I envy Sue in her picture-postcard corner of London, divorced from a banker, her life filled only with tennis followed by lattes with ‘the girls’, walks in Dulwich Park with her Chihuahua Lola and dinner parties where she doesn’t even have to cook the dinner. I smile, thinking of the M&S cottage pie for one I shared with Polly last time she came over – would that count as a dinner party, I wonder? I think about texting Polly to ask, and then remember with a piercing pain that we are not speaking.
Seeing Pete’s name on my phone shunts my anxiety back into sharp focus. I am too frightened to ignore him; what if something’s happened?
‘Hello?’ My voice sounds wary even to myself.
‘Hi. How are you?’ He sounds cautious too.
‘OK. On my way back from seeing a client.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Walking past Dulwich College,’ I say.
‘Oh, that’s not far from me. I can’t get my head around the fact that it’s just a normal school to the kids who go there.’
‘I know! I always think that. When it’s basically Hogwarts.’
‘Right. I was wondering…’ He pauses. ‘Could we meet? I was going to suggest meeting in town but I’m working from home today, in Sydenham, so I could come and meet you in Dulwich – in the park maybe?’
I had been looking forward to getting home and making a start on my ideas for Sue’s spare bedroom, but I know I won’t be able to concentrate on that now, so I agree and we arrange to meet outside the café in half an hour.
I retrace my steps down College Road, turn right along the South Circular and five minutes later I’m in the park. Half of the well-heeled mothers of south-east London have congregated here today, and I’m in constant danger from kamikaze toddlers on scooters. Pete won’t be here yet so I stroll past the tennis courts where some ladies (probably Sue’s chums) are hitting genteelly back and forth.
Pete is five minutes early, but I’m already there waiting. I watch him dodging buggies and smilingly brushing off the apologies of the mother of an excitable toddler who rams into his legs on a tricycle.
‘Hi.’
‘Hello.’ I find I can’t meet his eye for too long and don’t know what to do with my hands, pushing them into my pockets to keep them still.
‘Do you want to get a coffee or…?’
‘No, I’ve had loads already today. Do you?’
‘No, let’s just walk,’ he says, and we head off along the path.
‘So, have you spoken to the police again?’ he asks.
‘Yes, yesterday.’
‘And you didn’t…?’
‘Mention our little rendezvous?’ That sounded more bitter than I intended. ‘No, of course not. We agreed, didn’t we? You haven’t told them, have you?’
‘God, no. The last thing they need is another reason to suspect me.’
‘So they do then? Suspect you, I mean?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I think so, but of course they don’t have any evidence so I’m hoping they’re moving on, looking at someone else. All the time they’re investigating me, they’re wasting time when they could be looking for the real killer.’
‘Maybe there’s some forensic evidence that will put you in the clear? Surely there must have been something?’
‘I hope so.’ We walk on for a while, the sound of children’s voices fading as we get further away from the play area. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘OK.’ I push my hands deeper into my coat pockets, balling my fists.
‘Why are you so sure I didn’t do it?’
‘We spent the night together, remember?’ Anxiety makes my words ugly with sarcasm.
‘I know, but I could have done it before then. It was after eleven when we left, and from what the police said, nobody can remember seeing her after about ten o’clock. I had plenty of time to… I don’t know… lure her down to the woods.’
I smile, despite the gravity of the situation we find ourselves in.
‘That’s partly why, to be honest,’ I say.
‘What is?’
‘The way you said “lure her down to the woods”. Nobody who’d really done it would describe it like that.’
‘What would they say then?’
‘I don’t know, but luring someone to the woods is the sort of thing that would happen in a bad TV movie.’
‘OK, but why didn’t you suspect me before that?’
We’re passing the lake and rather than answering straight away, I suggest sitting down on a nearby bench. One of the slats is broken at the end and I shift closer to Pete to avoid the jagged edge. He doesn’t move away.
‘Louise?’ Our knees are almost touching, just a fragment of space between them. His hands are resting on his thighs, the skin around his fingernails chapped and raw as if he’s been picking at it.
‘I know it wasn’t you, because I know who did do it.’ The words tumble out in a rush, before I can stop them.
‘What?’ He jumps up and takes a few paces away from me, then turns back. ‘What the fuck are you talking about? If you know who did it, why the hell haven’t you told the police?’
‘No, sorry, I’m explaining it wrong. I don’t know who it is, but I do know that it’s the same person who’s been sending these messages to me, and to Sophie before she died. It’s to do with what happened, when we were at school.’
‘What, the bullying thing you told me about? And what do you mean, what messages?’
He sits back down, his anger subsiding. Tension flows out of me and the knot in my stomach loosens a little as I realise that I’m going to tell him everything. He’s safe, he’s got as much to lose as I have.
‘You’re not on Facebook, are you?’
‘No, like I told you, I stay right away from social media,’ he says. ‘Full of nutters.’
‘Well, I am,’ I say, and begin my story. When I get to the leavers’ party, I stumble over my words, watching him anxiously all the while for any sign of horror or disgust. He doesn’t react though, or interrupt, but lets me tell him the whole thing, including the part about the Facebook messages from Maria, the internet date, the incident at the park. When I’ve finished, I shift away from him a little, allowing the broken slat to dig into the back of my thigh.
‘So now you know. Whoever killed Sophie is the person who’s been messaging me. Which means it’s either someone who was around at the time, or… they never found Maria’s body. Do you understand now why I don’t want the police to make any more connections between me and Sophie than they have to? Why I don’t want them to know I spent the night in a hotel room with her boyfriend?’
‘I suppose so, but…’
‘And do you hate me?’ I ask, tears welling, ashamed at my childish need for reassurance.
‘For what you did to Maria? No, I don’t hate you. You were young. You made a bad decision, that’s all. That’s what people do when they’re young. Yes, it had catastrophic, unforeseeable consequences, but it was just a bad decision. I think you’ve probably paid for it, haven’t you?’ He takes my hand, eyes pleading. ‘But Louise, don’t you realise? This could get me off the hook. If you tell the police…’
I snatch my hand back as if he’s tried to bite it.
‘No. I told you, I can’t.’
‘And I understand that, I do. But you could just tell them about the messages from Maria, you don’t even need to say you bullied her, let alone go into the drink spiking.’
‘They’ll want to know why Maria has sought me out, what I did to her. They’ll ask questions I don’t want to answer.’