The Perfect Girl (13 page)

When Aunt Tess has gone downstairs I’m alone in the sitting room once more and I think about everything, mostly about how I’ve stuffed things up again because you shouldn’t just scream.

‘Screaming might feel like an outlet to you,’ said Jason, ‘and of course it is in a way, but there are other ways we can channel feelings. We can leave the room, we can ask for a timeout, we can point out that what’s being said is making us feel very uncomfortable or anxious rather than just displaying it. These are better strategies than screaming.’

‘What about howling like a wolf?’ I asked him.

Jason smiled but he didn’t run with it, not that I thought he would, but I liked to try to make him smile.

‘Let’s talk about what you could do instead,’ he said, and he started to try to teach me, yet again, how to be a functional human being.

It’s funny, I thought I was one before I went to the Unit, but by the time they’ve counselled the hell out of you, you understand just how freaky you are.

The night I went to Jack Bell’s party I didn’t feel freaky, I felt as though I was about to enter the realms of the Popular.

What happened in the bedroom with Jack is something that I’ve had to talk about a lot with Sam, my solicitor, and at the trial, but that was really all about alcohol levels and issues of (new word I had to learn) culpability.

I didn’t ever get to remember that bit of the party as something that might have been nice for me.

When Jack came back to the bedroom at the party, he brought me a pint glass full of Coke, which I told him was overkill and that made him laugh.

Jack handed me the glass and I took a big long drink, swallowing and swallowing until I made bug eyes and the bubbles tingled my nose, just to make him laugh.

‘You never do anything by halves, do you?’ he said.

‘Is that Diet Coke?’ I asked him. ‘It tastes funny.’

‘What are you?’ he said. ‘Some kind of Coke connoisseur? Yeah it is, so it tastes different. Do you want me to get you another one?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s fine. I like it.’

He sat very close to me, and he put his hand over mine, and pushed his fingers between mine.

‘I’ve never heard you play piano,’ he says. ‘I should one day.’

I didn’t really know what to say to that. Piano is, and always has been, a private thing for me, although it makes me a public person, and the sight of his fingers on mine suddenly brought to mind my mum’s hand, placing my fingertips on the keys, pushing them down, in the days when her hands were much bigger than mine, when my hands were far too small to stretch to an octave.

Jack interpreted my silence as coyness, as flirtatiousness. ‘Perhaps I’ll come to a concert next time,’ he said, ‘sit in the front row…’ He leaned towards me and ran his fingers from just under my ear all the way down my jawline to my chin. ‘Or would that put you off?’ he asked, and he leaned in even further then, and put his mouth on mine and his hand dropped to my chest.

I pushed him away a bit, because the intensity of the thrill was sort of frightening, and Jack was older than me and bigger than me.

‘I heard you play like a demon,’ he said. ‘Like you’re possessed or something.’

That made me laugh. ‘I don’t know about that,’ I said, but inside I thought that maybe I did, sometimes, when I was really into the music. You don’t really know how you look when you’re playing well, because the concentrating and listening is everything.

It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody without sounding weird, so I drank some more of my Coke to cover up how awkward I was feeling, and Jack’s eyes were on me all the time, even when he downed his drink all in one go.

‘What are you drinking?’ I asked him.

‘Cider. Do you want to try? I can get you some.’

I shook my head.

‘It’s good,’ he said, and he took my Coke from me and put it on the bedside table, and put his drink beside it, and then he sort of climbed on top of me a bit and pushed me back on to the pillows, ever so gently, and he started to whisper something into my ear, words that you dream of, when there was a knock on the door.

‘Shhh,’ he said.

‘Zoe?’ It was Gull.

‘I have to,’ I said.

‘Don’t,’ he told me, ‘I want you.’

But I couldn’t abandon Gull; it just wasn’t something I could do. Jack saw it. He rolled away and on to his back with a grunt of irritation.

‘Gull,’ I said.

I went to the door. It was locked, although I hadn’t noticed him do that, but the key was there so I opened it, to find her slumped against the wall.

‘Where’ve you been?’ she said. ‘I couldn’t find you anywhere.’

She looked disorientated and her voice was slurred.

‘Sorry,’ I said, as she leaned heavily on me. ‘Gull? Are you OK?’

And she puked, all over the floor.

‘Oh fuck!’ said Jack. ‘Get her to the bathroom.’

He kind of manhandled Gull down the corridor. I sat by her as she threw up, again and again, into the loo. Jack went to clear up the mess on the floor, and I realised quickly that I should have locked the door to the loo because before I knew it Eva Bell was standing in the doorway, shoulder to shoulder with best friend Amelia Barlow, and both of them were looking at us with absolute disdain.

‘Should have stayed in the library, girls,’ she said, ‘if you can’t take your drink.’

I heard once that Eva and her friends bought mixers to drink while they were getting ready for parties just in case there’s not enough alcohol when they get there.

‘Shut up,’ I said, but my heart wasn’t in it because Gull was puking so hard it was making her cry.

‘My mum’s going to kill me,’ she said, and I gathered her hair up and held it back from her head.

‘She doesn’t have to know,’ I said.

