Talking to Strangers, page 5
“Have they lived in Ebbing long?”
“He has. His dad started the hardware shop round the back of the library, and when he died of a heart attack at fifty, Noel got lumbered with it. The only son, you see. It wasn’t what Noel had planned, by all accounts, but you can’t always get what you want, can you? Evelyn was sort of part of the package—she used to work in the shop, so he didn’t have to look far for a wife. My Ted doesn’t go in there. He says Noel’s got a dirty mouth on him.”
“Has he? I noticed Mrs. Clayton doesn’t say much.”
“No. She doesn’t really mix. A bit like you, really.”
“I mix!”
“Barely. So”—Ronnie’s voice suddenly dropped—“have you seen the new man next door in number seven yet? He moved in weeks ago, but I haven’t managed to speak to him.”
“You must be slipping! And why are you whispering?” Elise said but found herself doing the same.
“Because he’s probably just the other side of that wall,” her neighbor hissed. “I’ve told you before, these party walls are like paper. I can practically hear you unbuttoning your coat when you get home—if I turn down the radio.”
“Seriously,” Elise muttered, and gave her a look. She liked Ronnie a lot. She’d been there for her—“in charge of morale”—when Elise had been dealing with the terrors of breast cancer and recovery, but sometimes, just sometimes, she wished she still lived in an anonymous block of serviced executive flats where no one wanted to know your business. A terraced house on Ebbing High Street meant she couldn’t avoid being watched and overheard. Still, she could hardly complain. She’d done her own share of scrutinizing her neighbors since moving into 5 Mariner’s Cottages.
“Mina Ryan’s office is letting it,” Ronnie was telling her. “So she’ll be all genned up on him. He looks right up your alley.”
He did, but Elise was admitting nothing to the matchmaker in her kitchen. She’d clocked the new tenant straightaway. Of course she had. The house had been in darkness since well before Christmas, and she’d been a copper too long not to notice a light in the window when she’d come home from work a month ago. She’d listened for movement at the wall and carefully peered over her fence into the kitchen. There were big cardboard boxes on the worktop, but no one was unpacking.
Elise had gone with an apple to sit and wait in her window that looked onto the High Street. There was nothing on Netflix, anyway.
She’d spotted her new neighbor slowing and fumbling with unfamiliar keys under the streetlight, and had taken it all in: six foot plus, clean-shaven, athletic stride, forties? Or a fit fifty? He’d been carrying a small takeaway bag from the Golden Gate Indian restaurant. A meal for one. And he hadn’t called out “Hello” as he’d let himself in. No one else in the house, then.
But Elise wasn’t letting on to Ronnie. The woman didn’t need any encouragement in her mission to fix Elise up.
“You should pop round with a bottle of wine or a cake to welcome him,” her friend urged.
“Shut up! He might be a recovering alcoholic or gluten intolerant,” Elise said, trying not to smile. “Look, haven’t you got a home to go to? I need to read my notes.”
“I could help. I know Knapton Wood, for a start. My daughter, Meggie, used to play there with her friends and ran there when she was a teenager.”
“Did she?” Elise took a sip of tea and pulled a face. “Shit, I forgot to put the milk in. Where is my head?”
“Don’t fuss—you’ve got a lot on,” Ronnie soothed, getting the carton out of the fridge. “God, are you still using oat milk? Makes tea taste like porridge.”
“Shut up—it’s good for me. Anyway, I’m not sure I would have run there. This morning was the first time I’d been there. It’s a bit spooky, isn’t it? Those huge dead trees…I prefer open spaces—or the treadmills at the gym.”
“Seriously? And they’re not dead—they’re yews, and hundreds of years old. They’re known as the Ancient Watchers,” Ronnie said.
Elise snorted. “I thought that was you.”
“Rude,” Ronnie said. “Anyway, Meggie stopped going up there. Well, everyone did after the Curtis boys were attacked.”
Elise turned. “In Knapton Wood? When was this?”
