The Alibi Girl

I shake my head, smile flickering where it won’t stay on my face. He disappears up to the counter and I feel it this time – the ache. I resent the easy way he chats to the barista. The adoration in his eyes when he looks out towards the Lakes. I’m jealous of mountains. Of the half-eaten biscotti on his saucer. Touched by him.

When he sits back down, I know he wants to address the hallway thing so in a rush of confidence, I beat him to it.

‘I can’t really tell you very much about it, why I cried and panicked earlier.’

‘It’s alright,’ he says. ‘I can guess.’ He offers me his new biscotti. I take it.

The smoke alarm goes off – a forgotten cheese toastie on the grill by the looks of it – and the chef spends a good minute flapping the ceiling with a tea towel.

‘I’m not a weirdo,’ I say. ‘That’s the truth. I’m just a little messed up right now. I’m a newly single parent and I’m struggling but I will be okay. Her dad – isn’t a part of her life anymore. He can’t be. That’s all.’

‘I get it, Joanne. Really I do. You don’t have to say anything else.’

I deflate. I wish he’d call me by my real name. I wonder how it would sound in his mouth. But for now, I am Joanne and Joanne will have to do. ‘Thank you.’

He checks his Fitbit. He’s going to leave soon and I’m dreading it. ‘Listen, I’m two flights up. You get scared again, or anyone visits who you don’t wanna see, call me. If I’m not home, I’ll be at the gym. I can put my number in your phone, if you like.’

He gestures to take it from me, but then I remember the picture of him as my wallpaper. ‘I’ll make you a new contact,’ I say, fumbling. ‘What’s your number?’

I punch it in and switch it off. ‘Thank you. For listening. And for the drink.’ It doesn’t look like I’ve drunk very much of my shake – I can’t suck the thick cream up the flimsy paper straw but since plastic is not so fantastic anymore and I don’t want to pig great spoonfuls of cream in front of my Future Husband, I reluctantly leave it.

‘I better go – I’ve got a client in twenty minutes. Come along later and check out the facilities at the gym if you like? I can give you the grand tour. First month’s free.’

‘Okay, I might do.’

He stands up, gathering his wallet, phone and keys. ‘See ya, Chickadee,’ he says to Emily’s covered head, tickling the top of her hood.

He’s touched her. He’s touched my baby. They have a connection now. He’s growing to love her like his own, I’m sure of it.

Long after he’s left, I’m still staring out at the distant mountains he’d watched so lovingly. We’ll go there someday, Kaden, Emily and me. We’ll go there on holiday. Be one of those fit families that hikes in North Face coats and big boots. Emily will sit in one of those baby backpacks, peeking out over her daddy’s shoulder. Our Family.

‘Helloo, Earth to Genevieve?’ A voice filters through my private imaginings. Vanda from work stands beside my table, face full of make-up, big red lips and carrying two large shopping bags. She’s surrounded by children all whining for ice cream.

‘Oh, hi Vanda. Hi boys. And girl.’ They’re not interested in saying hello – they race to the counter and start choosing Freakshakes from the menu.

‘I saw you from outside. Why you not work yesterday and today?’

‘I called in. I told Trevor that Emily had a bug.’

She frowns at the papoose. ‘She got bug now?’

‘Uh no. She’s much better today thanks.’

‘So you be in tomorrow, yes? I need to know or else I get cover. You don’t let me know again, I give your job to someone else.’

‘I’ll be in at eight, I promise.’

She bats her enormous spider-lash eyes. ‘You better be there or I come down on you like ton of fucking bricks, yes?’

‘Yes. Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Her children are obstructing two paying customers at the till but as Vanda shrieks ‘Kids move!’ at them, they quickly disperse and fall into line in silence.

3

Thursday, 24th October

I leave a little tube of Smarties behind the front gate for Alfie the paper boy and drop Emily off at the childminder’s on my way to work, passing by the arcades to see if Matthew’s there at the bus stop, playing the grabbers outside while waiting for his school bus, but he’s not. It’s half term, of course. He’ll be with his family.

Being outdoors with Kaden yesterday has made me feel braver, bolder, and the three men from the hairdressers seem a distant memory now. I’m expecting a normal day at The Lalique. The past fifty-odd days have been excruciatingly normal – bed-changing, vacuuming, bleaching, replacing creamers, sugars, sachets of tea. Then back along the seafront to bed and waking up again and it starts all over. The highlight of any shift is usually when I catch a child coming back to the room by themselves to get something. Then we have a chat and they tell me what they’re doing for the day.

