Authors: Gilly Macmillan
The Perfect Girl (5 page)
Zoe and I didn’t talk for long that first time we met at the police station in Barnstaple. I mostly wanted to introduce myself, to reassure her as much as I could, and explain to her that I was there to help her. I wanted to try to gain her trust before detailed questioning began. And I didn’t want to start that until I’d spoken to the officer on the case, to get disclosure.
I met him in the custody reception area. After a brief handshake, we took a seat in a room similar to the one that Zoe was waiting in. He had a broad, whiskery face and Punch and Judy red cheeks. His uniform was tight around the belly.
He handed me the charge sheet and told me that he was going to make an audio recording of the disclosure too. That’s sensible, it’s a record of what’s taken place so there’s nothing to argue over later, because that’s my job, to find holes in the evidence: procedural or actual, it doesn’t matter, either can serve my client.
He told me what they had, all of it. The police don’t have to do this, they can be slippery, and disclose in stages, drawing the process out if they’re inclined to. I’ve had disclosures that dribble out over hours, interspersed with exhausting client interviews where we’re forced to run a ‘No Comment’ defence because we don’t know what they’re going to pull out of the bag next.
Zoe’s disclosure was forthright, succinct and the content was as depressing as possible.
When you get a good, honest exchange with an officer in this situation, normally it restores your faith in your profession, gees you up for the daily grind of criminality, because that well-behaved, professional exchange between you both feels like an honourable thing; it pushes away the thoughts of the shysters and the ambulance-chasers, the doughnut-munchers and the baton-wielders. You become two men, in a room, upholding the law, and there’s a purity to that, a kind of distinction, which is a very rare thing on a day-to-day basis.
In Zoe’s case, it only made things slightly more bearable, because the facts of her arrest were so unremittingly grim.
‘She’d got herself out of the car when we got there,’ he said. ‘But she was definitely the driver. We breathalysed her at the scene, seventy-five mg.’
My heart sank because that reading was well over the limit. She must have consumed a great deal of alcohol to be that drunk, even given her small size.
‘Three passengers in the car,’ he continued, deadpan, though it was tough stuff to read out, even if you’re a professional. ‘Front passenger dead at the scene, rear left-side passenger dead at the scene, rear right-side passenger transferred to Barnstaple Hospital.’
He caught the question in my gaze but shook his head.
‘Died half an hour ago. Massive bleed to the brain. Family agreed to turn her off.’
‘Christ.’
‘I’ve seen some scenes, but this was really bad. And there was music pumping from the car, you could hear it on approach, made for a strange scene, spooky.’
I imagined the black night, starlight above, headlights parked at a crazy angle, a steaming engine, crumpled bodywork, shattered glass and the stereo still blasting out a loud driving tune to the broken bodies inside, only two out of the four of them producing wisps of misty breath in the cold darkness.
‘She consented to a blood test at the hospital,’ he continued. ‘Confirmed she was well over the limit.’
‘Zoe consented?’
‘And the doctor.’
I might have had something to work with if Zoe alone had consented to a blood test, because of her age. It was another situation where she had to have an ‘appropriate adult’ advising her. I was pretty sure the police had this one taped, but made a note that it was something to check.
‘Road traffic report?’
‘Ordered.’
‘How long for that?’
‘As quick as we can make it – end of the week probably.’
At this early stage in proceedings, part of my job was to be sure that the police had the evidence they needed to prove all the elements of the offence that the prosecution would present at court. We would need all the test results and paperwork in before I could make a proper judgement on that, but the heaviness in his voice and the apparently rigid adherence to protocol told me that as far as this area of the investigation was concerned, things weren’t looking good for Zoe. If I was going to find a defence for her, I suspected it was unlikely it would lie in the procedural detail, or the facts of the accident or the quality of her treatment afterwards, because, so far, the police appeared to have done everything by the book.
‘You’re going to have to bail her. You can’t keep her in, she’s too young.’
I wondered if he was going to argue this, because of the severity of what Zoe had done, but he didn’t.
‘We’re probably happy with that, subject to conditions of course.’
‘Good. We can discuss conditions. So you’re charging her with “Death by careless driving whilst under the influence”.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, but he meant ‘Yes.’
We stood. Our chairs didn’t move because they were bolted to the floor. A firm handshake and he said, ‘It’s a bad one this. It’s a shame. She’s just a kid.’
I nodded. I agreed with him, but I wondered whether the families of the children who died would feel that way.
Before I left the room, I said, ‘Does she know? About the fatalities?’
‘She knows about the first two, but not about the girl who died at the hospital. Sorry.’
That word again.
I shut the
panop
app and my hands are shaking, because this is what used to happen, when it all began.
In rehabilitation sessions at the Unit, Jason, my key worker, liked to stress this, and liked to make me go over and over it until he’d satisfied himself that I understood:
‘What must you avoid, Zoe, when you leave here?’
