‘Well. Get your breath back,’ she went on. ‘I thought you and I might go for a little walk and have a chat.’
‘I don’t want to.’
My mum said: ‘Anna!’ in a hiss. I didn’t want to
see her face so I just stared down at the tablecloth, the best green tablecloth. I stared until its pattern blurred.
‘If I’d said that to a policeman when I was your age I’d have got a crack round the head,’ said the fat one. He smiled to make it sound like a joke. ‘We don’t bite, pet. We just have to find out what happened to Kerry.’
I looked over to Sandra, who gave me a wink, as if we were somehow in this together. She stood up. ‘Come on, we’ll leave Rob to get even fatter on your mum’s nice biscuits. Let’s go out for a bit of air.’
Jenny stood up too. My mum gave me one of those tiny little digs in the back. It was like, Behave yourself. Don’t make things worse.
‘Nothing to worry about,’ Sandra added.
It was darker and the pinch of cold in the air made my eyes water. The three of us walked down past the row of houses and I didn’t have to be told which way to go. The Cut. Scene of the crime or scene of the whatever-it-was that really happened. Maybe.
‘I guess you’re having a tough time.’ Sandra had a sigh in her voice.
I shrugged back. ‘You guess right then. No wonder you’re a copper.’
Silence. Then: ‘Anna,’ she said. ‘I’m not having a go at you. I know it must be terrible for you. Don’t treat me like an enemy. I just have to find out what happened. It’s my job.’
‘You’re not doing it very well, then, are you?’ I expected her to get angry, but she just laughed.
‘You’re right. I’m not, am I? But think about this. If you’re having a tough time, how do you think it is for Kerry’s mum? And the rest of her family?’
I kept my eyes down and under my feet the paving stones seemed to slide along of their own accord. When I first moved to our street I was a bit scared of Kerry’s mum. She was really strict with Kerry and I could see why Kerry didn’t argue back. She had black shiny hair, cut short and boxy like a man. She was – not fat, not really, but sort of square. You wouldn’t rugby-tackle her ’cause you’d lose. I once heard my mum call her ‘buxom’ which I thought was a hilarious word. She didn’t say it to her face, of course.
That morning, though, when I was about to go to school, Kerry’s mum wandered out of her house, just wearing her dressing gown and slippers. Somehow in the space of two nights she’d turned into a different person. She didn’t look square-shaped any more. Her skin kind of hung off her face. She started walking up and down and shouting for Kerry, until Kerry’s dad came out, took her arm and walked her back inside. I hid behind the fence until her door closed.
We reached The Cut. The Cut is what it says it is, a little cinder path between Scrogg’s Field and the other side of our housing estate. It’s the sort of place parents tell their kids not to go on their own. They do go, of course, sometimes for a dare more than anything. No one used it when it rained because it was a total mud bath and you couldn’t tell the wet soil from all the dog dirt.
There were stories about The Cut. They said a man kicked a dog in the head and left it to die in there. The older kids used to tell the little ones that you could sometimes still hear the ghost-dog whining, at nights.
Sometimes Zoe and I used it as a quick way home from school. Not today, though, obviously. It had police tape around it and an officer in uniform standing at the entrance. Sandra nodded at him and he stood back to let her past.
She switched on a torch and beckoned me. It was the smell I noticed first. That mixture of earth and rotting leaves and dog wee, saturating the cold air. I shuddered. ‘It stinks.’
‘Places like these always stink,’ Sandra said.
The frost had hardened the mud quite a bit, so walking was OK. Sandra swished through the leaves and branches, sharp and still icy-wet. She kept moving her torchlight around. ‘OK, Anna. So you all came in here on Hallowe’en night?’
I’d already been dragged through this story, so many times since Sunday that I’d lost count. I couldn’t decide if Sandra didn’t listen properly or if she was trying to catch me out. There was only one thing we knew for sure. Here was the last place we saw Kerry.
‘Hang on.’ I stopped walking. ‘Is Zoe doing this too? Have you even spoken to Zoe?’
I couldn’t see Sandra’s face but that Jenny woman was right beside me and she gave me an odd look, as if I’d said something really mad.
‘What?’ I said. A couple of seconds of silence. ‘What?’ I asked again.
Sandra gave a little sigh. ‘Zoe is really not well today, Anna.’
‘San.’ Jenny reached across and pulled Sandra’s sleeve. ‘I can’t believe Anna doesn’t know yet. You should — we should tell her.’
My insides squirmed. ‘Tell me what?’
Sandra turned to me and pressed her lips together for a moment. It was a long moment. ‘Zoe is in hospital, Anna. We’re not sure...They’re doing all they can.’
I wrapped my arms around myself to stop myself shaking. It was so cold. My teeth started to rattle and I couldn’t stop them. My eyes blurred and I couldn’t see. It was so very dark.
2
Zoe. And Kerry
This is how it started. I only came to live near Zoe — and Kerry — when Mum and Dad split up. Mum said she couldn’t afford to keep running
