Here is the first chapter of my 1979 UK-set comedy murder mystery Backstabbers. When an awkward teenager discovers a dead theatre critic, he must navigate an amateur dramatics community full of secrets, lies and absurdities to solve the mystery - and find himself.
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All I had to do was please the right people. If only I knew what they wanted from me.
Those were the final, futile thoughts of Hartley Rumbelow as his lifeless body lay on the dank cobbled floor, trapped beneath the weight of his own creations. All that remained was regret and a lifetime of unfulfilled dreams.
His frail, ancient body was pinned beneath fallen bookshelves in his Georgian cellar. Storage boxes had spilled their contents: tattered books, yellowed manuscripts and loose papers. Close to his head lay the cover of a script titled Time Runs Out. These things had once meant everything to him. In the end, none of them was going to save him. It was simply useless knowledge.
A few feet away, eighteen-year-old Stuart Ostridge sat slumped on the floor, his back against the crumbling cellar wall. He stared, petrified and wide-eyed, at the dead man before him. Useless knowledge would be the undoing of Hartley Rumbelow, but it would prove key to the future of a sixth-former named Stuart Ostridge.
****
Before the exam, Stu’s wide eyes anxiously scoured the rabble of pallid skinhead sixth-formers in the school foyer. He caught sight of Lena Darrow’s raven hair, striking against her red plastic raincoat. Weaving and squeezing through the crowd, he pursued her.
Stu had previously written to a magazine agony aunt for advice on how to approach Lena. He blamed the lack of a reply for his current race against the clock.
Lena turned a corner and disappeared from view. Stu followed as fast as the rules allowed. The crisp, ironed-in pleats of his black school trousers flapped like two impressive sails on a mighty galleon.
Thankfully, the corridor was deserted, so nobody saw him speed-waddling like a camp duck. At the junction were four cavernous, paint-flaked corridors. The door to the girls’ toilets creaked nearby.
Stu played it casual, faking an interest in the school noticeboard while he rehearsed possible opening lines.
Hi, Lena. Would you go out with me? Pretty please?
Lena, I’m Stu. You probably don’t know who I am…
Lena, you know who I am, right?
Such a prat.
He felt a presence beside him and turned with his best winning smile, only to be greeted by Christopher Gothard.
A pestering spectre of copper curls and octagonal spectacles. A wide mouth with non-existent lips and staring dead eyes. That loud, cackling laugh. Stu had heard his dad’s conspiracy theories about the hidden hierarchy of shape-changing lizard people. Was Christopher Gothard one of their agents of doom? Stu liked to think so.
Guitar case at his feet, Christopher pinned leaflets of self-promotion to the noticeboard. He had left school two years earlier and had been rubbing it in ever since.
‘Stewpot!’ jeered Christopher.
Stu searched around Christopher without a flicker of recognition, deliberately evasive in the hope that he would naff off. Christopher continued anyway. ‘Heard your mate Alan making a right din at The Duck’s Foot last night. Don’t know how he’s got the nerve to pick up a guitar.’
Aggravated at having to acknowledge him, Stu replied wearily. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Teaching the first years music,’ said Christopher, as if it were common knowledge.
How could he teach music? Stu knew for a fact that Gothard could not even read sheet music, because he never missed an opportunity to brag about his God-given talent.
‘Still working on my debut album, of course. Potential number-one material.’ Christopher smirked. Stu shrugged. More like number two.
The girls’ toilet door whined open. Lena reappeared and Stu’s chest seized as she playfully nudged Christopher with her elbow. They exchanged an awkward kiss. Lena and Christopher. The love and hate of Stu’s life, standing side by side.
Lena registered Stu’s presence. ‘Oh. Hello, you. Ready for the exam? Can’t believe it’s almost over. What do you want to be when you grow up?’
Christopher supplied the answer before Stu could. ‘He’ll let you know when he grows up.’ In Stu’s mind, he seized Christopher by the throat and pinned him to the wall with a butcher’s knife. The fantasy vanished as quickly as it came.
‘I’m sure I’ll think of something,’ Stu said.
****
WEARDNESS SCHOOLS EXAMINATION BOARD
General Certificate Examination
Advanced Level
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Tuesday, 26 June 1979, 2 hours
Answer all the questions in Section A, and one from Section B.
You should pay careful attention to spelling; punctuations and handriting.
In the main hall of Scholars Hollow Secondary School, rows of casually dressed sixth-formers worked through their exam with varying degrees of commitment.
Stuart Ostridge feigned deep thought. Whenever he tried to look wise, his concentration melted into a yearning side-glance at Lena, seated nearby. Her dark hair fell across her face as she wrote. Stu had spent much of his secondary school life staring dreamily in her direction.
