The Perfect Girl (18 page)

When I arrive at Maria and Chris’s avenue I’m not allowed to drive down it. I park on an adjoining street and run until I’m held back by the raised arms of a police officer who’s guarding the strip of crime scene tape that sags across the entrance to their road.

‘I’m family,’ I say. ‘It’s my sister.’

He begins to explain why that’s not a good enough reason to encroach on the ‘crime scene’ but I can’t stand to listen, because I need to see, and so I duck away from him and under the tape and run the hundred yards down the street until I’m standing at the entrance to Chris and Maria’s driveway taking breaths that scorch my throat.

I’m just in time to see a body bag being carried out of the shed, and placed on a gurney. Faintness almost fells me and I have to lean against the golden stone column at the entrance to the driveway. It’s the realisation that this is true.

Maria’s my younger sister; she was always a sprite compared to me, a waif, she was my shadow when we were younger, the one who could make our dad beam even when he was supposed to be cross with her, and now she’s gone. Your younger sister is not supposed to die before you, it’s not right. As I have no child who I fear will predecease me, this upsets the natural order of things for me in a way that’s unexpectedly shocking. Our parents are both dead, but I didn’t feel orphaned until now, because I had Maria.

As I watch the men carry her, I imagine how it feels to them, because I know the weight of a dead body. I’ve hauled an animal corpse out of the back of a car, or off a surgical table, on more than one occasion. When all the tissues are lifeless and the heart has stopped pumping, the weight of death is extraordinary. If someone brings a dead animal to us, when we prepare to move the body from our surgery car park into the building for cremation, we usually wait until passers-by have gone, to spare their feelings, but the folks with the gurney outside Maria’s house take no such precautions. They’re not paramedics, because there’s no need for paramedics now. These are men whose jobs are rarely advertised, because they collect the lifeless bodies. They wheel the gurney towards the back of a van, which is unmarked. There’s no need for an ambulance now either.

The policeman is by my side, and he guides me away, but he’s kind enough to support me too and to explain gently that Maria’s body is in the care of the coroner now, pending a post-mortem investigation, and a murder inquiry has been launched.

And as I take my last look back at their house I think something that I’ve thought before: ‘What a waste.’ And even my sceptical soul can’t help but wonder if our family is somehow cursed.

I feel safe in the police car in a sort of way because if Tom Barlow hurt my mum then he can’t get me here, but I also feel afraid, because being in the police car feels like it did before.

It’s not cold, or dark, and I’m not in my party clothes with shards of glass in my hair and cuts on my face, and I’m not over the limit, but it is a police car and I am being transported.

That’s when I get the idea that I need Sam.

I know he’s in Bristol now because Tessa told Mum once that she’d run into him and that he lives here now too, like us.

‘That’s a funny coincidence, don’t you think?’ she said to Mum, but of course Mum didn’t want to talk about it so Tess had to keep her little smile at the coincidence just for herself.

The only person who can take me to see Sam is Uncle Richard, but I can’t mention it to him at first, because when he meets us at the police station he gives me a too tight hug, but then all he does is try to tell the police that Aunt Tessa didn’t come home last night. Nobody listens to him at first, but after he’s told them like a thousand times eventually one of them asks him if Richard has any reason to fear for her safety, or if he thinks Tess might have had a reason to have argued with her sister.

‘No!’ Richard shouts in a too dry voice that lurches up an octave. ‘No she bloody hasn’t. How dare you?’ Uncle Richard is always fierce about Tess and my mum says that’s because he loves her so much.

I want Sam, because of what I did before. I need him and his advice because I’m scared people will put the blame on me.

I hold my head together enough to put my plan into action because I’m able to put my grief in a box and put my thinking cap on. Jason at the Unit taught me how to do that. ‘Imagine your grief as a flower that has bloomed,’ he said in one of our sessions and I was like, ‘You already said grief blooms.’

‘Bear with me,’ he said. ‘Imagine it.’

So I shut my eyes and did; I made my grief into a peony, big and blowsy.

‘Now convert that flower into something made of paper.’

I opened my eyes when he said that. ‘What?’

‘Hang in there. Do you know what origami is?’

‘Of course. Japanese. “Ori” means “folding” and “kami” means “paper”. First clear reference to paper models is in a 1680 poem by Ihara Saikaku.’

Jason leaned back and looked at me. ‘Zoe-pedia,’ he said and this encouraged me to say: ‘The poem is about butterflies, in a dream, and they are made from origami. Traditionally, they would be used in wedding ceremonies.’

I drew breath because there was more I could have said. I thought that I could probably tell him the line of the poem in Japanese because I read it phonetically once, but Jason interrupted me:

‘So imagine an origami flower.’

In my head, the peony I pictured morphed from a mass of bloomy petals so soft that they could suffocate you, into something made of sharp folds and symmetry.

‘Now, fold that flower up tight. Fold the blooms back in.’

I saw it in my mind. The collapsing of the flower, the neatness of the package I could make it into. It un-bloomed.

