Prologue
Her skin is waxy, her lips tinged blue. She’s beautiful, lying on the concrete, so still in the darkness, eyes closed, hair splayed out to the side like a dark sunburst, blood pooling around her head. Shadows from the streetlamp and the shimmer of recent rain make the whole image surreal, like a movie set after the director has yelled cut and the extras have gone home.
I tiptoe around her, careful not to step in the blood, my hands steady, almost detached from the rest of me. I get low, nearly kneeling, lean over, and position my camera so that I can capture her face. So I can get a good image of the main event – the gunshot wound that has ruined her forehead.
My shoes make small, nervous squeaks against the wet pavement. Otherwise, it’s quiet except for the distant hum of a car engine and the snap and whirr of my Polaroid camera.
I’ve been trying without the flash, hoping the streetlight will capture the subtlety, but it’s too dim, the shadows swallowing all the colour. So I switch on the flash and the world jumps into hyper-reality, every pore and freckle and blood droplet seared into each photo.
Still, I’m critical. I think I’m too close. I take a few steps back and move around to the side. Flash, whirr, flash, whirr, the sounds rhythmic as a heartbeat. I feel a thrill, something dangerous and electric, coursing from my palms up my arms into my chest.
I’ve never done anything like this before. It’s like acting. Like art. It’s a different feeling. I like it. I’m focused on the details. The way her make-up has started to run, the flecks of mascara beneath her eyes. The longer I stay, the more I want to correct her pose, to shift her arm or drape her hair more elegantly, to remove the stray leaf stuck to her wrist that breaks the composition.
I think that should probably do it, but I take a couple more to be on the safe side. Better to have too many than too few, right?
I’m weirdly proud of the work, the way an amateur chef is proud of a well-executed soufflé, and I can’t stop myself from shuffling through the photos, choosing favourites already. There are some good ones here, at least two that could win a photography contest, if only there were a category for this kind of thing.
I nod, satisfied.
Today has been a good day.
Chapter One
Jade
The north wind whistles down Blake Street, slicing through my thin denim jacket and setting my teeth on edge. I pull it tighter around my body. No time to stop and do it up properly, I’m late for my shift at The Oak, the grotty pub where I’ve worked for the past four years. It was meant to be a stopgap, but the months and years have somehow run away from me, and now I’m twenty-eight with no life plan aside from earning enough to pay the rent with a smidge left over for something other than bills or beans on toast.
I live on the outskirts of Southampton in a rundown, depressing suburb that’s low on kerb appeal and high in crime. The Oak is only a fifteen-minute brisk walk from home, but I still always manage to be late. I think living so close by gives me a false sense of security. Mags won’t be happy. She’s threatened to sack me so many times, but never follows through because I’m good with the customers. It takes a certain type of person to cajole pissheads out the door at closing time and deflect lecherous creeps without sparking their anger. I guess I’m talented that way – lucky me.
Hurrying past familiar rows of bland terraced houses and flats, I intermittently check the dense, flowing traffic for a gap to cross,but the cars, buses, bikes and vans are whizzing by too fast and, annoyingly, there’s no pedestrian crossing on this stretch of road, despite Mum’s letters to the council about it.
Mum works at the same pub as me. She got me the job when I was unemployed, sweet-talked Mags into throwing a few shifts my way. I thought it would be too much – living and working with my mother – but it’s actually panned out okay as Mags tries to stagger our shifts. That way, while Mum’s at work, I get the flat to myself, and vice versa, like an unglamorous timeshare. Although we still see more of each other than we’d each like.
As it’s a one-bedroom flat, I sleep on the sofa bed in the lounge, which is hardly ideal, but I guess I’ve become used to it over the years, and at least it’s cheap. As a kid, we shared the bedroom, but I opted for the lounge once I reached fourteen. Mum isn’t thrilled that I’m still at home, ‘cluttering up the place’, but she hasn’t kicked me out – yet. I think she secretly savours the company, although you wouldn’t know it to hear her moan about everything I’m doing wrong with my life. About how I should have worked harder at school, or how I should be more proactive and get a better job. Like she’s one to talk!
The only thing less ideal than my home life is my relationship. Zac, my delivery-driver boyfriend, clocks insane hours – longer than mine, actually, but I don’t let him know that. We like to engage in a lot of one-upmanship about whose life is the crappiest. He thinks I have it easy because I don’t have impossible schedules and I don’t have to deal with traffic, but at least he’s not on his feet for hours, plus he’s never had to mop out a men’s bathroom after a football match.