‘Social media.’
‘And which social media in particular?’
‘All of it.’
‘And especially?’
‘Well, that question doesn’t make sense if we’ve already agreed that I’m avoiding all of it.’
‘Humour me.’
‘
Panop
.’
‘Well done.’
‘Can I have a gold star?’
‘Don’t be cheeky.’
Jason was, basically, mostly awesome. He didn’t take any crap from anybody.
My IQ has been officially measured as 162. This puts me in the category of ‘exceptionally gifted’. It means that I beat Einstein and Professor Stephen Hawking who scored 160.
But the problem is, a high IQ doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re clever enough to avoid being a massive teenage cliché. Which is what I was, or what I became. Before my descent into ‘teen tragedy’, that is.
When Jason looked over my case notes with me, at our first ever session, this is what he said: ‘For somebody with a genius level IQ you’ve made some pretty interesting decisions haven’t you?’
At that point, I didn’t know that he was going to be as close as I would get in that place to having a knight in shining armour, because I’d only been at the Secure Unit for a week, so I said, ‘Screw you,’ which was a phrase I’d already learned from the kids on my corridor.
I didn’t like the look of Jason with his film premiere facial hair, or the sound of his voice, which was boring and nasal like he had an adenoidal cold, or the stewed tea he put in front of me in a stained mug. I thought ‘Screw you’ was a good response, but it turned out that Jason had a bit more life experience than me. Go figure.
Panop
is an app where you can anonymously ask questions of others. This is what you read on the page where you can register for an account:
Hey! Welcome to panop!
We hate to do it, but we need to start with a word of caution…
We know that some people can sometimes get ugly and transform into trolls when they get online and we’re asking you nicely: if you sign up, don’t troll up. Don’t do it. Ask anybody a question, but keep it nice. If you can’t be nice, don’t sign up.
And if you sign up and you get asked a nasty question, don’t answer it! In fact don’t respond at all. Panop people (ppeeps!) should know their own minds, and they should be nice. We’re all about amusement, entertainment and good times online!
Happy asking…
After I signed up to
panop
, aged thirteen, a brand new pupil in Year Nine at Hartwood House School, do you want to know what the first question I received was?
It was this:
R u a
hore
?
I thought it was a mistake. It even took me a few hours to work out that it was a spelling-challenged attempt to write the word ‘whore’. I was that naive.
I didn’t realise that I’d been seen talking to Jack Bell the Popular Boy, who was supposed to be the exclusive property of his sister Eva and her posse of Popular Girls at my school. I didn’t realise I wasn’t supposed to talk to Jack Bell, because nobody had explained to me that by virtue of his parents’ money and his Boy Band Hair and Low-Riding Jeans, Jack Bell was Social Gold Dust, and that, as a recipient of the Year Nine Hartwood House School music scholarship, I was automatically granted the status of Social Pond Life.
Being a music scholar meant that my parents could not afford the school tuition, so I was not part of the Entitled. I wasn’t much better than a beggar. Everybody knew that I paid for my schooling with my piano playing, and it subsidised my ugly uniform too. I had to turn out at every concert and open evening, and be in every brochure, hands poised over the keyboards, and smiling serenely as if the very act of being a pupil at Hartwood House School had bestowed me with any talent and opportunity that I might be so lucky as to have.
I know by now that it’s possible to overcome the status of Social Pond Life if you work very hard and are prepared to make a multitude of fundamental compromises of the soul, but at the time I wasn’t sharp enough even to recognise that possibility.
So I found myself talking one day, during the first few weeks of term, to Jack Bell. And Jack Bell and I got on well, or I thought we did. I didn’t realise that other people were watching, and judging, and testing me in fact. I didn’t realise that Jack Bell was nothing more than a bright white lure dangling in front of me, blinding me to the dark wide gaping jaws of the beast behind, and that those jaws were lined with stiletto-sharp teeth.
There was so much I didn’t realise then. ‘You couldn’t have,’ said Jason. ‘You were naive, that’s all, and probably a bit unfiltered too.’
Jason, bless him, was the master of the understatement, because I was just as dumb as Forrest Gump, dumber perhaps, because I didn’t even work out that what I should have done was run.
But, while I’m sitting there with my phone in my hand, remembering all of this, what totally blows my mind is that I get a text from Lucas right then. This is the most activity I’ve had on my mobile for days, weeks, months even. Check your email, is all it says, and although he’s not exactly the master of sensitivity I thought Lucas might at least have asked me how I was, or something. But I do check my email anyway, and there is one from him.
The only thing the email message says is ‘Please read this,’ and then there’s just a PDF attachment called ‘What I Know’. The title of it freezes my blood for an instant, but I try to stay calm, because there’s no way he could know about me, is there? It’s probably just one of those lists of stupid or funny things from the Web, which is the kind of thing he usually sends me and which makes Mum and Chris annoyed because I laugh out loud unexpectedly when I read them and that is apparently ‘very rude to the people around you’.
