Chapter Two
Sam barely sleeps that night, or the next.
She dreams she’s being chased through Holland Park and she can feel his fingers sliding up her legs, no matter how quickly she runs.
She wakes sweating and pads downstairs, turns on the news.
On her old TV, she sees her godfather. DETECTIVE CHIEF INSPECTOR HARRY BLAKELAW, the banner at the bottom of the screen reads, and Sam grabs the remote and turns up the volume.
His voice sounds different on television: less of the Essex boy and more like the Broadstairs gentleman.
“… Charlotte was just fourteen years old,” Harry is saying to the reporters, “a straight-A student, popular, with a loving family and her whole life before her.” Harry pauses, swallows, clears his throat and continues.
“We’re appealing to anyone who was in or around Holland Park on Thursday evening into the early hours of Friday to come forward.
Often, witnesses have seen much more than they realize, so please, even if you think you saw nothing out of the ordinary, contact the Metropolitan Police if you were in the area.
” Harry reads out a telephone number and then takes a few questions, but it’s an active investigation so there’s very little he can say.
The feed switches to another man standing outside what appears to be a red-brick school building, and the banner now reads: HUGO WENTWORTH-brAND—HEADTEACHER.
“Charlotte is … was … a wonderful girl,” he says, running a hand through his dense white hair.
“She was especially talented at netball, playing center for our school team. Her father never missed a match. Charlotte was highly capable academically and had Oxbridge aspirations, hoping to follow in her father’s footsteps.
Teachers and pupils alike adored Charlotte.
Wicked sense of humor, too…” The headteacher smiles, tears in his eyes.
“What’s your fondest memory of Charlotte?” asks the reporter.
The headteacher smiles again and wipes his cheek. His chin wobbles slightly as he says, “Thank you, gentlemen, that’s all I can manage for now.”
A sudden knock on the door brings Sam back to her untidy lounge.
Wondering who could be calling on a Sunday morning, she makes her way into the small hallway, between her lounge and kitchen, and picks up the last couple of days’ post from where it’s landed on the mat, then peers through the glass in her front door.
A man in a bright-green Asda uniform stands holding a crate of groceries.
She slides off her deadbolt and security chains, then awkwardly drags the door open.
The man doesn’t even look at Sam as he reels off this week’s substitutes and she’s grateful he doesn’t notice that she looks like exactly what she is: a woman who’s spent the weekend in the same pajamas, without showering or even brushing her hair.
Sam dumps the crate out on to the hall floor, thanks the driver and locks the door again.
She grabs a packet of chocolate Hobnobs and munches through them as she moves the groceries, one item at a time, into the kitchen cupboards.
The kitchen lino is sticky underfoot and her slippers make a sucking sound as she moves about the room.
She promises herself that, once she’s back at work, she’ll get on top of the housework, too.
She rinses her dusty fruit bowl under the tap before putting the fresh green apples in it.
It’s been a while since she’s bought any healthy food.
But tomorrow is a new week and Mondays are always a good day to begin a new chapter.
She heads upstairs to the small landing that separates the two bedrooms and only bathroom.
She tips her already-overflowing laundry basket upside down and begins to sort her clothes, placing the darks into her old hiking backpack, ready to head to the laundrette tomorrow after work. She can take the whites on Tuesday.
Drained by the small exertion, Sam makes her way back downstairs and rewatches her favorite episode of Only Fools and Horses, the one where Del Boy disguises Rodney as a schoolboy to win a free holiday.
Sam usually laughs aloud at the sight of the young Nicholas Lyndhurst in his skateboarding gear, but today she can’t shake off her thoughts of a dark corner in Holland Park and a fourteen-year-old girl called Charlotte.
The morning of her return to New Scotland Yard, Sam rises early and jumps straight into the shower, lathering her dirty-blonde hair twice before combing it straight into a ponytail. She eats two slices of peanut butter on toast, and one of the apples from the fruit bowl.
It’s not until Sam goes to pull on her work clothes and the buttons of her suit trousers won’t meet in the middle that she realizes there’s going to be a problem.
No amount of pulling or wiggling can get her body inside any of the clothes that Past Sam had slid into with ease.
