Once, at the skate park, Maisy and Faria overheard Liam Parker boast that he had managed to climb into the Savages’ back garden at night. Together with his cousin Tyler, they claimed to have broken in through the back door and then taken a tour by torchlight.
‘What was it like inside?’ asked Maisy, who turned to pay him attention for what felt like the first time in her life.
‘The place is stripped bare,’ said Tyler, a heavy-set lad whose stripy T-shirt and tight jeans made him look like a badly squeezed tube of toothpaste. ‘Looks like it hasn’t been lived in for one hundred years. There’s dust and cobwebs everywhere.’
‘Were you scared?’ asked Faria.
Liam punched the end of his skateboard with one foot. He aimed to flip it into his hand, but instead it just slapped him in the groin.
‘The Savages aren’t coming back,’ he croaked, and collected the board to hide the fact that his face was knotted with pain. When he straightened up, he found both girls waiting for more. ‘They’re gone,’ he said with some certainty. ‘But it’s frightening to think that they’re out there somewhere.’
Vernon English’s physical injuries didn’t take long to heal. It was the mental scars that ran deep. He had been picked up by a squad car, following reports at first light that a man in a silver foil loincloth was staggering about attempting to flag down motorists near the park. Initially, his claim that he’d been kidnapped by cannibals was met with disbelief. The man was disturbed, the arresting officer assumed, and had most probably inflicted the injuries on himself. When a doctor was called to the station, largely because Vernon was so agitated, it was quickly recognised that he couldn’t have shaved his own back, and so two officers were dispatched as a precaution to the address he kept repeating.
What they found didn’t match the description of sheer horror that Vernon had described. There was no evidence that a freshly slain human body had been disembowelled, cut up, cooked and consumed. The kitchen was sparkling, though they couldn’t ignore the smell of fresh bleach in the sink and the waste disposal unit. What raised their suspicions further was the French window. Despite the absence of any broken glass, the pane was missing on one side. With no sign of anyone at home, they decided to radio in some concerns.
The Detective Inspector, when he finally arrived, had a keen eye for what was missing from a potential crime scene. In this case, once he’d conducted a search of every room, he concluded that the Savage family should be located as a matter of urgency. They weren’t suspected of any wrongdoing, so he stressed at the time, but it certainly seemed as if they had packed and left for a long holiday. Something wasn’t right, specifically in the kitchen. The fridge and the freezer had been stripped and cleaned, and the oven washed down with some kind of industrial scouring agent. As it was highly unlikely that thieves had broken in to clean the house from top to bottom, the decision was taken to call in forensics.
From that moment on, slide by slide under the microscope, the secret that the Savages had strived to keep to themselves began to seep out.
It started with a shred of grilled meat trapped between the seat and the back rest of a toddler’s high chair. As soon as that was proven to be of human origin, a full-scale enquiry was launched. Within the space of a day, the house was cloaked in scaffolding and tarpaulin, and crawling with specialists in white biohazard suits.
The investigation was intense, but it was only following a visit from Vernon that things began to piece together. Still barely speaking following his ordeal, he led them to the white police tent that covered the shed, hauled back an old piece of carpet and pointed to the concrete floor. It had proven to be surprisingly easy to break through, as if only recently set, and horribly upsetting when the first investigator pointed a torch into the pit. Not only had they uncovered some kind of underground slaughterhouse, several bin bags had been dropped in containing clothing, along with the bones of an adolescent male. Following tests, it was concluded that the human remains had reached a high temperature, not in some failed bid to incinerate the evidence but as if roasted in a domestic oven.
Everyone knew it was Jack Greenway before the police confirmed it at the press conference. He had gone missing at exactly the same time as the Savages. During their witness interviews, Faria and Maisy reported that Sasha and Jack had been experiencing issues in their relationship, but stressed that nobody expected her to break off with him like this. For a while, in private, the pair talked about what they knew in total disbelief. Surely their friend wasn’t capable of some of the things they were hearing? Slowly, however, as the story began to sink in, they looked back at their time with Sasha and began to see her in a different light. Food was important to her, as Vernon kept stressing during questioning, and so was family. Despite all the friction with her father, there was a bond that seemed to strengthen whenever they sat down to eat. That was when they talked. It was the glue that held them together. Maisy and Faria’s testimonies also backed this up. At school, they even found themselves defending their friend at times. Not for the flesh-eating. That was gross and always would be. Sasha might’ve had a taste for human heart, but despite it all, they maintained, hers was in the right place.
For the Savage family, it was to be their last supper in that house. Maybe Titus had already decided that it was time to move on, or perhaps he let his appetite get the better of him. Whether it was an oversight or deliberately planted so there was no going back, one tiny slither of what turned out to be Jack’s bicep, trapped down the back of the high chair, was all it took to make headlines. Whatever the case, Titus knew how to vanish with his loved ones. Everything was shut down overnight, from his company to Facebook profiles, email and bank accounts, but not before he settled his wife’s outstanding debt and notified the locations agency that their services were no longer required. Titus had everything covered so well that in effect the family consumed themselves.
Despite an international manhunt, no trace of Titus, Angelica, Sasha, Ivan, little Katya and their grandfather was ever discovered. Nor did the authorities ever learn what fate befell the vegan extremist, Amanda Dias. Before the alleged atrocity took place, CCTV cameras picked her up in the park, looking tense and restless. Some minutes later, she had taken off in the direction of the Savages. Inside the house, her fingerprints were found on a fork, but that was where the trail ended. Her father argued that she must’ve grabbed it in self-defence. Others quietly believed she had crossed over to a side that was generally believed to be unthinkable. It provoked no war between food factions, just a lot of discussion.
As for Vernon English, the private investigator at the centre of the saga, he worked hard to profit from the situation before taking early retirement. His book, a memoir about the experience, and how he solved the mysterious case of Lulabelle Hart, went on to become a huge Christmas best-seller, keeping Jamie, Delia, Hugh and Gordon from the top spot. Combined with the criminal injuries payout, he now lives happily on the south coast with his publicist and partner. The couple are expecting their first child.
Faria and Maisy didn’t receive as much attention from the media. This was mostly down to their parents, who agreed between themselves that it was in the girls’ best interest to be sheltered from the storm. They had their exams, after all, which they took in a packed hall with one spare desk set aside for the pupil on unauthorised leave of absence. Both are now in sixth form, but no longer hang out on the skate ramp. As Maisy has just learned to drive, they prefer to take themselves into town at lunch break.