‘I want to go home,’ said Gull. She grabbed hold of me unsteadily. ‘I need to go home. It’s my birthday tomorrow.’

‘What have you been drinking?’ I asked her. I didn’t tell her it was that late it was already her birthday, because that probably would have made her more upset.

‘Somebody spiked my drink. I swear, somebody spiked it.’

We had cycled to the party, sharing Gull’s bike. It was four miles, mostly downhill. The plan had been to walk home with the bike but I could see that that wasn’t going to happen. Gull was pulling herself up on me now and I didn’t think she could even manage to walk.

Jack said, ‘I can drive you home.’ He was looking a little nervous now, as if vomit and neediness weren’t on his agenda tonight.

Amy was right beside him, hanging off him a bit like Gull was off me only her body was pressed against his, and when he said this her eyes and Eva’s shot lasers at me. Amy was not very drunk, or if she was, she was holding it well.

‘How much have you had?’ she asked Jack. ‘Why don’t you let them walk home? She lives nearby, doesn’t she?’

Amy was right. Gull’s family had a small, modern home in Hartland where the washing-up was never done and even the dogs didn’t bother licking the grease off the floor. Her mum and dad were the warmest people you could meet, it’s just they didn’t care about that kind of stuff. They cared about Gull. Every penny they had, every ounce of love and effort, went to her.

‘She runs like the wind, our girl,’ her dad would say, ‘like the wind,’ and my dad would mutter, ‘He used to run like the wind too, Gull’s got it from her dad.’

Gull’s real name was Linda, but her parents, surprised by a baby when they’d given up hope of having one, began to call her Gull when, as her dad said, ‘she squawked like a gull at all hours, what else were we supposed to call her?’ ‘We used to laugh,’ he said, ‘she squawked so loud. You’d have thought we was throttling her, not getting her a meal and cleaning her ladyship up.’

Gull didn’t like people to know where she lived, because of being a scholarship girl like me. We didn’t live in big houses like Jack and Eva Bell and Amy Barlow and the other kids at our school. We lived in normal houses where there was mud, and stuff was old, and animals lay beside fires and there was single glazing.

‘She can’t stay here,’ Jack said. ‘My parents are coming home first thing in the morning.’

‘I’m not drunk,’ I said. ‘If I can borrow a car I can drive her home.’

‘You can’t drive,’ Amy said.

‘My dad taught me how.’

Jack had a look in his eyes suddenly. ‘We could drop Gull home and then go to the lighthouse,’ he said, ‘have you ever done that?’

‘No,’ I said, but I was suddenly seduced by the glint in his eye, and I said, ‘but I’d like to.’

Amy said, ‘That’s a stupid idea, Jack. Let her drive Gull home and bring the car back. Then she can go home on the bike.’

Jack ignored her. ‘It’s very cool,’ he said. ‘You can climb up to the top. I know a way. We could take my dad’s car.’

And I got this incredible idea of the lighthouse, with its strong beam of light raking the waves below, and I heard powerful music in my head, classical music, rising like the spray on the rocks. I knew there was a shipwreck there too, which you could see when the tide was low, basking on the stony shore like rusted orange skeleton bones abandoned after a violent death.

‘You should go with them, Ames,’ slurred Eva. She was drunk, definitely. ‘Make sure Jack doesn’t cop off with piano girl. He’s pissed enough he just might.’

‘Shut up,’ said Jack.

A boy called Douglas appeared behind Eva and slipped his hands around her waist and buried his head in the back of her neck.

‘You coming too then, Eva?’ Amy said to her.

‘Somebody needs to hold the fort,’ she said, ‘if Jack goes off. You go, make sure he behaves himself.’

She turned to Douglas, and her body seemed to slide up his and they kissed so long and hard that I was totally embarrassed, and in that moment it seemed that it had been decided that I would drive Gull home.

And I remember finishing my drink while me and Gull sat on the bed waiting for Jack to find the car keys, one arm around her and the other holding that pint glass of Coke. And I remember Amy glowering as if she would rather be anywhere else but with us, but didn’t know what else to do.

And I remember helping Gull to the car, and helping her in, and then getting into the car myself and starting the ignition, and I remember how it felt powerful and smooth, quite unlike the truck I’d driven on the farm.

But I shut down the memories there, because this is the bit where it gets painful for me.

I think about how I’m in the sitting room on my own, again, and I wonder if I should go downstairs and apologise for screaming like I did, because ‘apologies are always good and always necessary’, but I think my mum might want me to stay away so she can keep things smooth.

Lucas lingers in my mind: the kiss, the fact that he knows. How does he know? I wonder. Why hasn’t he said? His request that I read his email comes back into my mind. I remember where my phone is, and I dig down under the sofa cushions and find it.

The choice that I gave to Mr and Mrs Guerin and Zoe, when we met to discuss her case on that freezing cold morning in Bideford, was a difficult one.

Zoe could go to her initial hearing at court, and plead guilty. The court would look favourably on this, as it avoided a costly trial, and was an admission of culpability. It would probably keep her sentence to a minimum, though she was unlikely to avoid something custodial.