‘Now imagine that you’re going to stow that folded-up flower in a box. You’ll take it out later, and you’ll let it open out again, but for now we’re going to fold it away and keep it safe, and see what happens when it’s gone for a little while.’

It didn’t happen right away, but once I’d practised these thoughts, and finally believed Jason when he said it was OK sometimes to step away from the grief, and the guilt, I discovered that I got my concentration brain back. That’s the brain that lets me memorise anything that I see, the brain that connects with the music. It’s the brain that Granny Guerin said was like our family’s laundry basket: always packed to the brim, always overflowing, you could never keep everything stuffed into it and close the lid.

So on the morning after my mum dies I’m using Jason’s advice, and putting my grief for her in a box. I know it can’t stay there for long, because it’s too big, but I also know that it’s essential to do it, and to have my wits about me. I ask Richard to take me to Sam; I tell him we have to because of what happened to me before. I tell him that Sam knows Tessa from back then so he might be able to help us find her.

Richard looks at me and says, ‘Well, he can’t be any more useless than they are here, come on then, let’s give it a go.’

Uncle Richard finds Sam’s office address really quickly on the internet on his phone and when they don’t answer his call he says it’s probably because it’s a bit too early and it’s best just to go there.

At first, we have a bit of a problem persuading the police to let us go, because they act like they don’t know what to think about it, and Chris and Lucas and Katya just stare at us like they’re in shock that we’re abandoning them. But Richard is clever, and he knows that the police can’t keep us at the station because we’re not actually arrested, so they can’t stop us leaving, especially if it’s just for a little while. He tells them that Sam is a family friend as well as a solicitor and it would be a great comfort to me if I could see him.

The policeman obviously doesn’t like it, but when it seems like he’s made all the objections he can and Richard has answered them, all confident, he just asks Richard if he thinks he should be driving. Richard makes a nervous look at me like people always do when drink driving is brought up, and then assures the policeman that he’s going to call us a taxi which is how he arrived at the police station in the first place. I can tell the question hurts his pride, but he’s trying not to be too indignant or cross, because he wants them to let us go.

When we arrive at Sam’s office there are people just opening up, but we have to wait for a while because it’s Sam’s day off, which I didn’t think of, and some of the people stare at us a bit as they walk past in their smart business suit clothing while Sam’s secretary phones him.

‘He’s on his way,’ she says after she’s spoken to him. ‘You’re lucky I could get hold of him.’

Once Sam arrives it’s much better because we can be private in his office and I feel a surge of relief because Sam is somebody who knows every detail about what I did. With him, there’s nothing to hide, and I don’t have to pretend to be somebody else.

Sometimes, I think I’m more happy when I’m with people who know about it. In the Unit, all of us were there because we’d done something bad so it didn’t make me different from anybody else, and that was relaxing in a way, it truly was. And with Sam, I feel like he doesn’t judge me, he just helps me. I can say anything to him. With the Second Chance Family it wasn’t like that. There was so much that I couldn’t say, so much that I had to be ashamed of, even though the verdict at the trial was unfair to me and the idea of that twists and turns inside me every single day.

Sam sits, and we sit too, and in his hot, dark office with a scratchy carpet and framed certificates wonky behind his desk, I know I’m ready to tell him everything that’s happened.

It’s déjà vu: Zoe Maisey sits in front of me, and once again she’s white with shock. The only difference is that there’s no glass in her hair this time, and no hospital outfit. She’s wearing a teenage-girl tracksuit-pyjama-type outfit, covered by a flimsy cardigan, which she’s wrapped around herself tightly. She’s shaking.

Beside her sits her uncle. He’s red-faced, sweating and he stinks of alcohol. I hope he hasn’t driven Zoe here because I suspect he’s probably still over the limit, but I reassure myself that surely somebody in this family would know better.

But the worst thing is, that in spite of the bloodshot eyes and the oily, widened pores, and the untended shock of hair that’s just starting to grey at the temples, he’s quite obviously a very nice and also a good-looking man. His manner is lovely and gentle, though he’s surprisingly posh. I never imagined Tess with a posh husband, but I can see instantly why she married him and I have to stop myself from hating him for this. I must not make comparisons between us. Jealousy would not be appropriate.

‘She really needs her aunt,’ Richard says to me. ‘My wife. We’ve been trying to get hold of her for hours, but she went out somewhere last night and left her mobile at home and we don’t know where she is.’

I know his name, but he doesn’t know that I know it, and I must be careful what I say.

I extend my hand to him. ‘Sam Locke,’ I say.

‘Richard Downing.’ His handshake trembles, and his palms are clammy. He gives a two-handed shake, and his wedding ring, identical to Tess’s, clashes with my knuckle when he encloses my hand with both of his. ‘I’m sorry to turn up like this, but I know how much you helped them before. My wife, Tessa, told me about it, and Zoe was desperate.’

I wonder why he never came to court in Devon, why he and I have never encountered each other before. I’ve no time to consider this, though, because he’s speaking urgently, almost furtively.

‘The thing is, I’m worried about her,’ he says. ‘I don’t know where she is. I’m sorry, I know it’s nothing on top of what happened last night, but it’s so unlike her. What if she’s come to harm too?’

