Soul Beach (20 page)

He’s mulling it over. Sips his beer. Looks at me. Looks at his iPod screen. Is there a built-in lie detector app in there? ‘That’s a bit odd, Alice, I must say.’

‘Yeah, well, my sister always said I was a bit of a freak.’ That’s true, too, but she meant it in an affectionate way.

He laughs. ‘Join the club. Freaks anonymous . . .’ And I realise in that moment, in a single shared glance, that he’s bought my story and he’s going to help me.
‘OK, Miss Freak, how exactly can I help?’

Lewis leaves with the sketchiest of details about Triti. He seems
more
intrigued because he’s got nothing to go on, not less. ‘Piece of pi . . . cake,’
he says as he goes.

I wish I could leave with him. Instead, I’m trying to prepare myself for the next ordeal: the tribute.

Dad was threatening to go out until he saw me give him a look that said,
I need you here too
. So we’re sitting in the living room waiting for the big moment, and for the pizzas
we’ve ordered (takeaways two nights running! Mum would never have let that happen before).

There’s something eerily familiar about the whole set up. Then I realise: this is where we were this time last year, right down to the pizza order: Four Cheeses for Mum, American Hot for
Dad, Mediterranean for me. The kid on the phone just now offered me the Caprese, based on previous orders.

But the Caprese was Meggie’s. That night, Tim, wanting to be no trouble, said he’d have a garlic bread, and then a slice from each of ours instead of having his own.

We’d been at the recording the previous night, of course, so we knew how the show ended. But still, we were on edge waiting to see how she looked on camera.
We
thought she was
wonderful, easily the best of all the contestants, but would everyone else?

Meggie had an invitation to the transmission party, but she chose to be with us. That was before she got dazzled by première and launch invitations and we saw less of her. Well, who can
blame her for enjoying the attention? It was what she’d always dreamed of.

My dad catches my eye. ‘Feels like she should be here, with us.’

I reckon Mum is about to bark something at him, but instead she sees this as the olive branch he intended it to be. She nods. ‘Maybe she is. I feel her presence sometimes, as though she
can sense when we need her.’

I say nothing, though the idea of Meggie as a kind of ultra-wet, ultra-sweet guardian angel couldn’t be further from the truth.

‘And now on ITV, it’s time for the third season of
Sing for Your Supper
. Stay tuned for your first glimpse – and your first taste – of the stars of
tomorrow.’

The sponsorship jingle appears, showing a happy family sitting in a living room not that different from ours, with trays of steaming food. The teenage boy has bangers and mash, the girl a
too-bright stir-fry; Dad has a deep brown stew, and Mum is about to orgasm over an orangey chicken tikka.

Tasteful Dinners sponsor Sing for your Supper. Whatever your taste, you’ll find a winner with Tasteful Dinners
.

Then the gurning family fade away, and the opening music and titles fade up. I freeze. That music used to mean so much: the OTT, showbizzy theme promised that Meggie could become the star she
was destined to be.

I look at my parents. Dad has taken Mum’s hand, and she’s gripping it back.

I wonder if Tim is watching. Or if the killer has tuned in. Or if they’re one and the same.

The titles finish and the studio appears: red, black, gold, like the ugliest of nightclubs. The two presenters – a former glamour model and a middle-aged actor who used to do Shakespeare
before choosing fame and wealth instead – smile brightly and read the autocue loudly with exaggerated lip movements, as though they’re talking to a deaf person. Perhaps that’s the
only way you can talk after you’ve been injected with as much lip filler as they both have.

It’s the usual spiel about talent and torment and tagliatelle. The ‘unique selling point’ of this dumb programme is that it links two viewer obsessions: talent shows and
cookery shows. Each week, the kids cook for each other, eating together and making relationships that will be tested to breaking point by their ambition to win.

It’s rubbish, of course. Meggie told us that no one in the house talked to each other except when the camera was running, and after they’d filmed the foodie segments, one or two of
the kids would be straight to the loo to get rid of their dinner before a single calorie could be absorbed. Eating disorders never featured on the show, but they were there behind the scenes, as
girls and boys fretted about every extra centimetre showing on screen and reducing their chances of making it to the final. Even Meggie went on a diet towards the end, she was made to feel so
paranoid about her shape.

