Murder at Twilight Read online

  For the Children of Abbots Worthy

  I’ll start at the beginning, because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

  Although that would be me falling in the river when I was two and him falling in afterwards because he thought I was waving, not drowning. That was the first time I met him.

  Apparently.

  No, I’ll start at the second beginning.

  The one before where it all kicked off.

  That one.

  Mum and I are having the same row we always have. About changing the way we live. I want to change everything; she doesn’t want to change anything.

  “For goodness’, sake, Viv!” says Mum, lobbing her tea bag into the sink. “There’s no point in you taking the bus. I’m already driving past your school on the way to Noah’s!” She bangs her mug on to the kitchen table. “And that – is that. Now, are you ready?”

  “Why doesn’t Noah take the bus too?”

  Mum doesn’t answer.

  “Because he’s too precious – that’s why, isn’t it?”

  “Stop it, Viv. It’s all hard enough without you–” Mum shakes her head from side to side, “making it worse.”

  Tai, our dog, yaps and dances around the table legs. He thinks we’re playing.

  Too angry to even stroke him, I yank up my tights and jam my feet into my battered school shoes without undoing the laces. It’s always like this. We always please them. We’re always going to have to fit in with the Belcombes. Because Mum was Noah’s nanny. Mum wiped baby Noah’s bottom, read baby Noah his bedtime stories, patched up baby Noah’s cuts and bruises. She still drives him to school, buys his clothes, makes him practise the violin. Noah is Mum’s job. I’m – well, I’m me.

  I shoulder my school bag.

  And he’s super precious because he’s the last of the family line. There isn’t another one. Noah Nathaniel Simeon Belcombe, only child, otherwise known as Viscount Alchester, is first in line to the family throne. He’s an endangered species.

  I’m plain old Vivienne Lin.

  I crash through the kitchen door, letting it slam back against the wall, and stomp down the stone steps into the leaves swirling around the main courtyard.

  “But you didn’t even touch your toast!” shouts Mum behind me.

  At the top of the steps Tai tilts his head to one side, looking hopefully at my breakfast sagging in Mum’s hand.

  I don’t answer.

  “Viv! You’ll be starving by lunchtime.”

  I still don’t answer.

  Behind me, Mum sighs.

  “Bye, Tai,” she says, closing the door to our little flat above the old stables and sweeping past me to the shiny green Mini parked on the gravel in front of the main house. Lights flash and the Belcombes’ third car makes a smug little electronic bleep as she unlocks it.

  “Get in, please, Viv,” she mutters.

  I lean on the front passenger door and slowly her eyes come up to meet mine. “Back seat, please, Viv. Now, please.”

  I stay put, conscious that defiance is making me tremble slightly, and I wait, still leaning on the outside of the car, while she lets herself into the big house and comes out a moment later, followed by Noah, gleaming in his dry-cleaned St David’s uniform, his new shoes polished, his blond curls brushed into a golden froth.

  “Morning, Noah,” says Mum, pulling a tight smile.

  “Morning, Marion,” he says, coming round to the front of the car and nudging me out of the way, before yanking the door open and throwing his school bag inside. Following the bag, he squeezes himself into the front seat and immediately starts to fiddle with the stereo.

  “I wonder,” says Mum, standing at the driver’s door. “I wonder if you two could manage a journey, together, in the back?”

  “What?” says Noah, his stupid forelock of curls flopping over his face. “But I always sit in the front!”

  “You do at the moment,” says Mum, super calmly, “but you didn’t used to – if you remember, it’s only been a month … since you…” She stops.

  “Since you threw my bag out of the window on the main road,” I add, my arms tightly folded. “And didn’t get out to pick it up, and didn’t apologise.”

  “Viv,” snaps Mum. “So I thought we could return to the way it was before. The two of you together, getting on nicely in the back.” She hesitates. “It’s fairer.”

  Part of me wants to whoop with joy. Mum, standing up for my rights over the little lordship, holding a valiant flag up against the tyranny of the family that has everything. And part of me wants to climb into the boot and sit in the dog hairs to avoid sitting next to him.