I open the attachment. It’s a script, written by Lucas. Lucas is obsessed with film. He’s not really allowed to watch any of the films he wants to in our house, but I know he’s built a proxy website so when he’s at school he can bypass their internet security and watch films on his tablet there. I won’t tell, but I know. Lucas is clever in his quiet way.
I start to read.
A SCRIPT FOR FILM
BY LUCAS KENNEDY
Dear Maria and Zoe
I’m sending you this to explain a bit about how things were before my mum died.
This is a film script I wrote to tell the story of what happened to me, my mum, and my dad, before we met you, and I hope you will read it.
Please read it.
Love from Lucas
ACT I
INT. PRIVATE HOSPITAL ROOM. VERY WELL APPOINTED. NIGHT.
A woman, JULIA, in her early thirties, but looking much older due to her condition, lies completely still in a hospital bed. She was clearly beautiful once, and there are traces of this in her fine, symmetrical features and long, dark hair which spreads out over the pillow, framing her face.
We might see a vase of flowers, and just one or two get-well cards around the side of the room, which is immaculately clean, extremely well appointed and brightly lit. JULIA is getting the finest medical care available.
Beside her bed sits her son, LUCAS, 10 years old, who is holding one of her hands in both of his. He is a lovely, wide-eyed, dark-haired little boy. Mostly, his head hangs low, though at times he looks up and pulls her hand carefully to rest on his cheek, and when he does that we might see a tear fall. As her voice-over (V.O.) begins he raises his head to look at her, and adjusts her hair on the pillow so that it looks nice.
When JULIA speaks her voice is warm. She sounds like somebody who you would like to have as a friend.
DYING JULIA (V.O.)
This is not how I would have liked to meet you. I would have liked to have been on my feet, with my hair brushed, and at least a little bit of make-up on. And I would have preferred not to be wearing a nightie. If you had come to our house, I would have invited you in and offered you a cup of tea and a biscuit, or maybe even a fresh muffin if Lucas and I had been baking that day. We could have chatted in the sunlight at my kitchen table, and it would have been nice.
The camera is travelling around the bed so we see JULIA’s frailty, her pale skin and the stillness of her body. She’s not breathing independently.
DYING JULIA (V.O.)
The end isn’t far away now, as you can probably see, and a big part of me is desperately grateful to have Lucas here with me, because I never want to have to leave him; but I will admit that there’s another part of me that’s relieved that it’s nearly over, because what I can’t stand any longer, is watching Lucas watching me die. It’s been a brutal, lingering process, in spite of my efforts to hasten it. But we’re nearly in the closing stages. I’ve already had one massive heart attack you see, and I’m about to have another, which will be fatal.
We see a ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ order pinned to the end of JULIA’s bed.
DYING JULIA (V.O.)
Is that a heartless thing to do? Lucas wept when they explained what the DNR order meant, and he screamed at the doctors. But it’s necessary, so that things don’t drag on, and so that my boy doesn’t suffer more than he needs to. You see, I had an idea that in spite of my best efforts to leave him cleanly, my lovely, intuitive boy might find an excuse to come home from school early on the day I did it, that he might beg for me to be saved, whatever state I was in.
INT. CHRIS AND JULIA’S BEDROOM. DAY. A FEW HOURS EARLIER.
JULIA lies on her bed in a sumptuous, tasteful and beautiful bedroom. She’s already unconscious. Beside her lie multiple bottles of pills, all empty. One of her hands is loosely draped over a bottle of water. An envelope is on her chest. ‘To whom it may concern’ is written on the front of it. We hear frantic knocking on the bedroom door.
LUCAS (O.O.S.)
Mum? Mum! Mummy! Are you in there? Mum!
We hear the sound of the door being kicked in an increasingly frenzied way, and then a different kind of thudding, as if somebody is throwing their entire body weight against it. After that, silence.
LUCAS (O.O.S.) (CONT’D)
Yes, hello, ambulance, please, yes, and fire brigade. Please come quickly. It’s my mum.
INT. PRIVATE HOSPITAL ROOM. VERY WELL APPOINTED. NIGHT.
We find JULIA and LUCAS in exactly the same positions as before. We also see a younger CHRIS standing on the other side of the door, looking through it, at JULIA and LUCAS. He has the palm of his hand on the glass. He looks full of despair.
DYING JULIA (V.O.)
That’s my husband Chris. He’s as distraught as our son at this moment. He wants to be with me too, but he’s allowing our child time to say goodbye in his own way.
