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Hannah.
Jennie blinks hard and swallows down the emotion welling up inside her. She always gets emotional in crowds – parades, gigs, anything that involves large groups of people in a heightened state always affects her, and this is worse because it emphasises even more that Hannah really is gone.
‘Thank you all for coming.’ Lottie Varney’s voice crackles over the tannoy.
Jennie looks up and sees her standing at the top of the bandstand steps, loudspeaker in hand. Rob Marwood is standing over on the other side of the steps, his head bowed. A stocky-looking guy with a receding hairline is standing beside Rob, and there’s something really familiar about him. She watches him for a few moments before realising it’s Hannah’s old boyfriend, Simon Ackhurst. The years have not been kind to him.
‘Hannah Jennings was my best friend,’ continues Lottie from the bandstand, turning to look at the huge poster of Hannah. ‘She was kind and beautiful and smart. She loved eating cheese toasties, listening to Duran Duran, and watching her favourite show, Byker Grove. She wanted to be a fashion model and she had her whole life ahead of her.’ Lottie pauses.
The gathered crowd waits. All eyes are on Lottie, while Lottie herself watches a latecomer make his way through the crowd to the front.
Jennie turns to look at him too, watching as Elliott Naylor stops on the opposite side of the steps from Rob and Simon. He looks flustered as he takes a candle from a woman who is handing them out to the crowd. Once it’s lit he looks up at Lottie, who gives him a small nod and continues with her speech.
‘Hannah was just eighteen when she went missing. That was thirty years ago. And all that time we believed – the police led us to believe – that she had run away.’ Lottie looks around the gathered crowd, pausing as her gaze finds Jennie and giving a sad smile. ‘But she hadn’t run anywhere. She had died, as she had lived, right here in White Cross. Where we all live. Where our children live. A place we think we are safe. But someone killed my beautiful, funny, kind friend and buried her in the basement of the school. They snuffed out her light when it should have shone so brightly.’ Lottie’s voice cracks. ‘Her light should still have been shining now. But they murdered my best friend.’
The crowd seems to be hanging on Lottie’s every word. As she speaks, the press move closer to the bandstand and a few of them start taking photographs of Lottie. She dabs daintily at her eyes with a tissue, making sure not to ruin her make-up. Jennie wonders if her actions look as rehearsed to the crowd as they do to her.
‘The police investigation into Hannah’s disappearance has been reopened. If you remember anything from around the time she went missing, please, please get in touch with them and report it.’ Lottie’s voice becomes more impassioned. ‘We have to find the person who killed Hannah. We cannot let her death go un-punished. Please. Help me find the truth about how she died. We must get justice for Hannah.’
The crowd claps. Jennie hears someone crying a little way behind her. As Duran Duran’s ‘Ordinary World’ plays over the speakers, more people step forward to lay flowers beneath the poster of Hannah. There’s a group of teenagers a few metres away holding pictures of Hannah and crying. An elderly lady, who Jennie recognises as one of the school dinner ladies back in her day, walks past carrying a stuffed teddy bear to put with the flowers beneath Hannah’s poster. There’s no sign of Paul Jennings or his new wife.
It feels utterly surreal.
Jennie watches Lottie walk down the steps from the bandstand to join Rob and Simon. She hugs Rob, and nods hello to Simon. Elliott walks over to them, and the darkroom crew are reunited, in part at least.
Stepping back to make space for a pink-haired woman in a wheelchair on her way to lay flowers at the foot of the bandstand, Jennie looks back across the park and sees even more people have joined the vigil. As ‘Ordinary World’ fades and gives way to another Duran Duran hit, ‘Come Undone’, a memory flits across Jennie’s mind’s eye. Hannah dancing as the song played on the CD player in the darkroom, her twirling body silhouetted in the red light. A sharp pang of grief slashes across her heart like a knife.
Pushing the memory away, Jennie looks back towards the bandstand. Elliott and Lottie have moved closer to the flowers, cards and cuddly toys and are talking with the pink-haired woman. Rob and Simon are still beside the steps but the atmosphere between them appears to have changed. Rob looks pale and shaky as he speaks to Simon, his hands gesticulating wildly. Simon doesn’t reply, instead shaking his head and taking a step back, his lips pursed into a hard, angry line. Rob reaches out, putting his hand on Simon’s arm. For a moment it looks as if the tension is broken, then Simon says something and Rob throws down his candle and turns away.
Jennie watches Rob storm off, bemused. What the hell was that all about?
Chapter 24
Jennie flinches as a fox scurries across the lane ahead of her. She feels hyper-alert cycling home tonight, the close call with the car a few nights ago still vivid in her memory. At least it’s not raining, although the heavy cloud has hidden the moon, making her route seem darker than usual. Her mind wanders back to the vigil at the park and the argument she witnessed between Rob Marwood and Simon Ackhurst. Rob has only been back in town a day, and she didn’t have the impression he sees Simon very often. She wonders what they were arguing about. Whatever it was, there was a real heat between them.
As she cycles along the main road, her phone rings in her jacket pocket, making her jump. She lets it ring out, then flinches again a few moments later as it beeps and vibrates telling her a text has arrived. Whoever it is seems very keen to get hold of her.
Concerned that it might be one of her team, Jennie pulls into the side of the road and steps up onto the kerb. She pulls out her phone and reads the notifications on the screen.
1 missed call.
1 text message: Jennie, it’s Rob, I got your number from Lottie. We need to talk. Meet me at our old party spot up on White Cross.
As she’s reading the message another one pops onto the screen, also from Rob’s number: Jennie, come quickly. Please.
She frowns. Today was the first time she’s seen Rob in years, and there’s no reason for him to want to speak to her other than if it’s about Hannah. She was sure Rob was hiding something in his interview, and Zuri intuited the same. At the vigil he was clearly agitated.
Pulling a U-turn across the road, Jennie pedals quickly back along Main Street towards the school and the white cross on the hillside beyond.
It takes almost ten minutes to reach the bottom of the path that leads up through the woods to the chalk landmark. Chaining her bike to the kissing gate, she closes the bike lock and hurries through the gate and up the narrow trail. It’s dark under the trees, really dark. She pulls her phone from her pocket and switches on the torch app, quickening her steps.
There’s a rustle from the undergrowth to her left and Jennie’s breath catches in her throat. Overhead the leaves rustle in the breeze. In the distance she hears the call of an owl. Suddenly she feels very isolated, vulnerable.
Jennie looks at her phone. There are no new messages from Rob.
Could Rob have been the person lurking in her front garden last night, watching her from the shadows? She remembers him as a fun-seeking wild teenager, but the man she met today was completely different; far more guarded and clearly stressed at being under investigation over a claim of death by malpractice. It’s been thirty years since she really knew Rob Marwood. People can change a lot in that time.
She keeps walking, her fear escalating minute by minute. She’s alone in the darkness. No one knows she’s come here and there’s no one waiting for her at home.