But today, there are no children about and Vanda’s in an awful mood. She’s always in an awful mood with me. She’s like a Russian Cruella de Vil and she scares me twice as much. I’m hanging up my coat in the staff office when she storms in. No Hellos or How are yous, just: ‘There’s a shit in the pipe Genevieve, so you lucky I don’t throw you through fucking window today. Floor 2. Go help Trevor.’

‘A “shit in the pipe”?’ I say.

‘A blockage. A stiff in Room 29. Means we’re going to cordon off whole floor so the police can come and then we have to wait around and clean when they have gone. We’re short-staffed as well because Fat Faith’s brat has the conjunctivitis.’

‘Okay.’ I’m not quite sure what she means by ‘a stiff’ at this point but if it’s Russian for poo, I better make sure my plunger’s on the cart.

‘Baby not got bug today?’ she says as I wheel to the service elevators.

‘No, she’s fine today, thanks. The doctor said it could be colic.’

‘She tit or bottle?’

‘I’m breastfeeding her.’

‘So she may be allergic to you.’ It’s not a question.

‘She seems okay. Thanks.’

‘So you express when you’re not with her?’

‘Yes.’

‘She’s young to be left with childminder. What is she, a month?’

‘Five weeks. I can’t afford not to work, Vanda.’ The lift finally bing!s open.

‘How much she charge, childminder?’

I’m in the lift and the doors close before I can answer. I always breathe a sigh of relief after Vanda’s firing squad of questions. She interrogates where other people enquire and is always picking me up on what I’m doing right and wrong for Emily, just because she has four children herself. She thinks she knows everything there is to know about anything, she’s one of those people. Anything you have, she has double. You have a kid, she has four. You have money worries, she’s broke. You have a row with your boyfriend? Her ex-husband stabbed her. Twice.

When I get to Floor 2, Trevor the porter stands guard outside Room 29.

‘Alright Gen? Any sign of the police and coroner?’

‘A stiff?’ I say, finally realising what that means. ‘You mean there’s a dead person in there?’

‘Yeah,’ says Trevor. ‘A young lass.’

‘How?’

‘She’s in bed,’ he sniffs. ‘Shit herself too, by the smell of it.’

‘Oh my god.’

‘Oh this is nothing,’ he says, leaning on the end of my trolley. ‘I’ve been here fourteen years. Seen eleven deaths in that time. You must have seen your fair share, working in a hospital?’

My mouth is wide. I click back into Genevieve mode. ‘Oh yeah. Loads. Every shift in fact. How did she die?’

‘Dunno. No sign of pills or booze. Have a look, if you want.’

‘What?’

‘Nobody’s around. Go and have a butcher’s, before they get here.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Be my guest,’ he says, sweeping aside like the candle out of Beauty and the Beast, leaving the door open for me to enter. My mind is already whirring. Trevor hands me a white square of cloth. ‘I’d take this in if I were you. Don’t worry, it’s clean.’

I don’t know whether he means the handkerchief or the stiff, but in I go before I can talk myself out of it. I’m at the bathroom door when I smell her. I bundle the hanky against my nose and mouth. I’d only ever seen one dead body in my life. And it looked nothing like that. She looks asleep. Her sheets are pulled up to her chin.

‘Could be natural causes,’ Trevor calls out. ‘I didn’t look too hard. Heart condition perhaps?’ Even Trevor’s pungent body odour can’t mask the smell from the bed. She’s lying there, red hair all spread out on the pillow. Blue eyes open.

‘The dead can’t hurt me,’ I whisper. ‘The dead can’t hurt me.’

Trevor’s still jabbering on. ‘Can you see anything? Anything obvious?’

I momentarily lift away the hanky to answer him, then shove it straight back. ‘No.’ But when I look closer, I see that there are red spots around one of her eyes, and the white in the other one is all red. Around her neck and under her ears are fingerprint-sized bruises.

‘Do you know her name?’ I call out.

‘Tessa something,’ says Trevor. ‘She’s here for the teaching conference, so him on Reception said. Maths teacher, I think.’

I spy Tessa’s open handbag on the chair and I know I shouldn’t but I don the rubber gloves I use for cleaning and pull out her purse. I find her driver’s licence. I slide it out. Tessa Sharpe. Twenty-eight years of age. Red hair. Blue eyes. From Bristol.

Dread plunges in my chest like a descending elevator.

When I come out, Trevor’s standing with his back against the wall and his arms folded. I close the door and hand him back his hanky.

