She was at her computer, a large coffee on her desk, not long after eight.
A couple of minutes later, her neighbour, Gary, an overweight father of three in his mid thirties, arrived. The office was open-plan, each person having a small desk – paperless, which was the new office policy – divided from whoever sat next to them by a low screen. There were booths scattered around the office where you could go if you needed to have a private conversation, or concentrate on something for a while, but generally speaking you were at your desk in full view of anyone who happened to be passing. Kate didn’t mind it that much; she’d joined the workforce at a time when that kind of office arrangement was more or less the norm, but some of the older people hated it.
Gary was one of them. Prior to the move to open-plan, he had been the proud occupant of a small, windowless office which he had worked for years to obtain, and the loss of it still rankled. Kate suspected that he would have been less bothered by a pay cut than the loss of his office; there was something about the visible reduction in status that he found particularly hard to take.
He made up for it by swearing a lot. In the open-plan area everyone could hear, and it showed his younger colleagues how, even though he had been stripped of his office, he would not be cowed by the management.
‘Welcome back,’ he said. ‘Fucking traffic was abysmal as usual this morning.’
‘Not too bad coming from my side,’ Kate said. ‘The normal slow-moving car park.’
‘It was total shit coming from Glossop,’ Gary said, shaking his head. ‘Total fucking shit. Anyway, no bother. How was your holiday?’
‘Great. Really good.’ She would have said that if it had been a shocking disaster; it was how you responded in an office, especially to people who you didn’t know outside of a professional setting. It was odd; she sat with Gary every day, heard him talk to his wife about the bills they had to pay for private schools, heard him arrange beery nights out with his friends, knew that he was a fan of Leeds Rhinos in rugby league and Sheffield Wednesday in football and hated Arsenal with a passion, but, for all that, she didn’t know him at all. Despite the time they spent in close proximity to each other, they never shared more than pleasantries, general chit-chat. He didn’t even know that she and Phil had broken up.
He probably didn’t know they’d been together. She left her private life, as many of her colleagues did, at the door.
‘Good week to be gone,’ Gary said. ‘It was mad. An audit blew up.’ He puffed out his cheeks. ‘I was in here all hours. Got home Friday and I was fucking whacked. Then I had to wake up early on Saturday to take the kids to some fucking party.’
‘Hope it’s calmer this week,’ Kate said, suppressing a smile at his horrendous swearing.
‘Doubt it. Anyway, welcome back to the jungle.’ He tapped his login details into his computer. ‘I’m going to the canteen, get a bacon butty. You want anything?’
Kate nodded at her coffee. ‘That’ll do me. Thanks, though.’
She watched him walk off, his trousers loose and saggy around his buttocks, shirt partially untucked, shoulders round and slumped. Was that her future? Was this what life had to offer? Rotting away in an office, doing a job she hated, or, at best, found repetitive and boring?
That was what she feared. Maybe it was because she had just come back from holiday, but watching Gary walk away she thought, I don’t want to be like that. There has to be something more.
There had to be. Surely she could do something she found more inspiring. Become a cider-maker or a pilot or a photographer.
And the thing was, it felt possible, now that she had broken up with Phil. With him, her life had been mapped out for her, a gentle progression from wife to mum to grandma. Now though, she could do what she wanted. She had some money saved up; she could go travelling for a year. Or two. Or three. Maybe go to Nepal, meet someone and stay there, or move to New Zealand to work on a sheep farm. Who knew what would happen? That was the beauty of it. No one knew. All she had to do was make the decision to go and then the world would change from this – she looked around at the rows of desks – to an endless series of possibilities. She could end up anywhere.
But before that, she had work to do, emails to read, contracts to review. She looked at her inbox. Six hundred and twenty-four emails. She almost groaned.
She was about to sort them by sender so she could read the ones from her boss first when her phone pinged. It was a text message from Gemma.
Check out the news.
She typed a reply.
What is it?
They found another body in Stockton Heath.
It took Kate a few seconds to understand what Gemma was getting at, then it clicked. There’d been another killing. Another murder.
There was a link in the text message. She tapped it with her finger and watched as the story came up.
The body of a woman was found this morning near Walton Reservoir, on the outskirts of the village of Stockton Heath. Police were called to the scene by a local resident who spotted something unusual when out running.
This is the second body of a young female to be found in the vicinity of Stockton Heath. It follows the discovery ten days ago of Jenna Taylor, 27, not far from the location where the latest victim was found. Speculation is mounting that the two killings may be linked. When asked about the possibility that there was a serial killer at work, the police said it was too early to comment, but they would be pursuing all lines of inquiry.
A police spokesperson said that the woman was in her mid to late twenties, and named her as Audra Collins.
She blinked at the screen. She read the name again to be sure.
Audra Collins.
She knew Audra Collins.
She knew her because she knew everyone who was around her age and who had been at high school with her. That was how small towns worked.
But she also knew her because people had always said that Audra Collins could be her sister. Or your secret twin, they joked. Proof of human cloning.
May and Gemma had joked that the first victim – Jenna Taylor – looked like her. She was dead, and now Audra Collins – her secret twin, her clone – had joined her.
And the joke wasn’t funny any more.
She picked up her mobile phone and scrolled to May’s number. She was about to press call when a voice interrupted her.
‘Welcome back.’
Kate looked up; it was Michaela, her boss. She put her phone down, screen to the desk. She always felt guilty when she was caught reading the news or sending texts at work.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Just checking the news. Someone sent me something.’
‘Oh? Anything interesting?’ Michaela said.
‘Did you hear about