“Oh, ages ago. Meggie was about twenty—so must be fifteen or sixteen years, I suppose,” Ronnie said. “Little Archie Curtis was killed. Don’t you remember? You were a police officer back then, weren’t you?”
“Not round here, I wasn’t.” She’d been on Traffic at the other end of the force area. But she would have known. Of course she would. The killing of a child would have invaded every corner of every police station in the country, let alone her own. It was what every officer dreaded. Children were not supposed to die. But groping around in the wisps of chemical fog that lingered in the corners of her brain, she couldn’t locate Archie Curtis.
“Come on, Ronnie, you know how forgetful I can still be.” She’d got good at covering up the occasional terrifying gaps in her memory at work, but she didn’t need to pretend with her friend. “Remind me.”
“He was eight. He and his brother were building a tree house…”
And the fog cleared. The tree house. An intricate collection of twigs and leaves in the lower boughs of a tree. The newspaper photos had made it look much more sophisticated than the giant bird’s nests Elise and her brother, Leo, used to attempt when they were kids. And the blond boy with the wide smile. There he was. Little Archie Curtis.
“Got him,” Elise said. “God—how had I forgotten it was Ebbing? They caught the killer the same day, didn’t they? Wasn’t he a registered sex offender?”
“Yep,” Ronnie said. “Not a local. We were all so shocked when we found out we had a pedophile living among us. No one knew. No one had told us. And he didn’t look like one. Just an ordinary young bloke. All neat and smiley and living alone in one of the holiday lets down by the harbor. Nicky something, he was called. The family moved away and never came back. Anyway, nobody wanted to play or walk in Knapton Wood after that.”
“I bet,” Elise said. “But people forget, don’t they?”
SUNDAY:
DAY 2
ELEVEN
KIKI
Sunday, February 16, 2020
I’m meant to be catching up on my accounts while Pip’s with her dad for the day. Half term is always a nightmare—a war-gamed campaign of babysitters, playdates, and sleepovers is plotted out on the kitchen wipe board so I can continue to work. But I can’t concentrate. Can barely sit still. Because my interview with Karen has been picked up by the nationals. A first since joining Sussex Today. A couple of old mates from the major news sites rang yesterday to ask me if they could run it in full, and I made Miles agree. “Make sure it links to our website and we are fully credited,” he said, not making eye contact with me. No “well done” or “great job.” But what do I care? The piece has unleashed a torrent of messages and emails: from women wanting to tell me online dating has been a revelation and how they’ve met “The One” after years of searching, to what feels like an equal number of those with horror stories to spill.
I haven’t finished going through them all, but once I’ve cleared out the hate comments from trolls and incels, there’ll be some fantastic material. I clench my fists so hard my nails make marks on my palms and punch the air. This is it, I tell myself. I am not going back to press releases and internet sensations now.
I FaceTime Miles while I’m still pumped.
“Have you seen how many comments I’ve got on the online dating murder?” I blurt as soon as he appears on my screen, half-asleep. “One hundred and forty-three. That’s more than anything else on the site. Even the bloody rock-and-roll parakeet.”
Miles yawns but he nods, making his big hair wave around his head.
“So, I’ve decided I’m going to do a column, anonymously. I’m calling it ‘The Secret Dater.’ It’s a play on words—you know, dater/data…” Miles yawns again. “Anyway, I can take a deep dive into the scene, go on dates, and talk about a different one each week. I’d disguise the blokes, obviously, but there are great stories out there—some horrors, some big romances, and some real laughs.”
I’m babbling now and he nods again—probably to make me stop—and puts a thumb up. And that is good enough for me.
I close the spreadsheet on my laptop and sign up as my ex, Danny, on some of the big dating sites to look at how women are operating—just to give myself a head start. He won’t mind, I tell myself as I upload an old photo of him in shades, hair slicked back, and create a fake email address. His listing starts racking up Views and Likes immediately: thirty-two in the first ten minutes. And I feel the scorch of acid burn in the pit of my stomach. An echo of our last months together. Nights I sat waiting. Him not answering his phone. The ghost of someone else’s scent on him. I close my eyes against it. That is history now, I tell myself. No looking back.
