Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (primary phonics .TXT) 📕

Her eyes wide, staring blankly at the ceiling, her neck broken in two. A pool of blood, spreading out behind her like a scarlet cape.

KATIE

As I push against the glass of the revolving door, Charlie is waiting on the other side. I’ve never known him to come to my work before. I didn’t think he even knew where it was.

‘They let you out then.’

His face clouds over, his eyes full of anger.

‘They had nothing to charge me with, Katie,’ he says furiously. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

I roll my eyes. ‘Come on. Before someone sees you. Your brother’s face is all over the bloody news.’

I pull my coat tightly around myself. The street lamps are already on, the car headlights swishing at us as they turn the corner of the street. I take my scarf out of my bag.

I’d been dying to get out of the office. The Rachel case is now huge. Rory’s arrest has propelled it to the top of the news list – the wealthy son of a famous architect, questioned over the disappearance, possible murder, of a pretty young single girl, who may or may not have been pregnant.

Her father’s red-eyed press conference is still being endlessly replayed on Sky News, along with the new footage of Rory outside the Haverstock offices being led into a police car, his eyes locked on the ground. All the other news – war in the Middle East, the latest Brexit crisis – has been reduced to a few lines of tickertape along the bottom of the screen.

Of course, it had got back to Hugh that I knew her, that I’d been questioned. ‘I’m sorry,’ I’d told him. ‘I just can’t get involved.’ Hugh had shook his head, looked away. ‘Fine,’ he’d said. And handed me a pile of rewrites.

Normally I would have been gutted he was disappointed in me, but now I was too preoccupied to care. I kept staring at the huge TV screens, the footage of Rory being shoved into the back of a police car, a police officer’s hand clamped to the back of his head. Could it have been Rory I saw her going into the cellar with, all this time, and not Charlie? Could Rory have done something to her?

‘It’s cold out here,’ Charlie says. ‘Can we go somewhere and talk?’

The bar has a red velvet curtain across the door – as we step beyond it, it is deliciously warm after the icy wind outside. We are shown across the diamond-patterned floor and seated at a corner table, a low lamp between us, and handed two leather-backed menus. I order a glass of Malbec and Charlie asks for a beer. The waiter brings him a glass. He ignores it, takes a sip from the bottle. In the mirrored walls, I see the waiter glance back at him disapprovingly.

‘So you know about Rory being arrested, do you?’ Charlie says, taking a swig.

‘I work in a newsroom, Charlie, what do you think? It’s been all over the TV all day. Sky must have got a van to his office before the cops did.’ I pick the menu up, stare at it, put it down again. ‘Helen is beside herself. She said she’s had reporters knocking. Poor thing. Due to give birth any minute.’ I push the menu away. ‘I’ve told her about speaking to the regulator. And I’ve told our lot to lay off. I don’t know how much good it’ll do.’

Charlie sighs.

‘So. Helen told me you found out about how I knew Rachel.’

I nod. I find I can’t even look at him. I’m too angry. Charlie tries to take my hand, but I pull it away, shake my head.

‘I don’t understand. Why did you lie to me? Why didn’t you just say you knew her from the club?’

‘It wasn’t that simple. She told me not to. I know it sounds weird.’ He rubs his hand against the stubble on his chin. ‘I’m sorry, Katie. I did it because she asked me to.’ He searches for my eyes, smiling slightly. ‘You didn’t need to go the full Spotlight on me, you know. Going to the club. Scouting out the photo board –’

‘Don’t patronise me, Charlie. Don’t you fucking dare. And anyway, I obviously did have to. I obviously can’t rely on you to tell me the truth.’

The smile falls from his face. I look past him and stare into the mirror on the wall.

‘So what. You were fucking her, is that it?’

He looks at me, then down. He doesn’t reply. I look at the reflection of us together, sitting at the table. We’re not young any more, I think crossly. Why does he not understand that he needs to stop acting like a child?

‘All right,’ he says eventually. ‘Yes. It was before me and you got back together. It wasn’t serious. But yes. There’d … there had been a couple of times when …’

My heart sinks. Of course. ‘Oh, spare me the details, Charlie.’ I take a deep sip of wine.

‘It’s strange. She’d sort of disappeared from the club, too. She’d been working there a few months. Then we had this big night, the one Rory and Daniel came to, Serena too. They brought some client with them. I remember she was there then. But not long after that, she quit, and no one really knew why.’

He pauses, drops his gaze, runs his fingers through his hair. ‘Then suddenly she’s at Rory’s birthday dinner. Looks totally different, all dolled up and stuff. Somehow, she has become mates with my sister. And obviously I could see by then that she looked … you know.’ He grimaces. ‘Pregnant.’

I sense he is telling the truth. Still too angry to meet his eye, I scan the room for the waiter. I need another drink.

‘The night of Rory’s dinner,’ he continues. ‘They sat her next to me. So I asked her what she was doing there. She was really intense about it. She said she needed me to keep