The Perfect Girl (25 page)

I should be fighting my demons by now.

Usually, my emotions when I’m sober consist mostly of a cocktail of anger and desperation, garnished with emptiness, and they feel as if they’re embroidered into every cell of my body, as integral to me as my DNA.

And when I feel like that, alcohol is the only cure I know, the only thing that can wash the misery away. I think of alcohol as being like a slick waiter, clad in black and white, weaving his way through a crowd with a silver tray held aloft, bearing upon it a generous helping of respite, and oblivion, just for me.

Who could refuse?

Not I. Not on a normal day, when all I want is some peace; when I would do whatever it took to escape those emotions. Any choice made on a normal day would be a choice to drink. To have a drink seems necessary, unavoidable. The taste of it might not appeal, but the feeling as it goes down your throat is oh-so-good, a physical numbness that anticipates luxuriantly the imminent longed-for dulling of your mind.

But today, with the baby in my arms, I feel something different. I feel invigorated.

It’s such an unusual feeling for me that I’m careful around it, especially as this would be the most inappropriate moment conceivable to tell Tessa that I’m feeling a bit better.

When somebody arrives from the police station with DNA testing kits and they call for us to come and be swabbed one by one, the others look appalled, so I get to my feet and announce that I’ll be happy to be the first.

The newly arrived officer has a bad shaving cut on his jawline, which I notice as he pulls on blue plastic gloves and scrapes a sponge on a stick around the inside of my cheek. He winces a little as he does it and I feel a tad self-conscious that my breath might be slightly on the rich side.

When I’m done, Tessa goes in, after passing the baby to me like a relay baton, and Grace and I make our way upstairs to wake Katya, who they want to include.

She’s asleep face down in our spare room, and doesn’t take kindly to being woken.

She descends the stairs and enters the dining room with her chin held high and it takes just a minute or two before she re-emerges with an expression of distaste on her face.

She’s just in time to hear Chris say to one of the detectives, ‘I take exception to being asked to take an invasive test without an explanation of why,’ and as the detective begins to talk about ‘routine investigations’ and ‘helping with our inquiry’, Katya exclaims loudly: ‘I am giving mouth swab even though it is not in my contract, because of deep situation.’

Chris is momentarily taken aback, and she takes the opportunity to shoot a few more barbs:

‘People must do right thing. You must do right thing. You are always business talk yadda yadda yadda, and you never put arm around son.’

I look at Lucas. He’s watching them anxiously, and his leg is jiggling up and down.

‘Make test!’ Katya is shouting now, and pointing towards the room where the young officer sits with his pile of plastic-wrapped kits.

A dark cloud passes over Chris’s face and I think that this can only end in tears. What man could lose his wife to violent death and then hear this?

Zoe’s mouth is agape too and I imagine that this shocks her because it’s an outburst the likes of which she probably hasn’t seen before in this new family of hers, where everything seemed to be buried all the time, emotions included.

‘Katya,’ I say to her. I put my hand on her arm because even her stance is confrontational, and, as I do so, the baby leans towards her, arms outstretched. Katya can’t resist this. She turns and takes Grace from me. Behind her, Chris sits back down, a tactical withdrawal that I’m glad to see.

‘We’re very grateful to you, this is a horrible situation,’ I tell her. ‘Please know how much we’re sorry that you have to be part of this.’

‘I want call my agency,’ she says. ‘I have talk to police, I have make mouth swab, and now I wish to leave and stay somewhere else because sadness is making a strong feeling in my heart.’

She presses her fist to her breastbone as if in some kind of salute, and Grace puts a clumsy finger to a tear that’s dropping down Katya’s cheek.

Thinking that she’s probably right, that it’s a good idea if she goes, and that I’ve more or less mastered the basic requirements of the baby so we can do without her, I usher her out of the room, and direct her to the phone, taking the baby back from her as she lifts the receiver.

Behind us, Lucas says: ‘Dad, are we going to take the test?’

I can’t resist a quick look back to see Chris respond with a tight nod.

Crisis averted, my secret satisfaction grows just a little.

I give the DNA swab, but I want to know why they’re doing this and why my interview was interrupted so suddenly earlier.

It wasn’t a dramatic interruption exactly, but there was certainly a frisson of something – suppressed excitement perhaps – amongst the police.