  He’s a bully and I don’t want to share a seat.

  If he could disappear, right here, right in front of me and Mum – I wouldn’t shed a single tear. I’d laugh.

  “No,” he says, clicking his seatbelt across his chest. “No. I won’t.”

  Mum’s jaw drops open.

  “Noah Belcombe. Would you please sit in the back of the car so that Viv can sit next to you. Please.”

  He gets out his iPhone and starts to swipe through his photos.

  “Don’t worry, Mum. He’s just a pig – an inbred pig,” I say, walking round to the driver’s side and pulling the seat forward. “I wouldn’t sit next to him if you paid me.”

  Noah swings round as I’m about to get into the seat behind him. “Take that back, you little –” And he lunges for my hair.

  I’ve got faster reactions than him – always have had – and I thrust my hand out to stop him, but the outer side of my palm connects with the underside of his nose.

  “Ow!” He yowls and blood explodes across the car.

  “Oh, god! Viv – Noah – stop it!” says Mum, reaching for tissues.

  But actually, I don’t want to stop it and I punch Noah’s nose just a little bit more, so that the blood sprays down the front of his trousers.

  Mum jumps into the front seat and closes the door. I don’t think she wants Noah’s parents to see what’s going on in the car, although in the last ten years we’ve had some pretty spectacular fights – and she can’t have kept them all hidden.

  “Oh, no.” She dabs at him with kitchen roll that she finds in the glove compartment. “Oh, Viv – you idiot.”

  “Not my fault,” I say, settling back, feeling horrible mixed emotions about Mum scrabbling to clean Noah’s face balanced with enormous satisfaction in having caused him so much discomfort.

  “You’re dangerous, you are!” Noah splutters, pinching the top of his nose to stop the blood.

  Mum looks anxiously at the fall-out. A mass of bloody tissues and kitchen roll bounce across the car. Noah’s white shirt is still white, but his jacket has dark marks on it; his bag too. “It’s not too bad,” she says, starting the car and rolling gently out of the drive. “It’ll stop in a minute.”

  “Not bad – I should call the police on you!” he says, jabbing his finger in my direction.

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “Like calling someone inbred when they come from one of the most inbred families in the world is wrong? I’m just being scientific. The gene pool in your ridiculous family must be—”

  “Shut up, Viv,” barks Mum. “And apologise.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” I say, crossing my arms and staring out of the window. “He started it. He wouldn’t share.”

  “Silence! Both of you!” yells Mum as we pull out on to the road.

  No one speaks as we glide through the woods down the long, long drive. Connor Evans, the gamekeeper, is stoking a bonfire on the edge of the grass and he waves at us. None of us wave back. I would, but honestly, I’m too angry. Mum pauses as the electric gates open and we pull out into the lane, leaving the Blackwater Estate behind.
The village flashes past and soon we’re in the suburbs of Alchester. Mum negotiates the traffic and still we sit in silence, listening to the tick-tick of the indicators. Noah texts me.

  I’ll get you later, he says.

  In your dreams, troll I text back.

  And the beginning of the chain-link fence that surrounds my school appears on our right.

  We approach Herschel High and Mum pulls into the usual lay-by, leaps out and tips her seat forward. Without a word to Noah, I clamber out.

  “Bye, Mum,” I say, turning my back on the car and walking into school, ears burning, face burning, everything burning.

  I’m still furious when I bump into Nadine, Sabriya and Joe by the bus shelter. Nadine takes one look at my face and says, “Noah?”

  “He’s a…” I can’t actually think of a word.

  “An amoeba,” says Joe.

  “A slug,” says Sabriya.

  “A school sausage roll, with school gravy,” says Nadine.

  “A school-mash-and-roast-beef smoothie,” says Joe, and they laugh. Although I don’t, because inside, I seem to have lost my sense of humour.

  “Yes,” I say. “He is. He’s all of those things.”

  We join the living stream of Herschel High students pouring in through the gates. The two-minute bell rings.

  “Hey, Viv, you’ve got ketchup or ink or something on your hand,” says Joe as we spill into the corridor.

