The Fall - By Claire McGowan

Hegarty

The woman with the badly bleached hair ground her fag out under her trainer, and Hegarty sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Horton. Let me ask again. When did you last see your neighbour?’ The address he had for Keisha Collins, the grumpy girl at the court, was locked up, empty. He wasn’t sure what he was doing there anyway. Tidying up loose ends? Following a hunch?

Her neighbour wasn’t giving him an inch. ‘Why d’you want to know? She’s all right, that girl. Had a rough deal.’

‘Can you think of anywhere Keisha might have gone?’

Jacinta Horton shrugged. ‘He chucked her out, is all I know. Battered her a bit, I shouldn’t wonder. Then he went himself and next thing they’re in changing the locks.’

‘And her boyfriend’s name is Chris Dean?’ She’d already identified Dean from the blurry photos printed off Rachel Johnson’s phone. At least he had a name now, an identity for the mystery white man.

‘That’s the one. He’s a bad lot. That’s why the kiddy’s in care, you know.’

Hegarty was making notes fast. Luckily the woman was happy to spill about Chris Dean, natural distrust of the police giving way to disgust at the man. ‘The child’s name is Ruby Dean, yes?’ he asked.

‘That’s right. Lovely little thing, big dark eyes. In care with Keisha’s mam, and she lives down Gospel Oak way, s’far as I know.’

‘You don’t happen to know her name?’

Jacinta screwed up her eyes. ‘Met her one time when she came round. Loves kiddies, she does. Mercy, that was it. Mercy Collins, I s’pose she’d be.’

Hegarty shut his notebook. How easy would it be to find a Mercy Collins living in Gospel Oak? He wasn’t even supposed to be looking. The case was solved – wasn’t it? He rubbed his face wearily. ‘Thanks. You’ve been very helpful, Mrs Horton.’

She bent to adjust the hood on her child’s buggy. ‘Maybe you’ll actually come next time we ring up about them gangs. Always in the park, they are, on their bikes. Can’t take the kiddies near it.’

‘We’ll do our best.’ It was all you could ever say, and increasingly, his best was nothing at all.


Keisha

Keisha closed the door on her mother’s house and put down the frayed embroidered bag. Into it she had shoved Mercy’s glasses, her Bible and, worst of all, the cross they’d taken off her neck when she went down the corridor for surgery. Went down and never came back.

The house was quiet, the panes gently rattling with the constant sound of buses on the high street. Keisha walked into the living room, her trainers making no sound on the grubby old carpet. The fridge started up, making her jump. ‘F*ck,’ she said, to the still air.

It was so f*cking stuffy in this house! Mercy hadn’t opened the windows for about twenty years. She thought air was generally bad for you, and maybe in the case of Gospel Oak she was right. But she wasn’t here now.

Keisha humped the bag into the kitchen and put it on Mercy’s little chipped table. She took out her mum’s glasses on the string and put them on absently. Everything blurred away behind the thick lenses. In a way it sort of made her feel better, not being able to see the kitchen clearly, as if she saw it in her head remembered from when she was little. Mercy huffing slowly round the tiny space, thick with frying oil. But no, she wasn’t seven, she was twenty-f*cking-five and Mercy wasn’t here.

F*ck. F*ck. How had this happened? This morning her mum had been grumbling and groaning and spilling tea down her horrible brown wool cardie. Now she was – where? Not in the hospital, not really. Where had she gone? Pastor Samuel from the church would say he knew. Mercy herself thought she knew. Maybe that was why she wasn’t afraid of the first heart attack, because she felt for sure her God was waiting for her in a blaze of light up some staircase, a bit like in Stars in Their Eyes when they went behind the screen with all the smoke. But Keisha, she didn’t know a f*cking thing.

‘Mum,’ she said out loud to the empty kitchen. That felt mental. Inside her head she continued, What the f— what should I do now? The council said they were taking the house back next week, for a new tenant. They said I had to clean it all out before then. They said Ruby was with a foster family. They said I could talk about getting her back when I had a stable home. I don’t have any home at all now. And f*cking Chris – sorry, Mum, language – he’s out there, somewhere . . . And I don’t know what to do. Mum. What should I do?

But there was no way Mercy could help on this one, could she? Because they said she’d died. She was dead. The second heart attack was always likely, they said. Massive cholesterol, they said. There was nothing they could do.

Keisha took off the glasses, but even without them, the world was never going to look right again.


Charlotte

Something had woken her. The flat was quiet, only the sound of the fridge humming and the clock ticking. Dan’s side of the bed was cold.

That noise. It had woken her. Voices outside. She sat up in bed, heart racing. Clutching Dan’s jumper round her, she went to the window. At first she couldn’t see anything in the orange glow of the streetlight. Then one of the shadows moved – people, dressed in black. Kids. She flinched back from the window as the first stone hit the house.

Oh God, oh no.

They were laughing. They knew she was there, cowering like a frightened mouse. Another stone, rattling off the window this time. Oh God, don’t let them break it.

Then relief – Mike from downstairs was shouting out through the letter box. ‘I’m calling the police if you don’t leave right this minute.’

He didn’t open the door, Mike wasn’t that brave. Gradually the kids started peeling away, doing wheelies on their bikes. One shouted out something about racist f*ckers. Charlotte saw Mike open the front door, the streetlight glinting off his scalp. She saw him look around and straight up at her window.

Quivering with fear and loneliness, she scrabbled for her phone and dialled her friend Holly’s number. It was late, and Monday tomorrow, but it was an emergency. The number rang and rang, then went to voicemail – her friend’s voice chirping, Hi, this is Holly, can’t get to the phone . . .

Charlotte imagined her friend waking up, looking at the phone, seeing who was calling, and ignoring it. She gripped the phone and scrolled through the names. Who else was there? John, Chloe, Tom . . . No. There were dozens of reasons why she couldn’t call any of them. There really was no one.

Where had her friends been all weekend, when her phone hadn’t rung once? Round at Holly’s, or Gemma’s, all talking about how awful Charlotte was and how they never wanted to see her again now she was engaged to a racist killer? As the wedding got close she had noticed pictures appearing on Facebook of nights out she hadn’t known about – but she’d told herself they knew she was busy with the wedding plans and she did like to spend time with Dan at weekends. He worked eighty-hour weeks, for God’s sake. She barely saw him.

But now she was alone and the silence of the flat was all about her, creeping under her skin and nails, filling her up. She went back to bed and another memory surfaced up from the depths. Dan, weeks ago, waking her up, shouting in his sleep. Frightened, she’d switched on the light and he was clammy, his fists clenched and eyes open and staring.

‘Dan! Sweetie, what’s wrong?’ She’d shaken him awake. When his eyes focused on her she felt a thrill of panic, because for a moment, it was as if he didn’t even know who she was.

‘Bad dream,’ he’d said, and then because it was five a.m., he got up to do some work.


Keisha

Within two days Mercy was buried and gone. The Holy Hopers took it all in hand; all Keisha had to do was get dressed and turn up, sit in a room full of people who all believed that Mercy was in heaven now as surely as they believed they’d switch on the telly in the morning and GMTV’d be on.

In the meantime Keisha tried to breathe deep and hard, stand up at the right places, keep going. Pastor Samuel had arranged everything, and Keisha just stood in a daze while a whole line of black ladies came up and hugged her. Anthony Johnson’s mother was there, trailing the sulky bitch of a sister, who flicked her eyes away from Keisha as if she didn’t want to remember what happened in the toilets with the blonde girl on the floor, holding her own tooth up in her hand all covered in blood.

Mrs Johnson hugged Keisha again. ‘Ah, darlin’, your poor mother. She’s up there now, I tell her to keep an eye on my boy.’ She smelled just like Mercy, of skin cream and cooking, and Keisha pulled away. Just focus on each person in front of you, each step you had to take, each next thing to do. Maybe sometime in days or weeks or months she might be able to actually think about what had happened. But not now.

At the graveyard she spotted Sandra the social worker, blinking behind her glasses, in this massive hairy cardigan, even though it was hot.

‘Hello, Keisha.’ Sandra blew her nose on a tissue – hay fever, Keisha thought. If you were a social worker you probably couldn’t cry every time someone you worked with died, or you’d be keeping Kleenex in business for a long time.

‘Does Ruby know?’ She nodded her head towards Mercy’s new grave, where the church mourners were doing some chanty hand-clapping thing. Keisha had hung back; she couldn’t face it.

‘It’s been explained to her in appropriate terms.’ Sandra paused. ‘You should really come and see her, you know. It’s important to keep up contact, if you want to regain custody in future.’

‘What, sit in some McDonald’s with the bloody social worker at the next table? Oh, how’s your Happy Meal, Rubes? How’s that fair? She’s my bloody kid.’ Anyway, how did she know he wasn’t still following her, looking for her? She’d lead him right to Ruby.

‘I always get the feeling you think you’re being punished. But it’s just what’s best for Ruby, until you’re settled.’

‘But I’m not allowed her, am I? You said.’ She scuffed her shoes in the gravel.

Sandra put on her social worker voice – had she any other one? ‘I know you’ve tried very hard to turn your life around, but until we can be sure Ruby will have a safe stable home – well, you understand, I’m sure.’ She spoke so gently it made Keisha want to whack her.

‘I’m trying. I dunno what you want me to do.’ For a moment she thought to tell Sandra that she’d left Chris, but why should she? Things were even worse now he was after her, and she’d nowhere to live once her mum’s tenancy ran out. She was sure Sandra could tell she’d a black eye under all the make-up she’d slapped on.

‘You know what to do,’ Sandra said in her annoying way. ‘A safe and stable place for Ruby. In the meantime, you must keep up contact – or there’s a very serious risk you could lose custody permanently. You know what that means, Keisha? It means someone can adopt Ruby. For good.’

Keisha stared hard at the ground. As if it was so easy, to make a safe and stable home. No. She wasn’t going to ask for Ruby back until she could take her home, to somewhere good. Easier for now to think of the kid somewhere far away, some place nice, happy, safe. ‘Is she OK, like?’ Her voice sounded as if it was tangled up. She wasn’t going to cry. Not here.

‘She’s in a nice home,’ Sandra said kindly. ‘A lovely couple, their own family grown up.’

‘Are they black?’

Sandra looked shocked, because you were supposed to pretend race didn’t matter, weren’t you. ‘Well, I don’t—’

‘Please.’

Sandra nodded tightly. ‘We try to place children in their own ethnic groups, yes.’

So that was it, official – Ruby was black. But what did that make Keisha? No one seemed to know, and she sure as hell hadn’t a baldy.

Sandra threw her fat arms around Keisha, who flinched. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss, Keisha! She was a lovely lady, your mum. Please remember I’m always here for you. Any way I can help.’

Great, that was all she needed – Sandra on tap.

Mrs Suntharalingam came up on the arm of one of her doctor sons, neat and weedy in a black suit and tie. ‘How I will miss her. Who will move in now, some refugees with ten children? Ah, I will miss her.’

‘Me too.’ They stared at each other, old enemies mourning the same loss. But Mrs S had children, nieces, grandkids, a whole Tamil family. Who did Keisha have? Chris was gone, Ruby was gone. The old lady grasped her hand in one dry claw and moved on.


Charlotte

Charlotte woke up on Monday morning with a shock, the alarm shrilling. The flat was so quiet without Dan on the phone already, shaving in the bathroom. In the beginning he used to sing in the shower, pop songs in an off-key baritone that made her laugh. But now that she thought about it, she hadn’t heard him singing for ages, not for months, that she could remember. Funny how you didn’t notice these things until something made you think.

Today she was supposed to go back to work, and she was moving so slowly she’d be late. She stood with her hand under the shower for five minutes until she realised she’d have to put the immersion on to heat it up. Dan always put it on, because he was always up first. He always left her tea bag in the cup, and her bread in the toaster. She just had to breathe, breathe, keep going, put one foot in front of the other. Remember to go the good way to work, not the bad way. Avoid that street. Then it would all be fine.

