The Perfect Girl

ZOE

Sam stares out of his office window at the building opposite for a long time, while I sit and lean against my Uncle Richard who smells strangely sweet, and I think about the men who are probably in the Second Chance House now, examining it for clues. I imagine it just like the wreck of the car in Devon: taped off, Property of the Police.

I wonder if the butterfly is still crouched in a high corner of our landing ceiling at the Second Chance House or if, in the darkness, its wings open and shut enough times that it used up its energy stores, and fell to the floor. I wonder if the men in white suits will find a small pile of powdery scales and a spindly-legged carcass on the cream carpet of our landing.

After a while, Sam clears his throat, says that he needs to make a phone call, and leaves the room. Richard and I stay where we are, and first he scrolls around his phone a bit, and then he puts it on the table, but he keeps picking it up again to check it and I can tell he’s willing Tess to ring.

I just stare at the view that Sam was looking at.

The windows on the building opposite are like little boxes, each one showing you a glimpse into somebody else’s day. I watch a lady at her desk neatly slitting envelopes open with a knife, before getting out the letters and unfolding them and then whacking down on to them with a big stamp. I can’t hear her, obviously, but my brain provides the soundtrack, and the whump of the stamp as it hits the paper is loud in my mind, as well as the sharp sound as the knife slits the envelope, and the slurp each time she sips from a takeout coffee cup. The sounds alternate in my head, crescendoing, building up like the panic I’m feeling, until Sam returns.

I was right to panic, because he’s betrayed me.

‘I’ve phoned your dad,’ he says. ‘He’s on his way.’

‘No!’ I totally and absolutely don’t want my dad. He didn’t cope with me before, so how is he going to now that it’s even worse?

‘Don’t be angry, Zoe,’ Sam says. ‘You need somebody to look after you.’

‘You don’t know!’

‘I do know.’

He’s nodding at me, as if that makes him more right, which it doesn’t, and I want to argue about it more, because I’m sharp scared of how my dad will be with me.

I’m staring hard at Sam, thinking of what to say, when Richard’s phone rings and Richard lunges to grab it off the table where it’s skittering around on the shiny surface as it vibrates even faster than his tremor hands.

‘TESSMOBILE’ it says on the screen.

‘Oh God, it’s you!’ he practically shouts, once he’s fumbled hitting the screen to answer it. ‘Thank God! Thank God! Where the hell have you been?’

She’s speaking to him urgently; you can hear that down the line, but not her actual words. Richard’s face goes slacker as he concentrates on what she’s saying.

Eventually, he says: ‘I’m so sorry, darling, I’m so sorry about Maria, I just can’t believe it and I just thought you… no, don’t worry, I thought something might have happened to you too,’ he says, and his hand is on his chest, but he fully lies when he says, ‘God, Tessa, no, I’m not crying, no, I’m not, OK, yes,’ and then gets back on track when he says, ‘We’re at the solicitor’s place, Zoe’s solicitor, do you remember him?… Because she wanted me to bring her here… of course we told the police where we were going, honestly they were in chaos, it doesn’t inspire one with confidence… no, I didn’t think of it like that… no, sorry, no, perhaps I should have, but there wasn’t time to think… yes, she is… OK…’

He passes his phone to me. ‘Aunty Tess wants to talk to you. She’s OK.’

I can’t talk to her at first. The sound of her voice, and the way it’s strangulated and strange, makes me sob again.

‘What happened?’ she says.

It takes me a few moments to get my breathing under control, and Richard’s arm wraps around my shoulders as I do. ‘I don’t know. She was in the shed. She never goes in the shed.’

‘When? What time?’

‘We went to bed. We all went to bed and Katya woke us up when she got back.’

‘Did Katya find Mummy?’

‘Yes!’

‘Zoe, you’ve done nothing wrong, so don’t behave as if you have, whatever you do. I think you should come away from Sam’s office and come back to the police station to be with the others.’

‘I don’t want to be at the station.’ Like the courtroom, the station is a vipers’ nest, a place where I can trip myself up, say the wrong thing, dig my own grave, put myself behind bars.

‘I know, I understand, but I’m coming now and I’ll meet you there and then we’ll find out what’s going on and take things from there. You don’t need a solicitor. You’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘I don’t want to be with the police.’

‘But you don’t want them to suspect you’ve done something either, do you?’

Sometimes people say things to you straight and I like that. I didn’t think that coming to see Sam might make me look worse, but I see suddenly that she might be right.

In her silence, I ask, ‘Where were you?’

‘I stayed with a friend. I left my phone at home. I’m sorry I didn’t come earlier.’

‘Will I live with Daddy now?’

She sighs before answering, and it’s a hollow sound. ‘Honestly, I don’t know what we’re going to do, let’s take one thing at a time. Zoe? Are you there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t worry about that now. We’ll take care of you, OK? I promise.’

Sam is nice to me as he walks us out of the building, all of our feet thumping down flights of stairs.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever had a client just turn up before,’ he says. ‘It’s very unusual really.’

Maybe nobody has ever needed you as much as me, I think. We’re standing on the steps of his building now, and the soft early morning shadows are already getting shorter and more brutal, as the sun rises and starts to superheat the city and turn every surface into a glare.

‘Don’t be afraid, Zoe,’ he says. ‘The police will protect you until they know what’s happened. They’ll do a better job of it than me.’

I’m actually shocked that Sam, who saw how wrong things went for me before, could even think that, let alone say it to me. Until now, he’s never been in the category of ‘adults who don’t understand’, but he earns his membership badge right there on the pavement, and I feel sick with disappointment.

On the drive back to the police station, my mind stays so blank with it all that I notice nothing apart from the fact that the air conditioning in Richard’s car is broken and his sweat is making half-moon shapes under his armpits.