  “Oh! Yuk.” I wipe it off on my bag. “It’s Noah’s blood. I actually punched him.”

  Sabriya raises her eyebrows. “Noah’s blood – for real?”

  I nod. “Yup,” I say, a blush racing up my face. “And he bled like a … a…”

  “…pig?” suggests Joe, shoving me towards my tutor room, just as the bell begins to ring.

  * * *

  “Vivienne Lin!” calls Miss Parker.

  “Here,” I say.

  She marks me down in the register and I look at my timetable. Double Maths next. OK, I can do this. I’m not bad at maths, and if I want to become an architect, I’ve got to get a good grade. If I could just get Noah out of my head and start breathing properly everything would be fine.

  I peek down at my bag. There’s the dark stain from his blood. I wish I’d spotted it earlier – I could have washed it off before Tutor.

  Mindfulness – isn’t that what they call it? I stare out of the window. Autumn sunlight streams through towards me, blinding me. I try to concentrate on the little scraps of dust floating in the sunbeams. I try to control my breathing but an image of Noah’s curly blond hair, catching the sunlight, creeps into my mind. The hair thing’s always happened, and when we were little, all the adults would go ahhhh. How sweet, and then they’d look at me sideways and say, I bet she’s clever.

  Well, I am. I’m cleverer than him, I always have been, and I haven’t had any of his advantages. For a start, I’m here at crummy old Herschel High – not perfect St David’s. I’m plain old Vivienne Lin, he’s Viscount Alchester – lord-of-the-manor-to-be. Then there’s the squillions of acres and the whole feudal thing of everyone treating you like a lord. It’s like a place that got stuck. No one can ever leave working there because they live in houses that belong to the Belcombes and there are no other houses to live in because the Belcombes own everything for miles. It’s like everything you ever earn goes back to the people you earn it from. I’ve heard them all complaining, especially the people with large families to support – they have to rent bigger cottages, which means more rent, less money left over. That’s why I want to be an architect and build affordable housing for me and for others. And I want to build my own modern house on my own patch of land. I want to be my own person.

  My mindfulness has flown straight out of the window and I look down at the bloodstain on my bag. I wonder if his nose is still sore? I feel a slight twinge of guilt. Very slight. Noah does get nosebleeds. Always has. But they’ve mostly been to do with altitude, not fists. Examining the back of my hand for spatter, I think of all the blood shooting out across the car – there was a lot. It was spectacular.

  The bell rings and we fill the corridors, queuing to get into lessons, blocking the doorways. To get to Maths I’m going to have to go past the toilets, so I rush along the corridor and dive into the ladies’, running my bag under the cold tap and washing my hands with a thick glob of pink goo soap. It takes minutes rather than seconds so I get into Maths after everyone’s sitting down.

  “Nice to see you at last, Vivienne,” says Mr Marlow, swinging in his chair, arms raised above his head revealing two perfect circles of sweat on his checked shirt. I try not to look, or sniff, but can’t help myself and begin to laugh as the stale sweat reaches me. Maths is hard enough without this.

  “Can we open the window, sir?” I ask.

  “Just sit down, please, Vivienne,” he says, leaning forward and clunking his chair.

  “But,” says Sonny next to me, “it’s really hot in here, sir.”

  “Yes, sir,” says Juliet. “I can hardly breathe.”

  “Yes, sir – it’s like, boiling in here,” says someone.

  “So stuffy,” says someone else.

  “Can we at least take off our jackets?”

  “Sit down, please, Vivienne, and quiet, everyone,” says Mr Marlow, his arms down, the offending armpits out of sight, but not out of smell.

  “But, sir,” I say. “Windows, please, sir – or we won’t be able to concentrate.”

  Mr Marlow stands and points at the clock. “I’ve wasted seven minutes of my life waiting for you lot to be lesson ready,” he says. “Seven minutes. That’s seven minutes I won’t get back.” He sits on top of his desk and taps his fingers against the side.

  “And I’ve wasted seven minutes of mine breathing in your stinking armpits,” I whisper, slightly too loud in the sudden silence.