Zac and I have been together for almost two years now. I wouldn’t say he’s ‘the one’, but we do okay. And he does bring me snacks from the petrol station when I’m feeling tired, which in my world is basically love.
I cling to the hope that we might be able to move out of our parents’ homes one day soon and rent our own place, although Ican’t help but wonder if living together would ruin us. I’m worried he’d get on my nerves. I just have to weigh up whether he annoys me more than Mum does. If I’m being brutally honest, I’d prefer to live alone. I can’t think of anything more luxurious than having my own apartment and being able to come home from work and shut the door on the world. To have peace and quiet whenever I want it, or to play my music loud without Mum telling me to turn it down. Earbuds just aren’t the same as blasting it out through the speaker.
Power-walking the last stretch, I hope I can beat the rain. The clouds overhead are the colour of dull tin, smothering what little there was of the hopeful blue that promised more than it delivered. I can still feel the damp chill in my hair, which I twisted up into a messy bun after my shower in the hope it might dry by the time I get to work. No such luck.
The Oak comes into view on the opposite side of the road. It sits at the end of a drab parade of retail outlets – a newsagent’s, dry cleaner’s, fish and chip shop, a Tesco Express petrol station, a barber’s, and a charity shop with a plastic skeleton in the window wearing a Santa hat, even though it’s June. The only shop that’s never changed is the one that sells doll’s-house furniture. I never see any customers in there. Probably a money-laundering front.
Quickly checking the time on my phone, I see it’s already five past five. So I’m officially late. I’m really going to have to cross this bloody road somehow. The traffic is now crawling – not quite gridlocked, but close enough that cars nudge forward in juddery increments. There’s a line of buses, and the vinegary smell of chips hangs over the street like a greasy fog. I plant myself on the kerb and try my usual tactic – pick a driver, stare into their soul, and hope their innate British politeness will force them to let me cross. It works about one in twenty times – maybe today I’ll get lucky.
That’s when I spot the Range Rover. It’s shiny, black, and obnoxiously expensive, the kind of car that glistens even on anovercast day. It creeps forward, indicator ticking, then slows to turn in to the Tesco petrol station opposite. I’m about to seize my moment and dart behind it, when something makes me pause. Maybe it’s the way the windows are rolled down despite the cold, or the low bass of a song I don’t recognise. But the car draws my attention, and that’s when I see her – the passenger.
Mum.She’s in the front seat, laughing with the man in the driver’s seat. He looks like the worst kind of corporate cliché – navy suit, high-collared shirt, sunglasses despite the dark clouds. I can practically smell his expensive aftershave wafting across the street.
Mum,my mum, is sitting six inches away from this man, her face lit up in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen. I don’t even recognise her at first, not really. Her hair is different – darker, glossier, ironed into careful waves, instead of her usual straw-blonde with grey roots. Has she splurged on extensions?Is she wearing a wig?She can’t afford either. Unless her mystery man bankrolled it. There’s a pop of pink on her cheeks, a new lipstick on plump lips, and a patterned scarf I’ve never seen before draped around her neck. Suddenly, Mum looks less like the woman who falls asleep in front ofAntiques Roadshowwith a microwaved curry, and more like a model for a Marks & Spencer ad.
Has she somehow got herself a new boyfriend? She told me she was going to Lidl after her shift. Mum always insists she isn’t interested in romance. She says she likes being single. Why would she lie about that? My dad was out of the picture before I was born, and she hasn’t had a relationship since – well, not one that I’ve ever known. And where the hell did she get the time to do all that primping? I only saw her this morning before she left for work. Unless she didn’t go to work.
I stand here, invisible, as the Range Rover glides on to the petrol station forecourt. I’m rooted to the spot, watching as Mum leans across, her hand on the man’s arm, both of them doubled over at some private joke. It’s so surreal I half think I’m hallucinating it. Me, late for workwhile my mother’s on a date – on an actual date – with a man who probably owns more cufflinks than the number of pints I’ll pull tonight.
I take a step back and watch, heart thudding. They don’t see me. Mum is close to the man, gesturing at something on his phone. From this distance, she looks... happy. Like, properly happy. I haven’t seen that expression on her face – ever.
