Best Served Cold Read online

  First published in 2017

  Copyright © Charity Norman 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone:(61 2) 8425 0100

  Email:[email protected]

  Web:www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  eISBN 978 1 76063 819 1

  Set by Post Pre-press Group, Australia

  Cover design: Julia Eim

  Cover image: Evgeniya_m/iStock

  Contents

  Best Served Cold

  Extract from See You in September

  PROLOGUE

  ONE

  Payback is just a click away. In exactly one minute, she’s going to avenge Rex Jones.

  Tara sits cross-legged on her bed, in a London attic room with hideous floral wallpaper. Her index finger hovers three inches above the trackpad. She’s staring at the screen. Summoning her courage. Counting down.

  Sixty seconds. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight.

  But. But.

  Now that the adrenaline has worn off, in the sober chill of morning, there are so many buts.

  Fifty-five. Fifty-four.

  It’s begun to rain half-heartedly, drops spattering onto the skylight directly above her head. She doesn’t look up.

  Fifty. Forty-nine.

  Gotta do this.

  •

  When Tara was at school, there were teachers who did the job because they liked young people; maybe they even had a passion for Maths or Chemistry or whatever dire subject they peddled. Mr Bradley, for example, who had his English class reading war poets and almost enjoying it, or Mrs Librarian Pugh, with her pervy smile. Then there were the power-crazed sadists. They didn’t like children, they didn’t like teaching, they didn’t even like their subject. What they craved was power. Case in point: Miss Adele Roberts.

  Miss Roberts burst upon the third-form French class more than seven years ago—funny, fast and furious. Dark brows shaped into a permanent expression of irony, lips a study in crimson perfection. She had a habit of widening her eyes as she talked, as though unveiling some wicked and delicious secret. The scent of leather boots and sophistication lingered in a room long after she’d left it. Miss Roberts was the talk of the bus-stop crowd.

  ‘How old d’you reckon she is? Twenty?’

  ‘Nah, thirty at least.’

  ‘My dad’s got a crush on her. Says I have to do French GCSE.’

  It wasn’t just the dads. Half the third form, including Tara, had a crush on the woman. The other half wanted to be her.

  Then there was Rex Jones.

  He sat in the back row, by the window. Rex. Funny name for a kid. Funny name for anyone except maybe a dog, although, come to think of it, he was a bit like a starving mongrel. It was as though his body had forgotten to grow—except his ears, which stuck out like satellite dishes on the sides of his head. Bony hands and arms, ugly patches of eczema. His clothes never seemed clean, he never had a biro or calculator that worked and his school bag was falling apart. According to Tilly, Mr and Mrs Jones were hopeless gamblers who spent their days down at the betting shop. Tilly’s mother worked in the school office. She was famously indiscreet, which was how Tilly came to know everything about everyone.

  Rex wasn’t bullied, but he didn’t have any friends. People left him alone. He had pulled his desk away from everyone else’s; made himself into a little island of awkwardness. Tara sometimes tried to talk to him, but it was hard work because he blushed and replied in monosyllables. He loved oranges. Sometimes he brought one to school and spent lunchtime sitting on the wall outside the gym, eating it in slow motion, piece by piece. On his birthday he proudly produced a box of oranges for the class.

  One break time he caught Tara sobbing over some stupid argument with Tilly. He thought for a while, then went to his desk and came back holding something.

  ‘You can borrow these tonight,’ he said, putting it into her hand. ‘But they’re a secret. Okay? You won’t tell anyone?’

  It was a cloth bag about the size of a packet of crisps, striped brown and blue with a drawstring top. Tara looked inside and saw a family of wooden dolls, each the size of her little finger. Painted-on faces, knitting wool for hair and scraps of cloth sewn into tiny clothes.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Um, what are they?’

  ‘Worry dolls.’ Rex was twisting from side to side, not meeting Tara’s eye. ‘My gran made them for me. She’s dead now. Tell ’em your troubles, put them under your pillow and they’ll do all your worrying for you.’

