‘I’m not in this to kill kids,’ Mo said. ‘It was just supposed to be for the cash. Nobody gets hurt. That’s what you said. That’s what he said.’ Annie could see a thin film of sweat above his upper lip.
Larry pointed the gun at Mo. ‘You do as you’re told. Get a grip and let me think this through.’
‘We need to ring Cleaver,’ Curly said. ‘We’ve been here too long already. You were supposed to talk to him straight away.’
Annie watched with interest. This had something to do with Tom’s dad – they’d used his name. But was it because he was the headteacher or was it more personal?
She passed Tom another sanitary towel – only four left, she was going to have to ask the girls again – and watched as he removed the bloody one. Was the flow slowing down? It was difficult to tell.
‘Right, everybody quiet!’ Larry snapped. ‘One sound from anybody and I’ll shoot.’ He reached into his pocket and, for an awful, slow second Annie thought he might have a bomb or a grenade. ‘Not a word,’ he repeated as he dialled a number on an old-fashioned mobile phone.
Somebody must have answered almost instantly because he hissed into the receiver, ‘Get Cleaver. Now!’
Before
Annie hadn’t wanted to stay on in the sixth form. She’d wanted to study psychology, but it was only offered at a school in Penrith and that was too far to travel. Subject choice wasn’t the only reason she wanted to escape Fellbeck. Ever since her mum had got the deputy headship, Annie had been desperate to go somewhere else. She didn’t want to ‘set an example’ and hated it when her mum said that she couldn’t do something because ‘it would reflect badly on me’. It wasn’t up to Annie to make her mum look good – she just wanted to get some decent grades and get out of Cumbria – but her mum seemed to think of her daughter as some sort of Mini-Me and never let Annie just be herself.
Everything had changed in the summer. She’d been predicted A grades for all her A-levels due to her hard work so her mum had agreed to allow her to go on holiday with a group of friends as a reward. Actually, it had been a bribe at first. Annie knew that her mum had very little faith in her daughter’s academic abilities and had set out to prove her wrong, and to give her no reason to veto the holiday. It wasn’t like they’d planned to go to Ibiza or Ayia Napa – a week walking Hadrian’s Wall and camping was hardly a high-risk proposition – but Annie had been forced to use every trick and excuse she could think of to persuade her mum to let her go. Including lying about her walking companions. Keely and Jess weren’t a problem, but Tom Cleaver was definitely on Penny’s list of ‘boys to be avoided’ – which only made him more attractive to Annie.
Penny had never been explicit about her objection to Tom. She’d never banned Annie from seeing him. But whenever she mentioned him, or if Annie dropped his name into the conversation, however innocently, Penny’s lips would compress into a disapproving line and her eyes would narrow. Annie assumed it had a lot to do with Tom being the head’s son and the ‘incestuous’ overtones of a relationship with him would have reflected badly on her mother – or allowed Mr Cleaver deeper into Penny’s life. Annie deliberately hadn’t mentioned Tom’s intention to join the girls on their walk.
The morning they were due to start dawned dry and bright. Keely’s mum was going to pick them all up and drive them to Carlisle where they’d decided to begin the walk – opting to avoid the fourteen miles from Bowness-on-Solway into the city because, as Jess put it, ‘who wants to spend a day walking across a flat bog?’ Annie was desperate to get away, from the house, from her mum and from her life. She’d spent the previous evening checking and re-checking her clothing and equipment and had polished her old leather walking boots to a glossy shine.
‘They’re here!’ her mum yelled as Annie was completing a final weigh-in of her rucksack. It was just under twelve kilos which didn’t feel too bad; she’d split a tent with Jess, taking the flysheet and poles, and scrounged a lightweight sleeping mat from one of her other friends. The heaviest items were her sleeping bag and the two-litre bottle of water that Penny had insisted that she take.
‘Coming!’ Annie shouldered the pack and tottered down the stairs to the living room where her mum was holding back one of the curtains and peering out of the window, frowning.
‘Who’s that in the back of the car?’
Annie’s heart sank. Keely had said that Tom would be the last one of the group to be picked up but she could see his messily gelled blond hair through one of the rear windows.
‘It’s Tom Cleaver. You didn’t tell me he was going on this trip. You didn’t mention any boys.’
Annie made a mental note to pay Keely back – maybe a spider in her sleeping bag – before looking her mum directly in the eyes.
‘I didn’t know he was coming,’ she lied. ‘One of the others must have invited him. I always suspected Jess had a thing for him. That’s so annoying – it was supposed to be a girly trip.’
Her mum was looking sceptical and, for a second, Annie thought she’d gone too far with her protestations.
‘Well, keep away from him if you can. He’s trouble.’
She’d got away with it. She could breathe again. It wasn’t like she had anything to hide – there wasn’t anything going on with Tom – but she was hoping that might change during the holiday.
She wasn’t sure when she’d started to think about Tom ‘like that’ as
