A Face in the Crowd by Kerry Wilkinson

Author:Kerry Wilkinson [Wilkinson, Kerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786817631
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2019-06-06T00:00:00+00:00

I click the link, though the details of the story are worryingly familiar. The guilty man is my former boyfriend’s younger brother.

Ben’s dead younger brother.

The specifics are as precise as I remember: Alex Peterson once went to prison for hitting a man in the back of the head with a bat.

Chapter Twenty-Two

I read the story through once and then return to the search page before reading a couple more with similar details. In essence, it’s relatively straightforward: Alex broke up with his girlfriend. She started seeing someone new and then, after dark, Alex smashed the man in the back of the head with a baseball bat. It happened around half a mile away. He ran off, but there was a witness who identified him. It seems like charges were downgraded from attempted murder to actual bodily harm and, somehow, he got away with a three-month sentence.

There’s an emptiness inside me after reading and re-reading the details. Should I tell Harry? Or the police? On its own, it’s nothing but, bundled with everything else, it is one more coincidence on a growing stack.

Alex Peterson is dead, after all. I’ve been going to memorials in which his name is read out for five years now.

It’s only as I’m trying to look for more information about other attacks that I realise I can no longer feel my fingers. I could call another taxi, but it’s hard to justify more money for that – and it’s too early for buses – so I walk instead.

There’s another thing that has stuck with me: Harry asking about a ‘crazy ex-boyfriend’. It didn’t sound like he meant it as a joke, even though he laughed it off. The timing is extraordinary, with it being the anniversary of the crash. First the money, then the police turning up, all the times I’ve run into Melanie, and now Harry being attacked. There are little things, too. The phone calls from Unknown, Karen’s money.

As for Harry, I shouldn’t have kissed him – I know that for certain now. When our lips touched, there was no spark; no weak-at-the-knee moment – if that’s even a real thing. The little voice that won’t go away tells me I can’t be so picky at thirty; that Harry seems nice enough. It’s surely better than being alone…?

The streets are largely empty as I walk across town with my hands in my pockets, but it isn’t long before light starts to seep around the buildings as the sun creeps above the horizon. In seemingly a blink, the main road is full of queuing traffic, so I cut in a few streets to avoid the fumes. Kids in school uniform are booting a ball along the middle of the road, while one of them commentates on what’s going on.

The yawns begin as I round the corner to take me onto the street on which Hamilton House sits. My bed is calling and I can almost feel the softness of the pillows as Billy snuffles at my feet.

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