I stood in the middle of the curling dirt path. Panting, sweating, shivering from both the rain that was running down my neck and the sweat that was freezing into crystals over the rest of my skin. I was drenched in the storm that had sizzled to fruition as I ran down here and the tears that had refused to dry as I stumbled through acres of undergrowth and picked my way through the dying wilderness on the Hill.
One more time I reached up to cross the slab of polished flagstone that served as a front stoop, grabbing the ring of the bull's head knocker and rapping it hard against the wooden door, as many times as I dared. I didn't have control over my limbs anymore; the fact I'd ended up here proved that. When the ring fell slick between my wet fingers I stepped back off and into the arms of the cold and familiar thunderstorm.
There were levels to the Hill, and the people who lived there. There were wealthy recluses that had settled in the middle of the copse, like my mother; self-assured in their status and happy to retreat to the relative coverage of the trees. There were the rich of income but so starved of esteem who flocked to the communities at the precipice edge, locked up in shiny castle towers and looming estates that couldn't help but catch your eye as you were walking down below. They were the ones who'd drive their equally lurid sports cars and people carriers the 5 minute drive onto the motorway and into town in order to establish that they did, indeed, live on the Hill, and would gesture towards their homes as and when the question arose with an ironic, casual thumb. Being sought after and admired at gave them their fix, I guess – as many times a day as they could afford.
Then there the ones that no one really talked about. The ones who lived further than the copse and far further than the estates, drove themselves in self-suited exile past overgrown footpaths and strange-smelling flowers to rolls of terrain daylight didn't touch. You couldn't see them from town, you couldn't even see them from the motorway – they lived on the Other Side of the Hill, a fabled place I could imagine kids being warned about in cooked-up urban legends. Where settlers succumbed to wild plants and perilous nature and beasts prowled during the night, and where the houses were so far apart from each other, nobody would hear if you let out a scream.
Right now, that worked to my advantage. I could do with no one knowing the depths of my desperation.
The door opened, finally, with a creak of defiance that was loud enough to cut through the piercing thunder. The slat of welcome I was greeted with gave way to a similarly crude brown eye.
It was sheer surprise, I think, that caused Hassan to fully pull open the door.
"The fuck?" he asked, raising his voice over the decibels of the celestial orchestra going on above. The rumbles of thunder dispersed into the sky as the weather clawed at my protective layers. "What's going on? Where's Jez?"
"Jeremy's gone," I shouted back. "The band left at 7."
Some form of realisation seemed to dawn on his irascible face. His grip on the door fell slack, causing a bout of wind to quickly knock it into him.
"I need answers," I shouted again. It felt good to shout. It felt good to succumb to the spell of my emotions. "I need to know – who she is. I need to know."
My hood was finally ripped back from my face, unveiling my face to the horrors of the storm, pelting the crystallising rain at my cheeks and throat and eyelids. And as Hassan stood there defeatedly from the cover of his home, I felt the last of my hopefulness crumble into dust.
~
Whatever I'd believed about houses on the Other Side, I hadn't expected this.
Hassan's place was huge. In a very different way to Mum's. Hers was sprawling staircases and entertaining rooms with decadent twists of marble and gold, something that could've fallen straight from the clouds – whereas Hassan's, Hassan's looked like it grown out of the centrefolds of the earth.
The rooms were long, not wide. Dusting the iron chandeliers was most definitely a nightmare. There were no doors that I could see of, save from the front one; instead there were columns and spandrels that climbed together into intricate arches, and gaping windows of the same gothic stature that filled the place with light. The floors were supple rosewood, the furnishings nickel or brass, and the hallways both cavernously empty and stacked high with indiscernible clutter.
I followed him dumbly into the large and airy living room, hitching my breath on the vision of the storm through the diamond lattice of his beautiful bay windows. The space felt so full and heavy of the years it had extracted from the trees that kept it standing, you could barely hear your own thoughts in here, let alone the clashes of rain and thunder that warred on outside.
Hassan stood behind me almost boredly as I looked around. Watching as I appraised the life he had built for himself away from the rest of civilisation and the hovel he returned to each night when he'd exhausted all reasons to hang out with Jeremy. The only indication that he was mildly affected by anything I had to say on the matter was the shrewd slant of his brows, the latent scrutiny simmering beneath his murky brown stare.
