn’t be? It was a ridiculous dream.’

Zoë didn’t answer that. Outside the conservatory four magpies had appeared on the lawn and were hopping around, making feints at each other.
One for sorrow, two for joy. Three for a girl, four for a boy
. She could still see the big brother outside, sitting awkwardly on the bench. The one who’d got it all right in his mother’s eyes.

‘Is that all? Is that all you need?’

‘For the time being. Yes, it is. Thank you.’

She felt in her pocket for her car keys and was halfway out of the door when Pippa said suddenly, ‘I was at school with you, wasn’t I?’

Zoë turned back slowly. ‘I didn’t like to point it out.’

‘You were good at games and you were clever. Really clever. You used to win all the quizzes. Did you go to university? Everyone said you would.’

‘University? No. I dropped out. Travelled the world and ended up back here. Broke my father’s back financially, putting me and my sister through school, and look what I did to repay him.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘Went into the cops.’

‘I didn’t know you had a sister.’

‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘She went to a different school – softer than the one we were at. The sort that turns out good wives.’

‘How come you went to different schools?’

‘Oh, you know,’ she said evasively. ‘We couldn’t get on somehow. Like you said – amazing how you combine the same genes and get two totally different people.’

‘And you?’ Pippa said. ‘How about you? Did you have children?’

‘No.’

Pippa took a breath to reply – and in that second, in the slight pause, Zoë saw the cracks. The human being in there. As if the terrified Pippa Wood, the one who wouldn’t know where to begin or end dealing with this horror, had peeped out of her eyes. It was a flash, just a fleeting moment, a panicked, screaming Picasso face, a terror that Zoë was going to answer,
Oh, yes. I have a beautiful daughter. Just like Lorne. Except mine’s alive
. It was basic human envy – the envy that the sick, the grieving and the old have for the young and the healthy. And the living. Then the look was gone, and the calm mask was back.

‘Goodbye,’ she said, and turned away abruptly, closing the door behind her.

Zoë was left standing in the sunlight with the sound of Mr Wood’s saw, and the low chug-chug-chug of a barge going past on the canal.

17

All day at work people talked about Lorne Wood. Every place Sally cleaned someone would mention it, would shake their head and say how terrible it was – as if she was one of their own children. Sally didn’t much want to talk about it, she didn’t want to think about how easily it could have been Millie. This morning she’d taken the spoiled tarot card out of the pack and hidden it in a drawer. The remainder were wrapped in a cloth inside her tote bag because today she was working near the hippie shop, and there might be an opportunity to go in and show the cards to the owner. But in the end she couldn’t summon up the courage. Instead she locked them in the boot of the car and tried to stop thinking about them.

It was the day she sometimes picked up Millie from school, rather than let her take the bus. She parked in a street opposite, along with all the other mothers, their windows open to watch the gates. Nial and Peter came out and passed, holding up a hand to say hi to her, then, after a short interval, Sophie on her own. The moment she saw Sally she hurried over to the car. ‘Mrs Benedict, Millie’s still in the classroom. She wants you to go and get her.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. She’s upset.’

Sally locked the car and went inside quickly, hurrying down the vaulted-stone corridors. The classroom was at the other side of the school – it was very old-fashioned, lined with bookshelves, stuffed with books and learning aids. Light came through the tall mullioned windows. At one of the individual desks that faced the windows, Millie sat with her head drooping forward. When she heard the door open she turned. Her face was tight, as if a hand was holding it from behind and forcing her head to move.

‘Mum.’

She came and stood at the desk. ‘Are you OK? I saw Sophie.’

‘I don’t feel well, Mum. Can you bring the car in through the back entrance and pick me up next to the sports hall?’

‘What’s wrong? You should have called.’

‘Nothing. I mean – it’s my stomach. It’s just a bit—’

‘Your stomach?’

‘It’s crampy.’

‘Your period?’

‘No – just – I don’t know. It feels a bit squirmy.’

Sally examined Millie’s face. She’d never been good at knowing when her daughter was lying. But right now she suspected that whatever was wrong with Millie it had nothing to do with her stomach. She looked as if she was hiding something. ‘Did you speak to Matron?’

She shook her head, moved her eyes from Sally’s scrutiny and stared out of the window. ‘Please, Mum, can you just get the car?’

‘Is this about Lorne? Are you upset?’

‘No.’

‘Then is it Glastonbury? Because, Millie, I can’t change my mind, darling.’

