The Perfect Girl

TESSA

Richard’s carrying the baby. He’s walking around the house with Grace on his hip as if he was born to it, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

It’s been a while since our friends had babies and we would occasionally carry them, and I don’t think Richard has ever had Grace in his arms before. He’s transformed into the image of a benevolent uncle and, because I’ve wronged him, I resent that he’s a spectacle of goodness today. I almost feel he’s taunting me with it.

I try to reject that thought, though, because I know that grief is a strange and unpredictable thing, and I recognise that it’s provoking great surges of anger in me. If I’m honest, what I really want is for Richard to be looking after me, and me alone.

Or do I want Sam to do that? I’m confused, and the truth could be that at this moment I want them both.

‘Katya’s resting,’ Richard says. ‘The poor girl was just about finished. I think she’s had the baby all night.’

He’s pretending not to be feeling the effects of yesterday’s binge but I’ve seen the empty ibuprofen packets in the bedroom.

We have a moment to ourselves, apart from the baby.

‘Where were you last night, Tess?’ he asks me.

‘I needed some time alone.’

He lets this comment settle, visibly hurt by it. There are arguments that we’ve had so many times that he knows the score: he’s an alcoholic, therefore I have the moral high ground. Almost always. So he makes a submissive response.

‘I was worried,’ he responds eventually. We stare at each other across the room, and Grace tries to put her fingers in his mouth.

‘Oh don’t try that again,’ he tells her, waggling her fingers. ‘You’ll find some ancient fillings or some other kind of horror in there.’

She tries again. ‘Stop it!’ he says, shaking her hand, and he laughs. Only a little, but the sound of it and the look of amusement on his face jolts me because I’m not sure when I last heard Richard laugh.

When the detectives arrive at the house, the atmosphere changes immediately. Where before we were roaming the rooms like lost souls, and the Family Liaison Officer busied herself locating the kettle, and the tea, like a mother hen, now we all become constricted, nervous, hyped up and we feel under scrutiny.

Chris responds to the detectives by putting on as good a version of his professional self as he can manage under the circumstances. Shaking hands, trying to find the words to ask practical questions. But he reminds me of a faulty robotic toy: you can see what it’s meant to be doing, but it just can’t manage it properly.

The detectives ask if there’s a suitable room that they can use for interviews.

I install them in our dining room.

In the sitting room, Zoe is curled up in a corner of the sofa, her eyes watchful and guarded behind that hair.

Beside her, Lucas looks catatonic.

Richard has taken Grace upstairs to try to settle her for a nap in our bed; I can hear him singing a nursery rhyme that I didn’t even know he knew. Katya has passed out on one of the beds in our small spare room, from shock, or exhaustion, or from an excess of whatever she indulged in last night, it’s hard to tell.

I clear the dining room table to make space for the detectives. My work had been spread out all over it, mostly admin from the surgery, and I push all that to one side, as well as another of Richard’s models-in-progress, this one at least partially constructed with all the precision and care he can be capable of.

I offer to make the detectives tea, as if they’re plumbers just in to service the boiler. They decline. They’re very businesslike: crisp shirts tucked into shiny leather belts. Short back and sides for both, and one with salt and pepper speckles around the ears. They remind me of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who sometimes come to the door in all their smartness.

They ask to speak to Chris first and we all wait nervously and almost silently with the Family Liaison Officer, as their voices grumble away indistinguishably for forty-five minutes, separated from us by the hallway and the shut dining room door. When Chris finally emerges, he looks strained.

They ask for Zoe next, but she doesn’t move; those eyes, which belonged first to my sister, look at me instead.

‘I want Sam to be there with me,’ she says. ‘Please can we phone Sam again?’ and I understand that I’m her go-to person right now, and the responsibility of that makes my stomach lurch.

‘You don’t need him, love. You really don’t.’

Still she won’t move from the sofa. I wonder if the police have powers to manhandle her into the dining room to answer questions.

‘Why don’t you just have a little chat with the detectives,’ says the Family Liaison Officer. She’s a dumpy woman who has a bit of a wheeze going on that I’d want to treat if she were an animal. ‘As soon as they’ve heard from you they can crack on and get to work finding out what’s happened to…’ She tails off. Zoe’s stare is ferocious.

‘It won’t do any harm,’ I’m trying to be reassuring but it’s a struggle.

‘Just do as you’re told on this occasion,’ says Chris and his words interject sharply like the crack of a whip. ‘It’s not negotiable.’

Zoe stands up abruptly, and her clothes hang off her in a ghoulish sort of way for a moment or two before she wraps her arms and her garments tight around herself again and shuffles towards the dining room. I see her slump into a chair opposite the detectives and then one of them gets up and walks around the table to shut the door behind her.