Amber doesn’t want to stay in the park. Feels as though everyone – though only a couple of cleaners are on duty, emptying bins and rushing over to the rides when the Tannoy calls for an emergency mop-up – knows about what Suzanne’s just said in their private meeting. She goes back to her office and collects her bag and coat, leaving her umbrella behind. There’s no point, on a day like today; it’ll have gone inside-out before she’s got as far as the rock shop.
The Corniche is virtually deserted, though it resonates with the delicious scent of frying onions from the burger vans. Amber walks towards the bus stop, feeling miserable. Everything aches, partly from tiredness, partly from Vic, partly because (she’s noticed) bad news always shows up first in her shoulders.
She walks on, eyes a knot of people gathered by the town hall, shouting questions. Press, she guesses. In the middle she recognises a couple of local councillors, hair brushed and business suits on specially for the occasion. She realises with a frisson that one of the journalists – close to the outside of the crowd, Martin Bagshawe standing near by seemingly hanging on her every word – is Jade Walker. Christ, she thinks. I’ve got to get out of here. She steps up her pace.
Kirsty’s got her MP3 out. ‘… So what you’re saying, in effect, is that they asked for it?’
The leader of Whitmouth Council glances at his head of PR and goes into denial mode. ‘I would never suggest any such thing,’ he replies. ‘You’re putting words in my mouth.’
Martin Bagshawe hangs back, strains to hear what they’re saying, but finds it hard over the sounds of the seafront. Hears her say ‘asked for it’ and thinks: My God, she’s fearless. And he remembers Tina and her taunting, and thinks, Yeah, but she’s not wrong, is she?
‘Not really,’ she says.
‘I was just saying that there has to be an element of personal responsibility involved,’ says the councillor. ‘It’s not the same thing at all.’
‘Personal responsibility not to get randomly murdered?’
He smiles uneasily, wishing he’d never got into this corner. ‘You wouldn’t walk barefoot across a minefield, would you?’
‘If I knew there was a single landmine somewhere in several thousand square miles and I needed to get home, I’d probably take a punt on it, yes,’ she says. ‘Are you saying that men are helpless victims of their own urges, then?’
‘No. Of course not. But the fact is that there is a man who seems to be just that at large in this town,’ he says, ‘and like it or not, our young women – our visitors – need to take this into consideration. We do have a problem, with a minority of our visitors, of overindulgence in alcohol, and alcohol makes people careless. We’re simply begging these young women to keep themselves safe, that’s all. We don’t want any more deaths in our lovely family resort.’
She’s vaguely aware that someone is earwigging them, glances up to see a small, ratty man in an anorak, pretending to read. He’s familiar, but it takes her a moment to place him. Oh yes, the bloke from the beach. One of those weirdos who pop up wherever there’s news, gawking and looming and trying to get on camera. He gives her a ghastly smile, the sort of smile that suggests that he’s not had much practice at doing it. ‘It’s time somebody said it was wrong,’ the weirdo tells them. ‘There’s thousands of decent people in this town, but you’d never know it from the way the press go on.’ He pauses, seems to find something wrong with what he’s said. ‘Most of them,’ he adds. ‘Most of the press. Not all of them.’
The councillor takes the opportunity to slide away from an awkward conversation, glad-hands the little man as though he’s a visiting dignitary. She wonders whether it’s worth persisting. But there’s a press conference in twenty minutes down at the police station, and she should head there, in case there’s actually any news.
She glances over at the far pavement and catches sight of Bel, hurrying away. Christ, she thinks. That’s the last thing I need. Please don’t let her have seen me.
‘… dressed like tarts, howling under my window,’ the man is saying. He casts a look so full of longing at Kirsty that the skin on her back crawls. The councilman puts a calculated hand on his upper arm, just above the elbow, the way a kindly vicar would do.
‘And we want you to know that we hear your concerns,’ he says.
Kirsty takes the opportunity to turn away while the hand is still there. The last thing she wants is to get sucked into another discussion with the bloke from the beach. She feels twisted with tension. Bel looks like she’s heading for the seashore. I’ll go the other way, she thinks. I can take a detour to get to the police station. She pops the MP3 into her bag, throws Rat Man a grin and a propitiatory little wave, and turns back to the far pavement.
Amber takes refuge in the shadows between the whelk stall and the bucket-and-spade stall, and watches which way Jade goes. Watches her hunch against the wind and turn up her collar to shield her face from the horizontal rain. She turns up the alley by the Cross Keys, heading for Fore Street.
Crazy, she thinks. What am I doing, hiding? This is my home. My town.
But she wonders. Every day she’s thought of this woman, if only in passing. A single day’s acquaintance, and they have been constant companions ever since, though it looks like their outcomes have been different. Jade looks like she’s thrived, she thinks; as if rehabilitation has been as good for her as it was bad for me.
She can taste bitterness in her mouth. Feels as though life’s been unfair, knows it’s been unfair: somehow, Jade has been rewarded where she has been punished. Look at her, she thinks. Walking about in broad daylight, her head held high, while I’m scurrying through the shadows. Does she even think about me? The way I think about her? Half love, half rage, the friend I never got to have, the source of everything rotten in my life?
She realises that there are tears on her face, mingling with the rain. Stops in her tracks and grips at the strap of her bag while a wave of grief breaks over her, shocks her with its power. I was a child. And everything – everything – got snatched away in one wicked afternoon.
She dashes the back of her hand across her eyes and strides back to the Corniche. She’s the interloper, not me. And if she’s going to invade my territory, she can answer some questions.
Martin tries to look unfazed, though inside he is squirming with embarrassment. I can’t believe I said that, about the press. She’ll think I think she’s like the rest of them now, even though I tried to get across that I’d said it wrong. I’ve blown it, and I didn’t even manage to talk to her properly. I’ll have to keep trying. She’ll want to listen to me once she sees who I am.
He shakes off the councillor’s clinging hand, and walks on towards town without bothering to say goodbye.
Kirsty hurries inland, checking her watch. Ten to three. The press conference begins in ten minutes. She needs to get up there, to where the crowds are beginning to gather, to get through the cordon with her credentials and find herself a spot where she can record what’s said. It won’t be easy, in weather like this, and taking notes in the rain is the Devil’s own business. And that’s when you’ve got a working brain.
She stops by a shop selling brightly coloured plastic beach toys, stares at fluorescent windmills as they rattle in the breeze. Maybe I should buy one for Sophie. Yeah, because what’s missing from Sophie’s life is a windmill on a stick. Get a grip, Kirsty. You’re here to do a job. You can’t let your concentration slip. You’re only as good as your current job, you know that. Doesn’t matter how much you’ve done before: one cock-up and you’re dropped, that’s how the world of freelance works especially with half the staff of the News of the World wandering the streets looking for work. She’ll be avoiding you as much as you’re avoiding her; the stakes are equally high for both of you.