When She Was Bad by Tammy Cohen

she looked at him. But being around Rachel Masters for the last week had built up a level of frustrated energy inside him and suddenly the prospect of going home alone was too depressing to contemplate.
    ‘OK, but we can’t leave together. You go first and wait for me outside. I’ll leave it five minutes and then join you.’
    She squeezed his arm.
    They rejoined the table and Chloe made a big deal of retrieving her stuff and saying goodbye to Gill.
    ‘I still can’t believe you’ve gone. You were the best boss ever,’ she slurred, ignoring her new boss, sitting just a couple of feet away.
    As soon as she’d left, Rachel turned to Ewan.
    ‘I’ve been wanting to talk to you all evening, but you’ve been monopolized,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Come and sit down next to me and keep me company for a bit. We can get to know each other a little.’
    He felt a rush of liquid joy flood through him.
    ‘Sure. Love to. Only I can’t stay that long. I need to be getting back.’
    ‘Just five minutes.’
    But five turned into ten, and still Rachel was talking to him, asking him about himself, laughing at his jokes, leaning in very close to catch what he said above the noise of the suddenly full pub. He felt his phone in his pocket vibrate with an incoming text. A minute or two later, it did so again. He slid it into his palm and glanced down under the table. Chloe. Where r u?
    He wished he hadn’t made the arrangement with her now, wished he could stay here with Rachel all night. But he couldn’t text her back, not with Rachel sitting right here. And he couldn’t leave the girl standing outside.
    ‘I’ve got to go.’ He wondered if his reluctance showed in his voice.
    ‘Really? That’s a shame.’
    Was she flirting with him? The thought was a butterfly fluttering in his chest.
    As he shrugged on his jacket and got ready to tear himself away, she put a restraining hand on his arm. He was surprised to feel her fingernails digging into his flesh.
    ‘Tread very carefully, Ewan.’ Though her voice was as high-pitched and girlish as ever, her eyes when they met his were suddenly hard and he felt a prickle of cold on the back of his neck.
    ‘You could go far in the company. Don’t blow it.’
    Did she know that Chloe was waiting outside? Was that what the warning was about?
    His thoughts, after he’d said his goodbyes and threaded his way through the post-work drinkers, were a heavy mix of apprehension, confusion and disappointment.
    ‘Where have you been? I thought you were never coming.’ Chloe peeled herself off the wall she’d been leaning against and looked up at him, pouting.
    He felt a rush of irritation.
    ‘Come on then, if you’re coming.’
    And when she took hold of his hand a few metres up the road, he imagined she was someone else.

16
Anne
     
    From the outside, the house where Laurie grew up wasn’t a million miles away from the house in which she now lived with Jana and her family. A different suburb, but the same wide tree-lined streets, the same sense of everything being exactly as it should be. The house itself was situated on the corner plot of a block, set back from the road with only the overgrown lawn and scraps of police crime tape, still fluttering uselessly from garage handles and porch posts, to show that anything untoward had ever happened here.
    ‘The American dream, right?’ said the heavyset man behind the wheel as the Pontiac in which we were travelling pulled up to the kerb.
    Sergeant Dean Cavanagh had been sitting in the driver’s seat when he picked us up from the medical school, and it wasn’t until he was out of the car that his true size was revealed. The man was enormous. Next to him, Ed Kowalsky seemed insubstantial, as if the policeman could snap him in two like a twig if he so decided.
    ‘You kinda expect a big spooky old place with turrets, doncha? Maybe a coupla bats flying around the top.’
    Sergeant Cavanagh hoisted up his pants so the waistband nestled just