I Could Be You Page 5

  But when she turned back to unlock the front door, there was someone standing directly in front of her, blocking the way.

  Six

  Katie

  Eleven years earlier

  Ella Tate. Pale-skinned, blue-eyed, long-limbed and elegant. I should have hated her the moment I set eyes on her. In fact, I barely noticed her at first. Big mistake.

  She’s not brash or loud or anything like the usual type my dad hires to work behind the bar. Less ‘in your face’. Some of them, I get a feeling for them right away – the sort of person who’ll ignore me or take the piss, depending on their mood. Only they can’t do that while they’re being paid by my dad, so they’re forced to be nice to me instead. Smiles as fake as their lipsticked mouths and jiggly pushed-up breasts. I see right through them.

  It’s different with Ella. She acts as if she barely notices me. Which is a joke, because with a backside as big as mine, I’m pretty hard to miss. Dad says she’s shy, but he’s wrong. Shyness has nothing to do with it. She’s too self-obsessed for that. You see, the simple fact about Ella Tate is this: she doesn’t care about anyone else except herself.

  The first time I saw her, a week before I started college, I was having dinner in the bar with Dad.

  ‘Who’s the new girl?’ I asked.

  It was the end of the summer holidays and Dad was treating me. Dinner is normally a ready meal by myself in front of the TV. Volume turned up louder than is good for me to cover up the sounds from the pub below. The fact that we live over the pub has always given Dad the excuse he needs not to spend any actual time with me. He’s able to convince himself that because we’re both in the same building, that’s good enough.

  ‘Ella,’ he said. ‘Started last week. Mark Tate’s kid. Remember poor old Mark?’

  I nodded. Mark Tate, Dad’s golfing buddy, who died of cancer the same year Mum left us.

  ‘Any good?’

  Dad finished chewing his mouthful of steak before answering.

  ‘A bit quiet, maybe. But the punters like her. Obviously. She’s doing A levels. Same as you. Different subjects, though. Music and something else.’

  It was the ‘obviously’ that made me take a second look. Until then, all I’d been doing was trying to keep the conversation going. He can be a bit quiet himself, my dad, and I hate the silence that hangs between us sometimes. Without my mum, it’s like we can’t find anything to talk about any more.

  Ella must have felt me watching her, because she glanced up from the pint she was pulling. Her face turned a bit pink when I carried on staring, but she managed a sort of half-smile before looking away again.

  I could see, especially with a bit of colour in her pale cheeks, that there was something about her. She didn’t seem the sort of person who tried very hard or cared very much about how they looked. But girls like that don’t need to, do they?

  I noted her figure – thin, bordering on skinny – and her dark hair, plaited into a long braid that hung down over one shoulder. She wasn’t wearing any make-up, and maybe that’s one of the reasons I didn’t see her for what she was right away. Alongside Cathy and Rachel, the other girls working that evening, she seemed a bit bland.

  But the more I’ve watched her since then, the more I can see what Dad meant. There’s an elegance about her that I’ve spent the last few days carefully copying. She moves gracefully, like a professional dancer, and when she’s tired or hot or bored, she stretches her head back, turning it slowly from side to side, the pale skin at her neck glowing under the soft lighting over the bar.

  I kept the dinner going for as long as I could, knowing Dad would make me go upstairs right afterwards. But there’s a limit to how long anyone can spend eating a plate of beer-battered fish with hand-cut chips and mushy peas, especially when it’s gone cold and lumps of fat are starting to congeal on the sides of the plate. I ate more than I needed to, telling myself I’d skip breakfast in the morning to make up for it.

  As always, Dad wolfed down his steak and fries, pausing only to answer the questions I could think of to ask him. When he’d finished, he made a point of looking at his watch every few seconds while I ate the rest of my food as slowly as I could. Eventually, when there was nothing left, I put my knife and fork together the way Mum taught me and asked Dad if I could have a pudding.

  ‘No you bloody can’t,’ he said. ‘There’s a tub of Ben and Jerry’s in the freezer upstairs. You can have some of that if you’re still hungry. Although,’ he looked meaningfully at my plate, ‘I can’t see how you could be after all that.’