‘Vanda found one hanging on the back of a door once,’ he sniffs. ‘She’s winning the Stiff Sweepstake, aren’t you V?’

Vanda appears on her vertiginous heels with a toilet roll in either hand, her cart parked up against the wall, vape sticking out of her apron pocket. ‘I thought he was heavy coat. He was doing sex thing.’ She grimaces. ‘Lot of people die in hotels. Whitney Houston. Jimi Hendrix. That guy from Glee. Coco Chanel. Mainly drugs.’

‘I think she was murdered,’ I say.

‘Who, Coco Chanel?’

‘No, Tessa Sharpe. I think she’s been strangled.’

There’s a pause, and then Trevor and Vanda look at each other and laugh the kind of laugh that prickles me all over. The kind of laugh that stops the moment I walk into the Staff Office most mornings. The kind of laugh that followed me down the corridors all through school.

‘Head in the clouds again, Genevieve,’ says Vanda. ‘So we have a murderer in the hotel now do we? Shall we call Poirot? Or that old lady with the typewriter? Or maybe Kendal Jenner? Didn’t you say you saw her working in Greggs in town? I wonder if she knows how the stiff in Room 29 died.’

‘I didn’t see Kendall Jenner,’ I say. ‘The woman just looked like her.’

‘You said it was her!’ says Vanda.

Trevor gives it the slow blink like he’s king of all knowledge. ‘Listen, back to the matter at hand – this isn’t suspicious. There’s no forced entry, the windows were closed, she checked in alone and she was checking out alone today after the second day of the conference. Some people know when they’re gonna die and they check into a hotel to spare their loved ones. Sad but true.’

‘She’s been strangled,’ I repeat, more vehemently. ‘Her neck is bruised.’

‘What are you, a chambermaid-cum-forensic pathologist now?’ Trevor laughs in my face again.

‘She’s got bloodshot eyes as well,’ I say, willing Vanda’s face to soften and believe what I’m saying. They both keep looking at me. ‘I’m telling you, this is murder.’

Vanda turns to her trolley and counts out four creamers to take them into Room 24 opposite. A couple in flip flops flip flop past the open doorway and she greets them with a pleasant ‘Good morning, have nice day’ as they make their way to the lifts. They don’t answer and she flicks a third finger at their backs. The lift doors bing and they get in. She turns to me.

‘And you know this because you used to work in hospital, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ve seen strangled person before, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was this before or after you play hockey for England team?’

‘Afterwards. And I was in the youth team.’

She snarls, reeling back from me to grab two fresh hand towels from her stack.

‘You must think I came in on last dinghy, darling.’ She nods briefly at Trevor, then retreats back inside 24 with a stack of fresh linen. He stands there guarding Tessa Sharpe’s closed door with his arms folded. They both think I’m lying. But there’s a difference between lying sometimes and lying about everything.

Two suited men who look like police arrive on the next bing of the lift, flashing their IDs at Trevor before entering Tessa Sharpe’s room. In a flash, Vanda reappears and instructs me to begin cleaning the rooms on the third floor while the forensics swoop in and do their thing. I want to watch them but Vanda is adamant and when Vanda is adamant I have to fall in line, like everybody else.

From a third floor window, I watch them wheel Tessa Sharpe’s body out to the van parked at the back of the hotel where the deliveries come in. I can’t take my eyes off the body bag. It forced me to remember the last time I saw a body bag being wheeled up the ramp of a van. I’m about to start cleaning Room 42 but before I can knock, I realise it’s now or never and I run downstairs to Floor 2 and see one of the policewomen enter the lift with a plastic bag full of Tessa Sharpe’s belongings.

‘Sorry, love, you’ll need to catch the next one.’

‘I wanted to know – it’s murder, isn’t it? The lady with the red hair.’

‘Well I highly doubt she strangled herself.’

Briefly, I’m pleased I was right. But when the lift closes, panic sets in.

I think about Tessa Sharpe my entire shift. Everything I clean or wipe is tainted with the memory of that open-eyed stare, that picture on her driver’s licence. Her red hair. This is a quiet, mundane seaside town. I’ve only been here a couple of months but the only crimes that seem to be committed are drug- or vehicle-related. The odd lawnmower stolen from a garden shed. The odd bit of shoplifting. But this is murder. And it’s too much of a coincidence that she has red hair and blue eyes. And she was my age, almost exactly. And from Bristol.

I get my bag from the staff office and I’m on my way out again when Vanda shouts my name. Well, not my name.

‘Genevieve?’

‘Yeah?’ I turn. ‘I was just going.’

