The photos were horrifying. I thought that a body looked bad in movies, but in real life it looked even worse, not to mention that the smell in the forest had been horrendous. When we were children, Hassan had thrown my Bécassine doll in the sewer, and I had climbed down to retrieve it. At that time, I thought that I would never smell something that bad in my life again. I was wrong.
Unbeknown to us, Pollard had moved in behind us and seen the pictures. She screamed, and we turned around. At that point, I seriously thought that Gateway Hill was going to have a second dead body, because I fully intended to kill myself just to get away from that girl. It felt like she was always following us everywhere. Then she pointed to the picture and told us that she knew the victim.
Funny how feelings about someone can change drastically according to what you get out of them. She had been our biggest detractor, but everybody that did not like her immediately changed into those good old friends she never knew she had. Alex took her gently by the arm and gave her his seat right next to William and me.
I could see Scarlett and Delphine sitting at the table nearby with their new friends and giving me their legendary “you are shameless” look because for once I wasn’t complaining. I wasn’t going to be her best friend, but if she had information I needed, I was willing to be as courteous as possible, so I chose to ignore their stares.
Pollard informed us that the victim was a local woman, and she knew her to have been residing not too far from our school. She also informed us that the victim was the town alcoholic and regularly verbally abused her husband and her neighbours. She had been arrested a few times for violence towards her husband and children, but also for starting fights while being inebriated. She was the ultimate local nuisance.
“And many will probably express joy and relief at the thought of her demise,” said Pollard.
Hassan, as usual, didn’t pay any attention to Pollard’s narrative. He was busy playing with the photos and making comments like “These photos are seriously gruesome, and by that, I mean Texas Chainsaw Massacre–level gruesome. This is top-level psycho movie.”
I was starting to wish that he was the woman in the picture. The victim had had her hair cut. The body parts were mimicking the pentagram. I saved the pictures, and by the time we realised,time had flown by and it was almost time to get back to our houses.
School was out for the day, so after we had been sent to our rooms, Scarlett invited Pollard to join us as well; she had been helpful, and I had promised the girls and William to give her a chance. Maybe Will was right about her, I thought.
Walker and Morgan wanted to follow us as well, but Pam and I refused. Scarlett, Delphine and Pollard started to plead with us, but I was adamant.
Walker and Morgan finally left after Pollard made them leave, and we were finally able to start to know more about each other. Actually, all I wanted was more information about what I called my victim, and I was hoping that Pollard could guide us towards a possible suspect.
As we got to know Pollard better, some people kept telling me that I had misjudged her. Apparently, she was the daughter of the former mayor of Guildford. She had been sent to boarding school by her mother when she was twelve to protect her from her very abusive father. After years of abuse, salvation had come for her mother from one of her father’s multiple mistresses after she went to the police and accused him of kidnap and torture.
She claimed that after being tired of waiting for him to leave his wife, she had informed him of her decision to leave him. That was when he went crazy and repeatedly beat and tortured her during the course of three days until she was rescued by the postman.
That story had destroyed her father’s life and career, but on the plus side, he was now the guest of Her Majesty in one of her most refined prisons. He also finally agreed to give Pollard’s mother the divorce she had been asking for for years.
I was shocked but glad and relieved that her mother was finally free of that monster, but I had to admit that I had no sympathy for the mistress and her father. I had nothing but disgust for men and women who cheated on their partners or knowingly dated married people, and I thought that although she had not deserved to be tortured, karma definitely made sure that she would think twice about dating a married man.
Pollard’s bad attitude towards people who had a happy family life should have made more sense to me, but it didn’t. The “Papa was mean to me, so I am mean to everybody” defence was getting old. Every psycho was always using it. So what if she was hurting? She had no right to lash out at strangers as a result.
Probably sensing that things were about to turn sour, Pollard spoke to me one-to-one. After the information she had provided, I thought that I could at least repay her by listening to her. She started by apologising about her behaviour towards the students, to which I replied that she should address those apologies to them, not me. Then she apologised for the way she had treated me.
Now I was interested because as far as I knew, all she had done was to try to force her way into my life, but it was starting to feel like there was more. She admitted that she had not liked Pam and me when we arrived, because of the attention we were receiving from everybody, and she particularly hated me because of the attention William was giving me.
She had decided to be friends with my friends just in order to pull them away from me and isolate me, but it hadn’t worked. The last straw for her had been when I started dating William and destroyed her chances of ever being with him again.
She also admitted that she had a massive girl crush on me and that she had hated me for it as well. At that moment, the gossip was so juicy I almost asked her to give me a minute so I could go and spread it.