  Tears pricked my eyes and I blinked them away quickly so he wouldn’t see. He didn’t mean to upset me, and it wasn’t exactly his fault if I was a greedy pig who couldn’t control her appetite.

  Dad nodded at Ella, who came over and cleared our plates away. I wanted to ask him if I could stay down here for a while, but he’d already stood up, hitching his trousers over the big ball of his stomach, and said something to Ella that I didn’t catch. It must have been funny, because she laughed. And there was something about watching them like that – heads closer together than they should have been, the light, breathy sound of her laughter – that sent a surge of hot rage burning through me.

  ‘Dad.’

  I must have sounded sharper than I meant to, because when he looked away from her to me, he was frowning.

  ‘Can I stay for a bit?’

  The frown deepened, and I knew there was no point arguing. I could feel Ella’s eyes on both of us, probably trying to work out what was going on. Not wanting to give her the satisfaction of knowing more about us than she should, I told Dad it was fine, I’d go upstairs if that was what he wanted, then swung around and left without another word.

  Upstairs, I put the TV on, trying out Ella’s way of moving – back straight, head held high like a puppet’s with the string pulled tight. I turned the volume up, but no matter how loud I made it, I could still hear the sounds coming from downstairs. The clink of glasses, the low rumble of conversation, and every few minutes, the light, bright, tinkling sound of Ella Tate’s pretty little laugh.

  Seven

  Dee

  The man moved towards her. Dee screamed. As her eyes adjusted, she was able to make out his features. When she realised who it was, she shoved his shoulder, causing him to stagger back.

  ‘What was that for?’

  ‘For scaring me half to death,’ she said. ‘Jesus, Alex, what were you thinking, creeping up on me like that?’

  ‘Listening to Garth Brooks,’ he said, pulling the flex of a white earphone out of the top of his jacket. ‘I never heard you.’

  ‘Why are you here?’ Dee asked, choosing not to comment on Alex’s choice of music. She despised Garth Brooks every bit as much as she loved Johnny Cash. Johnny, who sang every word of every song as if it was the truest thing he’d ever felt. How anyone thought it was okay to put the two men in the same category called ‘country’ and assume it meant they were similar was a mystery she would never solve.

  ‘I wanted to see if you were okay,’ Alex said.

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  ‘I heard about Katie.’ He gestured in the direction of the road. ‘Is it true, Dee? Is she really dead?’

  ‘Come inside,’ Dee said. ‘I don’t want to talk about it out here. It’s too close to where it happened.’

  Alex followed her into the house and produced the bottle of wine he’d brought, insisting they open that first. Dee clocked the ‘first’, but didn’t comment. If she had any shred of self-respect, she’d tell him to go home. At fifty-one, she was too old to be sitting up late at night drinking too much wine with another woman’s husband. Even if, as Alex claimed, he and his wife were practically estranged.

  Alex worked at a boatyard on the beach at Normans Bay, a short walk from Dee’s house. She’d met him soon after she’d moved back home. He was on his own, working on the hollowed-out hull of a boat that had seen better days. Unlike Alex, who was one of the most beautiful
men Dee had ever laid eyes on – tanned skin, sun-bleached hair and a tight, wiry body.

  He was standing on the deck, scrubbing the wood with some sort of carpenter’s tool. He must have heard her coming, because he looked up, using his hand to shield his eyes from the sun. The sight of him, bathed in sunshine so it looked like there was a ring of fire around him, made the breath catch in her throat. She was almost past the boat when he jumped down, wiped his hands on the front of his jeans and introduced himself.

  Over time, they’d become friends of sorts. Alex was there for Dee after her mother died, dropping into her house on his way home from work to see how she was doing. Gradually, the frequency and length of these visits increased, until he had become a semi-permanent fixture. Dee knew he was married, and she knew it wasn’t normal for a married man to spend so much time with a woman who wasn’t his wife. But she was lonely, and Alex was there. Someone she could talk to, drink wine with, and who made her feel a little bit less crap about everything.

