She hesitates, making sure that the words are perfectly formed in her head before she speaks. “Because there was nothing calculated about the way she spoke,” she says. “I think she only told me because she was so shaken by what had just happened. She was terrified, I could see that. She was terrified that Kaspar would think her responsible somehow, and she knew what he was capable of.”
“So you are sure that your sister believed what she was saying,” Fenton says. “How sure are you that she was, in fact, correct? And why?”
“I’m sure,” Rachel says slowly, “because she told me that she witnessed it herself. There didn’t seem to be any room for doubt.” As she speaks, she feels a tremor of anxiety pass through her. It feels as if the conversation is starting to swerve in a different direction.
Fenton is silent for a moment, rubbing the tip of one finger contemplatively across his lip, back and forth. “Did your sister explain the nature of her involvement with these crimes to you?” he asks. “Did she explain why she was there, or what she did?”
“No,” Rachel says quickly. “She didn’t.”
Another pause, this time thickly charged and potent. “Do you really believe that Mrs. Kashani fell to her death that night?” Fenton asks at last.
The defense lawyer leaps to his feet again, extending his hands in supplication. “Your Honor,” he says hotly, “this is irrelevant. My client has not been charged in connection with Mrs. Kashani’s death, and it has nothing to do with the current proceedings.”
As he speaks, he glances over and across to his left, and instinctively Rachel follows his movement, and then she sees her. Sitting at the back of the defense box, dressed in a slim-fitting black jacket with her hair pulled back from her face and her lips painted dark pink. Rachel has been so reluctant to look in Kaspar’s direction, so conscious of his presence, that it had not even crossed her mind that he might not be alone. But of course, he is not the only one on trial.
When their eyes meet, Rachel thinks she sees Sadie’s bearing relax a little, as if she’s been waiting for this moment, her body drawn tight with anticipation. It’s the first time she has seen her sister in almost two months, and the oddest thing is that as soon as she sets eyes on her again it’s as if she has never been away. She could have been waiting in the next room, her back turned only for minutes. She’s imagined fireworks, drama. But Sadie doesn’t look as if she is about to leap out of her seat and start screaming obscenities. She’s watching Rachel with her eyebrows slightly lowered, frowning at her in the way that a scientist might gaze at some curious new specimen.
Rachel wrenches her gaze away, back to the lawyers. She feels the palms of her hands slippery with sweat.
“I’d argue that this line of questioning is very relevant, Your Honor,” Fenton is saying, “considering the need to understand the nature of the relationship between the defendants, not to mention their characters.”
The judge waits, the curve of an amused smile upon his lips as he observes the lawyer for the prosecution, and she remembers that this is at least in part a game for them, or at least a professional power play. It isn’t their own lives they’re holding in their hands. “Just be careful how you frame your questions, Mr. Fenton,” he says.
“Of course.” That elaborate hand gesture again. “Let me approach this from another angle,” Fenton says. “What is your opinion on your sister’s feelings toward Mr. Kashani? Was this a crush, a passing fancy? Or was it something more?”
Rachel does not answer at first. Instead she looks over at Sadie again, who is now sitting bolt upright. Her eyes are anxious and engaged, her lips slightly parted. She’s sending a message, certainly, but Rachel has no idea what it might be. How would Sadie want her to answer this question? She doesn’t know, and this not knowing fills her with panic. There is a sudden lump in her throat that she can’t get past, and her heart is beating faster, the pulse ricocheting through her unevenly and making her dizzy. For a moment she genuinely thinks she might faint.
And then it’s as if something inside her clicks and switches these feelings off. She draws a long breath. And she realizes that it doesn’t matter what Sadie wants her to say. Her sister is not her master now, and she never will be again. What matters here is the truth.
“She was utterly obsessed with him,” she says. “I don’t know if I would call it love, but she was clearly completely infatuated. She would have done anything for him.”
Leo Fenton lets these words settle between them before he reaches slowly in and plucks out the one he wants. “Anything?” he repeats.
She realizes the implication, knows that it isn’t only Melanie that they are talking about here. The specters of those two dead men are hanging over them, men about whom she knows nothing, to whom she owes nothing.
She looks at the defense box again. Kaspar has twisted around in his seat and seems to be looking hard at Sadie, sending some kind of signal that is making her clench her hands together and shake her head. In this instant, it’s clear that everyone else might as well be dust. “Yes,” she says.
Fenton nods and gathers his papers together with a snap. “No further questions.”
“Thank you,” the judge says. “Miss Castelle, you are free to leave the courtroom.”
Stiffly, Rachel turns and steps down from the witness box, makes her way toward the exit. Someone will be waiting for her on the other side, she knows, to take her away and keep her safe. In the instant before she reaches that door, she glances back, and her eyes meet Sadie’s for the last time. There is no pretense now; Sadie is glaring at her with unadulterated hatred, her jaw set with fury, and as she sees her Rachel is gripped with guilt and sadness, so great that she thinks she can hardly bear it. She wants to run over to her sister, throw her arms around her and bury her face in her cascade of dark blond hair and say, Sorry. But she can’t, and she knows she shouldn’t want to.
She turns away and pushes the door open. As she walks out of the courtroom, she cannot help but notice the total silence that she leaves behind. It reminds her, she thinks, of the moment’s tense anticipation in a crowded theater at the end of a performance, when it is not yet clear whether the audience will erupt into jeering catcalls or rapturous applause.