As she stood waiting for the kettle to boil (a good two minutes before realising she’d unplugged it), she heard the downstairs front door slam and she jumped, knocking the teaspoon off the counter and onto her bare foot. ‘Shit! Ow!’

She had to calm down, it was only the postman, of course. Edging open her door, Charlotte hobbled downstairs to intercept it before the other occupants could see. It could be anything. More hate mail? Brochures from the travel company they were supposed to be on their honeymoon with? She was managing to crush out the thought that she was supposed to be in the Caribbean right that second, not standing in her kitchen with her feet on cold tiles.

Sneaking back upstairs, she saw there wasn’t much – her phone bill, which she’d have to pay somehow, a flyer for a pizza takeaway place, and under that, a battered brown envelope with her name on the front in Dan’s clear blocky writing. It was postmarked HMP Pentonville Prison, just in case anyone didn’t know everything that had happened to her.

She was really going to be late for work, but she knew she had to sit down right there, while the kettle cooled, and read what it was Dan couldn’t say to her in person.

Charlotte, it started.

I can’t think what else I can call you now. I wish I’d never had to write this letter, but I do. There’s no way around it.

He had written the rest in bullet points.

• The mortgage is due on the 25th of the month. I can’t access my account, so you will need to go in and set up the direct debit from yours instead. The password to my account is your name. The PIN is in another letter I will send you today, you’ll know to destroy it.

That was typical of Dan, he had to be correct saying PIN and not PIN number like everyone else.

• As you know, there are bills outstanding. I don’t know what you’ll do for money. I’ll write to my parents and ask them to help you, but I used one of my phone calls to ring them and they wouldn’t speak to me.

Of course, Dan’s parents were Telegraph readers, anti-immigration, ‘life means life’ fans. And now their only child was in prison for murder. There was a chance it was even harder for them than it was for her. At least she’d been there, she knew it wasn’t true. Dan’s father, ex-Justice Stockbridge, didn’t entirely believe in miscarriages of justice.

The letter was typically concise, setting out what bills needed to be paid when and how to access their savings account. Clear out the money, he said. You’ll need it.

At the end of the bullet points he’d written, I must make sure you understand one thing. Please don’t put your life on hold ‘waiting for me’, or some other romantic idea. Don’t even wait for the trial. There is no point at all.

You should keep working, you’ll need the money coming in. That flat is large just for you. Think about selling or getting a flatmate.

A flatmate! Charlotte threw the letter down. How dare he! How bloody, bloody dare he send her this letter, as if she was his secretary or something, for God’s sake, and tell her to think about leaving her home? Or living with some stranger and measuring out the milk, when she was supposed to be married by now?

She looked back to the letter, a PS: Remember to hide those things like I said.

‘Piss off, Dan!’ she said to the empty kitchen, then felt the burn of the day’s first tears behind her eyes. By the time she’d cried and cleaned herself up, she was going to be so late for work they’d think she wasn’t coming.


Keisha

Keisha sat back on her heels and groaned. How in the name of f*ck had her mum got so much crap? The old box room above the stairs was totally wedged out with junk, the whole place stinking of damp. Her hair was so full of dust it looked like she’d gone grey overnight, and Mercy had never got round to having a proper shower put in. Her mum didn’t understand that you had to actually wash white hair regularly. As a teenager Keisha had been greasy enough to fry chips on until she worked that out.

She was totally sick of tidying, but she couldn’t let all Mercy’s things go to a skip, even if it was all shit, china plates with Princess Diana on them, every issue of the church newsletter since about 1800, a million Tesco bags that fell out every time you opened a cupboard. Mercy had been poor when she was little – eleven kids living in what wasn’t much better than a shack – so she saved. She saved everything.

Keisha had nearly finished now, piled all the tat up into bags for the bin, bags for the charity shop down the road, which was going to get a real bonanza of crap. Since she actually had nowhere to go once the house was given up, there was a small black rucksack she was filling with things she just couldn’t leave. Like her mum’s awful glasses. Who else was going to remember how Mercy had rootled around for them any time she had to read a label in a shop? Then she would take them off to show how shocked she was by the price.