The camera has made a full circle of the room now, and we see JULIA’s monitoring machines, slowly beeping. One of the readings seems to falter, before settling back into a steady rhythm again, and LUCAS stares at it, alarmed. He gestures to CHRIS, who calls a NURSE. She bustles in, checks things, then lays a hand on LUCAS’s shoulder to reassure him. He sits back down and now CHRIS sits behind him. It’s a vigil.
DYING JULIA (V.O.)
No, don’t worry. It’s not quite time yet. There are a few more moments, and while I have them, I want to tell you my story. It’s the story of Chris, and me, of our life, and the baby we had together, who we named Lucas. And I’m going to start the story when Chris was just fifteen years old.
INT. A YOUNG MAN’S BEDROOM. NIGHT.
A teenage CHRIS is sitting at a desk surrounded by books and papers, and he’s working in longhand on a pad of A4 paper, writing furiously, only pausing to check facts in a textbook, or cross-reference some notes. We might see that the room is quite dark apart from a single lamp illuminating his desk. A bare bulb hangs from the ceiling, but it’s broken. The room isn’t quite squalid, but it’s not comfortable either. We might see that a clock on CHRIS’s desk shows that it’s past midnight.
DYING JULIA (V.O.)
Christopher Kennedy was an only child, in a family where he had a mum and a dad, but where crack cocaine was sometimes the third, and always the most unpredictable, parent in the house.
We hear violent shouting coming from outside the room, and the unmistakable sound of somebody being struck. CHRIS winces, but keeps working, he’s used to this. Seconds later, a door slams and the sobbing we hear is a hopeless, defeated sound, like the whimpers of a beaten dog. Then we hear CHRIS’S MOTHER call to him.
CHRIS’S MOTHER (O.O.S.)
Christopher darling, come and help me. Please, come and help me.
CHRIS pauses to listen, we see various emotions working across his face, and at first he puts his pen down and appears to be about to get up, but then his expression changes to one of resolve. He reaches for a pair of headphones, which he puts on before resuming his work. With him, we hear piano music soaring, and the sobbing is drowned out. CHRIS’s expression changes to one of calm focus.
DYING JULIA (V.O.)
Chris knew, from a very young age, that the only person who could help him get anywhere was himself. So he became self-reliant, and he put in hours of work.
INT. THE WILLS MEMORIAL BUILDING, BRISTOL UNIVERSITY. DAY.
CHRIS is attending a graduation ceremony. We hear his name called and see him walking up on to the podium to collect his graduation certificate. The large audience applauds.
DYING JULIA (V.O.)
Chris’s hard work paid off. He graduated with a first class degree in computer science from Bristol University, at age 19, one of the youngest ever to do so. And after that, he kept his head down, and things continued to go well for him.
INT. CHRIS’S OFFICE IN THE COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT AT BRISTOL UNIVERSITY. NIGHT.
We might see city lights sparkling outside, through a small, high window. It’s a poky space, with a desk and a very plain student-type sofa crammed into it.
DYING JULIA (V.O.)
The University of Bristol gave him an office all of his own to develop his ideas in. If he stood in the right place, he could even see a view. And he didn’t rest on his laurels, because before long Chris had an idea that made some other people very excited indeed.
We see Chris staring at his screen. He writes an email and we can see the text: ‘I think I’ve bloody done it.’ He clicks the ‘send’ button.
INT. AN OFFICE IN THE HOME OF AN INVESTOR. NIGHT.
An older, and wealthy-looking man sits at a desk in a room that looks the way you might imagine a gentleman’s club to. He receives Chris’s email. He smiles when he reads it, and composes an email in reply. It says, ‘WE’RE GOING TO MAKE A KILLING.’ He presses ‘send’.
INT. CHRIS’S NEW OFFICE AT THE UNIVERSITY. DAY.
CHRIS’s new office is bigger and lighter, and the view of the city is extensive and impressive. The only thing that remains the same is the sofa, looking a little older and scruffier, but still there.
CHRIS lies on the sofa, he’s wearing a headset, and is on a call.
DYING JULIA (V.O.)
Chris got upgraded to a new office by the university, and deservedly so. His business idea was a good one. In fact, it was a great one, and he got a particularly tempting offer from an investment fund to turn it into a business.
CHRIS is speaking on the phone via his headset, and, as he does, sitting up in excitement.
YOUNG CHRIS
An order for 5,000? That’s good. That’s very, very good, a great start, solid…
(listens)
Sorry? Fifty thousand? Are you joking? I thought you said…
(listens)
Fifty thousand? That’s, well that’s just incredible.
DYING JULIA (V.O.)
And the business began to do so well, so quickly, that he didn’t need the support of the university any more. He set up on his own, and the investment fund gave him enough support that he could even afford to hire an assistant.
INT. A COFFEE SHOP. DAY.
CHRIS is sitting at a small table with a sheaf of papers in front of him. A young woman, JULIA, enters and approaches the table.
