The Perfect Girl

ZOE

I want to tear Lucas’s eyes out.

But I want to hold him too.

Grace is still in my arms and I have squeezed her so close to me that she has started to cry. Lucas is still standing over us, looking down at us, not moving, though his hand is on the bathroom door handle.

‘What were you trying to protect my mum from?’ I ask.

‘From Dad.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he was about to hurt her, and I tried to get her out of his way, because I could see him coming for her. I pushed her, because I didn’t have time to do anything else, but we were at the top of the stairs, and she fell down and hit her head. I didn’t mean it to happen, I was trying to help her. It was an accident; I swear it, Zoe. I’m sorry.’

And before I can say anything to that he unlocks the door, turns the handle and he’s gone, and the movement of the door sends a hot barrage of air into the room. I’m left sitting there in all the wet that Grace has made, just holding her while she grizzles. The force of what he’s just told me makes it feel difficult even to breathe, let alone to try to understand what’s happened, but I must.

Lucas says he’s tried to protect my mum from Chris, and he’s killed her instead. He said the same words to me that I said at my trial: ‘It was an accident.’

‘How are you getting on?’ It’s Richard, standing on the landing; it’s like he’s appeared out of nowhere. ‘Are you all right, lovey? Have you been crying again?’

‘I don’t want Chris and Lucas to take Grace,’ I tell him. I blurt that out, because it’s how I feel, but also because something tells me not to tell him what Lucas just said, and I think it’s because I don’t want it to be true.

Richard is looking at me a bit oddly, and for a moment I wonder if he was listening at the door before, whether he heard what Lucas said.

‘Is Lucas OK?’ he asks.

‘He’s fine. He was just helping me.’

He stares at my face for a second, and then his eyes fall to Grace.

‘I understand why you don’t want her to go,’ he says. He strokes Grace’s head and she reaches out her arms to him and he takes her from me.

‘I want to stop them.’

‘I don’t really think we can.’

‘But Grace belongs to me and Mum. She always has.’

‘Listen, I know it’s really, really hard, but Chris is her dad. There’s nothing we can do.’

‘Help me. I want her to stay here, just for a bit.’

Uncle Richard looks even more red and sweaty than he did this morning. He sits down on the side of the bath, holding Grace on his knee.

‘What if we offer to keep Grace for the day, just until they’ve checked into the hotel and got themselves sorted out?’ he says. ‘Then we can take her over there later.’

‘She needs a nap.’

‘Then I’ll say that. She can nap here before she goes.’

I look at Grace. She doesn’t often settle down quickly or quietly, and if that happens then Chris might just take her anyway. He’s never patient about that kind of thing.

‘I’ll put her in the buggy,’ I say. ‘If we push her around she’ll fall asleep.’

Grace has a buggy that’s padded like an emperor’s chariot. When she’s tired, she never lasts five minutes in it before nodding off, because it’s way too comfy and Mum says she likes the feeling of being in motion.

‘Can you tell Chris?’ I know he won’t listen to me, and I don’t want to say even a single word to him.

‘Leave it with me,’ Richard says.

He puts a hand on my shoulder and I feel like I can trust him, and that he’s on my side, and I suddenly understand that there’s something even more important that I should be doing: I need to find Lucas before he talks to anybody else.

The stairs make a sound like thunder as I run down them and I’m lucky because I find Lucas straight away. He’s standing in the hall, in front of the sitting room door. There’s nobody else there, and the door is semi-closed. He looks like he’s steeling himself to open it, and tell everybody what happened.

I take his arm. ‘Come with me,’ I whisper.

He shakes my hand off. He’s psyched up.

‘I have to do this.’ His words sound as if he’s having to force them out from between his clenched teeth.

‘I need you first. Please.’

I take his hand again and pull it to my mouth, and put my lips on the back of his fingers, just very gently. It’s the only thing I can think to do. I want him to feel my touch because after my First Chance Life ended I felt like nobody wanted to touch me because of what I did, because I wasn’t worth it.

They all talked and talked to me and at me about what I did and how to ‘move forward’ and guilt, and reparation, and sentences served, and future opportunities, and I understood all of that; but the reason I never felt encouraged by it, or strengthened was partly because I was sorry for what I did, so sorry that it hurt me every day, and partly because I was angry about what happened at my trial, but mostly because I felt I would never be worth anything, ever again.

‘Your self-esteem,’ Jason told me, ‘is at rock bottom, and I don’t like to see it that way.’

‘Go figure,’ I said back to him. It was at the end of our second to last session, it was nearly the last conversation we ever had; the last nice conversation, anyway.

Lucas starts to shake, and his fingers relax against my lips.

‘Once you’ve told them,’ I whisper, ‘they’ll take you away, straight away and we won’t ever get to see each other again for a very long time, maybe never. I just want to talk to you one more time before you tell them, please.’

He looks nervous of that. Or is he nervous of me, and of what I might do to him now I know what happened.

‘I want to hear your story,’ I say, because that’s the other thing I never had, the chance to tell my story without people always lecturing me around it. Sometimes I think I would have liked to tell my story to the mums and dads of the children I killed, that they might not mind so much if they heard it from me, away from court and judges and solicitors.

‘Bad idea,’ Jason said. ‘Reparation justice does recommend meetings between victims’ families and prisoners in some situations, but this doesn’t qualify as one of them.’

‘Lucas,’ I breathe the word on to his hand, terrified that we’ll be interrupted, or overheard, that I’m too late. ‘Please.’ My breath feels hotter than the day even as it spreads across his fingers.

His shaking intensifies. I play my final card. I put down my ace.

‘I understand,’ I say, ‘I promise.’

I hope I can keep this up. My impulse to punish him, attack him, rip him to shreds, bend and break his body like the kids who were in the car with me is strong, and it’s fighting a hard battle with my sensible head.

‘Where shall we go?’ he says just when I think all is lost, and he’ll confess and go to prison and Chris will disappear out of our lives with Grace, and I’ll have nothing.

I exhale with relief and tell him that there’s one place I can think of.