‘Hey!’
His shout took her by surprise and she stopped dead on the pavement. He was back in his van and had pulled up beside her, leaning out of the window. Her heart galloped, her hands squeezing into tight knots of expectation. ‘What?’
He looked cross now. ‘Is it you who’s been leaving me all those made-up reviews, by the way?’
Eliza rubbed her eyes, trying to dash away the tears. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she managed to reply, nose in the air.
‘I think you do,’ he said. ‘And I’d appreciate it if you could take them down. It’s not a game, all right? I’ve done nothing wrong. Ask your mum if you don’t believe me.’
He drove away, leaving her standing there shaken, unable to breathe momentarily, the very ground seeming to shudder and fracture beneath her feet. His van disappeared around the corner and she was alone. She felt as if she were an image on a computer screen, disintegrating into pixels before reforming in a new, unknown shape; her old self gone, invalidated. But who remained?
The wind rushed around her again, tugging at her long chestnut hair, and she shoved her hands in her pockets, bowed her head and began walking back to the bus stop. One last tear dripped from her chin on to the pavement and she gave an angry sniff. She had come here hoping for answers but had been left facing more questions than ever. So now what?
Chapter Two
While her daughter fumed tearfully on the bus back from Whitby, Lara Spencer was at work, sitting as usual in the passenger seat of her dual-control car, as one student after another stalled the engine, crunched the gears or, if she was lucky, pootled slowly and without incident around the quiet backstreets of Scarborough. When she’d initially trained to be a driving instructor, she had optimistically imagined herself jaunting about all over the place, but in truth, she tended to patrol the same old suburban estates week in, week out. Driving for a living but never actually getting anywhere, endless three-point turns in silent cul-de-sacs: that was about the sum of Lara’s life, really. But look, it paid the mortgage, it meant she could keep herself and Eliza warm and fed, and that was all that mattered. Right?
On this particular Thursday afternoon, eighteen-year-old Jake Watson was having his lesson and he was always entertaining company, if sometimes eccentric. ‘Have you ever, like, tried to kill someone with your eyes?’ he asked, midway round a roundabout, as if to confirm Lara’s private opinion of him.
‘Indicate left now,’ she replied. ‘Next exit. That’s it.’ She waited until he was safely through the junction before returning to his inquiry. ‘Say that again. You were asking me about, er, killing people? With my eyes?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, jerkily changing gear from second to third. ‘You know, by really staring at them? Like this—’
‘Eyes on the road, Jake,’ she said automatically as he swung his head towards her, presumably to demonstrate. Christ, a death glare was the last thing you wanted when you were trying to teach a young person how to operate a heavy piece of machinery moving at thirty miles an hour. ‘Concentrate on what you’re doing. Check your mirror. Look – the car behind you is overtaking.’
He tutted. ‘Someone’s in a hurry,’ he said, sounding more like a critical fifty-something than a teenager. ‘Idiot’s breaking the speed limit, too.’
She hid a smile at his self-righteous tone. ‘Thank goodness you’re far too sensible a driver to even think about doing such a thing.’
‘I know, right? Anyway – have you?’
‘What, tried to kill someone by staring at them? No,’ she said firmly. Amusement rose in her nonetheless. This was what she knew of Jake Watson so far: he lived in a pleasant street of 50s-built bungalows where people tended their front gardens and kept their cars gleaming. His mum sometimes waved him off from the doorway and on more than one occasion had been wearing an apron, indicating a bout of pastry-making or some other domestic goddessery. So far, so pedestrian – and yet here he was now, asking her innocently, startlingly, about killing people. Despite her instinct that this could be straying into inappropriate conversational realms, she was intrigued enough that it was impossible not to ask, ‘Why, have you?’
He shrugged. ‘I mean, I gave my French teacher a seizure with a look, back in Year 10, so . . . you know. Kind of, I guess. It was pretty bad.’
‘Gosh.’ Lara gently took the wheel where he was starting to drift across the central road markings. ‘Stay in lane,’ she said, guiding him back. ‘Let’s try not to kill anyone today, eh?’
He made a pleased sort of sound through his nostrils. Heavens, he was adorable, she thought to herself. She especially liked the kooky kids she came across, the ones who were so themselves, so other to the rest of the crowd. She couldn’t help wondering how the saintly, apron-wearing Mrs Watson dealt with such conversations though. ‘How’s college going?’ she asked now in order to change the subject. ‘What are your plans for next year?’
This was one thing about teaching teenagers that she loved: the fact that they all had their big life hopes glittering like beacons ahead of them. They talked to her about university applications, about apprenticeships, applying for jobs and training courses. Some shyly mentioned boyfriends and girlfriends; one boy a few years ago had come out to her before he’d even told his parents. Of course, it wasn’t all dreams and wishes – there were painful situations, too; she’d noticed what looked like self-inflicted cuts on more than one student’s arm and had wondered with anguish what misery must lurk in the shadows of their lives. Others poured out their sadnesses to her: first relationships faltering, parents separating, exam stress and disappointments. Last year, there had also been one girl, Romilly, who’d become thinner and thinner with each passing week, until she’d eventually passed out at the wheel, weak from starving herself for so long. She’d had to stop lessons and Lara hadn’t heard from her since.
For students undergoing such difficult times, she consoled herself that she was at least teaching them a valuable life skill, one that could make a real, practical difference to their lives. On the whole, it was hard not to become very fond of most of her clients; she adored their general resilience and spirit.
Take Jake, for instance. Here he was, telling her enthusiastically of his plans to study marine biology, followed by a tub-thumping sermon on the joys of fish. ‘I mean, people think that fish are just, like, cold, right? That they don’t have any feelings or much of a brain. But they’re so interesting,’ he said, accelerating triumphantly out of a successful three-point turn.
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Lara replied, smiling to herself. She felt a small stab of envy though, as she often did when hearing about her students’ aspirations – especially as becoming a driving instructor had definitely not been a career ambition back when she was a teenager. Her dreams then had been of escaping her quiet Cumbrian town for the bright lights of London, becoming a journalist, working in busy, gossipy offices full of interesting twenty-somethings, wearing black, having excellent hair and drinking red wine in bohemian bars. And, to be fair, for a number of years, she’d managed all of those things, and more. Until—