Or, Zoe could turn up at her initial hearing and make a ‘Special Reasons’ plea. She would have to admit that she drove the car, and caused the accident, but could ask a judge to decide whether she was guilty of knowingly driving when drunk. If you accepted Zoe’s explanation, it would appear that somebody spiked her drink at the party, most likely the boy she was with, Jack Bell, who was also one of the victims. We would have to prove that in court though, and that would be a tough call, especially as three of the key witnesses were dead.

‘Well, we’ll do that then,’ says Mr Guerin when he heard this option. ‘That’s a plan then.’

People who are in the system for the first time are always tempted to mount a defence, because it feels like a chink of light, a way of minimising the damage they’ve done, the guilt they feel, and the harm to their reputation and that of their family.

Maria could see pitfalls: ‘Well, wait a minute, what if they don’t believe her?’

‘It’s the truth, isn’t it?’ her husband said.

Maria didn’t speak, she was waiting for my reply.

‘If the court don’t accept that defence, then Zoe risks a tougher sentence than she might have got if she pleaded guilty.’

‘But it’s not on her conscience then, is it?’ said Mr Guerin. ‘If she pleads guilty it’s like telling the world that our daughter accepts that she murdered those children. Murdered them, Maria.’

Zoe was shrinking into her chair.

Maria ignored him. ‘It’s a gamble, then.’ She directed this at me.

‘It would be a gamble, yes.’

‘Would she have a chance of getting less of a sentence if the judge accepts the plea, than if she pleaded guilty in the first place?’

‘I doubt it, no.’

‘But we wouldn’t have it on our conscience,’ said Maria. ‘It would be a similar sentence but it would be proven that she didn’t know she was drunk, that it was just a normal accident.’

In my view, this is what you call clutching at straws, but this family was obviously trying to clutch at anything.

Mr Guerin was on his feet now, standing at the window of my office, which had a view of the waterside, where the tide was low that morning, leaving the boats mostly stranded on the mud. A low, immovable grey sky waited patiently above the scene while this family considered their options, and it dulled and flattened the landscape across the harbour. Below it, seagulls hovered and circled, just as they did every day.

Mr Guerin had his back to us but when he spoke his voice was firm, and it was clear that he’d made a mental U-turn.

‘It’s not worth the risk,’ he said. ‘What if they don’t believe her?’

‘I’ll tell them the truth,’ said Zoe.

‘You’ve killed people, Zoe,’ he said, ‘who’s going to believe you?’

Quite apart from the hopeless resignation in his tone, and the effect it had on his daughter, this statement got to me because Philip Guerin was exactly the kind of man who was likely to be on a jury in this part of the world, and while I knew that there would be no jury in a youth court, where Zoe would be tried, it was an attitude that could well be shared by the magistrates, or judge.

‘They’ll believe her.’ Maria was suddenly adamant. ‘We can coach her. They’ll feel sorry for her, she’ll be a good witness, and perhaps we can get some of the other children in the witness box.’

‘No,’ said Mr Guerin. ‘I’m fed up with you coaching her. You’ve coached her enough, Maria. We wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t coached her so she got a music scholarship. She’d be at the local school, which was good enough for me by the way, but not good enough for your daughter. If she’d gone there none of this would have happened. It’s going to that jumped-up school and trying to keep up with the kids there, that’s why this has happened. No. I won’t do it. She should plead guilty, and take the consequences for what she’s done, pay for it, and then perhaps we can get some forgiveness one day.’

‘I don’t agree,’ said Maria. ‘Think of Zoe. Think of us!’

‘I am thinking of her. And of the other families. I grew up with Matt.’ His voice choked. I recognised the name of Zoe’s friend Gull’s dad.

‘I know you did,’ Maria said.

‘I won’t put him and Sue through a trial.’

‘We have to give Zoe a chance to clear her name.’

‘No! Gull was their only child, you know that.’

‘I’m not willing to jeopardise Zoe’s future to save the feelings of the other families.’

‘Sometimes, Maria, you have a hard heart,’ said her husband. ‘What future does Zoe have now anyway?’

I wanted to jump in and defend Zoe, but Maria was on her feet now too, and both of them were seemingly oblivious to Zoe.

‘How is it having a hard heart to protect your daughter?’ Maria spoke quietly but with a vehemence that was startling.

‘And what if it doesn’t protect her? What if it goes wrong and she goes to jail for longer than she would have if she pleaded guilty?’

They were facing each other across the table, although it was hard to see Mr Guerin’s expression because his back was to the window now.

‘Zoe,’ I said, because it was definitely time for me to calm things down and I wanted to remind these two adults that their child was listening to them. ‘Do you understand what the decision is here?’

‘I don’t want to go to prison, but I don’t want to make it worse for the families,’ she said. ‘I’ll say I’m guilty.’

As there was a sharp intake of breath from Maria, Mr Guerin came around the table and put his hands on the back of Zoe’s shoulders. He had huge, red, dry, calloused hands, and they made Zoe look smaller and more fragile than ever.

‘Well done, girl,’ he said.

But I looked at Maria, and at Zoe, who watched her mother anxiously, and I didn’t think this decision was made yet.