My mind’s racing like a greyhound out of the gate, and I think that I really need to phone Sam now, more than ever, because he might be able to interpret the situation better than me.

Once Katya has finished speaking to her agency, Richard ushers her back upstairs as if he’s a mother hen, and I take the opportunity to try to get through to Sam.

But he doesn’t answer. He has a day off today so I can’t imagine why not. I try a couple of times and eventually leave a message saying that I’ll try him again later.

I try not to feel upset with him for not answering, but part of me thinks it would have been nice if he was on standby, in case I needed him. It’s not like he doesn’t know what’s going on.

As I replace the handset, I notice that Richard is in the doorway.

‘Who are you phoning?’ he asks.

The best lies are those that are closest to the truth. This is a thought that pops into my head, though I’m not sure from where. I don’t consider myself dishonest, in spite of my affair. My infidelity is the only thing I hide; in all other areas of life I’m squeaky clean.

‘I was phoning Zoe’s solicitor,’ I said. ‘Because I wanted to know why they might be taking DNA swabs from us.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He wasn’t there. They said he’s out.’ I think quickly enough to pretend that I phoned Sam’s office, not his mobile.

‘He was very hard on Zoe,’ Richard says. ‘Very hard indeed.’

‘They know each other well enough for that I’m sure,’ I tell him. Richard was learning to consume alcohol in previously unimaginably large quantities during the time of Zoe’s trial, because he had only just discovered that his professional status had fatally stalled. He never once came to Devon to support them. He never witnessed any of it. That is, of course, yet another source of resentment for me.

I hold Grace while Richard begins to heat some food from the fridge for her.

‘Katya told me she likes this stuff,’ he says, showing me a teaspoonful of intensely orange goo.

Grace is watching him intently. I can tell that she likes him, and he makes faces for her that make her giggle, but I can’t share the moment because all I can think about is the fact that Grace probably won’t even remember Maria, and may not even be part of our lives in the future.

‘I hope we get to see Grace,’ I say.

‘What?’

‘Well, she’ll go with Chris, won’t she?’

Richard stands, aghast, looking at me. ‘Will she?’

‘He’s her father! What did you think?’

‘I hadn’t really thought about it.’ He turns around to stir the purée, and I notice his shoulders have fallen.

‘Well, hopefully she can come and stay with us when she’s older,’ he says. ‘And how will Chris cope?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Will Zoe go with them?’

‘I very much doubt it. Why would she do that?’

He catches my tone of irritation.

‘Give Grace to me,’ he says. ‘I can do this on my own. You take some time.’

I’m feeling tetchy because all of this will need to be worked out, and it will be complicated and painful for the children, and probably for us too, and I can’t deal with it now.

I can’t ignore either the small doubts about Chris that have begun to tug at me. It’s dangerous to let my mind wander down this path, I’m very conscious of that, but I’m beginning to reassess some of his behaviour; in particular the way he folded my sister up in a towel and ushered her away at the end of the evening. To me, that looked loving at the time, but in the light of what’s happened I can’t help but put a more sinister reading on it now. Was it loving, or controlling? His aggression with Tom Barlow at the house, and his treatment of Lucas, the way he told him off in front of us all, would certainly edge me quite firmly towards a more negative reading.

I want to ask Richard what he thinks, because in spite of everything he’s a good judge of character, or he used to be, but we’re interrupted by the doorbell.

‘That’ll be the au pair agency, I expect,’ he says.

‘I’ll get it.’

He tries a small spoonful of Grace’s purée and winces. ‘This is too hot,’ he tells the baby, ‘we might need to wait a bit.’

‘What was the number of the solicitor’s office?’ he calls after me, as I leave the room. ‘I might try him again, I think you’re right to ask his advice.’

‘Oh, I don’t remember offhand,’ I say.

‘No problem,’ he calls, as I reach the front door. ‘I’ll just do redial.’

Before I can stop myself, and as I’m opening the front door, I shout, ‘No!’ at him, because I know the call will go through to Sam’s personal mobile. The representative from Katya’s au pair agency gives me a quizzical look, as does Richard.

‘Sorry,’ I say to her.

She offers me her hand. ‘Tamara Jones, West Country Elite Au Pairs. We always aim to respond to emergencies immediately.’

Behind me, I can feel Richard’s gaze on my back and, as I take Tamara Jones upstairs to find Katya, I can see that he has the baby in one arm and the phone in the other.