‘You were right about Miss Dead Woman,’ she says under hooded eyes. ‘Fair play. I take it you saw strangled person before, when you work at hospital?’

‘I knew someone who was strangled. I saw what it did to them.’

Vanda says nothing, looks to my feet and back up to my eyes and then nods and I take that as my cue to leave. She probably thinks I’m lying again. I wish I was.

The cleaning fluid smell has got into every cavity – my nostrils, my mouth, my eyes. I need fresh air more than ever. I head out through Reception and through the front door and I’m halfway across the front lawn when I hear young voices I recognise.

‘Mum, it’s the maid!’ says a voice and the two little girls I befriended at breakfast last week come rushing across the grass towards me. ‘Hi, Genevieve!’

‘Hi, girls!’ I say, momentarily forgetting my nausea. They’re wearing T-shirts over their swimming costumes and Kiki’s hair is wet at the very ends. My guess is they’ve spent the morning on the beach. ‘You making the most of the Indian summer, are you? Been swimming?’

‘Yeah,’ says Lola. ‘And we found a crab.’

‘No, I found the crab,’ says Kiki.

‘Wow, where is it? Can I see it?’

‘Mum made us put it back in the sea where it lives.’

‘Well that’s probably for the best. Now he can get back to his friend Ariel, can’t he?’ They both giggle. ‘How’s your knee now, Kiki?’

‘Much better,’ she says, showing off the Lion King plaster that I put on it the other day. ‘It’s not bleeding anymore.’

‘Lucky I carry those on me, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah, Mum never has any in her bag.’

‘It was a lot of blood,’ says Lola, all sheepish. ‘I didn’t like that.’

‘I was a nurse once,’ I tell her proudly. ‘I’m used to it.’

‘We found this,’ says Lola and removes a silver ring with a red heart stone in the middle of it. Costume jewellery but they’re both gazing at it like it’s Meghan Markle’s engagement ring.

‘That’s beautiful,’ I say, as Kiki places it in the palm of my hand. I turn it around and look at it for a bit and hand it back to her.

‘It’s for you,’ says Lola.

‘Oh, I couldn’t take this,’ I say, giving it back.

‘We want you to have it cos your boyfriend hasn’t given you a ring yet. So you can have that one until he does.’

‘I don’t know what to say. Can I give you both a hug?’

They fall against me and I inhale the nape of Lola’s neck – salt and sun cream. ‘Thank you, girls. That’s very kind of you. I wonder where it came from. Maybe from a shipwreck?’

‘Yeah,’ says Kiki. ‘Maybe it was a princess’s and she fell overboard—’

‘—while being kidnapped by a brutish band of pirates.’

‘Yeah!’ says Lola. ‘And the princess is in the sea, trying to swim back to her land.’

‘—but she hasn’t got there yet because the swimming tired her out so she’s stopped off on some deserted island and she’s been captured by a dragon.’

‘And the dragon—’

‘Hi, Genevieve, sorry to keep you,’ comes the voice of the infiltrator – their bouncy-bobbed mother, looming behind them. ‘Were you off?’

‘It’s fine. I’ve always got time to talk to my two friends.’

The girls beam and I want to hug them again so badly tears fill my eyes. I pretend it’s the sea breeze.

‘Thanks again for seeing to her knee the other day.’

‘It’s no bother at all.’

‘I’ve issued a complaint to the hotel manager about glass bottles on that beach. I’m not sure what they can do about it really.’ She turns to them. ‘Girls, make sure you rinse your feet before going in that pool, alright?’

‘Okay,’ they sing-song in unison.

I pull a face and roll my eyes which they both understand and giggle at the woman’s retreating back.

‘What are you two doing now? Do you want to go to the pier with me and play the slots? I can ask your mum if it’s alright?’

‘We’re not allowed any more money today cos we’re having new school shoes.’

‘We’re going to find Dad and uncle Ray at the pool and then later we’re going to the Jungle Café for dinner.’

‘Ahh, never mind. How about tomorrow?’

‘We’re going home tomorrow,’ says Kiki. ‘So we won’t see you anymore.’

I’m sadder than I want them to see.

‘Auntie Sadie’s going to do my hair in French plaits,’ adds Lola.

‘French plaits, eh?’ I say. ‘Well do you know what would go really well in French plaits?’ She shakes her head. I hold out my fists before her. ‘Pick one.’

She picks the right hand and I open it to reveal the packet of unicorn hair slides.

‘Ah, cool!’