He’s wide-eyed and genuinely worried, but I don’t want this conversation.

I glance at Zoe who’s looking at me with glazed eyes; I don’t think she’s taking in a thing that we’re saying.

‘I’m sure your wife will reappear,’ I tell Richard, rather shortly, because how can I reassure him that I know she’s OK. ‘Perhaps she stayed with a friend last night?’

He begins to respond but I absolutely can’t let this continue so I turn to Zoe and I ask the question that’s been bugging me since Jeanette called me: ‘Why have you come to me?’

‘Because it feels like before,’ she says. ‘It feels like before.’

And she breaks down into such awful, terrible sobbing that it’s as if the sound of it alone could wound you. But what I’m wondering, even while she vents her grief, is whether Zoe knows something and knows that she needs protecting.

Richard tries to comfort her. He puts his arms around her and her head falls on to his shoulder. He looks as though he’s feeling like death, and when our eyes meet his expression is one of compassion and confusion with a ‘help me’ in there too.

‘Why is it like before?’ I ask Zoe when her tears ebb a little. ‘Do you feel responsible in some way?’

Richard says, ‘Now hang on!’

‘I need to ask.’

‘She’s just lost her mother!’ Saying it chokes him up.

‘And I’m on her side, but I need to know why she wanted to come here.’

Zoe is emotionally and socially immature, but she’s also exceptionally intelligent. All the reports on her at the trial stressed this. She has the processing capabilities equal to any judge who might sit on her case and she has experience of the system too. Yes, she’s in shock, yes, her mother has just died, but she’s come to me for a reason and I need to know exactly what that is.

She peels herself from her uncle’s shoulder, which is now wet from her tears, and says, ‘Because I’m afraid.’

‘Afraid of what?’

‘Afraid of Tom Barlow.’

I remember him from the trial.

‘Why Tom Barlow?’

‘They’re saying he disrupted the concert yesterday, and came to the house afterwards,’ Richard explains, as Zoe fixes me with deer-in-headlight eyes.

‘Do you think he hurt your mum?’

‘I don’t know. He’s nice.’

She always said that at the time: Amelia Barlow is horrible, although her mum and dad are really nice.

‘The police say they’re going to talk to him,’ Richard adds.

‘If the police know about him then you mustn’t worry,’ I tell Zoe. ‘They won’t let him hurt you. What?’

She’s shaking her head madly. ‘But what if they blame me?’

I sigh. Zoe’s mind has raced ahead down the path of somebody who has a victim mentality. I take a tough line with her in response: ‘Is there anything to blame you for, Zoe?’

‘Oh dear God, you poor child.’ Richard rubs her back. ‘You don’t have to answer that.’

In her eyes I see she understands that I have to ask this, and that she’s ready to answer. It’s not the first time we’ve discussed her responsibility for somebody else’s death. Zoe and I have trodden these boards before and it doesn’t faze us, although Richard looks as though he might puke.

‘No,’ she says, ‘I was asleep. I fell asleep with my baby sister, my new sister. I went to sleep with her in her room. I didn’t hear anything because I had my headphones in.’

I’m about to reassure her that if that’s the case, then she should have nothing to worry about, and that there’s surely no reason for the police to think she would harm her own mother, but Richard interrupts me.

‘Tessa went to the concert!’ he blurts out, as if the memory is a big fish he’s suddenly managed to hook out of the empty lake of his booze-addled brain.

‘And she came to dinner with us afterwards,’ Zoe tells him. ‘She was there.’

‘Yes that’s right,’ Richard agrees, as Zoe reminds him of Tess’s movements, his neurons firing their way out of his hangover now, and putting last night into some kind of order. ‘She went to the concert, and we spoke afterwards and she said she was staying for dinner, but I didn’t see her after that.’

I did, I think, but I can’t say it.

‘We had bruschetta,’ Zoe tells Richard and tears still fall fatly down her cheeks. ‘But the police are there now, we’re not allowed home.’

While I often think of her as having a head that’s far too smart for her age, in front of me today she is very much a child and I feel slightly guilty for taking a hard questioning line with her, though really I had no choice.

What I realise is that I’m well beyond my professional remit here. This feels like more of a personal, not a professional visit, and that makes me feel extremely twitchy. If Tess had been with Zoe, she wouldn’t have let her come.

I stand up, look out of the window. I need to order my thoughts.

Various half-formed ideas scud across my mind: Zoe’s going to need huge amounts of help, but not the kind that I can give her. She’s here because she’s afraid, that’s all, not because she actually requires legal assistance. My gut tells me that she’s not involved in this as a perpetrator, and my gut is usually right, though not always.

But what floods me with apprehension, on top of that, and makes me try to wrench the window open further, hoping for a gasp of fresh air from the dank gulley separating our small building from the towering block beside us, is the newly forming realisation that, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t possibly help Zoe in this, in any of it, neither in an official capacity, nor a personal one. This is because the fact that I spent the night with Tess means two things: firstly, that I’m a potential witness, and, secondly, that our relationship is bound to become known.

I need, I think, a way out.