Beautiful Losers: A Novel of Suspense (3 page)

four

No wonder the girl
had gone off the rails.

I closed the door on the last of my clients. For weeks I'd been working with a girl called Lauren:
see-through
skin, sunken body, fear personified. After careful probing, one event stood out as a major contributory factor to the girl's descent into illness: her mother had abandoned her. And I knew only too well her sense of betrayal.

I updated notes on my laptop, picked up my bag, and walked across the hallway to Jim Copplestone's office. The door was closed, an envelope taped to it with my name scrawled across. I peeled it off, shoving it into my briefcase, and stepped outside. It had gone half past four and most of the girls were in the dining room having tea before they got on with homework before dinner.

The air throbbed with compressed heat, the flickering sun above my head sucking the moisture from anything that moved. Eager to sit in the
climate-controlled
interior of my car, my feet crunched across the gravelled drive with a quick step, my eyes squinting at the shining streak of metallic silver.

Then my gaze zoomed in on the windscreen of the Celica.

Halted in my tracks, I narrowed and refocused my vision, unsure what to think or do. Nervously, I glanced over my shoulder, briefly comforted by the Lodge's solid Regency architecture. Should I go and grab hold of Jim? Indecision engulfed me. Sweat prickled my palms. My chest tightened as if there was not enough room inside for my racing heart. Although I tried to hang on to my intellect, calm deserted me. I instinctively knew that what I was looking at was part of a warped pattern of behaviour. And if I did go back for Jim, I would have to tell him about the other things. It would blow it into the open. It would be like admitting defeat. It would announce I had a serious problem.

I advanced slowly, eyes scanning the surrounding streets, watching for sharp and sudden movement, anything or anyone that didn't fit, but all I saw were office workers and passersby. Listening for an unexpected noise, the scuffle of footsteps, the only sound was the steady drone of traffic, a chorus of car horns and breaking glass, and the screech of seagulls.

Reaching into my bag, I scrambled about and gathered together a wad of tissue. My jaw set, I leant across the windscreen, recoiling at the glassy eyes, the blood seeping between its open jaws, the tail curled and entangled in the windscreen wiper like a serpent waiting to strike. As I placed my hand over the dead rat, it felt alarmingly warm, soft and fresh to touch.

“Shit,” I cursed, repelled as I attempted to get enough purchase to pick it up. Finally, I gripped hold and flung it into a nearby hedge.

“Didn't know you were a litter lout.”

I wheeled round. “Christ, Jim, you shouldn't creep up on people. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry, I came to check you got my message. What on earth were you doing?”

Cold slithered up my spine in spite of the soaring heat.

“Kim, are you all right? You've gone quite pale.”

“It's nothing.”

Jim crooked his head. “Problem?”

“Nah.” I cracked a smile. “Some idiot mucking about.”

He looked at me quizzically. I couldn't fathom out either what he was thinking or what I should say. “I'll see you next week,” I finally blurted out, escaping into my car, the clean and welcome smell of leather enveloping me.

Starting the engine, I yanked the seat belt across and looked dead ahead. A tap on the window made my insides twist. I turned, looked up to see Jim madly gesticulating. I pressed a switch in the central console; the glass slid down. He stooped so that his face was level with mine,
his breath hot on my skin. “Give my love to Devon and have a good weekend.”

I did my absolute best not to react. He'd stopped me simply to say that? “Yeah.” I smiled. “You, too.”

As I drove out onto the main road I was forced to face one inescapable fact. Someone knew which car I drove.

Someone had targeted me.

five

Packed with screaming kids
newly escaped for the holidays, cars littered the motorway. For the first hour my eyes flickered to the rearview mirror. As a precaution, I frequently changed lanes and tried to apply reason to something I felt entirely unreasonable about. All I'd had were a couple of gifts and a few silent phone calls, I doggedly reminded myself as I pulled out into the outside lane. The rat was simply one of those things that happened in urban environments. Could have been one of the girls at the Lodge. Could have been guys out for a night of booze and cheap jokes. Could have been
him
. I clamped down on my jaw, outraged.