I realised what I was searching for when I found the conservatory situated directly behind him. With light pine floors and framed glass walls, it took on a verydifferent quality to the rest of the house. Light filtered out of a spideryglass dome directly onto the plants below, more specified clutter taking overthe work surfaces at the side and the space beneath the table that held them. Thebushels in their pots flourished a soft and vibrant green against the backdropof gnarled trees and sodden shrubbery outside.
There were only 6 that I could see, and each one had what looked like a cable tie secured loosely around the base, resting on the topsoil. Serial numbers were printed across the pale translucent blue.
"You can make money off of 6 plants?" I asked, feeling my eyebrows furrow as I processed this. "Do they grow that fast?"
He turned his head to eye up the plants I was looking at.
"Decoys," he said, lips upturned on a wan and altruistic smile. A hand reached up to sift self-consciously through his stubborn bedhead. "For the UKCSC."
I gazed back at him blankly. "The what?"
He sighed. "UK committee that oversees weed for recreation." A glance in my direction confirmed what I was suspecting. "Non-commercial."
"They don't know you deal?"
"Better stay that way."
I thought it unnecessary to tell him I had larger priorities than outing a small-scale drug dealer.
Travelling back to my face, Hassan's eyes turned sharp on me as he examined my dawdling form. "Ada, if you've got something to say, I'd rather you just spit it out. I haven't got all day."
I felt my throat go dry. All of my previous resolve to tackle this situation head-on had been shrinking incrementally inside my chest, like the withered, storm-bent wildlife. "I don't know where to start," I mumbled.
Hassan crossed the room in silence, house slippers leaving imprints in the rug by the hearth. My raincoat continued to drip puddles onto the floor. I hadn't really thought about the technicalities of following a hunch I had at 6:00am, post a night of horrible tossing and turning, as translated by the stained joggers I had dug out of the laundry and the sleep socks with an exposed hole at my left pinky toe after leaving my shoes by the door, and as I loosened my toggles and pulled at the PVC I realised I should've tried to come up with a plan. Bar turning up at Hassan's house and demanding some answers – which I had done, rather efficiently – I had nothing.
Burrowed up inside a wingback armchair, silk robe pushed back at the sleeves and one ankle laid across a jittering knee, Hassan looked out the window.
"The beginning's meant to be a good place," he mused, staring out at the mist over the terrain, "but I don't really want you staying for that long."
I snorted. "Not like you'd have to do that much work. I'm the one with the supposed problem. You could fall asleep on me, feign death, even. I'd be overjoyed."
"Well that wouldn't do any good for you, though, would it," he replied, with taunting, mocking sympathy. "Unless the problem really is 'supposed'."
Neither of us entirely understood what he meant by that, but the gist was there.
I plodded past the coffee table and by the hearth the same way Hassan had, sitting down in the armchair opposite him and resuming his task of looking out the window.
"Jeremy and I broke up."
I felt Hassan's stare on me, but I couldn't bring myself to return it.
"I asked him about the girl – you know –"
"Trisha," he said quietly.
I nodded.
"And ... well ... Jeremy said we weren't gonna be talking about her anymore. I asked him to reconsider – multiple times, nicely – and then I yelled at him."
Hassan grunted beneath his breath.
"Jeremy ... h-he wanted to move past it, and I ..."
"You called it off."
I exhaled, slowly. "Yeah."
Hassan nodded back.
The fingers of one hand dung forcefully into the armrest, and I dragged the other one over my face.
"I know I'm the idiot. This is ... you know ... my doing."
I was absorbed by my own silence for a while, as well as my unhappiness. Then I heard the low stuttering of a diesel engine that turned out to be Hassan clearing his throat.
"Not really."
My head whipped itself back as quickly my brain could manage it. "What?"
Hassan had been frowning, deeply, at the floor between our chairs, but on seeing the snap of my head met my baffled gaze. Albeit reluctantly.
"Jez is a lot of things, but ... he's a shithead when it comes to his feelings. He doesn't deal with the bad stuff too well. Tends to keep it locked in a box – obviously, that has consequences."
