The Perfect Girl

RICHARD

Zoe grabs that baby out of my arms as if the house is burning down and they must flee. She pounds up the stairs and we hear the bathroom door slam shut.

‘All right if I use your phone then?’ Chris asks Tessa.

‘I said go ahead.’

‘Lucas,’ Chris says to his son before he leaves the room, making the boy’s head snap up, ‘go and get your stuff together, and Grace’s.’

‘Where are you going?’ I ask Chris, but he doesn’t hear me, or pretends he doesn’t.

‘Where are they going?’ I ask Tess in their absence.

We’re alone. The liaison woman has gone somewhere or other, doubtless roaming the house like some kind of shady private eye, as she’s been doing all day, and Lucas shambled off obediently in response to Chris, in that way he has, as if he’s embarrassed by the mere presence of himself in a room.

‘To a hotel.’

‘With the baby?’

‘She’s not our baby, Richard.’

That annoys me. I might have my weaknesses, but I’m not an imbecile, and I’ve been trying to be patient with Tess.

‘I phoned the solicitor. On redial. I left a message,’ I say.

She blinks rapidly. ‘Oh?’ she says, but I can tell that she knows what I’m going to say.

‘Funny thing though: it was a mobile phone number. It went to a personal voicemail message.’

She’s breathing heavily through her nose as she looks at me. Her face is masterfully still but I can read panic behind it, however carefully hidden. Her mind must be racing but all she manages to come up with is, ‘Are you sure it wasn’t a wrong number?’

I start to quote the message: ‘“Hi, this is Sam, please leave me a” -’

She interrupts. ‘I know his number from before, OK? From the trial?’

‘You remember his number from, what, two and a half, three years ago?’

‘Yes!’

‘So why did you say that you phoned his office?’

‘I said it wrong. It’s not the best day for me this, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

I don’t appreciate that. ‘What are you hiding, Tess? Where were you last night?’

‘Not now, please. Not this, now.’

We sit in silence, and I try to sort out in my head whether her explanation is a plausible one. It definitely could be. It definitely might not be. I think that I may be too tired to tell.

Tess moves from her chair opposite me to sit beside me. For a moment I wonder if she might be going to express some physical affection towards me, and my heart beats nervously in anticipation, for it’s been a long time since we offered each other that kind of solace, even with a simple touch, but she leans towards me instead, and whispers: ‘I’ve been thinking.’

I wait for her to carry on, but before she does she gets up and closes the door and then sits back down just as she was before.

She says, ‘If the DNA tests mean that they’re considering us as suspects, it surely has to be Chris, doesn’t it?’

‘Chris?’

‘If somebody in the house killed Maria, it surely has to be Chris, don’t you think, surely?’

I can hardly hear what she’s saying; she’s dropped her voice so low.

‘If it was somebody in the house,’ I say.

‘Why else are they taking swabs?’

‘I don’t know.’

The door opens and we both sit back like guilty children.

‘All booked,’ Chris says. ‘I’m going to gather up our stuff and we’ll go when Grace has finished her bath.’

The thought of the baby going is surprisingly painful, but there’ll be work to do still, I think to myself, supporting Zoe and Tess, and that’s some consolation. I’m determined to hold on to this new sense of usefulness.

Behind him the Liaison Officer says, ‘Do you want us to organise a lift for you, Mr Kennedy?’

‘No, I don’t want to arrive in a police car, thank you. I’ll phone a taxi.’

Could he have done it? I think. He’s so pleasant, so polite. He’s worked so hard for everything he has, and has been through so much.

That thought begs another question that I haven’t had time to really consider yet, with all the minute-to-minute distractions of taking Zoe to the solicitor and being at the police station and worrying about where Tess was last night, and looking after everybody once we got here. That question is: if Chris hasn’t done it, then who has? Is this the moment that we all start to look for signs of guilt in each other? Was Zoe right to flee to her solicitor this morning? Was she ahead of the game, knowing more than most about blame and accusation, and has Tess caught up with her thinking now, and should I?