  * * *

  I don’t really mind detention. Apart from anything else it means I won’t be stuck in the car going home with Noah. I text Mum to tell her I won’t be ready on time and she texts back an emoji of a bus.

  Fair enough.

  Today, we’re litter-picking with Señora Delgado. She’s actually lovely and when I tell her how I ended up in detention, she laughs. “Oh, you are so naughty, Vivienne. Poor Mr Marlow.”

  But because detention overruns, I miss the late school bus.

  That means I’m going to have to walk into the centre of town. And catch the ordinary bus home.

  And the beautiful sunlight that’s been streaming all day suddenly fades, and it feels like winter and I wish that I’d eaten the toast Mum made, or grabbed my bobble hat or gone home at normal time in the car.

  A police car screams down the road towards St David’s.

  Shivering, I clutch my jacket across my chest and hunch up my shoulders. There isn’t much wind but it feels as if there is, and the cold creeps in through my neck and my cuffs and everywhere. Tights just aren’t enough protection when the temperature’s plummeting and my legs turn to lumps of ice.

  By the time I reach the bus station, I’m frozen.

  I get out my phone and send Mum a text to say I’ll be on the next bus, but she doesn’t reply.

  Then I send Nadine a photo of my frozen feet.

  She sends me one of her feet in slippers on her duvet.

  I send her one of the scary woman in pink sitting on the line of chairs.

  She sends me one of her cat.

  I send her a selfie of my head against the announcement board.

  She sends me one of a cheese toastie.

  The bus comes and I have to wait while thousands of people with bus passes fill all the easy seats.

  I sit at the very back and slowly warm up as the bus wanders through the edge of town. Then the house lights fade away and it’s just cold countryside out there.

  We stop in Easton Abbas. An old woman with a trolley slowly shuffles to the front of the bus and gets out. She vanishes in the gloom and the bus pulls away, lunging through po
tholes, speeding around the bends in the road, and tossing me back and forth along the back seat until I feel sick. Finally we rumble into Blackwater Abbas, where I ring the bell and lurch down the middle towards the door. No one else gets off and I’m surprised to see the reflective strip of a police car caught in the bus headlights as it slips past. There are never any police around here. Nothing ever happens.

  I wait as the bus pulls away, the roar of the engine and the glow of the rear lights vanishing in the direction of Lower Marston. Pulling up the collar of my jacket, I run past the few houses and along the footpathless lane as far as the gates of Blackwater House. There are no lights, but I’m used to this road in total darkness. And it isn’t totally dark, there’s a candy sunset streaking the western sky. Reaching the gates, I stop and punch in the entry code. With a groan they open and let me through.

  An owl hoots.

  The light from my phone seems over-bright as I text Mum.

  Any chance of a lift from the gates?

  But there’s no answer, so I try ringing. Again, no answer. It goes to voicemail straight away. That’s odd. Mum keeps her phone switched on all the time. In case of Noah. He may not be four any more, but he still seems to need her holding his hand.

  She’s probably helping him with his homework. Or taking his jacket to the dry cleaners.

  Putting my phone back in my inside pocket, I pause for a moment, listening to crunching noises all around me. At first I can’t work out what they are, and then I realise they must be ice crystals forming. My jacket has no more warmth to give. No amount of dragging it across my chest is going to make any difference, and the pockets are stupid not-real ones so all I can do is jam each hand inside the cuff of the other sleeve and clutch my arms across my chest. It’s like wearing a cold straitjacket.

  Off to my right are the glowing remains of Connor’s bonfire, and for a moment I stand with my toes in the ash, hoping the feeble embers might do something to warm me up.

  They don’t.

  Right now, I’m kind of regretting that detention. I could have come home with Mum and Noah in the Mini. Instead, there’s the whole drive to walk. Though – I glance off to the left – there are the bushes; I could take a short cut. Leaving the fire and brushing through the beech hedge, I strike out over the lumpy verge where there’s a kind of badger footpath. The ground crunches under my feet and when I look up at the sky it’s perfectly clear and there’s a star already twinkling. It’s going to be seriously cold tonight.