‘I didn’t forget you, don’t worry,’ I tell Kiki, offering her the remaining closed fist. She pops it open and takes out the kitten hairbands with a big shy smile. ‘There you go now, you can both look pretty for your meal at the Jungle Café, can’t you?’

‘Thank you, Genevieve,’ they sing-song again.

‘You’re welcome,’ I say and yank softly on Kiki’s soggy ponytail. ‘You better go.’

It’s only when the girls are out of sight that I realise I still feel sick. I smell Tessa Sharpe again, wafting out of the window of Room 29. My aloneness feels so obvious the further I walk along the seafront. I’m completely unnerved. Every few steps I’m looking over my shoulder. I cross the road to the arcades to see if Mia or James or Carlie are in there playing basketball or driving neon cars down desert highways but there’s no sign of any of them. They must all be away for half term.

And the breeze is so sharp it cuts across my cheeks and stings my eyes. And the wind whips up my dye-blackened hair.

Not my hair.

My real hair is red, and I see Tessa Sharpe’s red hair in my mind’s eye again. Red hair and blue eyes. She didn’t arrive with anybody; she wasn’t intending to leave with anybody. Whoever killed her had seen her around the hotel. I can’t not think it. I can’t pretend this time.

Whoever killed her thought she was me. Which means I was right. They’ve found me. They know exactly where I am. And when they discover that they’ve killed the wrong person, they’ll come for me.

First day of the Easter holidays, eighteen years ago…

4

I’m on the train, little suitcase next to me on the seat, legs swinging freely. I’ve got my Jelly Tots and my books and Miss Whiskers beside me, and Dad is sitting opposite, wearing his Bristol City away shirt, playing with his phone. If I close my eyes, this could be the Hogwarts Express. We could be going back on the first day of term. I’m on a huge red steam engine roaring through the misty countryside. I’ve bought some Chocolate Frogs and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans and Miss Whiskers is a real cat, like Hermione’s cat, Crookshanks, and therefore, magical. But Dad keeps talking to me and there are no parents allowed on the Hogwarts Express so I can’t fully imagine it.

‘You excited?’ says Dad, fidgeting with his phone, turning it round and round in his hands. I nod and carry on colouring my picture. ‘What are you and Foy going to get up to this Easter then?’

‘Uncle Stu is going to do us an Easter egg hunt. And Isaac’s going to teach me to ride his bike. And Chelle’s going to do some plaits in my hair. And we’ll probably play over the churchyard and in our castle.’

‘The castle?’

‘Our castle in the trees.’

‘I thought that was Paddy’s treehouse?’

‘He doesn’t want it anymore. He said we could have it. So now it’s our castle.’

‘Oh right.’

A man with a black box on his hip stops by our table and asks to see our tickets and I get mine from my strawberry purse dangling around my neck.

‘Are you staying with me this time?’ I ask Dad when the man has passed by.

‘No, love, I’ve got to work.’

‘I thought you didn’t have a job?’

‘I’ve got a job.’

‘At the phone place?’

‘No, I didn’t like that one.’

‘With the man on the market stall?’

‘No, I didn’t like that one either.’

‘With those men who came to the house last night?’

‘What men?’ He frowns. Oops. I was supposed to be in bed. ‘Oh those weren’t men – that was the Three Little Pigs.’ I chuckle. ‘They’re my mates. They keep asking me to build them some proper houses cos the wolf keeps blowing theirs down.’

‘Liar, liar, pants in the drier.’

‘It’s true, Squish. They’re going to pay me lots of money so we can have a brilliant Christmas this year.’

‘I thought you liked working at the phone place.’

‘Nah. The boss was a bit of an ogre.’

‘What, a real ogre?’

‘Yeah, a proper ogre. She’d eat whole humans for her lunch.’

‘Urgh.’

‘And she lived under a bridge and everything.’ He checks his phone screen.

‘Trolls live under bridges, Dad.’ The train goes under a bridge and all goes to black, briefly. ‘Like that one.’ ‘How come we came by train this time?’

‘The car’s being serviced.’

‘Can I have something to eat? The lady’s coming with the trolley.’

‘Wait ’til we get to the station. Auntie Chelle will get you something in town.’

The train cannot roll into Taunton Station quickly enough and I’m already in the aisle with my case when it comes to a stop. My knees almost buckling with excitement, I look through every window, whizzing through the faces on the platform for signs of Auntie Chelle. And then I see her. She’s in a red wrap-around dress and a blue cardigan and petrol blue boots with buckles. I can’t see Foy. The disappointment comes upon me like a sicky belch. Foy said she was coming. Where is she?