Around Bristol, there was the usual inevitable stretch of roadworks. Once past the bottleneck of traffic, the tension began to ease and I slipped an old Red Hot Chili Peppers album into the CD player, smacked my foot on the gas, and felt the gravitational pull that only a fast car can produce. My thoughts eventually turned to Chris, his mane of dark hair, his piercing blue eyes, the way he could floor me with a smile. Originally my lodger, ours was only supposed to be a temporary arrangement. It was no use getting suckered in by his electric blue eyes, his mysterious manner, and the lure of a man of deep complexities.

But I had.

He knew more about me than any other human being. With him, I felt warm, relaxed, and loved. He knew about my late father, about my eldest brother, Luke, who lived in the States. About Guy, my other brother killed in a freak motorbike accident years before. Chris understood that the job in Cheltenham was my way of escaping beaches enshrined in too much history, that my new life upcountry was an escape from my past and my ghosts. In essence, he got me.

And I got him.

I laughed silently inside. Intending to rent my family cottage to Chris and relocate to Cheltenham, to break with Devon and move on, I'd wound up with a foot in two camps. That was almost four years ago.

Traffic clogged the narrow lanes. The sun lay low in a
blood-shot
sky. I was on the home stretch, intimately familiar territory and, more than ever, I felt relief that I still had a hideaway. The person dogging my footsteps might be able to exert influence in Cheltenham, but not here.

Cormorants Reach overlooked the creek at Goodshelter. My father's last home, it was where we Slades gathered for family get-togethers and, more recently, for funerals. I knew every stone, lintel, cob wall, exposed beam, and dark recess. I knew its secrets. Without warning, the fabric of the building rattled with ancient arguments, slamming doors, bunched fists, and my tears. Startled by the memories, I banished them to the outer reaches of my consciousness.

At the sound of my arrival, the front door was already open, Chris's tall frame captured in a swathe of golden evening sun. Displaying a deep umber tan, he was wearing a brilliant white
open-necked
shirt tucked into faded denims. His feet were bare. The sight of him made my stomach jitter. I felt hopelessly happy, and the anger and fear that had assailed me disappeared. Seconds later I was enveloped, his lips on mine, his arms holding me with what felt like relief and the thought that he couldn't believe his good fortune in finding me.

“Better unpack the car,” I said, drawing away a little.

“Leave it.” He hooked me with his eyes and instantly I understood what he wanted, what he needed, what we both craved.

He took my hand and led me up the narrow flight of stairs to the main bedroom. There, he slowly undid the buttons of my shirt, taking his time as though he'd meticulously planned the moment in detail, slipping it off and throwing it across the end of the bed. I hauled his
T-shirt
up, pulling it off over his shoulders and outstretched arms. Chris's body was sleek and toned, a thin scar on his side the only flaw. Deep in my groin, I flickered with wanton desire, as though we were about to make love for the first time. He kissed the top of my high breasts, my mouth, the base of my throat, tracing the ragged line of scarred skin from the outer edge of my left cheekbone to the hollow of my collarbone.

“You're beautiful,” he whispered, releasing the clasp on my bra. And I knew that he meant it, that in his eyes I really was.

I undid the buckle on his belt. He eased out of his jeans and kicked them off along with his boxers while I hastily undressed. Then he scooped me off my feet and carried me to our bed.

He kept his eyes open. He always did. I'd once wondered if it displayed a lack of trust, something with which I was familiar, or was connected to men's endless visual capacity for sexual pleasure. His warm hands slid slowly over me, reacquainting with my body, as if he
wanted to explore every inch. I felt dizzy and shameless. We tasted and touched each other, and I told him explicitly what I wanted and what I wanted to do to him. At some stage he let out a low dry laugh, and pulled me on top of him.

Soon I was burning with heat. His hands were on my breasts, his eyes locked onto mine, the expression indecipherable. In that fleeting moment of time, I realised that however long we stayed together I would never truly know him. I sensed that his feeling for me was based more on biological need, on sex and desire, than love. Perhaps this was the way it was meant to be. Perhaps. The thought that you can't be truly intimate with someone you don't really know entered and, as quickly, exited my fevered mind. Too soon I saw his expression change.

Yet still he watched.

Afterwards we lay in bed and ate Thai chicken and basmati rice with
torn-off
chunks of naan bread. Licking my fingers greedily, I asked what sort of a week he'd had.

“Fairly bloody.” He took a gulp from a can of chilled lager. “Usual story: a small
hard-core
of
fourteen-year
-olds making life difficult for the rest. In today's enlightened age, there isn't much I can do about it other than dishing out detentions. It's deeply unsatisfying and doesn't really get to the root of the problem.”