* * *
• • •
THEY KNOCK FOR HER early the next morning, and the car takes her through Central London, crawling through snarls of traffic. Familiar buildings rise up and then dip away. A phrase from the Memorandum floats into her mind. She knows that under its terms, she is forbidden ever to return to London, if she wants to keep her police protection. This might, then, be the last time these streets ever imprint themselves upon her eyes. The car is moving through Trafalgar Square, and she watches as the fountains spray clear jets of water against the graying sky and drain to the ground below, foaming and scattering in whirlpools. She has a moment of instinctive knowledge that this image will stay with her—that in years to come it will ambush her at odd times, a nervous twitch of the mind.
Out of London, the car gathers speed, flying along the motorways so fast that the motion and the unchanging lines of road lull her to sleep for a short while. When she wakes, Deborah turns round and offers her a drink, lemonade from a plastic bottle. She drains it, the sharp citrus liquid fizzing stickily on her tongue. Staring out of the window, she watches the miles fall away. Roads narrow and traffic thickens. A strange fidgety excitement is plucking at her skin, a feeling she remembers from childhood when, on holiday, she glimpsed the first sight of the sea.
Deborah speaks with her eyes on the road, not turning round. “You’re clear on our itinerary for today, Rachel?” she says. “The salon first, then the station, and then Tom will take you to the furnishings store to get stuff for the new house.”
The car is pulling up outside a small, boxy building, unidentifiable as anything specific. The detective constable, Tom, speaks for the first time. “Doesn’t look
like much, does it,” he says, “but you’ll come out a new woman.” He laughs, swinging the car into a space and screeching on the brakes. Deborah shoots him a sharp look, as if in reprimand.
“Come on, Rachel,” she says. “Let’s go in.”
Inside, the building is small and windowless, lit by artificial spotlights, the air circulating and recirculating through the churning blades of fans. It does remind her, in a way, of a beauty salon. There is the watercooler in the corner, the mirrors lined up at intervals around the walls, the pile of magazines on a side table. The only difference is that she is the only customer. The chairs around her are empty, the radio in the corner silent.
The woman is brisk and efficient. Rachel wonders, vaguely, whether she herself is a policewoman, or simply some associate sworn to secrecy. She sits down in front of the nearest mirror, and looks at her reflection.
“We’ll dye first, and then give it a cut,” the woman is saying, running her hands possessively through Rachel’s long, blond hair. “And then colored lenses, and glasses, right?” She is speaking to Deborah, over Rachel’s head.
She is led to a basin. She leans back as the water surges to her hairline and hands begin to work there, rinsing and cleansing, squeezing and untangling. The dye is applied in stages, stiff sheets of silver foil bound all over the length of her head. She registers, somewhere in the back of her mind, that she does not know what color it is, has not thought to ask, and now it seems too late. They offer her magazines, engage her in conversation as she waits, and she answers automatically, chatting about celebrities. When they lead her to the mirror again, she averts her gaze. She does not want to look yet. When her eyes do slide for an instant to her reflection, the queasy sense of unknowing that creeps over her at the sight of the woman with the long, dark hair is enough to make her look quickly away.
The scissors are flashing around her face, the woman working fast and expertly. Great swaths of hair falling onto her arms and lap, soft and sweeping, scattering like feathers. She feels a new lightness at the base of her neck, the whisper of cold air across her skin.
“Tip your head back for me and try not to blink.” The woman’s fingers are pressing at the corners of her eyelids. The sensation is strange, but not painful, the slightest sense of a cool wetness that evaporates into nothing within moments. Next, the sharp pain of tweezers at her eyebrows, teasing and plucking, dragging hairs out at the root. “There,” she says. “Take a look.”
Rachel turns back to the mirror, and for a second, she simply stares. Looking back at her is a woman with dark hair cut into a sharp, neat bob, hanging above her shoulders. Her eyes are darker, too. Tentatively, she puts a finger to her cheek. Incredibly, the new shaping of her eyebrows has changed the whole cast of her face, reangling the structure of her bones. She takes the glasses the woman is handing her and puts them on, but there is no change in her vision. Clear glass, she thinks. The glasses give her an air of alertness; they make her raise her chin and square her shoulders. She has the strangest sense that this woman both is and is not herself. Something is stirring inside her; the knowledge that this process is going further and cutting deeper than she imagined. This change is more than exterior: she can feel it spreading under the skin, uncomfortably mingling with everything she has always known. She is neither one person nor the other. She is weightless, no more than a concept. She does not know, yet, who she will turn out to be.
* * *
• • •
FIVE DAYS LATER, she is driven to the house for the first time: a long, straight street dotted with spindly trees just coming into bursts of white blossom. The houses are tall, terraced, with dark red brickwork and white-framed windows. A young couple are wandering down the street, pushing a stroller; she hears the thin, querulous squall of the baby winding through the air. The car pulls up outside number 58, and slowly she gets out, looking up at the house.
“Welcome home,” says the young DC with the chubby cheeks and the cherubic smile. His name is Drew, and he will be her primary point of contact. Deborah has dropped out of her life as quickly as she came, silently and with no formal good-bye.
Inside, the living room is decked out with the items she chose in the furniture warehouse: the tall lamp balanced in the corner of the room, the squat burgundy sofa. For a moment, she has a strange impulse to laugh. It feels like the make-believe game she and Sadie used to play as children—dragging things into their playhouse and looking round proudly at what they had created. