The Dying Streets by Amy Cross

Author:Amy Cross [Cross, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-05-17T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Five

Ophelia

"No dear," Maureen says with a laugh, "absolutely not. She wanted to be an astronaut when she was younger, and then she wanted to be an actress for a while, so we paid for her go to acting classes after school."

"So how did she end up as a cop?" I ask.

"Well," she continues, "unfortunately, she wasn't very good at acting, or at maths, or at playing the trumpet, or at any of the other things she tried. I suppose eventually she just sort of fell into the police as a kind of last resort."

As she speaks, Laura appears in the doorway looking distinctly unimpressed.

"I see you're done already," she says. "Sorry, I guess I just assumed it'd take you a lot longer to get clean."

"Nah," I reply. "I'm good. It all came right off. These old clothes of yours are pretty cool, though. I know it's kinda cheeky, but would you mind if -"

"Keep them," she says, clearly trying to hide the fact that she's annoyed. "Did you take the pill?"

"The worm pill?" I nod. "I was thinking, though. It takes a couple of days to work, so maybe you and your Mum should take one at the weekend?"

"I'll be sure to remember that," she replies tersely.

"I was just telling your friend about the time you wanted to be an actress," Maureen says, turning to Laura. "It's been so long since I had a chance to tell all these stories."

"Yeah," Laura says. "It's surprising you remember them all so clearly, isn't it?"

"Her memory seems fine," I tell her. "At least when it comes to the important things, like which boy you were always trying to kiss at school or what happened when you tried to build a tree-house in the garden." I pause for a moment, before turning to Maureen. "I think Laura probably wants me to help out with dinner," I tell her, before getting to my feet and heading over to the door. "Back soon!"

"Having fun?" Laura asks as she leads me through to the kitchen.

"She was watching the news," I reply. "I was happy to leave her to it until that Daniel Gregory asshole came on and started talking about you. I figured it'd be a good idea to distract her, so I asked her all about you and then changed the channel once she'd launched into the first story. Call me crazy, but I kinda thought you might be grateful."

"You..." She pauses for a moment. "Fine. Yeah, sure. Thank you."

"He did it, you know."

She stares at me.

"That Gregory guy," I continue. "He totally killed that Natasha Simonsen girl. You can tell from his body language, and from the way he talks. He's been rehearsing ways to make himself sound more convincing. There are these websites that claim they can help you to lie and make people believe it, and some of them are pretty good, but once you know the tricks you can see 'em a mile off. It's totally blatant that he's guilty."

"Shame you weren't on the jury," she mutters as she stirs the chicken.

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