  She’d never heard him string so many words together. The bell went and people burst into the room, chucking a ball around. Rex immediately sat down at his desk while Tara shoved the precious bag into her pocket.

  She took the dolls home that night, although she and Tilly had made up that afternoon. She didn’t mention Rex’s secret to any of her friends. God no. They’d be like a pack of wolves. The only person she could trust was her older sister, Cassy.

  Cassy was perfect. Everyone said so. She’d finished school already, had a place at Durham to study Law next year, and was working in the local Oxfam shop. She cared about the flotsam and jetsam of life. She cared about people like Rex.

  Cassy sat on Tara’s bed, her hair in a plait over her shoulder, gently arranging the dolls in a row on the pillow. There were seven of them. Tara told her about Rex: how he never had any clean clothes, and his eczema seemed to go untreated, and his parents spent their days at the betting shop.

  ‘He doesn’t seem clean,’ she said. ‘To be honest, I don’t really want his grubby bag under my pillow.’

  Cassy held a tiny doll to her chest. ‘But what a gift he’s given you! These are his only friends. He’s trusted you with the most precious thing he owns.’

  So Tara slept with the dolls under her pillow, and the next day she brought an orange to school for Rex. They sat on the wall together and shared it.

  Miss Roberts seemed to sense something in Rex Jones, something that maddened her. The Miss Roberts–Rex thing started small: occasionally mocking his attempts at a French accent or reading his homework mistakes aloud, her eyes gleaming with what Tara began to recognise as bloodlust. You could imagine those white teeth biting into a soft throat.

  Then came the more personal attacks.

  ‘Rex’—beaming at the drooping boy—‘do you have any shampoo at home? Yes? Well, may I suggest you use it?’

  ‘Rex’—hurling his exercise book onto his desk—‘did you spill your dinner over this? Revolting. I had to clean it with disinfectant.’

  ‘Rex’—grimacing at the scaly inflammation on his hands and arms—‘is that eczema contagious?’

  The horrible, shaming thing was that nobody stood up for their classmate. The sheer power of Miss Roberts’s charisma made her unstoppable. People laughed. They laughed because they didn’t want to be the next victim, and because they wanted to please their idol. Even Tara laughed at first. They were all co-conspirators. Not malicious, just weak.

&
nbsp; One day it was Prisha’s turn to clean the whiteboard. She was one of those very tall girls who shoot up to nearly six foot at the age of eleven and spend the next three years hanging their heads like giant, self-conscious snowdrops.

  ‘Rex!’ cried Miss Roberts, who was in a playful mood. ‘Hop up and help Prisha clean the board. Go on, quickly! Little and large.’

  The class was already giggling when Rex stood up. It was like something out of a circus: clumsy beanpole next to scrawny mongrel, his head level with her chest. Both children looked as though they wished they were dead. Tara pictured blood oozing from Miss Roberts’s crimson lips, and shivered.

  ‘What’s up, sis?’ asked Cassy over dinner that evening. ‘You look as though you’ve got the worries of the world on your shoulders.’

  ‘Miss Roberts is a fucking evil vampire,’ said Tara. ‘Someone should put a stake through her heart.’

  ‘Language,’ said her father.

  Hypocrite. Tara had heard him use that word and worse. She scowled and refused to say any more. She didn’t know how to explain what was going on with Miss Roberts. Not even to Cassy. She simply had no words to describe how weak and ashamed it made her feel, sitting there while people were publicly humiliated.

  The next morning she brought another orange to school for Rex. The eczema had now spread to his lips, forming a blistering moustache. She watched him smuggle the striped bag into his desk.

  ‘D’you tell your worry dolls about Vampire Roberts?’ she asked.

  ‘I tell ’em everything.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Stuff.’ He rubbed at the angry skin on his upper lip. ‘You know. Stuff.’

