Try Not to Breathe (12 page)

A
lex pushed the trolley along each Sainsbury’s aisle in turn, although her list was short. She lingered amongst the vegetables, picking between two organic cucumbers for over five minutes.

Eventually, with a little food in the corners of the trolley and a fresh pack of DryNites pads, she wheeled her way down the wine aisle, trying to quell the acceleration. She hovered by the rosé.
Should I? For a change?
Then immediately reversed back to the same white section she’d plundered for the last few weeks.

As Alex loaded the bags into the trunk of her car, arms aching, the sound of her phone’s ringtone burst out of her purse. This was rare enough to make her jump and she answered suspiciously.

“Hi, Alex, it’s Andy Bellamy from
The
Times
. Can we arrange a time for you to come in?”

Alex’s knees clattered together as she shivered on the narrow Wapping pavement, craning her neck to look up beyond the tall gray walls. She breathed deeply, the cold air wrapping itself around her lungs as Alex drank in the huge tower. It was still the color of wet newspaper, rising up out of the East London mess.

News International’s “Fortress” was a lot bigger than she remembered. Or perhaps she was smaller now. Unable to move, Alex rummaged in her bag for a tissue she didn’t really need, and tried to wipe away the memories of her last day here.

A different time. A different person. No one will remember me.

Couriers bustled in and out of the security office, incredibly fresh-faced men and women whooshed in and out of the turnstiles, jabbing their security passes, jaws locked with their own deadlines.
Was I ever that young?
Alex wondered. But it was rhetorical—she was younger.

She remembered the initial call up so vividly. Scuttling out of the
Mizz
Magazine
office and hiding from colleagues in the stairwell, hand shaking so vigorously she thought she’d drop her phone. “Calling from
The
Times
…Would you come in for a chat? Maybe meet some of the team? Talk about opportunities?”

The first visit to the Fortress. Deep breathing exercises on the ride over, a stiff slug from the handbag for Dutch courage, a strong mint, the arched eyebrow of the taxi driver in the smeared rearview mirror. Twenty-four and hungry.

Waiting and waiting and waiting in the security office, visitor badge dangling, brand-new shoes tugging at newer blisters. Couriers buzzing in and out, the lazy laughter of bored desk staff. And then the phone ringing behind the desk, the clipped tone from the woman leaning over, “They want you on the red sofas. Do you know where they are?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

Accompanied at painful speed along the cobbles by a sighing security guard. Behind the velvet rope. The “inkies” rushing in and out of the dirty bits on the lower floor, where execs and columnists would never deign to go.

The editor’s parking slot as close to the main doors as a white line could ever hope to be.

Once inside, Alex had drunk in the smells of the newsroom, the leather of the executive lift and the Styrofoam coffee. She’d walked tall along corridors papered floor-to-ceiling with famous headlines. Holding her head as stiff and straight as her mother’s late night elocution lessons had taught her years before. “Just walk with the books on your head, Alexandra, it’s not that hard! My God, what have I done to deserve this?”

The unstoppable gush of excitement, creativity, that hunger again. Spilling from Alex as the smiling faces nodded from the other side of the walnut table, as polished as a bowling alley. “Zeitgeist,” “generation,” “ahead of the curve”…all the right phrases. And—Alex recognized looking back—her then-beautiful face smiling openly, a face that would look just so above a byline.

The handshake, the sealed deal, the sweats. The shits in the foyer bathrooms on the way out, barely making it. Glancing at an oil painting of Rupert Murdoch in the reception as she walked giddily by, smiling so hard her cheekbones hurt. The burbling water feature. So eighties, and ridiculous, and everything she’d ever wanted to see in the flesh.

On the taxi ride home, Alex had called her mother in Spain. It had seemed like the right thing to do.

“A columnist?” Her mother had sniffed. “It’s a shame they didn’t put you on the travel desk. At least then you might make the effort to come and see me.”

And then Alex had phoned Matt.

“Oh my fucking God, seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously!” she’d squealed, kicking her legs in the back of the taxi, shoes flying as she’d slid slowly from one side to the other as the driver shook his head in the mirror but not unkindly.

That night they’d put buttery lobster on a credit card. Delicate flutes of Champagne, clinked with wild abandon, tears in their eyes. Matt had carried her home. She’d felt light as a feather. And he had made love to her so gently that she couldn’t bear it. She’d sunk her nails into his flesh and dug him into her so she could be sure she was feeling everything. And his gargled voice had proposed in her ear. She’d cried: “Yes, oh my God, of course, yes.”

The next day, he’d woken her up with a strong coffee, kissed both her eyelids and said, “I meant it.”

If she had known how it would end, would she have taken the job?

Yes. God, she was hungry then.

A different time. A different person. No one will remember me.

“Do you know where to go?”

“Yes, it’s fine, I used to work here.” Alex smiled at the security guard and pushed out into the cold grounds. As she walked along the familiar cobbles, Andy Bellamy came out of one of the side doors, shirt flapping around his big belly.

“Alex, thanks for coming in.”

“No problem, it’s good to see the old place.”

They met awkwardly. She went for one cheek kiss, he for two and they clashed mid-air.

“I thought we could grab a coffee.”

The coffee shop in a chilly corner of the newspaper complex had been a thinly disguised Starbucks franchise in Alex’s time. Now it appeared to be a thinly disguised Costa franchise.

