I Could Be You Page 3

  ‘I thought you said she moved here from Bristol?’ Ed said, reading the employer’s recommendation. ‘This is from a company based in London.’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed,’ Dee said.

  ‘She must have stopped working for them when she moved here,’ Ed said. ‘Didn’t you tell me she was a piano teacher?’

  ‘Maybe she wanted a change of scene,’ Dee said. ‘New life, new job.’

  ‘Maybe. All she needed was this letter so she could secure the property. Once she had the house, I’m guessing no one cared very much how she paid her rent, as long as she was on time with it each month.’

  ‘Are you really going to start looking into all that now that she’s dead?’ Dee asked. ‘Does it matter? Oh. Unless… Is that why she was killed? Was she doing something illegal? Sorry, stupid question. Of course she wasn’t. So what are you looking for, if it’s not that?’

  ‘We need you to come to the mortuary,’ Ed said. ‘We haven’t been able to trace any family, and we need someone to identify the body.’

  ‘But I’ve already told you who she is.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Ed said. ‘You told me the dead woman is your neighbour, Katie.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And that’s why I need you to take another look at her. Right now, if that’s all right?’

  She opened her mouth to tell him it wasn’t all right. The dead woman was Katie Hope, and her son, Jake, was missing, and surely that was the only thing that mattered right now. But the words caught in her throat.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘What is it you’re not telling me?’

  ‘You said you were a hundred per cent certain that Katie was pregnant. And that she was Jake’s mother. You don’t want to change your mind about any of that?’

  ‘She was his mother,’ Dee said. ‘She fed him and looked after him and had parties when it was his birthday. Which is the eleventh of January, by the way. We had a little party in the mobile home. Me, Katie and Jake. I baked a cake.’

  A lopsided chocolate cake with ready-made icing. The first time Dee had ever baked a cake in her life. Two thick blue candles, which Jake blew out on the first attempt. Dee took a load of photos and printed them into a collage that she framed and gave to Katie a few weeks later. She had wanted to make a copy for herself as well, but she worried Katie might think that was a bit strange.

  ‘Well then,’ Ed said. ‘Here’s our problem, Dee. According to the post-mortem, our hit-and-run victim has never had a baby. So either you’re lying to me, or the woman in the mortuary right now isn’t Katie Hope.’

  Three

  Katie

  Eleven years earlier

  I’ve been here two weeks and I’ve hated every moment so far. I keep my head down, try not to make eye contact, but it makes no difference. Yesterday, a girl shoved her elbow into me as I passed her. She said she was sorry, but her friends all laughed and I know it was deliberate. Today, in class, two geeky-looking losers in the row behind me were whispering about fat people. Not so loudly the teacher could hear, but enough so I knew it was me they were talking about. I had to sit there and do nothing, shame and anger burning my skin while I imagined turning around and stabbing them in the eyes with my pen.

  Stupidly, I thought things would be different when I started college. I anticipated a great new life opening up to me. Friends and nights out and invitations to sleepovers. All the things other girls did. I spent the whole summer dieting. Okay, trying to diet. It sort of worked too, because I lost seven pounds. I’ve put four back on over the last fortnight. Stress weight. I’ve been stressed since I started here because it’s nothing like it’s meant to be.

  Generally, though, it’s not the geeks who are the problem. It’s the rest. The long, skinny guys with Converse trainers, ripped jeans and eyes you could drown in. The girls, all tight jeans and perfect eyebrows and straightened hair, who look right through me as if I didn’t exist. When they’re not elbowing me in the gut, that is.

  They act like I’m nothing to them. Someone to ignore or laugh at or stick your elbow into. I’ve already had five years of that in school. I came here to get away from those people, but they’re all around me. Flat stomachs, cat-cold eyes and sharp elbows.

  I’m standing at the entrance to the canteen, trying to work up the courage to go inside. The door is closed but I can see through the glass panels that the place is packed. A group of people shove past me, a blur of faces and faded denim. Someone pushes open the door and a cacophony of sound escapes, voices and laugher, the clatter of cutlery on plates. All of it bouncing off the floor and the walls out to where I’m standing.