The hardest room to empty was Mercy’s bedroom. It was stuffed full of her mum, her smell of talc, her fluffy cardigans and old wrecked shoes that she shuffled down the street in. Keisha was on her knees in front of the wardrobe, and had to drop onto her stomach to get the last shoes out, when she noticed it. There was something pushed under the wardrobe, stuffed against the lime carpet, some sort of folder like you might get at school. She pulled it out, looking for a distraction.

In the folder were essays. Handwritten, of course, her mum’d never been near a computer in her life, and they were about law, it looked like. Things like jurisprudence and legal process. Who’d have thought her fat old mum knew these kinds of things? Smiling a bit to herself at Mercy’s hidden depths, Keisha leafed through the folder and found a course booklet: Introduction to Legal Practice. She remembered Mercy saying a few times that she could have been a paralegal: ‘I could have a good job now, if not for you, cheeky Miss Keisha.’

The start date of the course was 20th September, 1984, the year before Keisha was born. Mercy was always going on and on about education. ‘You lost your chance at the good school, miss, now what will you do?’ And when Keisha would say cheekily, ‘Mum, you wipe people’s arses, what do you know?’ Mercy would whack her round the head with that big hand and the rings, and say, ‘I came to this country to study, you know that? But then you come along and I have to stop.’ So it was all Keisha’s fault. Like everything.

She was just folding it away again, thinking this would maybe be squeezed into the ‘keep’ bag, when something caught her eye.

Course Tutor, it said, and beside it the name was typed in bold capitals: IAN STONE. She’d seen that name before somewhere, she was sure of it. She’d seen it typed like this, a long time ago. Where?

Suddenly she knew, and she was running downstairs, slipping in her socks on the worn carpet. ‘Stop runnin’!’ she could almost hear Mercy shout after her.

In the hallway, under ten huge bin bags, there was the ‘keep it’ bag, an old Adidas rucksack with fraying straps. Now she stuck her hand into that warm plastic interior and rummaged for a big brown envelope, the sides shored up with tape. It was marked in Mercy’s writing: important tings. The ‘h’ had been written in below; it was just a mistake, but it made her hear in her head her mum’s voice.

She shook it out – gas bills, savings book, NHS card. And a folded-over bit of green paper that Keisha remembered from the time she had to apply for her provisional driving licence (so she could get into pubs). Her mum had insisted on filling in the form, so Keisha couldn’t see her own birth certificate, but she’d prised open the envelope and snuck a quick look, so quick she almost didn’t take it in, as if she didn’t want to see what it said.

There was her mum’s name, and in the grid beside it, it said, Occupation: student. Her mum had called herself a student? Her mum, who wiped people’s arses all day? But she didn’t have time to be surprised, because then she saw the name. Under Father, it said: Ian Stone. Occupation: Lecturer.


Hegarty

Hegarty glanced down at the address in his notebook again. Yes, this was the right place. He hadn’t expected a thug like Jonny McGivern to be living in this neat West Hampstead terrace. But when he’d looked up Chris Dean’s associates on the system, this was the address thrown up.

It took a long time for the door to be answered, and eventually a tall, heavy guy in just his pants came to the door, scratching his head.

‘Sorry to wake you, sir,’ said Hegarty pointedly. It was nearly two in the afternoon.

The man looked confused, glancing past Hegarty to the quiet street outside. Then he stiffened. ‘You the police?’

‘Top marks. How about a quick chat – Jonny, is it?’

Once Jonny had reluctantly let him into the living room, Hegarty stood by the door. Every chair was covered in clothes, pillows, an Arsenal duvet bunched up on the sofa. The place stank of weed and booze, and through the door to the kitchen he’d glimpsed plates piled up in the sink. Which reminded him – when had he last done the dishes at his own place? These side-investigations made it hard to get time at home.

Hegarty nodded to the sofa. ‘Someone been staying here?’