“You wouldn’t want to date him if you knew the truth,” I mutter to the women queuing for the privilege. “That he cuts his toenails on the sofa.”
I wince as I scroll through their faces. It’s like a Farrow & Ball paint color chart of human hope—from the palely shy to the dark hinterland of aggressively erotic. I doubt I will ever unsee Lynda X spilling out of a cheap basque in an untidy kitchen, a frying pan sticking out of the sink and desperation beading her upper lip.
“Come on, Lynda,” I murmur. “You don’t need to do this.”
But maybe she does. Maybe loneliness has driven this woman to strip off for strangers instead of finishing the washing-up. And she is certainly not alone. Hundreds of Lynda Xs are laying out their stalls online.
In my search, I stumble across Karen—dead in the morgue but still very much alive online, her voice crackling with nervous energy as she coos to her webcam: “Do you want to join me?”
Well, someone did. I just need to find out who. And I know this is really why I’m doing “The Secret Dater.” There’s a chance I’ll find Karen’s killer while the police are still cataloging exhibits. And be all over the media as the person who caught him, a voice in my head whispers. Okay, and be all over the media, I whisper back. So what?
I put my fingers back on the keyboard and take a deep, calming breath. I’ll have to get my hands dirty. I’ll have to sign up as myself to do the job properly. Go live. Friends have been nagging me for ages to do it, anyway. “People don’t meet partners in real life anymore,” one said. “It’s a separate activity. People have Bumble or Tinder apps sitting on their phones with Deliveroo and eBay. You need to get on with it if you want to find someone.”
But the thought of putting myself out there like a takeaway meal or pre-loved shoes was too depressing.
Okay, but this is different, isn’t it? It’s not about me. It’s for research. And I tap in the necessary information, altering some things slightly and creating a new email. But I do use a genuine photo of myself and carefully write my profile. I need to attract the same men as Karen did, so I nick a couple of her lines: “Hi, I’d love to meet new people and kick-start my social life. I like walks on the beach and nights out.” And wait. And wait. I check my Wi-Fi connection twice, but the realization that no one fancies me is curdling in the pit of my stomach.
What’s wrong with me? I want to scream. And am pathetically grateful when I finally get my first real bite. Not that he’s Brad Pitt. Eamonn from Hove has a comfortable face, is forty-nine, no kids, dog lover, and wearing a baseball cap in every photo. So, probably hat-fishing. I feel a bit sick when I start the chat, sure he will see through my pretense, but he keeps everything friendly and low-key. And within an hour I agree to an IRL meeting at lunchtime.
While I wait for the appointed time, I keep leaping up to pee, my bladder signaling strongly that I should stay at home. But when it’s time to leave, I take a good, hard look at the anxious face in the mirror.
“Get your big-girl pants on, Kiki. You need to get in the game.”
TWELVE
ANNIE
Sunday, February 16, 2020
Annie woke and reached for Henry. Her dream of running through Ebbing, banging on the windows of empty shops for help, wouldn’t clear. She could still taste the dry panic in her throat, and her legs felt weak and trembly. She hadn’t had the dream for a long time. Years. But this fresh horror in Knapton Wood had summoned it up.
Karen’s death had been like a rock thrown into their domestic waters. Bringing things back to the surface—buried hurts and grievances from the time of Archie’s death. She and Henry had ended up hissing like alley cats in bed last night.
Her fluttering hand found only cold space in their bed. What time is it? She flailed around, knocking over hand cream and a tiny elephant with a missing tusk on the bedside table before finding her phone. Eight thirty. She lay back, immediately exhausted by the thought of the day ahead.
She could hear Henry now, moving around the kitchen below her: turning on the radio for the news, clattering plates together as he emptied the dishwasher, scraping chair legs on the tiles.