  Two girls notice me, whisper to one another and start laughing. I turn away quickly, heat creeping up my neck and face.

  ‘Hey.’

  I’ve bumped into someone. I take a step back, the fire inside me raging bigger and brighter. My mouth’s already open, ready to shout at him to watch where he’s going, when my brain registers who he is.

  ‘Katie, right?’

  Eyes the colour of the sea on a hot summer’s day. Black hair hanging over his face in a perfect messy mass of curls and waves. Shane Gilbert. If my life was a high-school rom com, Shane would be the guy I ended up with. The jock with a heart, clever enough to see through the artifice of the shallow world we live in. Except this is real life, not a movie, and guys like Shane Gilbert never end up with girls like me.

  We went to school together. Lee Manor primary school in Hither Green, then Northbrook for secondary. We’ve known each other more than half our lives, but we’ve never been friends. We’ve always moved in different circles. The main difference being that Shane’s circle included other people, while mine has always consisted of me and no one else.

  This is the first time he’s ever spoken to me.

  I want to say something back, but I can’t think of a single intelligent thing. My brain has turned to sludge. There’s a low buzzing sound inside my head and my heart is jumping so hard against my chest I’m worried he’ll be able to hear it.

  He puts his hand out, touches my arm, and I jump back. My skin, where he’s touched me, fizzing.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he says.

  ‘Fine.’

  He looks like he wants to ask me something else. I hold my breath, thinking that whatever he wants to know, I’ll tell him. All the thoughts and feelings I’ve never told anyone else, and now, right this moment, I understand why. It’s because all this time, I’ve been waiting for him.

  But the question never comes, He grins instead and the world stops moving, and if everything were to end right now, I wouldn’t care. He says something I think must be ‘bye’ or ‘see you later’, because suddenly he’s moved past me and disappeared through the doors into the noise and bright lights and clattering cutlery of the college canteen, and I’m alone again.

  * * *

  It’s nearly midnight, but I can’t sleep. I’m sitting at my computer, looking at Shane’s Facebook wall. Trying to get back that connection I felt with him. Wondering if he’s in his own room thinking about me too. There was something between us, an understanding. I felt it and so did he. The question I saw in his eyes, I didn’t make that up. He wants to know the girl inside me, who’s been waiting her entire life for someone who’ll listen to her.

  He’s got a moody black-and-white photo as his profile picture – hollow shadows beneath cheekbones that are so perfect they don’t look real. I trace my finger along the picture and wonder what his skin feels like.

  We’ve been Facebook friends for a while now. It’s not difficult to get people to accept friend requests, because the more Facebook friends you have, the better. Shane was one of the first to accept me as a friend, and I wonder now if that was a sign that he wanted to get to know me better. He’s never liked any of my posts, but that doesn’t mean anything. Maybe, underneath all that confidence, he’s shy.

  Anyway, it’s not like I post that much. I stopped using Facebook after all that cyber-stalking bullshit Marsha C
armen spread about me.

  Shane’s photos are great. Atmospheric black-and-white shots of landscapes and London skyscrapers; group photos of him and his friends, all of them grinning like idiots. Marsha Carmen’s in a few of them. I find one that’s just of her. She’s half turned away from the camera, looking back over her shoulder. Smiling. For a moment, I imagine she’s looking right at me, and I get that tingly tightness between my legs. I touch her face with my thumb, remembering the tiny freckles she used to get across her nose and cheeks in the summer. I scroll down the page, and her face is replaced by a shot of another skyscraper. I wonder if Marsha’s told Shane about me. I hope she’s had the sense to keep her mouth shut.

  There are more photos, and I looked at each one in forensic detail, searching through the binge-drinking and dope-smoking for some sign of the soulful person I know is hiding underneath. But Shane’s like me. Good at concealing who he really is.

  As I lie in bed, muffled sounds from the pub creep through the floorboards, loud enough so I can’t forget it’s there. I think maybe Marsha’s right and I’m deluded after all. Shane probably only spoke to me because he felt sorry for me.