‘
No
. It’s
not
. I just feel ill. I
swear
.’

Sally sighed. ‘OK. I’ll be waiting round the side in five minutes.’

She picked up the car from the street and stopped it in the courtyard that faced the modern buildings of the new sports hall. Millie came out, her school blazer draped over her shoulders, her face down, and got quickly into the car. ‘Can we go straight home?’

‘You’ll have to tell me what’s happening.’

‘Please.’ She curled into the seat and pulled her knees up. ‘Please, Mum.’

‘Either you tell me what’s going on or we’re going to the doctor’s.’

‘No, Mum, I feel better now. I just want to go home.’

Sally put the car in gear and drove to the end of the tarmac drive, stopping at the intersection. She indicated left. Millie jerked sideways in her seat, her hand shooting out to grab the steering-wheel. ‘No! Wait – wait, Mum, please wait. Don’t.’

‘What is it?’

Millie was trembling. Her face was white, but Sally knew it wasn’t pain. If she had to put a finger on it she’d have said it was fear. ‘Millie?’

‘Go right.
Right
.’

‘But left is the way home.’

‘We can go the back way. All my friends are out there. They’ll do the L on the forehead thing if they see me taken off by Mummy. Loser.’

‘No one’s there. They’ve gone.’

‘Can we just go the back way, Mum? Please go right.’

Sally took the car out of gear. ‘I’m sorry, Millie, but it’s left. Unless you tell me what’s going on.’

‘Oh,
God
!’ She screwed up her fists. ‘OK, OK. Just let me – give me a moment to …’ She shuffled down the seat so she was crushed in the footwell.

‘What are you doing?’

‘There’s someone out there. In a purple jeep. I’ve got to avoid him.’

‘Who?’

‘Just someone.’

Down on the floor Millie’s face was white, her pupils dilated, She wasn’t just afraid – she was terrified. As if there was a monster out in the street. Sally eyed the phone in its holster on the dashboard and wondered who she could call. Isabelle? Steve?

‘Please, Mum! Can we go?’

Sally swallowed and put the car in gear. She inched it out over the junction and peered up and down the street. Her palms were sweating on the vinyl steering-wheel. The street was quieter now – the schoolkids had indeed gone, but, on the far side of the road, its nose facing the school gates, was parked a strange-looking purple four-wheel drive. It had bull-bars, a snorkel, and what looked like daggers embedded in the wheels.

Sally pulled the Ka out into the road.

‘Is he there?’ Millie dragged the blazer over her head and shrank further into the footwell, her hands over her head. ‘Is he? Oh, my God, I’m
so
dead.’

Sally pulled up alongside the purple car. She let the car stop in the middle of the road, and turned woodenly to look at the man. He was mixed race, with a little pencil moustache and very shiny gelled hair. He wore a tight white T-shirt and a thick gold necklace. At first he didn’t notice her. He was watching the gates of the school. Then he sensed her presence. He turned, met her eyes and gave her a slow smile, revealing a single diamond mounted in one of his front teeth. ‘What?’ he mouthed. ‘What?’

She floored the accelerator and the little car shot down the hill, screeching, making pedestrians stop and stare.

‘
Mum?
What’s happening? Was he there?’

At the bottom of the hill she glanced into the rear-view mirror and saw that he hadn’t attempted to follow. She swung the car left past the big nineteenth-century church on the fork, then to the right, then left again, putting as much distance as she could between themselves and the man. She didn’t stop until she’d reached Peppercorn, way out in the deserted countryside. She got out and stood on the lawn, breathing the sulphury smell of the engine and the organic waft of cow manure and grass – scanning the valley where the line of commuters wound its sluggish way towards the motorway. When she was sure nothing had followed them she went back to the car and opened the door. Millie ventured out from under the blazer, her hair mussed and sticking out all over the place, a bleary, lost look on her face. She crawled out, limp and exhausted, her head hanging.

‘Can we go inside now?’

Sally carried all her work gear into the cottage and put it in a pile in the corner. Then she went into the bedroom, Millie following. Sally kicked off her shoes and pulled back the covers.

‘What?’

‘Get in.’

‘But it’s only five o’—’

‘Please.’

Millie obediently kicked off her shoes and crawled on to the bed. Sally checked the curtains were drawn tight, then switched off the light and got in next to her daughter, embracing her from behind, her head resting on her back. She didn’t speak. She lay there, listening to Millie breathing, her eyes on the slit of light between the curtains. She counted in her head, slowly and rhythmically moving herself through the minutes, through the silence.

