The Other Side of the Door, Nicci French [new reading .TXT] 📗

sweatshirt and the two gloves in four different litter-bins. Then, with great unwillingness, I rang Sonia and told her I needed to meet her and, yes, it was urgent and, no, there was nothing to worry about and, yes, it should just be me and her, so she told me about a pub along the road from where she lived. I met her there and bought two glasses of wine, and we went outside on the pavement into the sunshine and I told her everything I had done. When I had finished, Sonia was silent.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘You idiot,’ she said loudly.

‘Sonia,’ I hissed. A couple were sitting at one of the picnic tables out on the pavement and the man looked at us.

‘You stupid, stupid idiot,’ she repeated, but this time in a furious whisper. ‘What the hell were you playing at?’

‘I thought it was too risky to leave it in the car park,’ I said. ‘We might have left some trace. We should have washed it first, washed away any clues. We were bound to have left something. Fibres, I don’t know. And they would have found it soon, just standing there.’

‘How do you know?’ said Sonia. The effort to keep her voice down seemed painful. ‘How can you possibly know?’

‘They must have some way of checking after a couple of weeks,’ I said. ‘Otherwise people would go and dump cars in airport car parks all the time.’

‘What if you’d had a breakdown?’ said Sonia. ‘Or an accident? Or been caught by a speed camera? Or been stopped by police?’

‘It seems mad . . .’

‘So you’ve just handed Hayden’s car to the police? That was your plan?’

‘It wasn’t what I had in mind but it’s not really the police,’ I said. ‘I’ve had cars towed away a couple of times. They take them to the pound.’

‘Yes?’ said Sonia angrily. ‘And then?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. I suppose it’ll just stand there,’ I said. ‘And I suppose they’ll send out a letter and then another, but as he had no permanent address, who knows how long it will take them to trace it back? And even if the police do discover it, so what? What’s suspicious? And now it’s not tied to the time of Hayden’s disappearance.’

Sonia took a sip of wine, then a large gulp. ‘Something’s wrong,’ she said. ‘You’ll have been caught on a CCTV camera or something.’

‘It was the right thing to do,’ I said.

‘There are cameras everywhere. Remember—surveillance society?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I thought I needed to get it scrubbed down. At least I’ve done that.’

‘We made a plan,’ said Sonia. ‘I haven’t said this before but I’m saying it now. You brought me into this. I helped you. We made a plan. You can’t just wake up in the night, have a bright idea, change everything and only tell me about it after.’

‘The plan was wrong.’

‘It wasn’t. Or if it was, it wasn’t as wrong as undoing it and making another wrong one. If they’d found the car, they’d have assumed he’d left the country. What will they think now?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said unhappily. ‘It doesn’t matter. They probably won’t think anything. Does anyone really care, apart from us?’ And then I remembered my bag arriving in the post and the adrenalin of terror sloshed through me again. ‘Hardly anyone.’

Before

‘Miss Graham! Miss Graham! I did it!’

I looked at the slip of paper and then at her. She had a grin splitting her face in half and two fat tears rolling down her cheeks. I put my arms around her and kissed her. ‘That’s fantastic, Maud,’ I said. ‘And well deserved.’

‘I can’t believe it. I’m so happy. I’m so happy.’ And she was off, running across the grass to a group of girls who were hugging each other, squealing and taking photographs with their mobiles. I looked around me at all the young people walking into the school with their faces set in tense apprehension, or coming out with their envelopes in their hands, my ex-students, in groups or alone.

I hate results days at school. However many get the grades they need, there are always some whose hopes are dashed. The worst is collecting GCSEs—that would be next week—when large groups of students, who haven’t worked, whom you’ve known from their first day at the school and will probably leave with few qualifications, gather for this ritual public humiliation. But even today, collecting A levels, felt brutal enough. Looking around the scattered crowds, I could tell immediately which ones had done badly: not just Amy, weeping onto the shoulder of her best friend, but Steven Lowe, laughing and shrugging, pretending he didn’t care and fooling no one, a shy young man called Rob, who looked as if he had been punched in the stomach and was having trouble standing upright, Lorrie and Frank, sucking desperately at cigarettes.

Along with nine other teachers, I had been there since half past eight and it was now ten o’clock. Generally, the day got worse before it ended: the students who expected to do well usually turned up first thing. Others came later, dragging their heels, acting indifference, putting off the moment of bitter and anticipated truth.

Then I saw a figure I knew, slouching nonchalantly along with his hands in the pockets of his jeans and a cigarette hanging from his lower lip. Joakim spotted me and lifted his hand but didn’t stop and I watched him as he sauntered towards the table where his envelope was lying. His neck and shoulders were stiff, but then I watched them relax. That was the nearest he got to expressing relief or gladness. He rolled the piece of paper loosely into a hollow tube, stopped for a few seconds to talk to a mate, let a girl with blonde pigtails cover him with lipstick kisses, shook the hand of Joe Robbins, the school head, then turned to go.

‘OK?’ I said to him, as he passed.

‘All right.’ A smile quivered on his mouth. He handed