Killing Rachel (13 page)

At breakfast Rachel was pleased to see her and friendly. Instead of waiting for her to finish her food, though, she got up and headed off to class saying, ‘See you later.’ And Rose had smiled and watched her go. Later that day she saw her with Tania Miller out by the boating lake. The two of them were walking round together. She stared at Rachel who was talking and laughing. Each movement, each shake of the head, each gesticulation sent a dull pain through Rose and she turned away. She wondered whether they really were friends again or whether Rachel was playing some kind of game.

The sound of a text startled Rose. It broke her reverie. She registered the brightness of the day and the fact that she was there in Holt. It was not a year ago when she was desperately trying to be friends with Rachel again. She felt the tension fall away as she read the text message. It was from Amanda.
Meet you in the Cosy Cafe in 5 mins.

She made her way towards a cafe and delicatessen in the middle of the town. Amanda and Molly were already inside sitting down. Rose got a peppermint tea and sat with them. She blew the steam from the top of the glass and stirred it with a long spoon. Molly was elbowing Amanda and nodding over towards the deli counter where a young man in a white apron was serving customers.

‘It’s Tim Baker,’ Amanda said, explaining. ‘I wonder if he knows about Rachel?’

Rose looked over, interested.

‘’Course he does,’ Molly said.

‘He doesn’t look too upset.’

‘Juliet Baker’s brother?’ Rose said, vaguely remembering Rachel telling her about him.

Amanda nodded, her mouth full of cake.

‘Why should he be upset about Rachel?’

‘He went out with Rachel. He was her boyfriend,’ Molly said.

‘He wasn’t really her
boyfriend
as such,’ Amanda said.

‘He was.’

‘For a couple of weeks! Rachel saw him for a couple of weeks. That hardly translates as boyfriend/girlfriend.’

Rose was looking from Amanda to Molly and back again.

‘It was more than a couple of weeks. In any case it was full on. He used to come up to the school in his BMW at night and she’d slip out of the laundry back door. She used to text me and I’d go down and open it for her when she got back,’ Molly said.

‘Going out of the building at night is an automatic suspension,’ Amanda said.

‘Rachel was in love.’

‘No, she wasn’t. It only lasted a couple of weeks.’

Amanda caught Rose’s eye. She had a look of exasperation on her face. Molly was fiddling with the pink feather clip. Her hand came away holding one of the feathers. She placed the feather at the edge of the table.

‘When did this happen?’ Rose said.

‘September. As soon as we got back,’ Molly said, with a wary look at Amanda as if she expected her to interrupt. ‘She knew him anyway from when she was friends with Juliet.’

‘Was she upset when it finished?’ Rose said, looking back at Molly.

‘A lot. She
loved
him . . .’

‘You don’t fall in love with someone in two weeks,’ Amanda said softly, as if she was talking to a young child.

‘It was longer than two weeks,’ Molly said sulkily.

Rose ate her cake. The two girls went silent. Amanda was looking at her phone but Molly was fiddling with the pink feather, brushing it back and forwards along the tablecloth.

They went for the bus soon after. Molly and Amanda were talking again but Rose lagged behind. She thought of the conversation they’d just had in the Cosy Café. Rachel had had a boyfriend. Not just any boyfriend but the brother of her old friend who had committed suicide. In the year that they’d been friends they’d talked about boys but that was all. They hadn’t
known
any boys. Rachel had a couple of boy cousins that she sometimes referred to and there were the famous boys from Nelson College some miles away and occasionally glimpsed in Holt.

How had they got together?

The bus was turning the corner heading towards their stop. Rose made a decision.

‘You go on,’ she said, laying her hand on Amanda’s arm. ‘I’ve just remembered something I needed to get. I’ll get the next bus.’

She walked off in the direction of the Cosy Cafe.

THIRTEEN

Tim Baker was a good-looking boy.

Rose eyed him while pretending to look through packets of organic pasta. He was tall and had broad shoulders and muscular arms as if he played sport. His hair was cropped short but his sideburns were carefully shaped as though he took some interest in his appearance. He had a broad smile, showing straight white teeth, and an easy way with customers, chatting amiably with each one.

She had no idea whether he looked like his sister, Juliet. Rose had only seen pictures of her dotted around the school. She remembered the first time she ever heard the name was on the morning of the announcement of Juliet’s death. It had been at a special assembly. At the end of morning classes the girls were called along to the main hall, all grumbling, aware of the precious minutes being cut off their lunch hour. Mrs Abbott was at the front, standing rigidly and looking deadly serious. After she informed the school, there were prayers and a moment’s silence but Rose had had no idea what to think about. Juliet Baker was just a name for her. It didn’t belong to anyone that she knew or could picture. Juliet was in Brontë House and even though some of those girls were in her classes she had never come face to face with the dead girl.

Mrs Abbott said nothing about the manner of Juliet’s death. She said there had been a
terrible accident
and that we must
pray for Juliet and her family
. She did not say that Juliet Baker had hanged herself. That piece of information emerged in the next few days. It wasn’t until months later, when she was friends with Rachel, that she heard the whole story.

How odd that Rachel should
go out
with Tim Baker.

The counter was clear now and Tim Baker was looking over in her direction, probably wondering why it was taking this girl so long to choose the type of pasta she wanted to buy. Rose walked across to the counter empty-handed.

‘Excuse me, are you Tim Baker?’

He nodded, frowning.

‘My name is Rose Smith. I used to be a student at Mary Linton College. I’m a friend . . . At least I was a friend of Rachel Bliss? I wonder would you have a few minutes to talk?’

‘Why?’ he said, looking at her with hostility.

‘It’s nothing bad. It’s just that I hadn’t seen her for months and I wanted to talk to someone who’d seen her more recently? Just five or ten minutes?’