It was almost a quarter of an hour before Millie spoke. ‘I’m sorry.’

Sally nodded. She was sure it was true.

‘He’s involved in drugs.’

‘Oh, God,’ she said wearily. ‘Oh, God.’

‘He sells drugs in the school, and at Faulkener’s too. He goes back and forth between the two. I don’t take them, Mum. I don’t. I tried it once with Nial and Soph. Please, please, don’t tell Isabelle – please. We hated it. It made my heart race and I thought I was going to die, but everyone at school’s done it, honestly – you’d be so shocked, Mum, at who’s done it. The prefects have, some of the ones in the hockey teams. They do it before they have a match. It’s like it’s totally normal.’

Sally pressed her head tighter into her daughter’s back. This was what the tarot card had been trying to warn her about, this happening behind her back. God, she really was as dumb as Julian had always said. ‘Is that why you’re avoiding him, that man? Because of the drugs?’

‘No. I don’t take drugs, Mum. I swear. I swear on everything.’

‘Is it something to do with Lorne Wood? With what happened to her?’

Millie turned round and gave her mother an odd look. ‘No. Of course not. Why do you think it would have anything to do with that?’

‘Then what?’

‘Money.’

‘What money?’

‘He lent me some money.’ She hitched in a breath, started to cry quietly. ‘Oh, Mum, I honestly thought it would be OK, I honestly did. I never thought it was going to turn out like this.’

Sally blinked dry-eyed in the darkness. Millie borrowing money? From someone like that? This was a dream. ‘It can’t be much.’ She paused, then added tentatively, ‘Can it?’

Millie curled herself into a ball, her shoulders shaking, saying over and over, ‘Oh shit oh shit oh shit. Mum, if you and Dad hadn’t split up it would never have happened. I’d have the money if you were still together.’

‘Is this about Glastonbury?’

‘No – it’s about Malta. If you and Dad were still together I could have gone on that school trip to Malta.’

‘You
did
go to Malta.’

‘Yes, but I could have gone without having to—’ She began to sob loudly. ‘This is such a mess. I’m such an idiot.’

Sally lifted her head. ‘Dad paid for the trip to Malta.’

‘He
didn’t
. In the end Melissa said he couldn’t. I couldn’t tell you – I thought you’d stop me going.’

‘So how on earth did you …? Oh, Millie. You’re telling me you got the money from
him
. From that man? But it must have been a
lot
. A lot of money.’

‘You’re making it sound awful. You don’t
understand
– you haven’t got a
clue
what it’s like. Everyone else’s parents are together. The whole class is going skiing in the autumn except Thomas and he doesn’t count, and Selma is going to New York at half-term. She’ll probably get loads of clothes while she’s there too and that’s before you even
get
to who’s going to Glasto. It’s
horrible
being me, Mum. You’ve got no idea, it’s horrible.’

‘How much do you owe him?’

‘He’s saying because I didn’t pay it back when I should have he’s got to charge me interest.’

‘That’s completely illegal. We’ll have to go to the police. We can drive there now.’

‘
No
. No, Mum. You can’t.’ Millie twisted around, stared over her shoulder at her mother. ‘You can’t go to the police – you just can’t. I’ll get expelled and everyone’ll find out – none of the parents’ll let me hang out with my friends. Dad’ll find out – Peter and Nial and Sophie’ll all find out. And he’ll hurt me next time. Really. If he finds out I went to the police I’ll be dead, Mum.
Please
– please. I’ll do anything. I’ll stop school and go to one of the state schools, then Dad can give the money he’s giving Kingsmead to me. I’ll do
anything
. Just
please
don’t go to the police – I can’t bear it if you tell anyone.’

‘How much do you owe him, Millie?’

Millie went quiet and still, as if she was crawling inside herself, rooting around to find a place where she was safe. ‘Four …’ she murmured after a while ‘… thousand. He kept adding interest, Mum, he kept making it more.’

Sally closed her eyes, rested her forehead against Millie’s hot back. She pictured Isabelle’s kitchen littered with expensive food and drink; she saw Melissa planting exotic shrubs in the garden at Sion Road; she saw David Goldrab swinging himself into his giant car. She saw all the mothers and fathers outside Kingsmead and knew that she was looking into a different world. That in the year and a half since she’d been divorced from Julian, she and Millie had slipped noiselessly and uncomplainingly over an invisible barrier into a place they’d never come back from. And it was all because of money.