Amanda Rose Brown

It was a late summer’s day when I found out that Amanda Rose Brown had died.

Perhaps I should explain. It was around seven in the evening: the buzz of day had stopped and there was a sleepy afternoon lull in my hazy Buckinghamshire hometown of Harleigh. I was on my way back from the post office – I had lost my passport, and needed to pick up a form to get a new one. I was walking past Harleigh Park, when I thought I heard someone. I looked round, but everywhere was empty. Unperturbed, I walked on – until I heard the sound again. It was thin and weak, like a kitten mewling for its mother. Doubling back, I looked around – and there she was. A girl around the same age as me with tousled brown hair, lying on her side with her mouth a perfect O of surprise and a knife sticking out of her back, not a whisper of a breath left in her body and her clear grey eyes open and staring at me in horror. Her face wasn’t pretty but it was neat, stained with crusted blood and grass, and there was something about it that made my nerves feel jangled.

I pressed my fingers to her throat, but there was no pulse and she wasn’t breathing. I called 999, asking for police and ambulance; I didn’t know first aid and I wanted to run around shouting for help and knocking on every door, but there are no houses near Harleigh Park, and I didn’t want to leave this girl. I sat by her, trembling, waiting.

I didn’t understand why the park was so empty. It was August. The streets should be full of boys chasing girls in the hopes of a phone number, the usual lads chucking a Frisbee around on the grass, the adorable skater couple. There should be birds and bees and the air of heady hedonism. Instead, there was an angular silence. Everything seemed black and white; black sky, black ground, the white glimmer of the sun on the girl’s white skin: black blood seeping over white daisies. I tried to piece together what had happened. The girl had been stabbed there, where there was a pool of blood. She had pulled herself over here, calling out for help. I’d been the only one to hear, and I’d paid attention too late, and now she was dead.

The police appeared, along with the ambulance. Someone put a blanket round my shoulders. Someone else was talking to me, asking me questions, trying to lead me away but I wouldn’t move. I couldn’t. I was just staring at the girl, at her maddeningly familiar face that I couldn’t place.

“Are you the girl that called the police?” asked the patient voice.
“Yeah…”
“I’m WPC Jones.”
“Amanda… Amanda Rose Brown…”
“Will you come with me please, Amanda? I was wondering if I could talk to you…”

“Mum, I found a dead body today.”
“Really? That’s nice dear…”
“I was just down the police station.”
“Were they nice?”
“Mum, I found a dead body!”
“You already said that…”
“Are you listening to me, Mum?”
“What was that, love?”

I got a call the next day.

“The girl you found, Miss Brown.”
“Yes?” I said, suddenly feeling hopeful. Had they managed to revive her? There was no such luck.
“She had her passport on her. Her name is Amanda Rose Brown. Date of birth, twenty-third of September, nineteen ninety four.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s a coincidence. That’s my birthday, too.”
“That was sort of what we wanted to talk to you about, Miss Brown. The photo on the passport is of you…”

“There’s been a mistake. This is my passport,” I said, moving to take back my passport more confidently than I felt.
“We found it on her,” WPC Jones said, stopping my hand. “And it looks like her, too.”
I went to see the girl in the morgue. She was in a drawer – really, a drawer – and they pulled it out like she was just another file, like she hadn’t been alive twenty-four hours ago. I did a double-take when the policewoman held the passport up next to the girl’s face.
“But…” I couldn’t form the words.
“This may be your passport, but it also seems to be this Amanda’s passport. So, the question is, who is the real Amanda Rose Jones?” she asked, looking at me sharply.

I guess we will never know for sure.