The Misper
BEA DAVENPORT
The Misper
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2018
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874
info@theconradpress.com
ISBN 978-1-912317-19-6
Copyright © Bea Davenport, 2018
The moral right of Bea Davenport to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. This book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Typesetting and Cover Design by:Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.
1
Good cop, bad cop
Today’s a new start.
At least, it’s supposed to be all new, but people keep on blurting out the same old stuff. Fresh page. Line-in-the-sand. Put-the-past-behind-you. It would be a good sign if someone said just one thing I haven’t heard before. Just one thing, you know? Surprise me.
It might be new, but it feels old. All schools smell the same, of sweat and Dettol and don’t-wanna-be-here. The stench wafts out of the reception area. I’m hovering outside while little groups and cliques wander past me, shaking off the rain, talking and laughing and squealing and all of that. Some kids turn their heads to stare, but most of them don’t even see me at all. I turn to see Mum give me the thumbs-up. She spent about half an hour fussing around me this morning, even straightening my frizzy hair and letting me use a dab of make-up to cover a zit.
Usually she’d say, ‘It’s only school, Anna, not a catwalk.’ My heavy eyeliner and dark-painted nails are definitely off limits. Mum wants me to make a good impression. And she’s going to stand there with that fixed smile, getting wetter and wetter, until I go inside, so I guess I’d better move. I raise my hand in something like a wave, hold my breath and follow some kids in through the toughened glass doors.
Over and over in my head, I’m thinking what I should tell anyone who asks about my last school or where I used to live. The thing not to say is that I’m trying to escape. Or that I’m running away from someone who isn’t even around anymore.
I knew this girl, you see. A sort of a friend. No one thought she really mattered much, but that turned out to be a mistake. Because she blew a hole through my life – and the lives of everyone I knew.
Last November 3
It was just after four o’clock in the afternoon and it was pretty dark. There were smells of gunpowder in the air, because the kids had been setting off fireworks every day since the shops started selling them. Any day at school was bad enough without Zoe. And usually any day without Kerry was a good one. But everything had been off its head today, like a weird dream where everything you think you know is not quite right. The best parts of the day were when no one was talking to me at all. The worst parts were when people asked me questions. Three-thirty couldn’t come quickly enough and I’d part-run, part-walked home so fast I was out of breath. And there was a police car outside my house.
I stopped dead and took some big mouthfuls of air. It tasted of fumes, fireworks and frost. My first thought was to turn and walk away again, in the opposite direction. I almost did it. But then I pictured the inside of the house: Mum putting out the best tea cups and searching the cupboard for some good biscuits for the police officers. She’d have that worry-frown on her forehead, so deep it hurt me to look at it. Every minute waiting for me would make it worse. So I reached for my front door key. It slipped in my damp hand.
They were the same officers who came round yesterday… and someone else. The light-haired woman detective and the fat bloke who was her sidekick. They were just what you see in the films — good cop, bad cop. I knew how they worked. She tried to get me to tell her what happened, by pretending to be my friend. He tried to get me to tell him what happened, by pretending he already knew and that he could see right through me. They said, ‘Hello again, Anna.’ And I guessed there was no good news.
The woman cop gave me that sympathetic smile. The fat bloke already had my mum’s china cup in his fat fist and was dunking a biscuit in his tea. And the circles round my mum’s eyes looked so dark, you’d think she’d drawn them on. All these things made me feel guilty: her smile, his sneer, Mum’s face. Even though I didn’t actually do anything. No good telling that to the cops. After all, somebody did something to Kerry. Whatever it was.
I said there was someone else there, too, this time. Another woman, younger, with spiky hair the colour of apricots and a row of earrings in each lobe. She looked like a scarecrow that’d been pushed into a skirt suit from Oxfam. They introduced her as Jenny and they rattled on about psychology. It turned out my mum agreed this woman can talk to me. A nut doctor. Great.
‘You’ve been running,’ said the lady cop. I raised my eyes and I stopped myself from saying: ‘Well done, Sherlock Holmes,’ only because Mum was in the room. The friendly one was called Sandra. Her hair was in the sleekest bob you ever saw, like she ironed it along with her blinding-white shirts. I just shrugged. I didn’t want to say anything more than
