the end of the street out of sight of the house. The street was a cul-de-sac, so Mia couldn’t leave it without him knowing. One hour passed, two, three. The street-lamps flickered into life. A girl emerged from the street, walking quickly, head down as if she didn’t want to see or be seen by anyone. She was almost past the car before Julian realised it was Mia, looking so different as to be almost unrecognisable. Gone were the torn fishnets, leather jacket, heavy makeup and facial piercings. She wore a knee-length summer dress that clung to her pencil waist, flat pumps and little makeup other than childish pink lipstick. Her hair was dyed sandy blonde and tied back in a ponytail. It gave Julian a jolt to see her. It was as if she’d found an old newspaper photo of Susan Carter and got herself up to look like it.
Julian lowered the driver’s side window. “Mia.”
She hurried onwards, seeming not to hear. He got out of the car, calling her name again. She started and looked up. A frown gathered between her eyes. “Are you stalking me or something?”
“What’s going on? Why do you look like…like that?”
“How many times have I got to tell you to leave me the fuck alone?”
“Please, Mia. If you’re in trouble, I can-”
Mia’s hiss silenced Julian mid-sentence. She turned away from him and continued walking. He followed her. Her eyes flashed an angry glance at him. “Do you want me to scream again?”
“Scream your lungs out. I don’t care.”
“Why are you doing this? What the fuck am I to you? I mean, you don’t want to fuck me. And we’re not even friends.”
“I…I like you, that’s all. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
Mia stopped and turned to Julian. Her eyes were softer than before, but there was a kind of contempt behind them too. “You’re too late, Julian. The bad thing already happened.”
He shook his head hard. “It’s not too late. You’re still here, still alive.”
“Just because something looks alive on the outside doesn’t mean it’s alive on the inside.”
“Maybe so, but there’s nothing dead about you.”
“How the fuck would you know? You can’t see inside me.”
“Then open up. Show me what’s inside you. It can’t be any worse than what’s inside me.”
Mia snorted, the contempt at the front of her eyes now. “There are no dreams inside me, rich boy. I can’t afford them. There’s nothing inside me but piss, shit and cheap vodka. I’m sick, rotten, like this fuckhole of a town. Can’t you smell me? I can and it makes me want to puke.”
Before Mia finished speaking, she started walking again. Again, Julian followed. “You don’t have to do this. Whatever it is.” Mia ignored him, but he persisted, “I can help. Just tell me how.”
Mia whirled suddenly and slapped Julian, her nails drawing blood. They stared at each other a moment, him with his mouth hanging open, her po-faced. Then she resumed walking away from him. This time, he didn’t follow. Head hanging, he returned to his car. He watched Mia dwindle from sight. He thought about Susan Carter, missing all these years, her parents still not knowing for sure what happened to her. He thought about Joanne Butcher, her maggoty eye sockets, her livid, bloated flesh. “No.” The word hissed out from between his tight-pressed lips. “No fucking way.”
Julian drove after Mia. There was a set of traffic lights ahead on red. He braked, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, muttering, “C’mon, c’mon,” as Mia turned a corner.
The lights changed. He accelerated around the corner. His heart accelerated too. Mia was nowhere to be seen. Jerking his head from side to side, he spotted her a short distance along a side street bordered only by a windowless building. She approached a black Mercedes with its lights off. Julian wondered who the hell she knew with a car like that, as she opened the backdoor and ducked inside. He could see two other figures in the car — one in the driver’s seat, the other in the backseat. But the light was too dim to make out their features. They disappeared from sight as the car’s headlights glared into life. As the car pulled out of the street, he caught another glimpse of them. The driver was a middle-aged white man with a dark beard and shades. Big and serious-looking, not the kind of guy you’d want to tangle with, and wearing what looked like a chauffeur’s uniform. The figure beside Mia was a busty woman in a low-cut black dress, thirtyish, red-hair piled into an intricate coil, good looking, but with a hard-bitten edge. Mia was staring out the window towards Julian, but she didn’t see him. She had that somewhere else look on her face again.
The Mercedes headed for the southern suburbs. Julian tailed it at what he thought was an inconspicuous distance, his mind whirring with the possibilities of what Mia might be getting herself into. He pictured Mr Ugly’s snoutish nose sniffing at her. He pictured a tongue emerging like a fat pink worm from thick, leering lips to lick at her. He pictured powerful, hairy-backed fingers closing around her throat. The images passed before his eyes in a sickeningly vivid cavalcade. The Mercedes put on a sudden burst of speed, jumping a red light. He pressed down hard on the accelerator. There was a crunch of smashing glass and crumpling metal, and his neck snapped to one side as a car hit the front end of his car and swung it around.
An electric shock of pain crackled from his neck to his feet, as he twisted his head to watch the Mercedes speed into the distance. When it passed out of sight, a thought struck him like a knife sliding under his skin, that’s it, Mia’s gone and I’ll never see her again.
Chapter 10
Julian lay pretending to sleep as the doctor reassured his parents that, with the exception of some bruises and a minor case of whiplash, their son was unhurt. “He’s been very lucky, you know,” the doctor said. Julian didn’t feel very lucky. He felt about as low as he ever had in his life. “We’ll keep him in overnight, just for observation,” continued the doctor. “If everything checks out, he can go home in the morning.”
What home? Julian felt like saying, but he kept silent. He heard the doctor leave the room. He sensed his parents looking at him. He felt a hand — his mum’s, he guessed, from its cold softness — rest gently on his. He didn’t open his eyes. He knew he was in trouble — before the doctor arrived, he’d seen his parents talking to a policeman. “Julian,” his dad said.
“Shh,” said Christine. “Don’t wake him. He’s had a car crash, for God’s sake. He needs rest.”
“He could’ve killed somebody. They’re talking about charging him with dangerous driving.”
“Shut up, Robert, or leave the room.”
Robert huffed out a breath, but said nothing. There was a warning in his wife’s voice that suggested she didn’t care about any of that stuff — at least, not while her son was laid up in a hospital bed in a neck brace. She gave Julian’s hand a squeeze. “Get a good night’s sleep, darling, and try not to worry about anything. All that matters now is that you get better.”
Her soothing voice took Julian away from his anxiety to a place where he was willing to let go. As usual, the dream was lurking in the shadows of sleep. Only this time it was Mia in her Susan Carter get-up who writhed and struggled beneath him. Ducking his head, he bit her windpipe, chewing deeper and deeper, blood spurting around his jaw. He saw his face reflected in her dying eyes, mutated by a violent orgasm into something a thousand times uglier than the face in her diary. He awoke with a heavy, choking sob in his throat and Mia’s words seeming to echo in his mind. You’re too late. The bad thing already happened. Too late. Too late…
Julian didn’t go back to sleep.
In the morning, after the doctor had checked him over, his dad took him home. At the very least, Julian expected a lecture about the idiocy of running red lights, but all his dad said was, “The garage called. Looks like your car’s a write-off.” He wore the tight-lipped expression of someone who’d been strictly warned to keep his thoughts to himself.
Julian shrugged. Right then, he couldn’t have given a shit about his car. Right then, all he cared about was finding out if Mia was okay. He would’ve left the hospital before his dad arrived and gone in search of her, if it hadn’t been for his neck. The pain was something else. Even with the brace and pain killers, every slight jolt made him wince.
His mum and Wanda were waiting at the front door. “I’ll bet you’re hungry,” Wanda said to Julian. “I know what hospital food’s like.”
Julian nodded and wished he hadn’t. “You can eat in bed,” said Christine. “The doctor said to give your neck