  As the year passed, the laughter and the tyranny were as relentless as a leaking tap. Drip-drip-drip. Tara seemed to remain one of Miss Roberts’s favourites even when she answered back or was caught cheating in a vocab test. Rex never answered back; never missed a day of school either. But his clothes got dirtier, and the rash crept up the back of his neck and around his ears in a painful tidemark. He looked like a mangy dog, cowering in a corner, waiting to be kicked.

  The worst thing happened on a Thursday towards the end of the Easter term.

  On that day, Miss Roberts swept into the room with joyous energy. ‘Last week’s test!’ she cried, handing out books with radiant smiles for her pets. ‘Good, Tilly. Nice effort, Tara! Rex . . . oh dear. What a mess. Do it again at lunchtime. Put it away for now. Go on, put it away.’

  She stood by his shoulder while he lifted the lid of his desk. When she pounced, she was fast as a striking snake; so fast that Tara never even saw her move. The next moment she was waving something above her head: a little striped bag.

  ‘No,’ whispered Tara. ‘No, no, no. Don’t.’

  ‘What’s this?’ asked the teacher.

  When Rex didn’t reply, she undid the string. Looked in. Lit up. ‘Rex! You keep dolls in your desk?’

  Rex’s ears were flaming beacons, his eyes reddening. He tried to wipe them with the back of both hands but tears kept coming.

  ‘How old are you?’ asked Miss Roberts. ‘Three?’

  Rage surged through Tara’s veins. She could taste it, hot and acidic in her throat. She longed to rescue Rex, to sweep him up and fly out of the window. She’d had enough of her own powerlessness.

  ‘Give them back!’ she yelled, leaping to her feet. ‘His gran made them. She’s dead.’

  But hardly anyone was listening: Prisha, Tilly, a couple of the others. The rest were too busy laughing.

  ‘Rex! For God’s sake!’

  ‘What a baby!’

  There was a hysterical note to their laughter now, as though they winced at the cruelty but were too enthralled with their leader to stop. Rex folded his arms on his desk and buried his face in them.

  Tenderly, delicately, the teacher scattered the dolls around the boy’s head, a grimace of intense pleasure curling her mouth. Sick, Tara thought. Sick. Evil. She longed to slap the woman’s face. She imagined the crack of palm on cheek, the mischievous dimples wiped away.

  Miss Roberts returned to her whiteboard and had them reciting verbs—‘Je suis, tu es, il est’—as though she hadn’t just trampled all over somebody’s soul. Rex didn’t look up for the rest of the lesson. As soon as the bell went, he lunged for his bag and stumbled out of the room, leaving the seven dolls where they lay—on the desk, on the floor. Tara gathered them up. They looked anxious despite their smiling mouths. Perhaps they were carrying too many troubles; perhaps it was all too heavy, even for them. She tucked them away in their bag, and back into Rex’s desk. She felt sick.

  I’ll get you, Miss Roberts, she promised silently. One day, when you’re not my teacher, I’ll get you.

  That night she rolled around in a furious tangle of sheets, longing for revenge. There must be revenge! Cassy was away that week, on a package holiday in Corfu with a couple of girlfriends. Tara had never missed her sister so much. At about four in the morning she sent her a text—r u awake?—but there was no answer. Cassy always turned her phone to silent overnight.

  Tara brought an orange to school the next morning. She hung around by Rex’s desk, rehearsing the comforting things she’d say to him, but he never turned up.

  When Cassy arrived home and heard the story she was gratifyingly horrified. She suggested they get in touch with Rex, maybe ask him to come over for a day. This was easier said than done. He wasn’t on Facebook. The sisters spent an hour looking for him in the phone book but there were hundreds of Joneses in their part of London. They couldn’t ring them all.

  He didn’t come to school again before the end of term and by the time the following term began, all trace of Rex had been rubbed out. His desk was empty, his gym bag gone from his peg.

  ‘He’s been sent to live with an auntie in Wales,’ said Tilly. ‘Not coming back. Turns out his dad was fiddling with him.’

  ‘Fiddling?’

  ‘Fiddling.’ Tilly pointed downwards with both her forefingers. ‘You know. Paedo. He’s going to prison.’