I teased my nails over the nap of the armrest, feeling it give under my fingers and depending on the sensation to keep me grounded. Just the rehash of this conversation was sending my head buzzing again.
"I want to know who she is," I reiterated, as strong as I could against my waning resolve. "I – I don't care if it's not my business. I lost my boyfriend over her. I deserve to know what she did."
I'd expected another groan, or sigh, tormented and impatient like Hassan usually was when it came to matters concerning me. But he didn't say a word; nor make a gesture, or create a single sound. Somehow that was much worse.
Ticks of a clock hung somewhere on the wall measured out the seconds that stretched between us, mapping out my anxiety and the conflict resonating from his drumming fingers. Both feet on the floor, Hassan anchored his elbows into his thighs and propped his head on top of his clenched, interlocked fists.
"Alright," he said. "I'll tell you."
Despite the fact this was exactly what I wanted, part of me was mystified by how easily he'd given in.
"You're serious?"
Hassan flicked his eyes up to meet mine. "Dead serious," he said. "You're right. Somebody ought to tell you what happened with those two – and unfortunately, nobody knows this story better than me."
~
"What do you wanna know first?"
"Who was she??"
A sigh came out of Hassan's nose. Pursing his lips together and gritting his teeth into another grimace, he slid his phone into the pocket of his robe.
"They were together. Trish was Jezza's girlfriend."
The grimace made sense. Not that I hadn't seen it coming; there were enough signs, given what happened at the afterparty and everything, but I'd been trying to keep an open mind.
Taking a leaf from my boyfriend – ex-boyfriend's book (God, that stung) – I taped up that can of worms to fall apart over when I wasn't under the intense inspection of Hassan Ruparelia.
"Okay."
Hassan watched my non-reaction warily. "Do you wanna know how long for?"
It seemed to be a very full can. "Do I?"
He fidgeted as he assessed his conundrum. "You do wanna know the story, don't you?"
"Yes, yes, of course." I sighed, dejectedly. "Go on then. Tell me how long for."
He seemed caught off-guard. Which didn't make sense. He'd asked the question, hadn't he?
Hassan swallowed and turned his head so I couldn't see his face – or maybe, he mine.
"Uhh ..." He let out a low and restless exhale. "Since they were 15."
There was a long, long silence, and a plunging drop as my stomach hit the floor.
"That's like 10 years," I stated.
"Nah, not really," he hastened, trying to correct himself. "Things ended between them a couple of years ago. Maybe even a little longer. Might've been 2 and a half –"
"WHAT HAPPENED, Hassan??"
Hassan recoiled like I'd burned him with a firebrand. It was unfair, I know, considering I'd barged into his house on an unsuspecting Sunday and subjected him to my interrogation. Then again I'd never particularly had a handle on my emotions.
He'd moved from his armchair since agreeing to talk to me, a polyphonic ringtone going off in another room displacing him from his perch of comfort before he could break the first syllable. I couldn't bring myself to snoop around, not when I had the weight of an unsavoury history waiting for me, and in the 15 minutes he'd disappeared to finish up the call and make a mug of whatever it was in his hand I'd lost myself to imagining the worst.
Now, he was stood on the other side of the room, cold grey light from the storm dragging life into his dark skin and bleary eyes, highlighting the thick lashes that cast shadows onto his cheeks and the bedhead that was still defying gravity at various angles. He threaded the hand in his pocket through the ruffled strands as he fought to get his facts straight.
"Okay, so – Jez and I have been friends for ages, right? Since we was in primary school. Same class and everything; it was a small shitty school in a small shitty town, that was how we got to know each other. Trish joins in like, Year 5, and she speaks English, but she's definitely got an accent of some sort because she weren't raised here, she was from some place up North and it made her kind of stick out. That and her –"
"Up north? So what – Scotland, or something?"
Hassan's sentence dissolved into his tongue as his eyes began to narrow, eyebrows furrowing in what looked like disbelief.
"Like Norway, Ada. Or Russia."
"Oh."
"Nah, not Russia. She did mention the place at some point." His eyebrows stayed furrowed as he ransacked his brains for a better contender. "S'not the point anyway. The point is, she was different, and kids being kids in them days, they was really mean to her. She got bullied a lot. Problem was, quite a few times Jezza were a part of it. He gave her a lot of grief."