I decided to let bygones be bygones, and we hugged. Then she asked me if I could do the same with Walker and Morgan, and I flat out refused. My issues with those two were bigger than being bully enablers; I personally held a serious grudge against them. When I realised that they had never told Pollard what had happened between Pam, me and them, I enlightened her.
A few weeks after we had arrived in J.C., Pam and I had witnessed Walker and Morgan sneaking onto a bus to Guildford. At J.C., the students are allowed to go to Gateway Hill on a weekend, but only to Gateway Hill. The other towns were off limits without adult supervision. After seeing the girls do that a few times, Pam and I had decided to jump on a bus and pay Guildford a visit.
We did some shopping and were about to leave when we saw them get on another bus, so we followed, hoping to be taken to a nice market or yard sale, but that was not the case. We ended up in a place called Stoughton. It looked like a run-down area with nothing interesting to see, and we were about to leave when a group of thugs appeared and started taunting the girls.
They tried to move away from them, but the guys stopped them and started attempting to touch them. We had seen enough. There were six of them, and we didn’t know if they were armed or not, but we called out to them and told them to stay away from the girls. They started to laugh at us. People across the street started to take an interest; they were all staring. I walked straight to the one who seemed to be the leader and told him to leave, and he said, “Or what?”
I smiled and said, “Take your group of human rejects and leave, or I’ll break your nose.”
He turned to his friends, who by now had abandoned Walker and Morgan and had started gravitating around Pam and me, and repeated to them what I had said. They started laughing, and he said, “Last chance, apologise like a good little girl, or get your nose busted.”
I looked at Pam and she looked at me. We smiled at each other, and I said, “Nose it is.”
He said, “All right, then,” and he proceeded to attempt to punch me, but I was faster than him, and I dodged his punch. I then hit him, and all hell broke loose. We all started fighting. A guy on the other side of the street ran towards Pam and me, while others had their phones out to call the police.
But the entire time, Walker and Morgan were in each other’s arms, screaming. They did not move; they didn’t even attempt to help us. We could have been seriously hurt, but they clearly didn’t care. They chose to stand there and watch us possibly get beaten to death.
After the last guy dropped to the floor, I walked towards them. I was furious and said, “Seriously? Seriously, you didn’t come to help? Are you serious?”
They mumbled some meek apology, but I was so enraged that I punched Morgan in the face, and she ended up on the floor. I was going to do it to Walker too when Pam grabbed my hand and stopped me.
She told me to let it go, but she issued them a warning. She said, “Listen very carefully because I am not going to say this twice. Next time you are in trouble, we will let them kill you. From now on, consider us enemies. What you have done today, we will never forgive or forget. You and us, we are done forever.”
We then left after thanking the only person who had come to our aid. We could hear the girls crying but we didn’t care.
When I was done with my narration, Pollard was left gobsmacked. She stood there silent for a while, and I was just standing there with my arms crossed, ready for an argument.
She proceeded by saying, “It’s not the same. You guys are Yans. They are not.”
I was outraged. The fact that they weren’t willing to lend us a hand proved that they were without honor and their standard of morality was low, and so was hers since she was defending them.
I wasted no time throwing that in her face, and she turned red, realising that her argument was not sound. Then I proceeded to remind her that Yan women, although we have supernatural powers, Morgan and Walker had no idea that we were Yans, and yet they deliberately left us to be beaten.
That, to us, was the highest level of evil. In my eyes, the girls were worse than their attackers, and I had no intention of ever forgiving them, let alone ever going to their defence, no matter how much they might need it.
Pollard begged me to give her a moment with Pam, and she did the same thing. She apologised for her past behaviour and asked if Pam would agree to give her a chance. Pam agreed, but to my dismay, she also agreed to give Morgan and Walker a chance. I knew that Pam would try and persuade me to follow her lead, so I ran away and joined the other girls.
Over the next few days, I realised that Pollard and I also had a lot in common, like our love of MasterChef Australia. Everybody who knew me knew that I was a big fan of MasterChef, even though I couldn’t cook, but Pollard not only loved the show, she was also taking culinary classes as well, and she also agreed that MasterChef Australia was the best MasterChef in the world, with the most talented contestants.
I also found out that the best food at the Mystery Pot Tavern was created by her culinary teacher. Most of the tavern menu was created during class by him, so she knew the recipe of my favourite dishes.
Her teacher was the one who had created my favourite starter, the divine avocado-wrapped prawns, my favourite main, the chicken J.C., and my favourite pudding, the J.C. cake, which was a cake made of pastry and filled with fennel crème madame. It was served as a big slice of puff pastry shaped like a slice of cake and was ridiculously beautiful.
The moment Pollard said that, I automatically turned into her biggest fan. Her dream was to move to Australia and enter the competition, and I was certain that she could give Reynold Poernomo a run for his money, or at least a good try.