“Which is?”

“They don't give a fuck. School's an irrelevance.”

I whistled between my teeth. My own school days were detestable. I rarely spoke about them because, by comparison to Chris's childhood, I'd led a charmed life.

“Trouble is, I kind of get it,” he said.

“That was different,” I reminded him. “You were trapped in the care home system. No wonder you were an angry kid.”

“Angry and criminal.”

“Criminal?” I said, arching an eyebrow. In almost four years, Chris had never told me this before. In fact, he'd revealed little other than the odd highlight.

He flashed a grin. “Don't worry. I wasn't an
axe-murderer
or anything. A bit of stealing, that's all.”

“How much is
a bit
?”

“Food, booze, cigarettes.”

“You don't smoke,” I said, amazed.

“Everybody smokes at fourteen years of age.”

“I didn't.”

“That's because you were holed up in a convent.”

I let out a giggle. “It wasn't a convent, Chris.”

“Might as well have been, from what you've told me.”

A bleak vision of metal beds, green walls, and
linoleum-covered
floors, cold and clammy underfoot, swam before my eyes. I thought back to forced walks in pairs—
in crocodile
, as it was termed—
on
sheep-shit
laden hills,
twice-daily
assemblies, supervised reading on Sundays, the slow and deadly crushing of identity. Most searing of all, I remembered the feeling of abandonment by those I loved. I jettisoned the thought.

“Anything else I should know about?” I said with a grin.

“I had a penchant for spraying public property with graffiti.”

“Quite the hooligan. Were you ever caught?”

“Not once.” He sounded immensely proud.

“What brought you to your senses?”

“Mr. H.”

I remembered. According to Chris, Mr. Harries, his History teacher,
was the first person to really take an interest in him.

“God knows where I'd be now without him,” Chris said.

“Well, there you go,” I said, poking Chris playfully with a finger, making him laugh. “Stay brilliant and you'll win those little tearaways around to your way of thinking.”

Chris swept up the plates and dumped them down on the floor. “And how was your week?” he said.

I told him about the radio programme.

“You're turning into quite a star.”

I glanced at him. Had I detected a note of cynicism? “Maybe I could start a whole new breed of
psycho-celebrity
.”

Chris didn't appear to get the joke, didn't react.

“It's good publicity for the Lodge,” I continued, “and a great vehicle for highlighting eating disorders,” I added, thieving a line from Jim.

“I thought the press did a pretty good job. You can't read anything these days without stumbling across
My Bulimia Nightmare.
The media's full of it.”

“The media is also responsible for messages that reinforce the idea that young women can only be happy if they're thin as a blade,” I said, unable to dampen the furious passion from my voice, something that had occasionally got me into trouble. Too intense, give it a rest, I'd been told. “If women don't conform, or, worse, are actually overweight, they're perceived as either bad or sick.”

“It's okay, darling, you don't have to preach to the converted,” Chris said, running his fingers over my bare arm.

I chewed my lip. “Sorry, I didn't mean to be strident. I simply feel so strongly about it.”

“I'd never have guessed,” he said with a smile.

I flashed an awkward smile in return. What pained me most was that, out of all psychiatric illnesses, anorexia had one of the highest mortality rates. There were young women who were literally taking the slow and agonisingly painful route to death. With all the chat about obesity, somehow anorexia got lost.

“Anyway,” I said, eager to wrap it up, “I'm in a better position to talk about eating disorders than some features editor from a magazine.”

Chris leaned over and kissed me. “I agree.”

I beamed at him and stretched back on the pillows. He wasn't really carping about my brief moment of fame. He was concerned about the unwanted attention it might invite. I couldn't blame him.

Rolling over, I snuggled my arm underneath him so that my cheek lay against his chest. I could hear his heart beating. It made me feel safe. We didn't speak, simply rested in the moment. Then I remembered.

“Oh hell.”

“What?”

“I forgot to call Alexa.” I sat bolt upright.

“She got hold of you?”

“What, she called here?” I leapt out of bed.

Chris pulled a face. “She left a message.”

“When was this?” I said, grabbing my robe.

“About five minutes before you got home this evening.”

I let out a groan and galloped downstairs.