Perfect Strangers: an unputdownable read full of gripping secrets and twists. Erin Knight
Sarah hovered outside Year 2’s classroom door, heat creeping up her neck. Darcey skipped in ahead of her.
‘I don’t know what on earth’s happened to your lovely self-portrait, Tabitha, I’m usually with the Year 1 children, aren’t I? You know this because last year you were in Year 1, weren’t you, Tabitha? Now, I’m sure when Mrs Harrison finally arrives for class she’ll have a perfectly good explan—Ah, here she is now. Stop crying, Tabitha, or you’ll have two smudged faces.’
Juliette’s brunette business bob had grown longer over the years she’d been working at Hornbeam Primary. Her fringe swept over to one side nowadays, softening the severe lines of her cheekbones and the tailored tops she always wore cutting a threatening edge along her collarbone.
Sarah tried to keep her work wardrobe as casual as smart allowed. Juliette still dressed for the city finance career she’d curtailed to become mother extraordinaire to Elodie and Milo some sixteen and fourteen years ago respectively. What the banking world lost in a formidable career woman, Hornbeam’s Year 1 class, the board of governors, and the PFA had since inherited in a no-nonsense higher level teaching assistant who liked to organise people the way Sarah imagined she used to organise numbers. Remotely. Methodically. And if the occasion called for it, ruthlessly.
Sarah cleared her throat quietly. She made a conscious effort not to slouch as she walked into her own classroom. ‘Sit up, Sarah!’ her father used to implore her at the dinner table, ‘you look like a letter S. We should’ve named you something beginning with I, or L, or E. Maybe we could’ve improved your posture.’ Her father had been a headmaster. Inside the home and out.
Sarah waited politely for Juliette to step out from behind the desk. Juliette had good posture. Nothing in the way she held herself betrayed how she’d been autopsying Sarah’s private life in the staff room not ten minutes ago.
‘Thank you, Mrs Inman-Holt. I can take it from here.’ She’d become adept at avoiding all eye contact with Juliette. They’d been friends once. Bizarre to think it now. They’d laughed over their husbands’ barbecuing skills, their children had played together, Will and Elodie’s mutual affection for Play Doh at toddler group igniting a friendship lasting nearly seven years between their once-compatible families. Patrick and Karl had bonded over international basketball and Heidi Klum, Sarah and Juliette over the pursuit of the best kid-friendly careers and herb-infused cocktails. And then Sarah went and left the summerhouse door unlocked.
‘Tabitha was hoping to have her portrait all fixed up in time for open-door Wednesday, weren’t you, Tabitha? So your mother can see it?’ Tabitha nodded. Thank goodness Olivia hadn’t peeped her head around to wave at Tabitha on her way out of school. ‘Perhaps whoever spoiled your lovely picture might offer to help you fix it?’ Juliette didn’t look at Sarah very often either. The simple act probably enough to transport Juliette back to that horrendous afternoon, the terrible discovery after the screaming had begun.
‘We’ll take a look at it at break, okay Tabitha?’ soothed Sarah.
Juliette snapped her head around, her fringe obediently realigning itself. She walked between the front of the whiteboard and the two perfectly formed lines of children sitting cross-legged on the carpet. Sarah never had them all sitting so uniformly, like little druids waiting for the moon to do something significant.
‘Before I go, Mr Pethers is expecting us to run through the new e-safety strategies at break, Mrs Harrison.’
Bugger. Sarah had forgotten Mr Pethers’ last-minute meeting request. The internet had become a double-edged machete in school after one of the Year 3s had looked up a numeracy game and inadvertently found their way on to a website entitled Let’s Do METH!
‘Thank you, Mrs Inman-Holt. Tabitha, take a deep breath, we’ll get it sorted before your mum comes in, alright?’
Juliette hesitated in the doorway. ‘Speaking of e-safety, I’ve shut your mobile phone in the stationery cupboard, Mrs Harrison. You’d left it unattended on your desk. It’s been vibrating.’
A lesser demon would’ve smirked, but Juliette was more of a subtle soul. A sideways glance was enough. If I tell Mr Pethers on you, Sarah Harrison, you’re going to be in BIG trouble. This was how it was now Juliette worked at Hornbeam too. Sarah wasn’t just at school five days a week, she was back at school five days a week. With her very own, impeccably dressed black cloud ready to rain down on her.
And Juliette had every right.
Isobel caught herself chewing slowly as Cleo chattered on about Fallenbay’s natives.
‘Totally true story, Jon literally clonked her with his surfboard. That’s how they met! Right out there on my terrace. Sarah was just minding her own business and, wham! By rights I should get maid of honour; Sarah wanted me to but she was overruled, her parents browbeat her into asking some unpleasant sociopathic cousin, on her father’s side, I think. Sarah’s allergic to confrontation so, you know, she usually just rolls with what the masses want, she’d tell you as much herself. They’re getting married next year. Why doesn’t that kind of romance happen to the rest of us? It’s all we want, right?’
Isobel swallowed the last of the complimentary madeleines Cleo had plonked on the table and began carefully stacking her spent tea things in front of her. Cleo vigorously wiped down the next table. She’d cheered up as the morning progressed. Work could do that. Isobel used to love her work too. The challenges, the kids, the sense of doing something useful with her life. Imparting knowledge. Making some tiny difference.
‘You do know what I mean, don’t you, Isobel?’
‘Romance that’s like a bang to the head?’ Cleo couldn’t be more wrong if she tried.
‘Yes! Startling and unexpected. The closest to romantic my Sam gets is smiling affectionately at his favourite cheese.’
Isobel glanced at the faces in clusters of two or more at the other tables. She was the only person in here sitting alone, again. No odd-bods. No lone wolves. Just Isobel.
‘How do I use the free wifi?’
Cleo popped fresh tealights inside a jam jar. ‘Just log on, password’s “coast”.’
No register, no allocated user accounts. The name DEEP_DRILLERZ wouldn’t mean anything to Cleo.
‘Cleo? Could I ask you a question?’
‘Fire away . . .’
‘Do you get many locals in here? Or would you say it’s mainly tourists passing through? Like me?’
Cleo frowned. ‘Pomme du Port bag a lot of locals, but us, not so much after the lunch rush.’ She set her hand on her hip. ‘They’re not even French in there, y’know, and they have the cheek to call themselves the apple of the harbour. Bloody charlatans.’
‘But what about here? Free wifi must bring the locals in? Students? Workers?’ Psychological deviants. Isobel’s hands felt clammy, sickly thoughts pressing in. He could’ve sat in this chair, drunk from this cup.
Cleo huffed. ‘It’s a mix, really. We do get the locals in, but they stick to the morning, mainly, while the tourists are eating breakfast in their holiday lets. And we get the kids in through the summer holidays. Hordes of the buggers, hang around all day, but, y’know, if they’re here they’re not getting into any trouble.’
The onslaught had stopped by the summer. No more emails. No more links appearing on the Facebook walls of Isobel’s friends and family. Had the school children invaded his turf for milkshakes and free wifi, is that what finally slowed him? Terrorising women online must be tricky with a café full of kids looking over your shoulder.
Cleo’s eyes narrowed. It put Isobel on edge. Her therapist used to do that in their CBT sessions, Jenny’s analysing face. Cleo slipped