"Don't tell me she found that attractive," I said, aghast.
He looked at me again like I was growing a unicorn out of my head. "NO," he replied. "'You thick? She hated him, with like, proper passion. Jez always was a pretty popular guy, so back then, don't think he thought he was doing anything wrong - just picking up on jokes with his mates and having a good time of it. We never really mixed with the girls in our class and to be honest, at that age I don't think we ever considered them as having real feelings.
"Then you get to secondary school. Again, s'a small town, not like there are a lot of options, so we all went on to Suddington Manor. Things are obviously not the same as before; lot more classes, more particularly sets, and Trish and I were put in a lot of the same ones for stuff like Maths and Science or whatever, 'cos Jez tended to coast on the academic side and put up more of a performance in things like Sports and Music. No surprise. At some point, Trish and I was put as partners for a project or something, and from then on we became fairly decent friends.
"Jez started slipping pretty bad in his grades come Year 9 – on top of that, he were a bloody nuisance in classes. Funny, but disruptive. The guy's always loved performing, but the teachers couldn't stand him no more. He was this close –" Hassan measured a miniscule distance between his thumb and his index finger, and I raised an eyebrow "– to being expelled, so he gets called into headteacher's office one day and told he has to get his act together. I don't think it particularly bothered him, really, but like, he knew he'd miss his mates and that the only other school nearby was in Albas Creek, and that was mingin', so he started trying to boost himself, intellectually. He struggled a lot. Connie and Steve was dead worried about him because it looked like he weren't gonna get the grades to stay on another term, so they asked our form tutor, Miss Jessop for help – she suggested Jez get someone in the year to tutor him so they could explain things in a way he'd actually understand.
"The obvious guess was Trish. She was top of year in most subjects, she lived close to him, and she was already tutoring some of the students in younger years for some extra cash. But Trisha hated him. Like, hated. I cannot explain to you how much this girl despised Jezza's guts; at this point, it kinda looked like he was getting his just desserts. I knew that he weren't all that bad, but absolutely no one could convince her he was trying to shape up and that he wasn't gonna be a massive waste of her time. I kind of had to talk to her, on behalf of the teachers. And then I told Jez he had to make this work or I was gonna break his bloody guitar.
"All of this was when we was 14, just before we was choosing GCSEs. I don't know what she tutored him in, only that it happened 3 times a week, and I had to hear about it every Maths lesson we sat next to each other. Like Jeremy this and Jeremy that and how the fuck could you be friends with someone like Jeremy, he's such a dick. I got myself a mallet from my Dad's toolbox; I was ready. Then, like, Trish went through some family stuff in Year 10 – think her Granddad died or something – and Jez was the one who helped her through it. Got me to tell all her tutoring students to get lost while she were grieving and picked up all her homework, and he'd stop off at her house on his way home just to check how they was doing. He was crushing hard on her too, by then, but that wasn't why he did it. Jez did it for her because he fucking cared; same way he cares about all his friends.
"Eventually, he got her to soften up. Times like that really show you who's in your corner, and for Trish at least, seeing that different side to Jez started to change her perception of him. They started hanging out more, I didn't have to deal with anymore whinging in lessons or on the footie pitch, and with her help and everything, Jez did really well in his GCSEs. He even made it into college, for crying out loud! It was mad. He stopped being such a dickhead in school and shit just so he could make a proper case for asking her out, and like, it seemed to win her over, so, yeah. They was probably official by the end of Year 11.
"College was difficult for me and Jez – neither of us did that well in Year 12. Trish was too involved on her teaching qualification to be able to help us through the crappier stuff, so Jez made the decision to drop out and focus on his music full-time. We'd all hang out when Trish and I was done for the day, and ... life was good. Really good. It was definitely when they was at their happiest. I don't know, they had this magneticness, when they was around each other, and it weren't that hard to pick up on. Everybody noticed. And when Jez started up the band and Trish would come out to all his shows – they became, like, this very famous couple. Suddington royalty. Fans got a bit obsessed with it, but it was all in good fun, you know? We was happy for him. We was happy for both of them."