He’d bring her a cup of tea in a minute. And maybe they could put last night’s row to rest. Normally, if they’d argued, Henry would make the first move and come and put his arms around her, and she would say sorry and kiss him. It was marital muscle memory. And they’d be thankful to make their peace and move on. But after last night’s spat, they’d slept with their backs to each other, and their resentment had lingered, like a Victorian illness.
They hadn’t rowed like that for a while, and Annie struggled to remember what the last fight had been about as she rolled onto her side. But things had been building since Friday’s engagement dinner. It’d been stressful, playing happy families for three hours. By the end of the evening, Annie had sat mute, guiltily longing for the happy couple to leave so she could talk to Henry about what he thought about it all. But she hadn’t had a chance. It’d all ended in a mad rush when Henry had realized the time and hustled Emily and Xander into the car to drive them to the station. Emily had needed to get back to London, and Xander was off to Brighton to meet his mates. Annie had stood in the doorway with her hand still raised in a last wave after the car had disappeared up the road, and then she’d trudged upstairs to bed. She hadn’t even had the energy to pick up her book.
She smiled warmly when Henry stumbled in, balancing two cups and a plate of toast. “Oh, how lovely,” she cooed, sitting up with her arms out to hug him, but Henry perched out of reach on the end of the bed.
“I’m sorry about last night, love,” Annie murmured. “I hate it when we row.”
“So do I,” Henry muttered. “I don’t know what’s got into you lately. Bringing up all this old stuff and rehashing ancient arguments. You even brought up the bloody ceiling I didn’t paint properly—what? Twenty years ago?”
Annie dug her fingernails into her palms under the covers to stop the row reactivating. “I’ve said I’m sorry, love. But it’s been so horrible, hasn’t it? With this new death.”
“Annie,” Henry growled softly. “You’ve got to stop talking about that—it’s nothing to do with us. We should be focusing on the good things happening in our life. Our son is getting married to a lovely girl.”
“I know,” Annie murmured, trying hard to picture Emily and Xander’s happy day but failing. “Xander hasn’t told her, has he? About Archie?” she blurted.
Henry closed his eyes. “For God’s sake, you don’t know that. She would hardly have brought it up at an engagement dinner, would she?”
“No, you’re probably right,” Annie said quietly. “Everything’s making me anxious at the moment.”
“I know. Look, have the morning in bed if you like. I’m going to sort out the shelves in Gav’s room.”
He pecked her on the cheek as he left. And Annie told herself it was all forgotten. She’d do his favorite chicken cacciatore for lunch. She needed some tinned tomatoes—and a bottle of Chianti. And she almost felt normal for a moment. Annie on a typical Sunday. A day of rest and domestic chatter about the week ahead. But she suddenly felt like a stranger in that world. She was all about death and loss again.
THIRTEEN
ELISE
Sunday, February 16, 2020
Elise picked up the pace as she jogged along the path above the beach, gazing out at the curve of the horizon, getting in her steps. She took off her hat as she ran, loving the sensation of her hair being blown about by the wind.
She knew that winter by the seaside was an acquired taste. Gray layered on gray and sea blackened by lowering clouds wasn’t for everyone. But she loved its unsentimental starkness after the postcard sparkling seas, ice creams, and little cafés with bunting and scones in the summer.
There’d been a sharp frost every morning for a week, and the pebbles on the beach had become lethal icy marbles underfoot. Elise had noticed that most of the Bluetits—the women she saw plunging in daily for a dawn swim—had put their swimsuits away for the moths to devour. Only the hardiest kite surfers were out there, skimming the waves, then standing with their wet suits stripped to the waist in the car park, swapping triumphs behind their rusty camper vans.
The weekenders had locked up and left by Halloween. They wouldn’t be back until spring, and Ebbing had hunkered down, grumbling to itself. Elise had flipped through the online neighborhood forums when she’d first arrived two years ago and discovered a master class in barely contained fury. In among the ads for secondhand sofas and window replacement were people festering about the things they saw and resented every day—dumping rubbish illegally, dog mess, blocked views, bad parking. And, of course, the wealthy blow-ins who priced locals out of the housing market.