  But Marsha is wrong, completely and totally, because the very next day, Shane speaks to me again. He’s studying computers too. It’s the end of a class in which we’ve been doing an assignment on programming concepts. I finished it within half an hour and spent the rest of the lesson searching for an elegant way to hack Facebook accounts without being caught. I know there’s a way to do it; I just need time to work it out. Suddenly the class is over, and I’ve been so caught up in what I’m doing I don’t notice until everyone’s scraping their chairs back and the chitchat of bullshit starts up all around me.

  ‘Hey.’ He catches me as I’m walking out. A light tap on my shoulder that sends darts of electricity racing down my arm.

  I breathe in slowly and turn around to face him. I try to think of something clever or meaningful or funny, but I seriously have no idea how you’re meant to respond to a ‘hey’.

  In the end, all I can manage is a feeble ‘hey’ right back. The smile turns into a grin and he asks me how I’m finding things so far.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I mumble, my stupid brain refusing to do what I need it to. I’m so busy trying to think of something to tell him, something he’ll remember and smile about later, that it takes a moment for me to realise he’s talking again.

  ‘Bit different from Northbrook, right? I mean, that place was like a prison. I think it should be against the law to treat kids like that. At sixteen, we’re old enough to join the army if we want to. So in theory, right, it’s okay for us to, like, kill somebody, but we’re still not allowed to hang out in the park at lunchtime.’

  ‘Crazy,’ I say. ‘Yeah.’

  He looks like he’s thinking about how to respond to that priceless nugget. I’m half expecting him to ask me if I’ve sought medical help for my mental problems, but instead he says he’s heading to the canteen to hang with ‘some of the gang’, and do I fancy joining him?

  I can feel my face burning when I say thanks but no thanks, I have to get home. It’s not true. More than anything in the world, I want to stay with him, but I know what it’ll be like in the canteen with ‘the gang’. They’ll all be sitting around talking and laughing, hanging on every word Shane says, and not one person will notice me or speak to me and I’ll sit there wishing I was dead.

  ‘No problem,’ Shane says. ‘Guess your old man’s got you working behind the bar these days. Maybe I’ll pop in sometime to say hi.’

  He says bye then and heads off towards the canteen with that loping walk of his, hoisting his bag across his shoulders, while I stand there unable to move or breathe or speak.

  Maybe I’ll pop in sometime to say hi.

  And I know this is it. The moment it all begins.

  Four

  Dee

  ‘How sure are you that Katie was Jake’s biological mother?’ Ed asked.

  ‘It never occurred to me that she might not be,’ Dee said. ‘I mean, I saw her when she was pregnant. You can’t fake that, can you? And presumably you’ve already checked the hospital, her medical records, stuff like that?’

  ‘Someone called Katie Hope certainly gave birth to a baby boy called Jake on the eleventh of January 2016,’ Ed said. ‘Eight pounds three ounces. Healthy child. No complications. Baby was born in the maternity unit at the Conquest in Hastings. We’re still trying to find out whether she gave birth alone, or if she had a birth partner. If she did, that might help us find out where she is.’

  They were in Ed’s car, driving along the seafront en route to the hospital. He had dropped Rachel Lewis off along the way. She was going to help coordinate the volunteers searching every bit of coast and land for the missing boy. Now, it was just Dee and Ed in the car.

  The French market was in full flow – stalls selling cheese and cured meats and crêpes with chocolate sauce. Tourists eating fish and chips and ice cream; seagulls hovering overhead, waiting to dive in and scoop up any scraps of food they could. The pier stretched out over the turquoise sea, white and gold and magnificent.

  Dee barely saw any of it. In her mind, she was back on the road outside her house yesterday afternoon. The sweltering sunshine, waves of heat rising from the dusty ground, blurring the outlines of the body. The sudden sharp shock of recognition when she saw the T-shirt and realised who the dead woman was.