‘Er – nah. Er, I mean, yeah, me. This is my mum’s place.’

‘And where’s she?’

‘Eh, she’s away. Gone to Spain, like.’

Hegarty decided to ignore the drugs paraphernalia Jonny had stupidly left littered round the room. That wasn’t why he was there. ‘You seen your mate Chris Dean recently?’

‘Who?’

He laughed at this poor attempt at lying. ‘Come off it, you and him go way back, don’t you? When was it, 1999 that you two got nicked for shoplifting? Literally thick as thieves, eh?’

Jonny looked confused, wrapping the duvet defensively round his bare chest. ‘Ain’t seen him.’

‘I see. Just yourself here, then, if your mam’s away?’

‘Er – yeah.’

‘But you’re still kipping on the sofa.’

Again the look of confusion and deep pain, as if trying to lie actually hurt the guy’s brain. ‘Yeah.’

‘Tell me this, Jonny, you know anything about this Kingston Town club murder?’

‘Thought you got the fella for that.’

Hegarty wandered round the room, prodding aside takeaway cartons with his shoe. ‘Wrapped up in gangs, wasn’t he, Anthony Johnson? Thought you might know a thing or two about that.’ He turned and fixed Jonny with a stare. ‘Or are you gonna tell me you don’t know nothing about that either? Didn’t join the Parky Boys before you cut your teeth?’

Jonny just sat there, and Hegarty sighed. ‘Well, if your mate comes back, you tell him DC Matthew Hegarty wants a word. Think you can remember that? It’s very important.’ On his way out the door he called back, ‘Oh, and you better clean your act up, Jonny. You might be getting a visit from the Drugs Squad in a few days, and your mam won’t like it if she comes back and her door’s kicked in.’


Charlotte

Charlotte stood in front of her office building, taking deep breaths. She’d crumpled Dan’s letter into the bin in anger, but she knew she’d pull it out again. The words seemed to have leached into the skin of her hands, as if written in acid.

It was time to go in, she was very late. Going the good way from the tube always took longer, but she definitely couldn’t cope with the other way now. She’d dressed up today, in heeled shoe-boots and a plain shift, but thanks to Dan’s letter she’d left it far too late to do her hair, which hung round her shoulders in a damp frizz.

She blipped her key card over the door and it slid open as if nothing had changed. Getting into the lift with her head down, and reaching up to press the number four, in that movement she remembered something Dan had said weeks before, when declining a second cup of coffee on his way out: ‘Sometimes I have to sit in Costa for twenty minutes before I can push that lift button.’

And she hadn’t really listened – had she ever? And now it was her turn to feel terrible, heart-clenching fear, as the lift rose and the doors opened silently onto the hubbub of Floor Four, the sleek red curves of the reception desk.

‘Charlotte!’ Kelly, the Essex-girl receptionist, stopped filing her nails to stare. ‘You’re here! Er, just a sec.’ Calling Simon, no doubt.

Charlotte pasted on a wavering smile and picked her way across the open-plan office, careful to meet no one’s eyes. Except that someone was in her desk, a girl in leggings and a wide tutu skirt. Charlotte couldn’t believe how young she looked.

Trying to keep down the up-chuck of anger that was suddenly in her throat, Charlotte said, ‘Oh, sorry, that’s my seat?’ As if she was on a train, politely moving on the chancer who’d sat down in her reserved place.

The girl looked her up and down. ‘Are you Charlotte?’ As if she was famous – but not in a good way.

‘Yeah, hi.’ Charlotte tried to put on her work face, smiling over the snarl.

‘I’m, like, covering for you?’

‘Charlie!’ That plummy voice, pimped with East London vowels, made her wince.

‘Hiya, Simon. I’m a bit late, er – tube problems.’ An accepted London excuse that could mean anything from I slept through my alarm to I woke up last night in Ealing.

‘Well, here was me thinking we wouldn’t see you.’ He looked over her frumpy outfit and ravaged face. ‘You OK, darling? That’s a nasty bruise.’

His darling was the camp twist of lime in the Soho man’s G&T, and a sore red herring to any girl dumb enough to think he might actually be gay. Far from it, as she knew only too well.