  ‘It was me who found her,’ she said, waiting until the wine had been poured and they were sitting outside on the deck. ‘She was just lying there, in the middle of the road. It was horrible.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Alex rubbed a hand across his face before downing half the contents of his glass. ‘Such a terrible thing. Do they have any idea who did it?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Dee said.

  Alex pulled out a packet of tobacco and started rolling a cigarette.

  ‘I was hoping you’d tell me there’d been some sort of mistake,’ he said. ‘I’m having a hard time getting my head around this. You don’t expect something like this to happen to someone you know.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you knew her,’ Dee said.

  ‘I didn’t really. But the little fella – Jake – he loved the boats, see? Remember that big trawler we were working on at the beginning of the summer?’

  Jake would have loved the excitement of exploring an old boat, Dee thought. And Alex would have been good with him too. Patient and fun, showing the boy around and sharing interesting facts about the boat he was working on, hamming up his Glasgow accent to make Jake laugh.

  ‘When I knew she was on her own,’ he said. ‘I took Jake with me the odd time. To give her a break, you know.’

  ‘She never said anything,’ Dee said.

  ‘No reason she would. It was no big deal.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Dee felt unaccountably disappointed that Katie had never mentioned that she knew Alex. Until she realised that she herself had avoided talking about Alex to Katie as well. She’d felt ashamed that she was spending so much time with a married man, and hadn’t wanted Katie to think less of her. Now, she wondered what Katie’s reasons had been for omitting to mention Alex’s name in any of their conversations.

  ‘He’s a lovely wee kid,’ Alex said. ‘I helped out with the search earlier. It was totally depressing. All of these people out looking for him and not a sign of him anywhere.’

  ‘I haven’t been able to think of anything else since I found her,’ Dee said. ‘And when I saw the buggy… I keep going over it, trying to work out if I could have done something.’

  ‘What could you have done?’ Alex said. ‘She’d already been run over by the time you found her, hadn’t she?’

  ‘It’s not her.’ The words blurted out of her before she could stop them.

  ‘Who’s not her?’ Alex said.

  ‘The dead girl,’ Dee said. ‘It’s not Katie. I thought it was when I saw her. She was wearing Katie’s T-shirt and she looked like her. But I was wrong. It’s not her and no one knows who she is or where Katie and Jake are. And the police think Katie killed her, but I can’t believe that.’

  ‘Whoa.’ Alex held up a hand, stopping the flow of words tumbling from Dee’s mouth. ‘Way too fast, Dee. Start again. From the beginning.’

  She told him everything – from finding Katie’s body and searching for Jake, through to the trip to the morgue earlier today and seeing the dead woman lying on the gurney.

  ‘And it wasn’t Katie,’ she said. ‘The woman who was killed, I’ve never seen her before.’

  Alex opened his mouth, as if he was going to say something, but he stayed silent. Dee understood. He was trying to make sense of something that didn’t make sense. A woman wearing Katie’s clothes, pushing Jake’s buggy, had been killed outside Katie’s house. But she wasn’t Katie.

  ‘Did she have, like, a sister or something?’ Alex said eventually.

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘And you’re sure?’ Alex said. ‘That it’s not her, I mean.’

  ‘Positive.’

  He lifted the bottle to refill their glasses, but it was already empty.

  ‘Okay if I open another?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Dee said.

  She watched him moving around inside her kitchen, as familiar with the place as if he lived here.

  ‘My ex-husband’s an alcoholic,’ Dee said when Alex came back with the open bottle of wine.

  ‘Okay,’ Alex said, leaning over her to refill her glass. ‘Any reason you’re telling me that now?’

  ‘I’m starting to wonder if I might be one too.’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ Alex said. ‘I’m a bad influence. Tell you what, Dee. We’ll have this wee glass and then I’ll be on my way, okay?’

  ‘Sure.’

  She was confused. Had he thought she was asking for help? If so, he was a more arrogant sod than she’d realised.