Lena was the reason Stu had stayed on at school while his friends went off to become frequently gigging pub-rock stars and tyre fitters. She was also the reason he had clung to his paper round for so long: it gave him a legitimate excuse to pass her house every morning.
Yet Stu remained almost invisible to her. He had wished invisibility upon himself many times throughout his eighteen years on Earth, but now it troubled him. Could you bring about your own curse simply by wishing too hard?
Hiding in plain sight had benefits. Stu once overheard a conversation between Lena and a confidante, huddled over a My Guy photo story. Lena spoke of the embarrassment of her Dad, Maynard Darrow, an obscene stand-up comedian who toured working men’s clubs.
Stu’s parents often dropped warnings into conversations about girls, usually after his older brother, Jeffrey, brought home another well-matched nightmare.
‘You’re not gonna do all that, are you?’ they would state rather than ask.
The exhilaration of dating a local celebrity’s daughter might break the deadlock. Mrs Ostridge often gushed at the television whenever Liberace, Anthony Perkins or Freddie Mercury appeared. Stu’s dad’s trademark eye-roll would always be followed by: ‘It’s a miracle you were ever born.’
Sweaty weeble Maynard Darrow’s vulgar stand-up routine provoked Stu’s sympathy for Lena. To his parents, however, Maynard was a comedy genius and, more importantly, occasionally on television. Introducing Lena to them would be an easy sell.
Stu was certain that, if Lena read one of his stories — a collection of aired frustrations by a voice desperate to be heard — she would understand him. Maybe even like him.
Everything Stu knew about girls came from films, the Littlewoods catalogue and Jeffrey, who thrived on feeding his little brother misinformation about life. ‘The Chat’ with his dad, Godfrey, had been brief and to the point.
‘You know about the birds ’n’ bees, don’t you?’ Young Stu nodded, and nothing else was said.
He would have stood more chance of passing his A levels.
Stu kept a carefully managed list in his well-hidden diary, should he ever need it.
‘Remarkable Ladies of Note’ Top Ten:
(Delivered with sensational dynamic urgency by David ‘Kid’ Jensen or Peter Powell)
10. Wonder Woman
9. The Cadbury’s Caramel Bunny
8. Stevie Nicks
7. Julie Newmar’s Catwoman
6. Pauline from Legs & Co.
5. Princess (from Battle of the Planets)
4. Suzi Quatro
3. Vita Gothard (Christopher’s mother; a liberated bohemian and nude life model)
2. Debbie Harry
Yet none of these compared to number one:
1. Lena Darrow
Fate was drawing him to Lena. In the early days of their non-relationship, Stu had a vivid dream. He was old and dying. From his deathbed, he saw a woman with dark hair. Her face was blurred except for her eyes, which told of a complicated history. Even though he was dying, he knew he was safe — the security he had pined for all his life.
Mr Hargreaves, a George Roper-moustached teacher posing with one tight-trousered leg perched on a chair, drily declared, ‘One hour to go,’ as if none of it mattered anyway.
Panic kicked Stu in the guts. Spending an entire hour thinking about Lena was not the best use of his time.
Section B
Choose one of the following and write 350–500 words.
Eight options. One stood head and shoulders above the rest.
2. Useless knowledge
This is where Stuart Ostridge would come into his own.
‘Falking Hill is a market town in Essex. It is also part of the London Borough of Weardness. Largely working class, with aspirations of being middle class. White. Conservative. A town of tradition. For generations, an old lady has sat in the town centre, forcing people to buy lace and heather or else be cursed. She does a roaring trade in the mornings, when city commuters in bowler hats pass on their way to the train station. Some say Falking Hill is going downhill fast, yet it has the latest fashions, public transport to London, two cinemas and a pub on every street corner — and not a fully functioning toilet between them.
Other features include a fountain in the shopping centre that bubbles over every Saturday, courtesy of teenagers armed with washing-up liquid. There is always a long line of prams outside the supermarket, and an art display outside the library most days, thanks to Peter the Painter, a local tramp who expresses himself on pieces of cardboard.
Everyone in Falking Hill knows someone who works at the car plant down by the river or at the brewery in the centre of town. The market and shopping centre frequently smell of hot milk — a super-intense, malty breakfast-cereal pong that fills the nostrils pleasantly until it hits the lungs and makes you heave. Even though it is known as mashing day, the smell seems to hang over the town constantly. Locally, it is known as the Falking Hill Stink.’
Stu’s clammy writing hand cramped, smudged with ink. The curse of the left-hander. In junior school, a teacher had once embarked on a witch-hunt, exposing Stu as a ‘cursed’ left-handed child.
The teacher instructed him to write with his right hand or else. Or else what, Stu never discovered. People could be cruel. Stu knew that much. Useless memories were Stuart Ostridge’s other speciality.
‘Five minutes left!’ bellowed Hargreaves, with blatant boredom. How the hell was this possible?