“No more Caramel Macchiatos?” Alex asked.

“No, now it’s the same old shit with a different name,” Andy said. “Thank our friends at
The Sun,
they did an exposé on Starbucks wasting water and the whole thing kicked off. Anyway, take a seat.”

Andy had worked on the City pages when Alex left. He hadn’t been in the meeting room that last time. But he’d looked over the rim of his newsroom monitor as she’d been escorted out, flanked by security. A hundred pairs of furtive eyes had looked over their monitors that day.

“So do you miss it here?” he asked.

“I miss the money,” Alex laughed.

“Yeah…there’s not so much of that about now, eh?”

“Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for every commission I get now, but
damn
. When I think about how much I got then, and how little I had to write in comparison…”

“What was the name of the column you did again?”

“Which one? There was the main column on Tuesday and then ‘Losing Mum,’ on Sunday.”

“Ah yes, of course.”

Alex could see a guy in the queue that she dimly recognized, and immediately worried why.

“Shame that stopped.”

“Well, my mum died, so it sort of reached a natural end.”

“Oh God, I’m such a twat,” Andy said, aghast. They both laughed.

“It’s fine. Ha, it’s really fine.”

“Look, I wanted to talk to you about the Amy story you pitched and I thought it would be easier to have a face-to-face. It’s an interesting case but I have a few misgivings. Put it this way, we couldn’t make a story out of it yet.”

“There’s definitely a lot more to be done.”

“Make no mistake, it’s interesting. Very interesting. I remember it happening, the stepdad being nicked, the mum. It’s awful what happened to that family, but I’m still struggling to see how we could legitimately make a valuable article out of it now.”

Alex swallowed hard. “Okay, I see what you’re saying. But what if new evidence was found about the person that attacked Amy? That would warrant a full feature, surely? Whoever did this is still out there. Someone capable of attacking a young girl and leaving her for dead. People don’t tend to do things like that once and then retire, they tend to get worse.”

Alex looked around at all the caffeinated eyes peering out from behind giant cardboard cups of coffee. She lowered her voice.

“I think the key to the story is, you know, where is this guy? And what are the police doing about catching him?”

“Who knows?”

“Right, no one knows where he is and the police aren’t doing anything. It’s just another cold case for them. It would only be opened up if something very similar happened.”

Andy Bellamy folded his arms over his barrel tummy and cocked his head to the side.

“I mean,” Alex carried on, quietly, “is that okay? Should someone else’s family be ripped apart before this is solved?”

“Okay, yeah, you’ve made your point,” Andy said. “I’m not totally convinced, Alex, and to be frank your last few pieces haven’t really done it for me like they used to…

“Here’s what I’ll do. You bring me something with a tangible exclusive, similar cases that hadn’t been put together before, police reopening the investigation, some suspect they overlooked, girl waking up and dancing the tango…something, and we’ve got an interesting double-page spread. Bring me something vintage Alex Dale and you’ve got yourself a full four-pager.”

Andy Bellamy’s words had gnawed away at her all night and she thought of them as soon as she woke up the next morning. Parallel cases, overlooked suspects, she’d not started on anything like this. Other than rifling through all the clippings, pissing off her ex-husband and bothering a wary stepdad, she’d not done very much at all.

It was a battle of willpower over fatigue to pull her running things on, but Alex knew it was the best method for clearing her head.

As her trainers thumped heavily along the pavement, chest pumping and stomach gurgling, she tried to order her thoughts into some kind of plan.

Retracing the police steps was largely pointless. They’d spoken to Bob and ruled him out. She’d spoken to Bob and ruled him out. The police had done the same to the boyfriend, the neighbors and her teachers at school. All were incapable or elsewhere.

The net needed to be widened. In 1995, there was no obvious way to pull together the social network of any one person. Apart from help the school might have given, it would really have been up to the parents to provide a list of friends and contacts.

Amy had no friends at all in 2010, but in 1995 she was still at school, she still went to youth clubs, she had friends at home. Amy may not be able to maintain those connections but her friends from 1995 would still be around, linked together by their shared school years. Alex sprinted all the way to her front door.

Still panting and coated with salty sweat, she fumbled her key in the door and jogged straight over to her laptop, flipping it open and clicking into the browser window.

For the first time in years she typed: friendsreunited.com.

A quick search on “Edenbridge Grammar School” brought up 2,047 members, but to see them, Alex had to register or log in. After deliberately stepping away from this kind of thing ages ago, signing up felt dangerous. She added herself to Amy’s school, in Amy’s year, and filled in scant information.

“Alex Dale” now nestled between Amy’s classmates, right where Amy Stevenson would have sat. Between the out-of-date biographies.

Referring back to her transcripts with Bob, Alex had jotted down some names: Jenny, Becky and Jake.

There were three Rebeccas (Harris, Limm and Simpson) but only one potential Jenny, Jennifer Cross. No Jake but a Jacob Arlington.

Alex’s tummy fluttered. Jennifer Cross and Jacob Arlington. That had to be Jenny and Jake, surely? Everyone signed up to Friends Reunited back in the day, it
had
to be them. She called Bob’s number, chewing the end of her pen.

“ ’Ello?”

“Hi, Bob, it’s Alex Dale here.”