  As Tara opened her desk, something blue and brown caught her eye: Rex’s dolls. There was a message too, scrawled in his terrible handwriting. Purple felt tip. He’d never managed to find a biro that worked.

  TARA. FOR YOU. BYE.

  Underneath these words he’d drawn a smiley face. It was that bloody smiley face that had made her cry.

  •

  Forty. Thirty-nine.

  Yes, no. Yes. No.

  The cursor hovers over the send icon, a stylised paper dart. A poison-tipped dart.

  Thirty-seven. Thirty-six. Thirty-five.

  Seven years later, the thought of that note still makes her want to cry. The kid had a shit life but he still drew smiley faces. The memories are so vivid. She can smell erasers and the mint of Tilly’s chewing gum; that sickly polish the cleaners used on the parquet floors; Miss Roberts’s leather boots. Rage and horror still charge through her veins. She can see a scruffy boy trying to wipe his eyes.

  She gave up French after the Rex thing, switching to German with dumpy Frau Weber who liked to talk about her childhood in Berlin. Tara never heard from Rex again, though she’s often wondered what happened to him. Perhaps he’s studying to be a nuclear physicist, a ski instructor, maybe a pilot. I’ll bet he isn’t though. Bet he’s being bullied by some psycho of a boss.

  She’s heard plenty about Miss Adele Roberts. Oh, yes. Still teaching at the same school, still preying on the weakest in the herd. Tilly’s little sister takes French and she thinks Miss Roberts is a goddess. The woman is standing as an MP in the general election, so her mug shot is on posters everywhere. You can’t get away from that vampire smile. A sociopath, grasping at power. It’s like watching the rise of the Third Reich.

  It was Tilly’s sister who first brought her the news that some poor sod was about to marry Miss Roberts. Then there was an article in the local paper: PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATE ADELE ROBERTS TO WED INVESTMENT BANKER GRAEME KIRKPATRICK, with a picture of
the happy couple walking hand in hand down the High Street. Models of respectability. Him: a dark suit and a smug smile. Ginger hair, receding. A chin roughly the size and shape of a brick. Her: completely fake, same as she always was.

  Thirty-three. Thirty-two.

  A couple of years after the Rex thing, Tara’s own world fell apart.

  The nightmare began when Cassy went backpacking during the summer holidays. Thailand and New Zealand. Tara still obsesses about their last day together. She’s tried to block it out with alcohol and ecstasy and a string of useless boyfriends, but it’s no good. The memory clings to her, especially in that lonely swamp between wakefulness and sleep: a happy drive to the airport, ruined by a family row. Tara is to blame. It’s all her fault. She opened her big mouth and said something stupid, and the day went to shit.

  Just before Cassy disappeared through security, she stopped and turned back. She smiled at Tara—smiled at them all, but especially at Tara.

  ‘See you in September,’ she said.

  But they didn’t see her in September. They never saw her again. She found God in New Zealand. Found God, and lost her mind. She fell in with some religious crazies and within weeks she’d broken all contact with everyone she’d ever known. She deleted her Facebook page and email address. She disowned her family as though they were pure evil.

  They’d lost her. She might as well be dead.

  ‘I wish she was dead,’ Tara would whisper to the worry dolls, before she put them under her pillow each night. ‘I wish she’d been killed in a plane crash. I hate her. Bitch.’ But it wasn’t true. The dolls knew it wasn’t true. They smiled sadly, their eyes wide.

  Tara’s parents split up after Cassy disappeared—well, that wasn’t surprising. The air was deadly in their home, poisoned by fumes of guilt and resentment and hurt, and in the end her father left. Tara dropped out of school because nothing mattered anymore. She left home too, moved into this mouldy bedsit, the attic room with the gaudy wallpaper. Since then she’s worked in a warehouse, a care home and two pubs. Six months ago an ex-boyfriend got her a job at Fallen Angels, where he’s a bouncer. Not exactly her dream job, but it’s been paying the rent.