Discreetly, Stu tore a corner from his exam paper and wrote four words: WILL YOU GO OUT WITH ME? He folded the note and skimmed it towards Lena. She glanced from the paper to Stu with a questioning frown.
Before she could open it, a hand plucked it from the desk.
****
The second hand stuttered on the clock behind Hargreaves’ desk. Head of the sixth form, Hargreaves was entering the twilight years of his career and it was not getting any better. If this was his lot, he was not going to spare anyone else. One foot perched on his desk, he held Stu’s folded scrap of paper between two fingers. Stu struggled to avoid making eye contact with Hargreaves’ groin.
‘Will you go out with me?’ Hargreaves read. ‘I hate to break it to you, Ostridge, but you’re not my type.’ He let the humiliation settle. ‘Idiot. Why throw your prospects away on some silly fantasy? Not that it matters one jot, because I’ve glanced over your exam paper.’
Before Stu could offer an innocent plea, Hargreaves raised a finger to silence him. ‘I warned you. Repeatedly. Just give them what they want. You were meant to write facts. Quotes. This is meaningless hearsay. Descriptions of pub toilets. Claptrap!’
To prove his point, Hargreaves read from Stu’s paper. ‘These are not my people.’ He glared over the page. ‘What, you think you’re better than the grafters of Falking Hill market? Breaking their backs to feed their families? What are you trying to prove? That you’re different? Well, brace yourself: you are the same as the rest of us.’
‘But that’s the stuff that means something. To me,’ said Stu.
Hargreaves erupted. ‘But we don’t want that. We want this!’ He slammed his hand on the stack of exam papers. The impact echoed for several uncomfortable seconds.
‘You’re a piss-taker. Ostridge by name. Peck, peck, bloody peck. Your sort will be the first against the wall when the time comes.’
Stu’s cheeks flushed pink as he struggled to hold back the flood behind his eyes. Hargreaves leaned close enough for Stu to smell his stale breath. ‘Why don’t you write about it, Stuart?’
The sneering ‘Stuart’ was delivered with such drollery that it was practically an insult.
****
Emancipation from the educational system was a day long-fantasised about, but this was not how Stu had imagined it would be. There was no victorious excitement, no randy lads thrusting their fists into the air. Just an anti-climactic silence, dead yellow grass and a long, cracked concrete path.
****
Stu gently positioned Selling England by the Pound by Genesis on the turntable. The needle crackled as it touched down on the vinyl. Dancing with the Moonlit Knight unfolded. Stu sprawled on the dark brown living-room carpet, chunky headphones on, attempting to blot out the day’s events and the revelation that Christopher Gothard and Lena Darrow were a “couple”. His thoughts circled the times he had been forced to play with Gothard at the insistence of their parents, and Christopher’s uncanny knack for breaking Stu’s toys. Never his own, no. He always broke them with the same blank expression. On the rare occasion Stu broke something of Christopher’s, at least he had the decency to hide the evidence and deny any culpability.
Stu’s Mum called from the kitchen as Stu bathed in Peter Gabriel’s imagery. A pair of legs in military combats stepped over him. They halted, treading a firm shove into Stu’s arm.
Godfrey and Jemima Ostridge bore a passing resemblance to Engelbert Humperdinck and Dusty Springfield respectively. Stu took pride in his parents’ resemblance to a couple of musical legends.
Jeffrey, his shorn-headed older brother by five years, treated every day like a trek through a Vietnamese swamp. He possessed an intense stare, perfect for intimidating younger brothers.
*
Dinners on laps, the Ostridge family grazed in front of the television, watching I Didn’t Know You Cared. The laughter from the studio audience punctuated the following conversation.
‘How did the exam go, Stuart?’ enquired Jemima before eating a mouthful of dinner. Stu murmured a throwaway ‘yeah’, not wanting to encourage interrogation. But his Dad made sure his son wasn’t going to get away lightly. ‘What exactly are your plans for a career?’ asked Godfrey.
‘I dunno,’ said Stu, pretending to be distracted by the television. His Dad wasn’t letting go of this bone of contention. ‘And how much does that pay an hour?’
Sensing the friction in her husband’s voice, Jemima adopted a friendlier, softer tack. ‘Why don’t you speak to Ray Spake about that junior apprentice job?’
‘I was thinking… I might write… stuff,’ said Stu, finally making eye contact with his Dad to show he was serious, which only troubled his Dad even more.
‘I’ve read those stories of yours. Bloody lucky they haven’t locked you up.’
Internally, Stu screamed a panicked How? He certainly hadn’t offered up his writing for critique from his parents. If anything, Stu had gone out of his way to keep his stories a closely-guarded secret. Stu slumped with dismay, picturing his parents gleefully rifling through his private thoughts. As if justified, Godfrey scoffed, as if Stu had no reason for feeling a bond of trust had been violated.
