Leave Her Hanging: A Noir Thriller

Chapter Six

I turn away and explore the books on her shelves. A few of the usual suspects: Harry Potter, Northern Lights, a collection of Shakespeare, a few textbooks. But there’s other stuff too, books about acting and books of poetry, stuff we never studied in English. There’s a piece of paper stuck to the back of the door with a poem copied by hand from someone named Emily Dickinson. It says:

I had no time to hate, because

The grave would hinder me,

And life was not so ample I

Could finish enmity.

Nor had I time to love, but since

Some industry must be,

The little toil of love, I thought,

Was large enough for me.

I don’t really understand it, but I like it. I read it through a few more times, then I hear a slight intake of breath behind me. I turn and see Ella’s put the diary aside, and now she’s lying down on the bed. Her head is arched back, her face flushed, her eyes closed, her mouth open. I see the curve of her neck, the sharp movement of her breasts as she takes ragged breaths. The top button of her jeans is undone, and her hand is disappearing beneath the denim, beneath the fabric of her underwear, and I can see her fingers moving up and down. I stop breathing as I watch her play with herself. And she opens her eyes, looks at me, and smiles invitingly.

I’m across the room and on the bed with her in a heartbeat.

But when I opened my eyes and came back to the present, she wasn’t on the bed anymore. I stood in the centre of her dark room, everything cast into cold blue light by my phone, listening to the snoring at the end of the hall. Her bed was unmade. The posters were still there, the books, the poem on the door. But without Ella here, the room was just a box filled with shadows.

My knees went weak, and for a second I thought I was going to fall. But I put my hand out to steady myself on her desk and stayed upright. I was here for a reason. I couldn’t be weak. Not now. I took a couple of deep breaths, shook my head, closed my eyes, opened them again.

All right. Let’s do it.

I started by doing a quick circle of the room, examining the shelves, looking for anything that hadn’t been there before, or anything that looked like it’d been used recently. Nothing stuck out. She didn’t have a computer in her room, but that was no surprise. She often had to borrow mine to do her school work if she couldn’t use the ones at school. She never even had a mobile phone. Sometimes she worked part-time on the checkouts at Countdown, but that money always seemed to disappear into her parents’ bank account. She always talked about saving up for a car, but it never seemed to happen.

I flicked through some of her school books that still sat on her desk from last year. Nothing but notes and random doodles in the margins. I didn’t really know what I was looking for. Maybe some cry for help. But there was nothing.

I sighed, closed her math workbook, and looked around. I crouched down and checked under the bed. Just mothballs and an old pen. Okay, then. Wardrobe. I opened it up, shoved the dresses and coats aside on their hangers. A few hats were stacked on the shelf at the top, along with some board games covered in dust and an old Barbie doll guarded by a daddy long-legs. Nothing.

Her drawers, maybe. I tugged open the top one. Socks, bras, underwear. Most of the pieces I recognised, but as I shone my phone over them, I found some others tucked near the back. I pulled out a bra and matching underwear. They were pink, frilly, nothing I’d ever seen her wear. They looked newer than the others as well. I turned them back and forth, trying to picture her choosing them at a shop, wearing them. I couldn’t. Ella always had her own style, and it didn’t include pink. Maybe some aunt had bought them for her ages ago and she’d just shoved them to the back of her underwear drawer, never wearing them.