Girl A Read online

We could hear Ana on the stairs. The two of us stood, together, and watched her come through the kitchen. She was wearing a yellow dress, and when she walked into the sunshine she opened her arms, as if she would embrace us when she arrived. ‘The strange thing is,’ Ethan said, just before she reached us, ‘each time that I speak, I think of him. I still like to think of him in the crowd.’

  3

  Delilah (Girl B)

  DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT GREG JAMESON at sixty-five: fat and retired, like a show dog gone to ruin. Each morning his wife, Alice, makes the tea, butters the toast, props him up with the newspaper and an old hospital tray she took from work. ‘To make up for the long, long nights,’ she says. It is ten o’clock, and the bedroom curtains flutter in mid-morning sunlight, and in these moments, the night shifts are long forgotten.

  His days are rich. He enjoys the garden, with cricket on the radio. He enjoys a weekly swim at Pells Pool, but only in the summer. Undressing on the grass, he is surprised by the great white mass of his stomach; by the grey hairs webbed against his chest. He is surprised not to sink. In the winters, he hibernates, with biscuits and sports biographies. He talks at local schools and at community centres in London, talking about his time on the beat, talking about his days as a detective, talking about how they could do the same. Some days they will ask interesting questions, and he’ll know that they really listened, that the day was well spent; other times they will enquire: ‘Did you wear a hat?’

  Sometimes. He will think of it, then. Sometimes he had returned home in the early morning, his mind crawling with hatred for the human race, and he had contemplated packing a bag and driving to the loneliest place he could think of – Ben Armine, perhaps, or Snowdonia – and spending the rest of his days as a hermit. (Or, he reasoned, as the local eccentric; that way, he could maintain access to hot meals, and a pub.) There had been days when he couldn’t speak to Alice because she was too incompatible with his shift: she believed that people were, fundamentally, good. She sang in the kitchen, and was upset when she received charity leaflets about cruelty to animals. What could he possibly say?

  Yes. There had been a time when he had worn a hat.

  Many of the cases were solved, and he doesn’t think about them so much. Others hang open, like a door in the winter, and he can feel their draught.

  For example: a twenty-year-old man, Freddie Kluziak, attended the party of a close friend in the function room of a pub. Second floor. The pub’s surveillance camera was fixed on the stairs leading up to the party, and captured Freddie ascending with two acquaintances, carrying a birthday present. At the end of the evening, the lights came up, and Freddie’s friends searched for him, to no avail. That was fine: he would have left early, drunk or tired. Two days later, his girlfriend raised the alarm. Nobody had seen him since the party. The surveillance footage arrived on Jameson’s desk like a long-awaited invitation. The whole team gathered around, craning for the details. Jameson spent seventy-two hours accounting for each person who walked up the stairs that day, and each one of them walked back down, except Freddie Kluziak.

  What perturbed Jameson the most was the present. That was gone from the scene, too. He felt absurd, telling Freddie’s father that his son must have left via a window with a parcel in his arms, but at that stage they had excavated every wall of the function room, and the landlord was sick to death of them.

  Or: a five-year-old child climbed up to a third-floor window ledge and jumped. George Casper was illiterate and near mute. He did not, his teacher explained, know how to turn the pages of a book: he would look at them like they were dead, flat things. He liked birds. This from the mother. Offered as an explanation. George had pushed a chair to the window, she said, to get closer to them. He rolled from the sill, a grubby Icarus, half-naked and with no vocabulary to shout. ‘Which chair?’ Jameson asked, and the mother couldn’t remember; she had moved it to see the body below. Jameson lifted all three chairs in the flat and did not believe that a malnourished child could have moved any one of them. The rooms were a cacophony of DNA: the boy had stood on every seat; there were dregs of each resident in all of the beds; they tested some dog shit in error. Jameson did not know how the child had come to land on the concrete, but he looked at the parents and suspected that they were not just stupid, but cruel.

  He was unprofessional, then. The only sordid months of his career. He walked past the door of the flat in jeans and a shirt, after work, listening to the family. He followed the stepfather to a pub and drank six whiskies – six – hoping to hear something before last orders. ‘Where do you go,’ Alice murmured, when he came in smelling of smoke, the folds of casual clothes sounding different from uniform as he undressed in the darkness.

  One evening he passed the mother in the forecourt of the block. She was carrying shopping bags and her belly was engorged. It was too late to change direction, so he smiled at her, and she glanced away, then looked back.

  ‘Aren’t you the policeman?’ she said, eyes roaming for uniform, or a badge.

  ‘Yes. Yes. Just on a plain-clothes patrol. How are you?’

  He carried her bags up the stairs. She was excited to be a mummy again, she said. They came out cute as puppies. ‘Do you have children?’ she asked, and he said no. He hoped to, some day. He wished her good luck.

  That night he lay on the bed, fully-clothed, and Alice woke to him crying. The tremble of his body across the mattress. They had wanted a child for five years by then. He gathered her into his arms – maybe it was her gathering him – and his face dried against her hair. It was no good thinking about the unfairness of life, and they had resolved not to do so, but sometimes—

  There were other things that they could do. There were children in the family. Alice’s younger brother had three girls, and they looked after them often. Jameson and the eldest girl shared a birthday, and when she was ten he spent a whole day assembling a garden trampoline for the family party, with balloons tied to its legs. It was unexpectedly exhausting, and when he had finished, Jameson collapsed on the mat. Alice stood at the kitchen door, holding her tea, and laughing.

  ‘Harder or easier,’ she said, ‘than flat-pack furniture?’

  She set down her mug on the doorstep and clambered past him, up onto the trampoline. She bounced, threateningly, from foot to foot.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, come on!’

  They held onto one another, shrieking, and knackered in seconds. The children were delighted with the trampoline, and for a short time it was a highlight of any visit to the Jameson household. Then the girls were teenagers and uninterested in adult company, and the trampoline became rusted, and buried beneath each new autumn’s leaves.

  The Gracie case came to him when he was fifty. January. He hadn’t worn a hat for many years. He and Alice had just returned from work and had taken down the Christmas decorations. Something about the act embarrassed him, although he had enjoyed them in December. The undressing of the tree; the careful placement of the ornaments back into their boxes. Who had it all been for? They sat down for dinner in the kitchen – Alice was talking about hospital politics, and their niece’s new boyfriend, and the grisliest trauma call of the day – and the phone started to ring.

  He was summoned back to the office for the initial meeting. The forensic team had sent over photographs from the house, and the Detective Chief Superintendent guided them through each room: this is the body of the father; Boy D was discovered here, in a crib; Girl B and Boy B were in the first room upstairs, restrained. The forensic archaeologists had started digging in the garden and at the foundations of the house, but it would be a long exercise. The children were in different hospitals, according to their specific needs; they were all malnourished, and, with the exception of two of the boys, they were each in a critical condition.

  Seven children. Jameson watched the pictures on the screen, changing and yet the same. Same soiled carpets, same dank mattresses, same bags of rot. He thought of Alice, who wou
ld be curled on the sofa, wearing her glasses to watch the television. ‘It sounds bad,’ she had said, as he left. ‘I’ll wait up.’

  ‘Don’t, Alice.’

  ‘I’d like to.’

  There were two priorities, said the DCS. The first was the preservation of evidence; the second was the commencement of interviews. How did this happen? When were the children last seen; who were their friends; where were the other relatives? There would be medical reports tomorrow. They had the mother in custody. They had found an aunt, who seemed eager to talk.

  ‘We can’t speak to the children just yet,’ he said, and Jameson understood that this had been a point of contention and that the DCS had lost.

  Jameson was asked to interview Peggy Granger. ‘After that,’ the DCS said, ‘you can work with Girl A. One of the child psychologists is already reading into her case. Dr Kay. Do you know her? Young. Very impressive – I’ve worked with her before. Groundbreaking, some people say.’