‘Oh, don’t look so wounded, Stuart. We’re your parents.’
****
A display of boxed plastic silver horseshoes lined the top shelf in Stu’s bedroom. He had recently received them for his 18th birthday ‘for good luck’, according to his Mum. A hiding place from nosey family members was the more accurate description. Stashed behind the display was a raggedy toy dog Stu had owned since he was born, which Jeffrey often took hostage to get his own way.
Also concealed was Stu’s diary. He didn’t need his family to know how much Genesis meant to him.
Stu’s bedroom walls were a mosaic of film posters and pictures of Roger Moore (the acceptable face of masculine hero worship) cobbled from Look-In comics. Star Wars figures were poised aboard a cardboard Death Star on top of a small wardrobe. His family judged him as being too old for toys, but Star Wars spoke to him when it came out in ’77: Trapped on a dull planet, longing for adventure. Though Stu suspected his future was more Porkins than Skywalker.
The lower shelves stored broken Action Men, crippled by fatal parachute jumps from Jeffrey’s bedroom.
Jeffrey. The only person ever to break a Stretch Armstrong.
Leaning on the windowsill beside his bed, Stu gazed at the oak tree across the road. A bright orange plastic Sportpax P.E. kit bag swung in the breeze, hooked high up in the branches. Stu convinced himself he could still see the cartoon images of a female diver and a manly swimmer, overlaid with Bay City Rollers stickers. Another reason to despise Christopher Gothard.
Having snatched the P.E. bag from Stu, he cackled ‘Want it back? Here it is.’ YOINK! Christopher launched the bag up through the branches. On its descent, the drawstrings snagged on a branch… and there its legend grew. Stu tried to rescue it over the years, whenever its prominence rose. His name was on the bag. He knew the secret it contained. Damn Gothard. And damn that Rollers phase. He wasn’t even that into them.
What did a girl like Lena Darrow see in Christopher bloody Gothard? At least Gothard had taken the risk of asking her out. Gothard didn’t just hope for a better life.
Stu’s fear of feeling exposed stemmed from a fear of making mistakes, of which he made many. He recently broke one of his Mum’s ornaments (whilst struggling to shake a shoe off his foot) and tried to glue it back together. Badly.
As a child, Stu would receive the heel end of a slipper. As an eighteen-year-old, he received a far more painful response from his Dad: ‘You’re a coward, Stuart.’
Stu had a deep dislike of facing fears. Of which there were many:
10 The haunting theme tune to Picture Box, and the eerie, unnerving fanfare crescendo which heralded the BBC’s Open University programming.
9. Jaws. It was impossible to go swimming ever again. Even sitting on the toilet became an ordeal, should the shark manage to squeeze itself up the drain pipe and bite him on the bottom.
8. Armchair Thriller (Again, haunting theme tune with a silhouetted man sitting on what, admittedly, looked like a comfy armchair). In particular, a recent episode titled Quiet as a Nun, featuring a faceless nun in an attic.
7. Zoot, the saxophonist from The Muppet Show.
6. Fenella the little green witch from Chorlton and the Wheelies. That face and that voice.
5. The BBC Test Card. The image of the girl and the toy clown. What did it all mean?
4. Public information adverts: Like a distrusting parent warning their reckless children against careering headlong into death, these adverts mirrored Stu’s parents’ method of parenting. Narrated with arrogant whimsy – an early death was only a matter of time - these adverts haunted Stu. Be it the dangers of crossing the road, going too high on the swings or accepting sweets from well-spoken paedophiles, there was an advert designed to scare the living brown out of the viewer. The worst offender featured the Grim Reaper and a creepy Donald Pleasance voiceover: “I am the spirit of dark and lonely water, ready to trap the unwary, the show-off, the fool…”
3. Open doors. Bedroom, wardrobe… always a feeling of being watched.
2. Balok, the starey-eyed/open-mouthed alien in the Star Trek end credits.
1. Things without faces. The silhouetted woman from Tales of the Unexpected credits. The Phantom Flan-Flinger from Tiswas, a silhouette made three-dimensional.
Yet the biggest fear in Stu’s life loomed unnoticed, controlling every decision.
The Unknown.
Thoughts of death plagued Stu. When will it happen? How? Would this be the last time he would ever listen to ‘Wig Wam Bam’? If he thought too deep, his heart would kick-start into a frantic pounding, which struck Stu with ridiculous irony: A self-induced heart attack. Dying due to the fear of dying.
Scared of adverts, scared to ask out a girl. Accidents were waiting to happen.
Certain death was only a finger in a plug socket away… although, in all probability, Stuart Ostridge was more likely to die of mortification than from any physical wound.
© 2026 Andrew Wright
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