  ‘If this girl’s not Katie,’ Alex said, ‘at least it means she’s okay. And it means Jake’s okay too. Because he’ll be with her, right?’

  ‘I guess so,’ Dee said.

  ‘So where is she, then?’ Alex asked.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘You don’t think…’ Alex paused, then shook his head. ‘No. Course not. Sorry, Dee. It’s just… I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘Katie wouldn’t do something like that,’ Dee said.

  ‘I know. There must be another reason why she’s done a runner. In fact, I thought she was acting a bit funny the last time I saw her. I didn’t pay much attention, but now I’m wondering, you know, if something was worrying her.’

  ‘When was that?’ Dee said. She questioned how she had missed it. Alex and Katie. It had never occurred to her they could be friends. If that was all they were.

  ‘The day before it happened,’ Alex said. ‘I dropped by on my way home from work to see if she wanted me to take Jake for a few hours the following morning. She acted funny when she answered the door. Usually she’d invite me in, offer me a drink, and I’d play with the wee fella for a bit. But that evening, it was like she couldn’t wait to get rid of me.’

  ‘So you came here instead,’ Dee said.

  ‘That’s right.’ He grinned. ‘I was on my way to yours anyway. Like I said, I’d only planned to drop into Katie’s for a few minutes.’

  When he’d turned up that evening, with a bottle of wine and a supermarket bouquet of flowers, Dee had actually been flattered. It hadn’t crossed her mind that they had been intended for someone else.

  ‘The photo,’ she said, remembering the image on her TV screen – Katie and Jake on the beach together. ‘The one the police are using. Was that you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Alex nodded. ‘That’s my handiwork. I took it a few weeks ago, gave it to her as a present. She didn’t seem to have many photos of the pair of them together.’

  Dee drained her glass and stood up. ‘I’ve got a headache,’ she said. ‘I’m going to take some painkillers and go to bed.’

  She picked up his half-full glass, along with her empty one, and carried them into the kitchen. She heard Alex following her but didn’t turn around to look at him when he spoke.

  ‘Have I done something wrong, Dee?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling a bit rubbish, that’s all. Are you okay to see yourself out?’

  She stood with her back to him, waiting for him to leave. He didn�
�t move at first, and she thought she’d have to turn around and scream at him before he got the message. But then he left, shutting the front door so hard Dee felt the vibrations all the way to where she was standing.

  Her hands were curled into fists, nails digging so hard into her skin that she had four half-moon indentations on each palm when she unfolded her fingers. The glass he’d been drinking from still had wine in it. Shimmering green and gold under the too-bright kitchen lights.

  She slammed the back of her hand into it, and watched as it flew across the worktop, a spray of liquid soaring out of it as it fell and shattered into tiny pieces.

  Eight

  Dee

  Someone was calling Dee’s name. She could hear the voice but couldn’t see anyone. She was standing on a long, empty road. Nothing moved, there was no sound except the haunting echo of the woman’s voice. And then she saw her. Lying on the road in front of her. She was wearing a blue T-shirt. Her feet were bare. One blue sandal lay on the ground beside her. There was no sign of the other sandal.

  The woman wasn’t moving, and Dee thought she was dead. Until she lifted her head and looked right at her.

  ‘Help me, Dee.’

  She’d thought the woman was Katie, but she was wrong. It was her mother lying on the dusty ground, legs destroyed, arms reaching out, calling for her daughter. Dee started to run towards her, but a blinding white light appeared from nowhere, consuming everything, until there was nothing but her mother’s voice calling her name and the white light burning her skin, sucking all the air into it until she couldn’t breathe.

  A screeching sound jolted her out of the dream and she was suddenly awake. Curled uncomfortably in the wicker chair on the deck, an empty bottle of wine on the table. A pair of squawking seagulls were fighting over a piece of shellfish on the shingle a few feet away.

  The sun was coming up, low and white and blindingly bright against the still sea. The last traces of the dream faded as she sat up and vomited over the side of the chair. The stench of sick filled the air; the bitter, burning taste of it lingered in her mouth and throat, chunks of regurgitated food sticking between her teeth.