Angela Clarke is theSunday Timesbestselling author of the Social Media Murders series. Her debutFollow Mewas named Amazon's Rising Star Debut of the Month, longlisted for the CWA's Dagger in the Library, and shortlisted for the Good Reader Page Turner Award. Angela has appeared on CBS Reality'sWritten In Blood, on stage for BBC Edinburgh Fringe and on BBC News 24's Ouch comedy specialTales From the Misunderstood, at Noirwich, Camp Bestival, Panic! (in partnership with the Barbican, Goldsmiths University and theGuardian), at City University, at HM Prisons, and she hosts BBC 3 CountiesTales From Your Life, and the Womens' Radio Station Three Books show. She won the Young Stationers' Prize 2015 for achievement and promise in writing. A sufferer of EDS III, Angela is passionate about bringing marginalised voices into publishing. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
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You did anything to bury me, but you forgot that I was a seed.
Dynos Christianopoulos
The Start
I am covered in her blood. Her hair is caught between my fingers. Her blood is in my hair. I can smell her. Coconut shampoo, vanilla body spray, wet metal.
Robert is missing. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know what happened. I only know one thing. I didn’t do this.
Now
The crowd outside sound crazed. The noise rushes toward us as I’m pulled away from the courtroom. Mr Peterson, my solicitor, is running alongside me. His face furrowed, concerned. I can barely make out his words over my panicked breaths.
‘Put your jacket over your head. Shield your face!’ he shouts. ‘There must be a way to take her out back?’
The officer ignores him, and pulls harder on the handcuffs that bind us together. The metal scrapes against my wrist. I can’t speak.
‘Cover your face!’ Mr Peterson yells.
The officer is in his late twenties, the same age as me. Tattooed Sanskrit symbols burst out the top of his shirt and climb his neck. He doesn’t look at me. His one barked instruction told me he speaks like I used to. He’s from London. South. We might have gone to the same school, passed each other on the street. Did he move to Gloucestershire to escape the past too? His tattoos a roadmap to his new self. The dolphin on my bikini line is one of the only things left from my time on the Orchard Park estate. Always a stupid name for an ugly growth of concrete tower blocks. I erased everything else. Rewrote myself. But the faded blue ink remains. A childish mistake. Mistakes Emily won’t get to make. A sob catches in my throat: I won’t cry here.
Mr Peterson yells again, but his voice is lost under the roar of the screams outside. I grab at my Burberry mac with my free hand, try to swing it up and over my head. The fabric lands at a strange angle and I’m plunged into darkness. The shouts get muffled into indistinct anger. The officer pulls at me and I trip. It must be the steps.
‘Jennifer! Jennifer!’ voices yell.
How do they know my name? What do they want? The fabric of my coat is sucked into my mouth. I’m choking. Must pull it away. Must keep my face hidden. Must get air. I’m suffocating.
I can see feet, a swarm of legs against the barrier.The edges of camera fl ashes.
‘Why did you do it, Jennifer?’
‘Murdering bitch!’
‘Burn in hell!’
Their vitriol sears chunks out of me. Has Sally at the office heard? Is she out there? I can’t imagine anyone I know doing this. Slinging bile at strangers. At me.
‘Hang her! Hang her! Hang her!’ The chant is gathering pace. It’s animalistic. Raw. I want to tell them I feel their pain too. But even if I could find the words, they’d never hear over this roar. The belt of my mac whips round and lashes at my back, as if carried by their hate. Can they get to me? Could they hurt me? I try to move toward the officer. The trainers they gave me, still laced for display in the shop, catch on the ground. The steps are the yellow Cotswold stone I normally love. It looks diseased now. My ankle twists. I trip forward. My arm is jerked up like a puppet’s by the man I’m handcuffed to. Pain tears into my shoulder.The coat is caught and flicks back and away. I’m exposed.
A volley of camera flashes. There are a hundred screaming faces. I must get my coat. The tattooed officer pulls me on. Must cover my face. I try to use my hand but it’s hopeless. Arms reach for me. The police are trying to hold them back. Flashbulbs explode. Everything’s white. Bright.
