Chapter 36: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 38: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 40: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 42: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 44: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 46: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 47: 1995 – Archway, London
Chapter 49: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 51: 2017 – Dulwich, London
Chapter 52: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 54: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 56: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 58: 2017 – Dulwich, London
Chapter 59: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 61: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 63: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 65: 2018 – Guildford Crown Court
Chapter 67: 1995 – Flaxley, Worcestershire
Stumbling down the hill, filthy and too exhausted to even lift the shovels dragging behind them, they looked up to see a red glow starting to stretch along the ridge above. Dawn was breaking.
‘Hurry up,’ he said.
At the bottom of the hill, she managed to haul herself over the stile, only to tumble down the slope on the other side and fall face down in the road, her fingernails bloodstained, her mouth and nose clogged with dirt. She could have fallen asleep there and then, not caring if she were seen.
A hand reached under her armpit and hauled her to her feet.
‘Keep moving.’
What was the point in moving or any attempt at concealment? He wouldn’t lie buried for ever. Someday, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week or next year, someone would find him.
It feels like centuries since I was young. I look around my office; Miranda is scrolling through Tinder while drinking a coffee. Her lithe body falls across a hard-backed wooden chair as if it were a hammock.
Paulo wears mustard-coloured jeans, his feet up on the desk, the soles of his boots splayed towards me. The urge to kick them off becomes so great, I have to look away.
‘Yeah, I know, yeah,’ he drones into his phone, too loud and irritating to tune out.
What right do they have to youth? They do not value it. They will waste it, as I did mine, and one day wake up, middle-aged, in an office full of people who believe them to be obsolete, an irrelevance. They will stare at the calendar and not believe the year – how did we reach 2017 so quickly? And then the day, Wednesday – how many hours until the weekend?
I used to wonder what these millennials thought about me, then I realised, I’m invisible, they don’t think about me. On the first day Miranda made some polite enquiries. I tried to ignore her lisp as she asked, ‘Are you married, single?’
‘Separated,’ I say.
‘So, what you gonna do about it?’ she asked.
‘About what?’
‘Being single?’
‘Nothing,’ I told her.
She gave me an