Chapter 23
Chapter 23
It’s really quite something. As the sun sinks below the hills and darkness takes hold, hundreds of candles illuminate the park. Jennie padlocks her bike to the park railings and walks across the grass towards the bandstand. It’s amazing how many people have turned out to be part of the vigil. Some are a similar age to her, so perhaps they went to the school and remember Hannah. Some are older, parents of kids who attended the school perhaps. But many are younger, people who would’ve barely been born when Hannah went missing.
There are a few uniformed officers hanging back, keeping an eye on things, and over to the far side of the crowd there look to be a few journalist types. The mood is sombre and peaceful.
Secured to the rail around the bandstand, a huge poster of Hannah looks down on the gathered crowd. Flowers and teddy bears have been laid around the bottom of the poster. There are so many roses, hundreds of them; pinks and whites and yellows. As Jennie watches, a woman in a black maxi dress and silver flip-flops kneels down in front of the poster and places a bouquet of white lilies on the grass. As the woman turns away, Jennie catches a proper look at her tear-stained face and realises with a jolt that it’s Becky Mead, one of her sixth-form nemeses. Despite the situation, she can’t help smiling to herself: Hannah would’ve loved all these people coming out here for her, especially the mean girls.
Hannah.
Jennie blinks hard and swallows down the emotion welling up inside her. She always gets emotional in crowds – parades, gigs, anything that involves large groups of people in a heightened state always affects her, and this is worse because it emphasises even more that Hannah really is gone.
‘Thank you all for coming.’ Lottie Varney’s voice crackles over the tannoy.
Jennie looks up and sees her standing at the top of the bandstand steps, loudspeaker in hand. Rob Marwood is standing over on the other side of the steps, his head bowed. A stocky-looking guy with a receding hairline is standing beside Rob, and there’s something really familiar about him. She watches him for a few moments before realising it’s Hannah’s old boyfriend, Simon Ackhurst. The years have not been kind to him.
‘Hannah Jennings was my best friend,’ continues Lottie from the bandstand, turning to look at the huge poster of Hannah. ‘She was kind and beautiful and smart. She loved eating cheese toasties, listening to Duran Duran, and watching her favourite show, Byker Grove. She wanted to be a fashion model and she had her whole life ahead of her.’ Lottie pauses.
The gathered crowd waits. All eyes are on Lottie, while Lottie herself watches a latecomer make his way through the crowd to the front.
Jennie turns to look at him too, watching as Elliott Naylor stops on the opposite side of the steps from Rob and Simon. He looks flustered as he takes a candle from a woman who is handing them out to the crowd. Once it’s lit he looks up at Lottie, who gives him a small nod and continues with her speech.
‘Hannah was just eighteen when she went missing. That was thirty years ago. And all that time we believed – the police led us to believe – that she had run away.’ Lottie looks around the gathered crowd, pausing as her gaze finds Jennie and giving a sad smile. ‘But she hadn’t run anywhere. She had died, as she had lived, right here in White Cross. Where we all live. Where our children live. A place we think we are safe. But someone killed my beautiful, funny, kind friend and buried her in the basement of the school. They snuffed out her light when it should have shone so brightly.’ Lottie’s voice cracks. ‘Her light should still have been shining now. But they murdered my best friend.’
The crowd seems to be hanging on Lottie’s every word. As she speaks, the press move closer to the bandstand and a few of them start taking photographs of Lottie. She dabs daintily at her eyes with a tissue, making sure not to ruin her make-up. Jennie wonders if her actions look as rehearsed to the crowd as they do to her.
‘The police investigation into Hannah’s disappearance has been reopened. If you remember anything from around the time she went missing, please, please get in touch with them and report it.’ Lottie’s voice becomes more impassioned. ‘We have to find the person who killed Hannah. We cannot let her death go un-punished. Please. Help me find the truth about how she died. We must get justice for Hannah.’
The crowd claps. Jennie hears someone crying a little way behind her. As Duran Duran’s ‘Ordinary World’ plays over the speakers, more people step forward to lay flowers beneath the poster of Hannah. There’s a group of teenagers a few metres away holding pictures of Hannah and crying. An elderly lady, who Jennie recognises as one of the school dinner ladies back in her day, walks past carrying a stuffed teddy bear to put with the flowers beneath Hannah’s poster. There’s no sign of Paul Jennings or his new wife.
It feels utterly surreal.
Jennie watches Lottie walk down the steps from the bandstand to join Rob and Simon. She hugs Rob, and nods hello to Simon. Elliott walks over to them, and the darkroom crew are reunited, in part at least.
Stepping back to make space for a pink-haired woman in a wheelchair on her way to lay flowers at the foot of the bandstand, Jennie looks back across the park and sees even more people have joined the vigil. As ‘Ordinary World’ fades and gives way to another Duran Duran hit, ‘Come Undone’, a memory flits across Jennie’s mind’s eye. Hannah dancing as the song played on the CD player in the darkroom, her twirling body silhouetted in the red light. A sharp pang of grief slashes across her heart like a knife.
Pushing the memory away, Jennie looks back towards the bandstand. Elliott and Lottie have moved closer to the flowers, cards and cuddly toys and are talking with the pink-haired woman. Rob and Simon are still beside the steps but the atmosphere between them appears to have changed. Rob looks pale and shaky as he speaks to Simon, his hands gesticulating wildly. Simon doesn’t reply, instead shaking his head and taking a step back, his lips pursed into a hard, angry line. Rob reaches out, putting his hand on Simon’s arm. For a moment it looks as if the tension is broken, then Simon says something and Rob throws down his candle and turns away.
Jennie watches Rob storm off, bemused. What the hell was that all about?