Читать книгу Pretty Little Things: 2018’s most nail-biting serial killer thriller with an unbelievable twist - T.M.E. Walsh - Страница 15

CHAPTER 5

CHARLOTTE

I relish the light breeze as I walk down the road from where I parked my car, towards the heart of the village, the epicentre of all our lives – the village hall, the two pubs, and the corner shops and independents.

I had to drive on the Linkway but today my nerves held better than usual, which means I’ll be able to get through the morning that bit more easily.

I guess thoughts of Ruth, Caroline and the others are too much at the forefront of my mind to care too much about my problems, which, let’s face it, pale in comparison.

I glance at all the cars parked along the high street and am glad I made the decision to park further away and avoid the stress.

Saturday parking is a nightmare here.

I make sure I hug the side of the pavement that’s furthest from the road, as another car comes around the bend at speed. The backdraught sends my hair flailing around my face, and I scramble to pull it back down to cover myself. Instantly I’m a little ashamed. Given what’s going on, a facial scar should be the last thing on my mind, let alone anyone else’s.

Everyone else in this village is used to my face by now, so why can’t I relax?

I used to think village life would be perfect, a safe place to raise my daughter, but scratch beneath that shiny veneer . . .

It’s bad enough that I have to work for Harry Evans, that small shit of a man I mentioned earlier, who thinks I owe him something, especially because he lets me work alongside his son.

‘This shop is a family affair, Charlotte,’ he’d said to me when I asked if there was any chance of work. ‘It’s tradition, you see.’

Well, yes, I did see, and honestly I didn’t care. I just wanted a job after life so cruelly took my old one away. There was no way I could go back to working full-time, not yet.

Savannah said the hospital would have me back in a heartbeat, but I’m not ready. Still, the thought’s comforting.

I come into the heart of the village now, passing the Black Bull pub as I cross the road towards the monument ahead. Just on the other side is the newsagent’s. Evans’s, as it’s so imaginatively called, is already open. I look at my watch. Harry’s opened early.

I step into the shop, the bell ringing as I push the door open. I cringe. Any chance of avoiding Harry for a bit longer is quashed. My eyes do a quick sweep of the area and I see that Dale’s not in yet either.

Dale is Harry’s son. He’s eighteen and has a huge crush on Elle. I might’ve thought it sweet once, but now I know what an idiot Harry is, the less I have to do with the Evans family the better. Keep it professional, do my job, get paid, go home.

‘You’re late,’ Harry says, as he marches down the shop towards me.

I shrug my coat off and avoid his penetrating, dark, beady, bird-like eyes. ‘My watch says it’s five to,’ I say, breezily, trying to remind myself I need to be sweet because I have to ask him to let me out of work to pick Elle up from swimming.

‘You know I run a tight ship, Charlotte,’ he says as he heaves a large package of newspapers off the floor beside the counter. He grabs a Stanley knife and quickly cuts the plastic ties that hold the bundle together.

‘I’m expecting the shop to be busier today, what with those girls being found. There’ll be journalists, maybe even news reporters.’ He pauses, eyes looking away into somewhere far off. ‘Imagine that, eh? My little shop on the BBC evening news.’

I stare at him, part horrified yet also unsurprised. Ultimately, I try to look unoffended. This is Harry Evans after all. He’s a man born in the wrong era. Harry’s forty-nine, born at the end of the sixties, but he’s a fifties man at heart, set in his ways with views just as out of date and offensive as his clothes.

He smooths a rough hand over the front of a tabloid, a grin pulling at the side of his mouth as I give him the once-over.

He’s dressed in some kind of brown overcoat today, with light, mustard-coloured, checked trousers.

Who even sells such monstrosities?

Underneath that overcoat I know he’ll be wearing a patterned shirt and tie that both clash with his trousers. Harry thinks it makes him eccentric and a character of the village. I know, along with everyone else, that he just looks the pretentious twat he is.

I glance at his shoes and allow myself an inward smile.

He’s all about the clothes, and the coiffed hair but I look further and cast an eye on his shoes and see him for what he really is.

The shoes are well worn, the leather down to the bare board on the toes. Harry Evans isn’t just a pretentious twat. He’s a tight pretentious twat.

‘Dale not in yet?’ I say as I ease past Harry’s bulk.

‘Any minute now,’ he says, ripping into the last of the newspaper bundles. ‘Hurry up and get back here. This is your job, remember?’

I don’t bother to reply, instead taking slightly longer than I need to put my bag in my locker and hang up my coat. I quickly check my reflection in the mirror – hate what I see; my foundation is patchy around my scar – before heading back to the shop floor just in time to see Dale has arrived and Harry’s already got him pulling something down from the shop window.

That’s funny, because there’s only one advert in the window as far as I know . . .

‘Dale?’ I say, coming up behind him.

He half-turns his face to me. ‘Oh, hey, Charlotte. You OK?’ He stops peeling off the poster in the window to give me his full attention. ‘D’ya hear about those girls?’ He looks all conspiratorial, leaning in closer to me than is comfortable. ‘Sick, innit?’

My eyebrows knit together then. ‘Yeah . . .’ I say, shaking my head, barely listening. ‘What’s that you’re taking down?’

Dale looks down at the poster half-peeled from the window. ‘Oh, Dad said it had to come down now.’ He pauses. ‘Thought you’d OK’d it.’

I see now what I already knew. It’s an A4 poster ad for our – or rather Iain’s – plumbing business.

Dale must see that I’m pissed off. ‘Sorry, I thought Dad had told you,’ he says, twisting the poster in his hands, nerves getting the better of him now.

‘He didn’t.’

‘Nor did I need to.’