She rummages deep inside her wardrobe, frustration mounting.
She literally has nothing to wear. She pulls back the wardrobe door, ready to slam it with a force that the old hinges would be unlikely to survive, but stops herself.
She takes a deep breath in through her nose, holds it, exhales, and makes her way calmly out of the bedroom.
Tipping out the old backpack that she’d placed in the hallway, Sam retrieves the black leggings she’s lived in for longer than she cares to remember. She sniffs them tentatively, then winces. She has no choice, though. She’ll just have to stand a meter away from anyone at all times.
“Fuck you, Prozac,” she mutters as she pulls the leggings on and repacks the bag.
She finds an old, semi-smart polo neck at the back of the cupboard and stretches it over her head.
It smells musty and she finds herself coughing as she emerges from the tubelike collar.
She pulls out her old beige trench coat from the cupboard under the stairs.
As she slides her arms into it, Sam catches notes of the luxury fragrance she used to spritz on each morning before she left for work.
She can’t believe how well the scent has lasted.
Six months and still going strong. Rouge Malachite has more fortitude than I do, she thinks, remembering the day she bought the bottle for herself as a birthday present.
She can’t imagine ever finding the energy to spray perfume again, let alone going to a shop and buying it.
Nonetheless, she enjoys the scent as she fastens her coat all the way up, to under her chin.
The buttons strain in their holes but Sam doesn’t care.
The tightness of it will help to keep her upright.
Picking up her handbag, she steps out into the brightness of the day, locks her front door behind her and walks down the path.
She ducks to avoid an overgrown bramble and lifts the little garden gate open.
Hers is by far the messiest garden on Acklam Terrace.
Most of the neighbors have replaced their grass with decorative pebbles or marble-colored paving, but Sam has always loved snatches of metropolitan countryside.
Sam takes the narrow alley past St Paul’s—not the cathedral, but Clapham’s own church of the same name and lesser fame. It’s a pretty building in Sam’s opinion; just as worthy of a visit.
Sam emerges on to the high street and looks longingly at her go-to café, Bubbles and Beans, which she’ll be forced to bypass today thanks to her wardrobe issues. She jogs across the road and joins the orderly queue at the bus stop just seconds before a red double-decker squeals to a halt.
The bus is packed and Sam wedges herself into the corner near the emergency exit.
She spends the journey concentrating on her breathing.
In spite of her headphones and the heavy-metal playlist, she can still hear the woman next to her reciting English verbs into an app.
Bodies sway as the bus stops and starts again.
Teens in various school uniforms hop on and off.
People sneeze noisily into tissues. A toddler writhes and a businessman yells into his phone—when Sam sees his eyes travel over one of the schoolgirls’ knees, she feels salt rise in her throat.
More passengers pile into the bus as it heads into central London and bodies begin to brush up against her.
Sam’s arms tingle. By now, her mouth tastes like the ocean.
Unable to bear it any longer, she hits the bell and jumps from the bus two stops early.
Ten minutes later, she’s walking along the Thames embankment toward New Scotland Yard.
As she walks, Sam keeps her eyes away from the mangling murk of the river.
Every time they ventured down to the sandy banks of the river in Somerset where Sam had spent summers splodging with friends from her primary school, her mum used to warn her that water killed more people than lions and tigers and bears ever had.
“Fresh water is the most dangerous of all,” Mum had said, squeezing on bright-orange armbands as Sam darted embarrassed looks at her friends who were already waist-deep. “Salt and chlorine add buoyancy, but in fresh water like this you’ll sink in seconds.”
“No one else has to wear these,” Sam had hissed at her mother. “I’m not a baby.”
Mum kissed her nose. “You’ll always be my baby.”
Sam reburies the memory with a few deep breaths.
A moment later, the 1930s classical facade of what was once called the Curtis Green building is in front of her.
The word New is simply to highlight that the building has been updated, not, as many people think, because there is any new ideology behind the policing that goes on there.
Her father, a Detective Inspector himself, hadn’t lived long enough to see the work on the building completed.
It was probably for the best. Detective Hansen had loved tradition.
He’d have hated New Scotland Yard and all its modernity.