I’m in our kitchen. The glass panel in the door is shattered. Flashes of red slice across the white walls. Emily’s birthday cake falls from my hands. It smashes onto the floor, an eruption of icing and sponge. I can’t look down.Won’t look down.
‘Jenna!’The voice rips through the chaos.
Ness! I can’t see her.‘Ness!’ I scream.Where is she? I try to stop; the crowd surges forward.A hand snaps out like a snake’s tongue and claws at my arm.
‘Keep moving!’ the tattooed officer bellows.
‘She’s my sister.’ Where is she? He pulls me on. There are barriers and a van. Oh god. A prison van.
‘Jenna!’ Ness’s voice again.
I turn. I need her. I need to speak to her.Where’s she been? Where’s Mum? A flash of red hair.There!
‘Get off me, you prick!’ Ness shouts, barging aside a screaming man in a cagoule.
‘Easy, love,’ shouts a meaty policeman.
We’re almost at the van now. ‘I need to speak to her. Please.’
The hatred in the tattooed officer’s eyes winds me.
‘Jenna!’ Ness is at the front now, hanging over the barrier.
‘Is Robert with you?’ It’s my only hope. That the police have made a mistake.That for some reason he’s there.
She shakes her head. No. The police said they found Robert’s blood in the kitchen. He’s missing. Gone.
Agony twists through my gut. The stone melts under my feet. I reach for Ness. For comfort. For support.
The officer jerks me back. The rabble seem closer. Ness is being buffeted from the side. ‘Is Mum all right?’ I shout.
She nods, tears in her eyes. ‘We didn’t know. The electric’s been down – the phone’s been out.’
My heart lurches. When did they find out? Now? Is that why they weren’t here before? I was arrested two nights ago, charged yesterday. Mr Peterson said he couldn’t get hold of them. I’d feared he was lying, that they might have believed this, refused to come.
Ahead, a female prison officer is unlocking the van. Sweat patches bloom under her white shirtsleeves. I can’t do this. I need to speak to Ness. To Mum. To Robert. Where is Robert? My heart contracts. The floor threatens to suck me down. I twist back.Yell. ‘My lawyer is called Mr Peterson. He’s inside.’
‘Bring back the death penalty!’ shrieks a puce blur.
Mr Peterson must know where they’re sending me, mustn’t he? I can’t get everything straight in my head. Can’t make it all make sense. ‘Mr Peterson will find out where I’m going.’
The mob bulges. The meaty policeman stumbles, falls backwards. A crack. The barrier holding back the howling mass tips.There’s a rush forward.
‘Jenna!’ Ness screams as she’s swallowed by heaving bodies. A multi-headed monster swells closer.
I could step toward them. Let them rip me limb from limb. Make this all stop. But I’ve got to stay alive for Robert. He must be out there. He needs me.
The officers either side of me shout. A hand grips my arm and pushes me up into the van’s narrow corridor. I feel like I’m underwater, their voices muted bubbles. The step grazes my shin. I stumble. Try to put my hands out. The handcuffs lurch me back up.The guy chained to me undoes his cuff and I fall to the floor. He turns back and squares up to the advancing crowd. Behind him the police are fighting to keep them from the vehicle. From me. A photographer jumps over the barrier’s legs and, camera up, starts snapping. I shield my face.Too little, too late. I see Ness through my fingers, behind the crowd, stooping to pick something up. My trampled mac. Mascara streaks her face. I haven’t seen my sister cry since we were kids. It breaks my heart afresh.
The female officer jumps in and pulls the door closed behind her. Her foot catches the edge of my shin and I feel the skin pinch. The air shifts. It smells like a piss-stained alley. Stale, acrid, suffocating. Don’t panic. It’s just me and her as she towers above. She’s in her fifties, her hair dyed straw yellow over wiry white. Her eyebrows dark and pencilled on. A sickly smile on her lips.
‘Welcome to the sweatbox, Princess.’
(C) Angela Clarke 2019