He stared at her in a disconcerting way so that she had to break eye contact. When she looked back he had softened.

‘I’ve got a break in half an hour. I’ll be in the King’s Head.’

‘OK. I’ll see you then.’

The King’s Head was busy and Rose managed to get a couple of seats on the end of a table. There was a roaring fire at the far side of the bar but where she was sitting it was quite draughty. She held the edges of her coat together. Looking down she saw her black DMs tightly laced up, a rim of pink showing from the sock underneath. She was glad she’d dressed warmly this morning. She sipped her drink grimacing at its coldness. Tim Baker arrived moments later and went straight to the bar without so much as a wave in her direction. After paying for his drink he headed for her table and sat down opposite her. Finally, after taking a gulp of his beer, he looked at her.

‘What can I do for you?’ he said, in a mock deli-counter voice.

There was noise from all around, a dozen conversations going at once. She raised her voice.

‘Rachel and I were friends for a year or so but we . . . We drifted apart and I hadn’t seen her for months. One of the girls in school said you and she went out together. I just wondered how she was. Whether you thought she was unhappy?’

‘We got together for a few weeks, end of September, early October. I saw her around and we got talking about Juliet. Actually, I felt a bit sorry for her. She seemed quite lonely. I know that she was always
available
, if you know what I mean.’

Rose didn’t answer.

‘Two, three weeks. We spent a bit of time together. That was it.’

‘Did you end it?’

‘No one really ended it. I said I’d ring her and I didn’t. You know, I did feel sorry for her and at first it was nice to have someone to talk to about Juliet but after a while it brought back too many memories. It wasn’t going anywhere. Look, she was an attractive girl and she . . .’

‘What?’

‘She was easy-going, if you know what I mean.’

Rose frowned. Tim Baker was smirking.

‘There was no romance. It was just having a good time. And she was willing.’

‘It was just about sex?’

‘Don’t look so shocked. On second thoughts, I get why you’re shocked. You don’t look like the sort of girl who . . .’

He looked her up and down, his eyes lingering on her heavy boots.

‘Are you not interested in boys?’

Rose was instantly angry.

‘You don’t know me,’ she snapped, tucking her boots back under the seat.

Tim Baker shrugged and looked around the pub. He didn’t seem so good-looking now. His skin was red and his nose a little crooked. Rose swallowed hard and forced herself to talk to him.

‘I just wanted to ask you if you thought, during those weeks, that she seemed a bit depressed? Only she wrote to me a week ago asking for my help and the odd thing is that she kept mentioning your sister, Juliet . . .’

‘She wasn’t depressed when she was with me. She seemed very happy, believe you me.’

He was so cocky. She disliked him intensely.

‘Aren’t you even sad that she’s dead?’ Rose said miserably.

‘Listen,’ he said, pushing his beer away as if he had no intention of drinking another drop of it, ‘when my sister killed herself . . .’

He stared at her unable to finish his sentence. His eyes were heavy and she sensed some real unhappiness behind the good looks and the confidence.

‘What was she like? I never knew her when I was at Mary Linton.’

He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and flipped it open. There, in a plastic pouch, was a photograph of a smiling girl. Juliet Baker. This picture was different to the ones she had seen around the school. Those were formal shots, usually in school uniform. She picked up Tim Baker’s wallet and looked closely at the image in front of her. A pale face surrounded by black jaw-length hair, the fringe brushed to the side. She was smiling widely, her teeth white and even just like her brother’s. She was pretty and there was a spark of something joyful about her.

‘When was this taken?’

‘A few months before . . .’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You didn’t even know her!’

‘No, but I know what it’s like to lose someone.’

He shook his head and stood up.

‘I’m done talking about Rachel,’ he said. ‘I know you said that she was your friend but she wasn’t a nice person. I didn’t have any feelings at all when I heard she’d died. I’m not sorry. Not one bit.’

She watched him walk out of the bar. The door opened and let in a blast of cold air and she nursed her drink for a few moments before getting up herself and leaving the pub.

On the bus she thought of what he’d said about Rachel.
She was easy-going
. Was that all it had been about? Was that why Rachel was so down? Because the boy she had slept with had dumped her without even a goodbye? Were the supposed sightings of Juliet Baker just one of Rachel’s little fantasies when, actually, what she had was an ordinary, everyday broken heart?

She thought of Joshua. How different he was to Tim Baker. She could never imagine him talking about a girl like Tim Baker had. Joshua had lost his dad but had no bitterness in him. He wouldn’t take it out on other people.

That’s why she cared for Joshua so much.

She stared out of the window at the countryside speeding past. Why was she there, on the bus, spending time in her past life? Rachel was dead. She’d brought the letters. Why not just leave it at that? Why should she care what state of mind Rachel was in? Maybe she should pack up and head for Stiffkey and be with Joshua.

She walked from the bus stop back towards the school. She put her hands in her pockets, feeling the cold air nipping at her. A couple of cars passed and when she got to the entrance of the school she looked at the grass verge alongside it where Joshua had pulled up in Skeggsie’s Mini to drop her off. It was rutted with tyre tracks for ten metres or so, as though a number of cars had pulled up here to drop people off or pick them up. Possibly Tim Baker’s BMW had sat there some nights waiting for Rachel to creep out through the laundry room to get out of school.

She turned into the driveway and walked slowly, not really wanting to arrive back at the school again. She wondered how Joshua was getting on and pulled her phone out of her pocket to see if she had any messages. There were no missed calls or texts. Maybe she should contact him and tell him she wanted to go back to London. Anna’s house seemed homely after being back in school. She wished she was back in her studio, listening to music, sketching or working on her laptop. Why not call him? If they left soon they could be back in London by teatime.