Dale and I both turn at the sound of Harry’s voice as he comes out from the back. He carries what looks like another poster in his hands.

‘It was a temporary favour, Charlotte. I didn’t charge you for ad space seeing as you’re an employee, but, well . . .’ He shrugs. ‘Can’t be seen to have favourites.’

I watch as he hands Dale a replacement sign to stick in the window. It’s some ad for local garden services.

‘Harry,’ I say. ‘Please, we need all the help we can get at the moment. There’s so much competition with us being so close to other towns, people undercutting. We really need the money right now.’

Dale looks at me and gives me a sympathetic smile, but it’s clear he’s not going to speak up for me. Harry looks at me with indifference.

‘Plenty more hours if you want them, Mrs Monroe. All you have to do is ask,’ he says, without an ounce of sympathy.

He walks off then, leaving me with Dale, who suddenly looks more embarrassed than I am. There’s an awkward silence between us and I’m relieved when a man and woman enter the shop, both on their mobiles, speaking fast and trying hard to hide the excitement in their voices.

Dale looks at me as we hear the snippets of their conversations.

‘They’re too maggoty to be viewed by family members, that’s what I heard . . .’

‘. . . Yes, that’s what we thought, but they were in different stages of decomposition, so it’s going to be hard to say how each died . . .’

Dale goes to serve one of them with several newspapers and I move away from the counter. I feel Dale’s eyes following my movements.

‘Journalists,’ I mouth to him.

*

I’m sitting in the back finishing the last of my tea when Dale comes in.

I raise my mug at him. ‘I’ve ten minutes left on break.’

‘Yeah, I know. Dad’s watching the shop.’

‘Need five minutes?’

He blows out a long breath. ‘Yeah. I’ve lost count of how many journalists have come through here in the last few hours.’ He grabs a can from the mini fridge, takes a seat opposite me and pops it open.

‘So,’ he says, ‘how’s Elle?’

‘She’s fine.’

He swigs from the can, swallows and lets out a burp. ‘Got a birthday coming up soon, hasn’t she?’

‘Her seventeenth.’

‘Almost legal drinking age,’ he says with a grin.

This is awkward. I give a noncommittal nod and look at my phone.

‘Has she asked for anything specific for her birthday?’

‘Oh, yeah, driving lessons.’

He chokes on his drink. ‘Wow, are you going to get them for her? I keep hoping Dad will let me start driving the van more. He let me do the newspaper drop for the paperboy last week.’

‘How was that?’

‘Bit scary on some of them bends, and when I got onto the Linkway, I was bricking it.’ He laughs then catches the expression on my face.

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s OK, it’s just a road.’

‘Yeah, but, y’know . . .’ He looks at my scar, quickly looks away.

I smile. ‘It’s fine, really.’

The Linkway.

I try not to think about it too much, which is hard. I have to drive on it most days and it sets me on edge each and every time. It doesn’t get better with each journey, contrary to what the doctor said to me months ago.

‘So, Elle’s getting lessons,’ Dale says.

I shrug. ‘I can’t see it right now. Iain wants to get her them, even though he’s moaning the next minute about how we have to be careful with money.’

‘Has she asked for anything else, less expensive?’

I see his face flush when I look at him.

‘I thought it’d be nice to get her something.’

‘She did say she wanted some jewellery.’

He looks hopeful.

‘Pandora stuff.’

His face drops a fraction.

‘Expensive tastes, I know,’ I say. ‘Last year we got her a four-leaf-clover enamelled necklace. Cost a small fortune.’ I hope this will kill the conversation about Elle. I’m not going to encourage anything here. Dale’s nice, but . . . well, then there’s Harry. Don’t mix business . . . Savannah’s been proof of that.

I distract myself with my phone again.

‘I’m, er, sorry,’ he says. I look up, brow creased. ‘About earlier, with Dad? It’s just a poster, though.’

I bite my tongue.

‘Doesn’t Iain advertise online? He’d reach more people.’

‘Jason helps out in that department but the poster does help.’

Dale visibly bristles at the mention of Jason. He considers Jason to be a rival – not that he has any kind of chance where my daughter’s affections are concerned, but that doesn’t stop him believing there is some connection between them.

There’s no chance of Jason dating Elle either. He’s twenty-six and Iain’s second. Jason knows better than to bark up that tree. Elle feels differently, though, obviously. Jason’s quite attractive and Dale’s . . . not Elle’s type at all.

‘Is Elle having a party this year?’

Watching Dale trying to steer the conversation back to Elle is laughable but I humour him anyway. We chat for another few minutes before we hear Harry clanking around at the front of the store.

‘Better get back,’ Dale says, almost jumping up.

I glance at my watch. I have another few minutes left of my break. I unlock my phone and browse Facebook.

I have one new message showing.

A sinking feeling hits me in my gut then because I know it’s from her before I’ve even clicked on the tab.

I tap at the screen anyway.

And I’m right.

I open the message and give it a quick glance. When I skim-read the first few lines and see numerous insults, I hit the delete button and try to put her words to the back of my mind.

I’ve lost count of how many messages she’s sent since all this began, when she tracked me down, found out where I lived.

I haven’t told Iain yet. Maybe I should, but he’s already treating me like a kid about certain things and always reminding me of things I haven’t done. Sometimes it’s like he’s always waiting for me to screw up.

That’s another reason I still drive on the Linkway. It’s my way of proving to Iain and Elle – Savannah too – that I am fine.

I look down at the screen of my phone. I instantly regret deleting the messages and make a mental note to keep anything further from her.

A nasty feeling rises inside me and I know in my gut this is just the tip of the iceberg.