The Doll's House

20

They were caught in a strange kind of hell. This one came complete with plastic flowers, a statuette of Jesus and tired sofas. Many people, having discovered the worst, fled the mortuary, wanting to get as far away from the reality of their tragedy as possible. Others, like Daniel Briers, simply didn’t have the strength in their legs. Which is why Helen now found herself sitting by his side in the mortuary relatives’ room.

‘It doesn’t make any sense.’ Daniel Briers hadn’t said a word since he’d identified his daughter. Now, a full thirty minutes later, he was trying to process the awful news, cradling a full cup of cold tea.

‘She texted me, wrote tweets,’ he continued. ‘I replied to her texts for God’s sake.’

‘Did she ever reply directly to your texts? Within the following day or so, say?’

Daniel looked at her, but didn’t speak. It was as if he didn’t understand the question.

‘Daniel, I know that none of this seems real, that you’re in shock, but it’s really important that you answer my questions, if you can.’

He looked at her for a moment, his mind scrolling back, trying to connect to his past with his daughter.

‘No. It’s true, there were always large gaps between the texts. And the tweets.’

His mind was whirring with the awful possibilities this presented.

‘It did seem odd,’ he continued. ‘But she’d left under such a cloud that I thought this was her way of keeping control of the situation, of letting us know that she was in charge.’

At this point, he finally broke. The last words cascaded from him and were then swallowed up by huge, racking sobs. His misery was primal, elemental – a towering, imposing man howling in grief for his lost daughter. Helen had witnessed this scene many times before and always felt deeply for those left behind. She knew what it was like to lose a loved one and feel responsible. But this time her sympathy was particularly acute.

Not only was Daniel Briers grappling with the fact that his daughter had died before they could be reconciled – he was also beginning to realize that all recent communication between them had been fake, fabricated by a devious killer. Someone had been keeping his little girl alive from beyond the grave.