  ‘If it’s not Katie,’ she said, ‘who is it? And why was she wearing Katie’s clothes?’

  ‘That’s why I need you,’ Ed said.

  At the Cavendish Hotel, he swung right, away from the seafront and along the wide avenue that led into town.

  ‘Why didn’t you simply show me a photo?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean. You could have got a photo of the dead woman’s face and shown that to me instead of dragging me across to the mortuary.’

  ‘I want to make sure this time,’ Ed said.

  ‘You think I lied?’

  ‘I think you made a mistake,’ he said. ‘Not the same thing.’

  Dee stayed silent, knowing there was no point trying to argue with him until she’d seen the body again. In her heart, she knew she’d been right the first time. The dead woman was Katie, no matter what the pathologist or Ed Mitchell said. If anyone had made a mistake, it wasn’t her.

  Ed started humming under his breath. Dee paid no attention at first. Until she recognised the tune.

  ‘Are you doing that on purpose?’ she asked.

  Ed smiled. ‘Sorry, it got inside my head and I can’t get rid of it.’

  ‘You have no idea how much I hate that song,’ Dee said.

  ‘You don’t like Tom Jones? Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘Why do you call yourself Dee, anyway?’ Ed asked.

  ‘What sort of question is that?’

  ‘Delilah’s such a pretty name,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand why you’d shorten it.’

  ‘If you don’t shut up right now,’ she said, ‘I’ll jump out of this car and you’ll have to find someone else to identify the body.’

  Her father had named her Delilah after the Tom Jones song that was number two in the UK charts the month she was born. Dee had spent most of her childhood and far too much of her adult life enduring stupid people singing the song to her. She’d loved her father very much, but there was a part of her that would never forgive him for that.

  The mortuary was located at the back of Eastbourne’s District General Hospital.

  ‘Ready?’ Ed asked, after he’d parked the car.

  She wanted to tell him she’d changed her mind. Her mother had died here in the DGH twenty-two months ago. Dee hadn’t been back since and didn’t want to go inside now to look at another dead person. But Ed was already getting out of the car and walking towards the swinging glass doors that led into the mortuary. Hating him for taking it for granted that she was okay
with this, Dee followed him.

  Their footsteps clattered and echoed around them, bouncing off the tiled floor and the concrete walls that seemed to crawl closer to Dee the further she went. The corridor was too long and too brightly lit, reminding her of a recurring dream she had. In it, she was running down a corridor like this one, trying to reach a door at the end. Except no matter how fast she ran, it was never fast enough, because the door never got any closer and whoever was behind her, chasing her, was about to catch her and there was nothing she could do to stop it happening.

  And then, different to the dream, they’d arrived at the end of the corridor and were standing outside a blue door with a window panel and a metal handle.

  ‘Okay?’ Ed asked. He touched her shoulder, and just for a moment, she wanted him to wrap his arms around her and hold her tight.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said, taking a step back to put a bit of distance between them.

  Ed knocked on the door, and it was opened a moment later by a fresh-faced man who looked too young to be a qualified doctor but who seemed, as far as Dee could work out, to be the pathologist.

  There was a bit of back-slapping and how-you-doing between the two men, but it didn’t go on long enough for Dee to get irritated.

  ‘This is Dee Doran,’ Ed said, nodding at her.

  ‘Peter Sweeney,’ Babyface said, holding out a hand, which Dee dutifully shook. ‘Pathologist,’ he added, in case she hadn’t worked that out yet. ‘I understand you want another look at our victim?’

  ‘I’ve asked Dee if she wouldn’t mind,’ Ed said, before she could tell Peter Sweeney that what she really wanted was a large glass of wine somewhere far away from here.

  ‘In here.’ The pathologist gestured to a door on her left, one she hadn’t noticed until now.

  He opened it and stood back to let Dee and Ed go ahead of him into a small room that under other circumstances might be described as cosy. Muted lighting, a comfortable-looking sofa and a low table with a fresh bunch of flowers in a vase. One wall was covered with a grey curtain, which Peter pulled back, revealing a large window.