Hassan took a break from his avid storytelling, glugging down the now cold remnants of whatever was in his mug before setting it down on the coffee table. The strange glow in his eyes, the nostalgic smile, died as he mulled over the rest of details. I guessed this was where things became depressing.
"She kept him sane during the first few years," he said, dolefully. A glimpse of a sober smile tugging the corners of his mouth as his hands settled comfortably in his robe pockets. "'Specially when the band was blowing up. It was tough – not just for her, but for the guys too. Couple of them were happy to lap up the screams and attention, the 'marry me' signs and everything, but Jezza was the damn frontman. It was his gig. He loved getting them artworks and roses and whatnot, but you know, there was pressure on them. They had to ... get more sexy, like. Entertain the obsessions and the nudes and whatever, sign tits when fans asked them to, in like broad daylight at local shows and fundraisers and stuff. It got rocky. Trish would get paranoid and Jez would get sensitive and sometimes it was okay – they'd talk it over, go away for the weekend, get back to what they had – but sometimes ..." Hassan pursed his lips again, before dragging them into a thin line. "Sometimes it really weren't."
I watched him, cautiously, as he tried to figure things out. Twice he started sentences that never made it past the first word; between these attempts, he ran one hand, then both hands through his hair – digging into his roots like he was trying to dislodge a vital clue, discover the evidence that wasn't springing to mind. His lips grew more and more drawn each time and those eyes began to teem over with a deadened hopelessness.
Maybe nobody had the answers for why this story had ended the way it did.
"How did it end?" I murmured, after a moment or two. Hassan looked up like he'd forgotten I was in the room, but the jolt to his consciousness seemed to provide his reminiscing with a sense of direction. He collected his thoughts and cleared his throat, churning the diesel.
"Well ..." he tried out more words until he found the ones that fit. "Trish left. Before Jez's 23rd – before her 23rd, 'cos she left sometime in June, and Trish's birthday is only at the end of August. It was after Warminster's Big Summer Bash, some county festival the band managed to snag – that was the last time any of us saw her."
"She just left?" I asked.
Hassan gave me a single curt nod.
"Yep. Disappeared before Jez could call her the next day, because her phone was turned off, and even her friends or her family didn't know where she'd gone. Jez was ..." he shook his head, like it was too much to think about. "Zombified, is what I call it. He weren't himself anymore, like he lost something crucial when his girl disappeared off the face of the earth, which in my opinion, sounds legit. He didn't talk to anyone about it, got super angry if anyone tried prying ... clearly, that's still the way it is. But he got so lost within himself for a while it was like there was only a 50/50 chance he'd ever find a way out.
"He stepped out of the limelight of the band for a while, just focused on building the business with his dad. And when he did come back, he gave the frontman role to Axel and took over production and writing instead. Couldn't bear the scrutiny into his personal life anymore. Took up the bass, because nobody looks at the fucking bass player; he were as good as safe. We was all worried that that was it for him, that he'd lost his mojo and it was gonna take a fucking miracle to get it back. Until ..."
Hassan swallowed, chancing a glimpse over at me before wrestling back a tick in his jaw. "Until recently, at least."
So many thoughts began to fly about my head. Least of all the not-unwarranted hatred I'd been receiving from Jeremy's best friend the moment I was introduced as a poor replacement for everyone's favourite fairytale. And the more I mulled over it, the more I found myself slapping up against pieces that didn't add up. Why would you flee from the love of your life? Something had to have happened. And it had to have either been extreme or building up in the background for a substantial amount of time.
Did they also have an emotional blow-out, like Jeremy and I'd had yesterday? Did he hurt her? Did she hurt him? But Jeremy had been just as surprised by her disappearance as everybody else.
"Don't go running away with them theories," Hassan warned, catching the conspiracies in motion as they flitted across my face. "I've tried a dozen times; it doesn't get you anywhere. The only people who know what went down that day, night, whatever, is Jez and Anna. And both of their mouths are as good as welded shut."
This final piece of information struck me as odder than everything else I'd heard thus far. "Anna?" I asked him, bewildered. "Anna? How does Anna know what happened to Trisha?"
Hassan eyed me once more, with the same incredulity as all his other bouts of disbelief, before lowering his voice to answer.
"Ada – Anna is Trish's sister."