And that makes me think of Triti.

There’s a shot of the line-up for this year’s competition – fifty acts, altogether. Even this early on, as the camera pans, it’s easy to spot who is there for comedy
value and who will survive the brutal ‘sudden death’ cull at the end of this first show. Half of them will have their dreams shattered tonight. Maybe they’re the lucky ones,
because it seems to me that every person but one in this shot will have their heart broken for our entertainment. And some, like Meggie, could fare even worse.

They cut to close-ups of the two presenters. Uh-oh. Serious faces. Here we go . . .

‘Of course, returning to your screens is a happy moment for both of us, but this year we’re also aware of a very real sadness,’ says the actor. ‘Absolutely.’ The
model nods sincerely and her boobs jiggle in her slinky dress. ‘I know that everyone who loves the show as we do will be thinking tonight of one of our most talented and popular contestants.
The girl who won our hearts from that very first time she sang. The girl who became known across Britain, and the world, as the Songbird.’

The orchestra plays softly: the opening theme to
Amazing Grace
. The screen fills with a shot of Meggie from that first show, but they’ve done something to the video so that it looks
softer round the edges, slightly faded. She looks as fresh and perfect as she always did – Lewis was talking crap when he said she wasn’t truly beautiful – but the effect makes
her seem like a starlet from the twenties or thirties. Or an icon.

‘Meggie Forster was a unique talent,’ the actor intones in the same voice he must have used as Hamlet. ‘Taken from us tragically young. We will all be thinking of her
throughout the series, but tonight in particular we wanted to mark her life and also what she did for us and our viewers on this show.’

Yeah, I think. What she did for you was double your fee. The first series was a washout. It was only when the papers started raving about the Songbird in series two that people started tuning
in, from Australia to Zanzibar.

‘Understandably, Meggie’s parents and sister didn’t feel able to join us here in the audience tonight,’ the model says, her round eyes almost popping out of their sockets
as she ladles on the sincerity.

‘They actually asked us?’ Dad says and Mum nods, raising her eyebrows.

‘But Meggie’s mother, Beatrice, agreed to speak to us about the six months since she lost her daughter, and how knowing she’s remembered by millions helps the grieving
process.’

Mum’s had the soft focus effect, too. Or maybe it’s the extra weight she’s carrying, because she looks more like Meggie’s sister than her mother as the shot widens to
show her sitting in the chair that I’m now curled up on.

‘From her first few weeks of life,’ Mum says, ‘I had this sense somehow that my little girl would end up known to millions . . .’

At the end of the tribute – which was more tastefully done than I’d expected, though the album plug by that runner-up boy band as they paid their respects was tacky
as hell – the actor repeats the number for
Crimestoppers
.

As the camera switches to elsewhere in the studio, where the model is about to interview the contestants, Dad mutes the telly.

‘Right. There we are then.’

‘I know you didn’t want me to do it, Glen, but you never know what might happen. It might make someone feel guilty enough to go to the police,’ Mum says. We all know exactly
which
someone
she has in mind.

‘It wasn’t too awful,’ Dad concedes. ‘What did you think, Alice?’

‘Could have been worse,’ I say. I wait for the moment when I can return to my bedroom and the Beach, where my sister is back in the present tense, not the tragic past.

We sit in silence. I can’t guess my parents’ thoughts. Maybe I don’t want to. Perhaps they think the wrong daughter died . . .

Suddenly Dad stands up. ‘The pizza. They haven’t brought it. I’ll go and chase them.’

I want to say I’m not hungry any more, but he’s already gone.

‘I’m off for a lie down, Mum.’

She stands up and opens her arms. ‘I did do the right thing, didn’t I, Alice? It was impossible to know what was right.’

I hug her, and whisper, ‘Of course, Mum. You did a brilliant job.’

I release myself and go upstairs.

There are four texts on my phone.

Cara’s says:
Thinking of you, chick. Why not join me and Felipe for a drink later, yeah? I bet you need it.