  ‘Girl A,’ Jameson said. ‘Is she the one who escaped?’

  He returned home in the middle of the night. Alice was lying on the sofa in lamplight, with two cups of tea on the carpet beside her.

  ‘They always told me not to marry a policeman,’ she said. ‘And they were right.’

  He knew that she would have been thinking of this all evening; calculating exactly what to say to make him smile. He lifted her legs up, then sat down and placed them onto his lap.

  ‘I feel a hundred years old,’ he said.

  ‘You look at least two hundred and seven. How was it?’

  ‘Terrible,’ he said. She reached down and handed him a mug. ‘And the villain’s already dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘the evenings, very early on, when I would sometimes cry? I always thought that it was because of all of the terrible things that I had seen. All of the worst parts of the human race.’

  ‘Sh,’ she said. ‘You don’t—’

  ‘But it wasn’t,’ he said. ‘I think it was gratitude. I think that I was just so relieved. You see? For us, and this life.’

  He came to know Dr Kay well over the months that followed. They spent many hours in the hospital, listening to the stories of the thin, wounded child. There were days when he found it difficult to look at her, and would focus instead on his notes, or the strange digital language of the hospital machines, which he didn’t understand. All the time, the girl was becoming stronger, and if, on occasion, he questioned Dr Kay’s methods, or what she chose to say and to withhold, she pointed to this. ‘Each day,’ she said, ‘Girl A progresses. She’s moving further and further away from that house – faster than any of the others. You see that, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, then. Let me do my work.’

  When the interviews were over and the evidence collected, he was assigned to other cases, although he asked about the children often, and he continued to supervise the Gracie case. One evening, Dr Kay visited him late, as he was finishing work. The last pale spring light was sliding from the blinds. He was packing his bag and thinking of his bed, the smell of it and the sheets worn just the way he liked. He thought, too, of the beds at Moor Woods Road.

  Dr Kay was waiting on a cheap plastic chair, every part of her out of place: the softness of her sweater, the cat-eye glasses, her hands on her lap, with the nails painted by somebody else. ‘Hello, Greg,’ she said, and stood to embrace him.

  ‘Coffee?’ he asked, and she nodded, although they each knew that she wouldn’t drink it. He took her backstage, to one of the interview rooms. The chairs had been abandoned at strange angles to the table, as though people had departed in a hurry. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he said. At the coffee machine, he found that he was frightened. He hadn’t expected to see Kay until Deborah Gracie’s trial. He took the coffee before the machine had finished, and it spat hot water at his hand.

  ‘Are they all OK?’ he said, when he was back. He placed the coffees on the table, and Dr Kay took one for the warmth of it.

  ‘They are,’ she said. ‘You’ll have seen the press releases, of course. “The current whereabouts of the children are unknown.”’

  ‘So – with families who’ll care for them,’ he said. ‘People don’t need to know any more than that.’ He lifted his plastic cup, and toasted. ‘May they all live long and happy lives.’

  ‘There’s an exception,’ she said. She exhaled, covered her eyes with her hands. He reached for her.

  ‘I only came to you,’ she said, ‘on the basis of what you’ve said to me before. About what particular people take for granted. About what you and your wife might want.’

  She had covered her eyes so that she didn’t have to look at him. Beneath her palms, her face was tired and hard. She knew exactly what she was doing.

  Now, at sixty-five, the phone is ringing again.

  Jameson is in the garden, working through the Sunday paper. Alice lies on the grass, reading the travel section. ‘You’re closer,’ she says. He swears, and rises from his deckchair, gathering his body out of it. He counts the rings of the phone, aware that he is becoming slower; each year there seem to be more rings before he can reach it.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello, Dad,’ I said.

  ‘Lex. We’ve been worried.’

