‘I needed the bathroom.’
‘This is for academy students only.’
‘I was busting.’
The woman eyes me sceptically but I try to match her stare, opening my palms, as if to say, ‘Nothing to see here.’
‘I think you should leave.’
‘Don’t get all shitty on me.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said don’t get shirty. I made a mistake. I’m sorry.’
I flounce confidently between the benches, turning right through the door, cradling the envelope under my arm. Along the tunnel, up the stairs, through the exit doors, I don’t look back until I reach Cyrus, who is waiting in the foyer.
‘Where have you been?’ he asks, sounding relieved.
‘Loo.’
‘You shouldn’t just wander off.’
‘Why? Am I a prisoner? Did you want to follow me to the ladies? You could watch me. Some men get a kick out of that.’
He doesn’t answer.
Side by side, we cross Bolero Square. I have to lengthen my stride to keep up with him.
‘Jodie Sheehan wanted to quit skating,’ I say, making it sound like a revelation.
‘Who told you that?’
‘Alice. She’s one of the other skaters.’
Cyrus stops and turns. ‘How do you know Alice?’
‘I talked to her when she came off the rink. Alice said Jodie had a boyfriend. He was older, she said, but didn’t know his name.’
Cyrus is staring at me, unsure how to react.
I pull the envelope from inside my shirt. ‘You didn’t tell me that Jodie was pregnant.’
‘How could you possibly know that?’
‘I found this in her locker.’
37
Yelling at Evie is like shouting at a TV, or at a car that won’t start. I can hear myself getting more and more worked up, while she regards me with utter ambivalence or worse, complete disdain.
‘Have you any idea of how many laws you’ve broken? The position you’ve put me in? That was someone’s private locker. You stole possible evidence. You could be charged. I could lose my job. Bad show, Evie! Bad show!’
She gives me a dull stare. No regrets. No remorse. Whatever warmth or connection may have existed has gone, replaced by an icy wasteland that I might never cross again.
I order her into the car. She doesn’t react. Pedestrians are watching us, drawn by my raised voice. I’m clutching the yellow envelope as though it’s going to explode in my hands.
The wind lifts hair from Evie’s forehead and makes her eyes water, but she doesn’t blink. It’s as though she is closing down her mind, going somewhere else. I stop myself and swallow my anger. Evie isn’t ambivalent or unmoved. She is doing what she’s always done when under attack – she’s escaping to a safe place. This is how she survived years of sexual abuse.
‘Please get in the car,’ I say, softening my voice.
Evie looks at the open door.
‘I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I’m sorry.’
She doesn’t say anything.
‘Do you want to go back to Langford Hall?’
‘Is that what you want?’ she whispers.
The question thumps into my chest. I should say something to reassure her but I’m too angry. What am I to do with this girl? I know practically nothing about her, despite having read her files. She is surly, ungrateful, stubborn, and her presence in my life makes it seem impossibly overcrowded. I want to yell, ‘Don’t be a child! Grow up!’ but Evie had no childhood. This is it.
We drive through steady traffic and spitting rain to the sound of my wiper blades slapping against the side of the windscreen. When we reach the house, Evie goes upstairs to her room. An hour later I stand outside her door, unsure of whether to knock. I press my ear against the panels of wood. Nothing.
Retreating to the library, I empty the contents of the envelope onto my desk – the pregnancy test and the SIM cards and the cheap mobile phone – an old-fashioned Nokia with a flip screen, most likely second-hand.
I should give the envelope to the police. How would I explain it? If I tell them that Evie broke into Jodie’s locker they’ll send her back to Langford Hall and I’ll likely be investigated and lose my job.
Perhaps I could post the envelope anonymously; or leave it on Lenny’s doorstep. Evie’s fingerprints will be on the contents. So will mine. Shit!
The police already know that Jodie was carrying a second phone on the night she died because she kept receiving messages after her own handset was turned off. Now we have proof of a third cell phone and multiple SIM cards. Why would a fifteen-year-old girl need different phone numbers? And what was she doing with six thousand pounds?
Yesterday at the Whitakers’ house, Brianna hinted that Jodie wasn’t as innocent as everybody made her out to be and said I should talk to her brother. It sounded like teenage bitchiness but hinted at more. Felix Sheehan could be the key to this.
In the meantime, I have to do something about the envelope. Opening my laptop, I put a Skype-call in to Lenny. She answers on her mobile. I hear laughter in the background.
‘Am I interrupting?’
‘Sunday lunch. It’s like feeding time at the zoo.’
‘I have a package that belonged to Jodie Sheehan. You can’t ask me how I came upon it.’
‘I can, and I will,’ says Lenny, not in the mood for games.
‘Someone left it on my doorstep.’
‘Don’t fuck with me, Cyrus.’
‘I need this favour.’
Seconds tick by. I can hear her breathing.
‘Where is this mystery package?’
‘You should send a car.’
38
Angel Face
I’m sitting in the lee of a bus shelter, head down, hood up, listening to the traffic swish past on the wet road. My anger is so hard against my front teeth that I can taste it in my mouth. Cyrus had no right to shout at me. I was trying to help him, to do something nice. I don’t need his lectures, or his charity, or his sad eyes or his psychoanalysis. Fuck him!
A bus pulls up and the doors fold open. I hesitate for a moment. ‘Are you getting in?’ asks the driver in a thick accent. I step on board and hand him money.
‘No cash,’ he says irritably. ‘Card only.’
I remember Cyrus gave me some sort of travel pass. I search my pockets and hand it over.
‘Tap. On reader. Box. Here.’
‘How should I know?’ I mutter, as the bus pulls away. I sway down the aisle and choose a seat where I can’t see my reflection in the mirror. Beneath my overcoat, I’m wearing the dress that Caroline Fairfax chose for my court appearance, but I’ve unpicked the high collar and undone the top buttons, making it look sexier. Mascara and eye-shadow have made my eyes look bigger and my lashes thicker.
Chloe Pringle once told me that lipstick was supposed to emphasise a woman’s sexuality by echoing the colour of her labia. I thought this was disgusting and stopped wearing lipstick for a month.
Reaching into my coat pocket, my fingers close around my roll of banknotes – my stash, my stake. Soon I won’t need charity, or Cyrus or anyone else.
The old brick warehouse is squeezed between a minicab office and used-car yard, close enough to the railway line for the whole building to shake when the freight trains roar past. Opposite is a vacant lot where a handful of cars are parked amid mounds of rubble and patches of weeds.