Robbie’s says:
Hope you’re OK. Still love you, you know, as a mate. Still care. xx

There’s one from a number I don’t recognise, until I remember I forgot to save Adrian’s name to my phone:
Tim’s been in tears tonight. He promises
he’ll be in touch soon. I watched it too and I still can’t believe she’s gone, even now. She’ll always be a legend. So sorry. Ade x

The final one is from Lewis:
I’VE GOT HER. Triti, I mean. Let me know when you can talk
.

No sympathy. No sadness. He’d probably even forgotten that the show was on.

But his is the message I’ve been waiting for, and the one I respond to straight away.

‘She died in a hospital in Camden,’ Lewis says, when we meet in the pub.

Oh my God. Triti exists.
Existed.

For a moment, I can’t speak. More proof that Soul Beach is real. Despite everything I’ve found about Danny, sometimes I still get worried that someone has set the whole thing up as a
clever hoax. Or even that my imagination is somehow dredging up random stuff I’ve read or seen, and I really have lost it.

Yet I couldn’t possibly have read about Triti. Which means Lewis might just have proved I am sane. Which means I am now pretty much his number one fan.

I find my voice. ‘You’re sure it’s her?’

‘A hundred per cent. I found her via the death certificates on one of the official registration back-ups. You don’t get much more certain than that.’

‘Is that public?’ I ask.

Lewis smiles. ‘Not really. But the security on their mirror site is unbelievably lame. Got through the encryption in under a minute.’

He reaches into his messenger bag.

I catch sight of the Gucci logo. ‘Is that a real one? They’re four hundred quid, aren’t they?’

Lewis frowns. ‘I don’t care about the label, I’m not that shallow. It’s just that it’s more hard-wearing than the fakes.’

I happen to know the bag is
this
season’s – Cara hopes her mum might buy her one for Christmas if she drops enough hints – so I wonder how he knows yet that it’ll
outlast the fakes. But I’m too distracted by the papers he’s taken out of the bag to argue. I reach out.

‘Wait, wait!’ he says, determined to savour his moment of triumph. ‘The weirdest thing is that the autopsy shows an Indian girl, Triti Pillai, aged sixteen and seriously
malnourished. All the usual signs of eating disorders, most notably the acid damage to the back of the teeth.’

‘I don’t get it. Why does that suggest an eating disorder?’

‘Stomach acid is evil. If you throw up all the time, your teeth rot.’

‘Oh.’ I think of Triti’s bright white teeth and her shy smile. ‘That’s horrible. But why is it weird?’

He hands over the document, finally, and points to the bottom.

I read out loud: ‘Cause of death: myocardial infarction, probable cause, undetected cardiac defect, of genetic origin.’

‘A heart attack. But essentially natural causes. They’re saying her heart just gave up because of a weakness she inherited. No mention of the anorexia or bulimia making the body less
able to cope with that weakness. I mean, I’m no expert, but it’s strange. Why would that be given as cause of death when she so obviously starved herself? All I can think of is that the
doctors said it was natural causes so the family wouldn’t have to face an inquest. Her folks were either very persuasive, or
very
influential.’

When Meggie’s inquest opened, the press were everywhere. It was over in seconds, proceedings postponed until they caught the killer. Dad went alone, and the photos of him are some of the
most shocking they took of him. He looks like a ghost himself.

‘Surely that’s a good thing though?’ I say to Lewis.

‘I suppose so, if your daughter dying can ever be a good thing. But what’s even weirder is that
you
got to know about it. It wasn’t reported. Not in the papers or the TV
news. I’ve looked everywhere. She was just a teenager who died of supposedly natural causes. Nothing special about her. So how did you hear about it?’

He waits for me to say something.

‘Perhaps . . . perhaps it was in a paper that doesn’t have a website,’ I suggest.

Lewis doesn’t smile. ‘Or perhaps you’re not telling me everything?’

He waits again, scrutinising me like I’m a particularly troublesome hard drive.

Well, two can stare. Nothing will persuade me to tell him how I know about Triti. I return his stare so intensely that if you were watching the two of us from the next table you’d think we
were either in love, or full of loathing.

It’s never occurred to me before how similar those two emotions look.

He blinks first. ‘Anyway, it’s only half the story. If you want the full one . . .’ He turns the papers over and there, scribbled in his crazy handwriting, is an address in
Camden. ‘How do you fancy a day trip to the wastelands of north London?’