‘Oh, I’m all right, I suppose.’ The lie of the century, but she suspected he didn’t really want to hear about it.

‘Good, good. The lovely Fliss here has stepped into the breach with your Snax account –’ he flashed a toothy grin at the younger girl – ‘so if you’d plonk yourself down somewhere else for today. You can sit in on this meeting later though?’

‘Oh, sure.’ Meeting? What meeting? She was supposed to be in Jamaica right now, not in the traffic-clogged hell of Central London. She needed to get up to speed, but once set up on the temp’s desk, all she could think about was Googling appeals, miscarriages of justice, solicitors – anything that might help Dan. It was a mammoth struggle to remember all the perky little ideas she’d had for the Snax campaign a week ago – forever ago. She’d just have to throw round some buzz words like ‘social networking’, ‘digital viral marketing’, ‘user-generated content’ and the like.

All morning people passed by her desk, rushing on in their towering heels. She saw Tory dart behind the water-cooler to avoid her, and her best work friend Chloe rushing to a ‘tampon brainstorm session’. Chloe was thirty-two and single, so usually Charlotte felt pleasantly lucky round her, but today Chloe had on some rocking new harem pants and Charlotte managed to feel both stuffy in her dress, and scruffy with her damp hair round her shoulders.

Nobody offered her coffee all morning; they just left her there. She sat hunched over the screen, her spoiled nails clacking off the keys and reminding her they were supposed to be sporting a perfect wedding manicure right about now. Beside the Snax pitch she was pretending to work on was a website for people who’d been wrongly convicted of crimes. Innocent, the banner flashed red and black. Innocent, innocent, innocent. A word so powerful it could slay you right through the heart. She did her best to stay away from sites mentioning Dan but the story was everywhere. Racist murder. Racist.

‘Charlie?’

She jumped a mile, what was wrong with her? She was used to Simon by now, surely. ‘Oh, sorry. Is it time?’

‘Cinco minutos, darling. Better print out the pitches.’

‘I’ll just go – freshen.’ She bolted to the ladies’ and into one of the cubicles, suddenly breathless at the smells of toner and people’s tuna lunches. Charlotte sat in the cubicle, trying to breathe in and out. It would be OK. It would be OK. She’d been all over those Snax before. Surely it would come back. Crispy, crunchy snacks, just seventy calories a bag . . .

Outside she heard the door open, and Chloe’s voice said, ‘Oh my GOD, I so totally did not know what to say to her.’

‘I know, yah.’ Tory. ‘I thought she’d be away for ages – she was going on and on about her honeymoon.’

‘I’m not being funny, but how can she even come in after that?’ She could tell from the slurring of her voice that Chloe was putting on her lipgloss, like she always did before and after lunch. ‘I mean, he like, killed someone.’

‘And Fliss is so totally peed off that Simon’s putting her in the Snax pitch meeting. I bet she is so totally not ready.’

‘Well.’ The tap ran. ‘Simon’s always had a soft spot for Charlotte, if you get my meaning?’

Tory gave a posh-girl laugh. ‘Totally!’

‘Anyway, Prêt?’

‘Yah, but I’m not eating carbs today, like, at all.’

‘I know, I need to lose four pounds . . .’

They went out, banging the door. Going to Prêt à Manger at lunchtime was what Charlotte did with Chloe. Chloe would be small-minded about everyone she knew and Charlotte would say how creepy Simon had been that day (it was easier somehow if she made jokes, that way no one would notice she really meant it) and they’d goad each other into getting a chocolate pot or a flapjack. Though in recent weeks Chloe had seemed a little miffed at the success of Charlotte’s wedding diet.

‘Maybe I need a big white dress to fit into, too,’ she’d said, sucking the sugar off her coffee stirrer instead. ‘Maybe that’s the motivation I’m after. Skinny bitch!’

There were voices in the corridor, loud noises of welcome, so the Snax people must have arrived. Charlotte rearranged her dress and ran water over her hands and face. She would have to go back out there.