  All week, Delilah had ignored my messages, until her voicemail greeting started to sound secretive, then spiteful. That left a long Sunday afternoon in London, with little to do. The streets were still quiet, although a few early drinkers clustered at the tables in the sunshine. Behind tinted windows, people wiped down tables and floors, reluctant to come outside. Here, the half-drunk pints and abandoned take-outs were starting to rot. Hot, dank smells sweated from the drain covers; the city couldn’t hide its insides so well in the heat. I bought a coffee and sat in Soho Square to call home.

  Dad wanted me to come to stay, for a few nights at least. ‘All of this family contact,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if it’s good for you.’ This was a tired debate, which was roused for special occasions: Dad had spent the last year arguing against my attendance at Ethan’s wedding. When they adopted me, my parents moved as far away from Hollowfield as they could, and although Mum said that she had always wanted to live closer to the sea, I suspected that they also wanted to remove me from the region altogether. To them, the past was a sickness which my siblings still carried; you could catch it from a conversation.

  ‘I’ll come,’ I said. In Sussex, they had boundless time and intermittent Internet access, and they would want to hear all about New York, and my weekend with Ethan, and what, precisely, a genomics company was supposed to do. ‘Just not yet.’

  I told Dad about the prison and the chaplain’s monologue. ‘I should have referred her to you,’ I said. ‘My accomplice. Do you remember burning the letters?’

  ‘Of course I remember. I remember that it was all your idea, too. You know, I could have come with you, to the prison.’

  ‘I was fine.’

  ‘I don’t like the thought of you there alone.’

  ‘Like I said. It was fine. And I have the others, too.’

  ‘And will they be much use?’

  ‘It’s not looking particularly promising.’

  ‘Have you been speaking to Eve again, Lex?’

  Here it was: the old determination to preserve me from the rest of them. ‘What if I have?’ I said, knowing that he wouldn’t answer. We were coming to the end of the conversation, and he always had to hang up on good terms.

  ‘Look. If you can’t come home just yet, at least see Dr K.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s necessary.’

  ‘Maybe not. But it might be a good idea.’

  I thought of what Devlin said when faced with a suggestion she had no intention of entertaining: Thank you for your input. The polite disregard of it was crueller than disagreement or debate, which at least took a little effort. I saw Dad’s damp handprints on the p
hone, and the little minutes of terror he had allowed himself over the last week, wondering why I hadn’t called.

  ‘I’ll consider it,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

  In my room at the Romilly Townhouse, I called Olivia. ‘I’m at work,’ she said. ‘I’m in a terrible mood.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘They turn the AC off over the weekend. Who thought that was a good idea?’

  ‘You can come to my hotel,’ I said. ‘I have a tab.’

  ‘And air conditioning?’

  ‘That, too.’

  I met Olivia on the day that I arrived at university. We shared a bathroom. She was the kind of person whom you notice right away, even if they’re on the other side of the bar and talking to somebody else. I arrived in the halls before her, and Dad helped me to lug my belongings to my room. He seemed older than any of the other fathers; ‘I’ll bring things from the car,’ I suggested, ‘and you take them down the hallway.’ I had spent half a day searching for just the right duvet cover, dismissing Mum’s suggestions as too juvenile; too middle-aged; too flowery; too feminine; just hideous. I settled on a dark blue cover embroidered with constellations, and the moon on the pillow, which, now that I looked at it, seemed deeply, irreparably embarrassing. Dad and I made the bed, and I smoothed down the cover. My hands were shaking. The bed was set in the corner of the room, and I would wake with my head beneath the window.

  ‘Can we move the bed to the other wall?’ I said. ‘Do you mind?’

  We rearranged the room. He sat down on my desk chair, holding his back, and pulled a list from his pocket.

  ‘Your mother,’ he said, and shook his head. ‘Let’s see. Knee-brace?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve got all of your food.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve got your fancy dress things.’

  We had been informed of various events in the first few weeks of term, and accompanying costume requirements. ‘I packed them,’ I said.

  ‘And you’re going to go?’

  ‘I’ll see how it goes, Dad. You can leave now.’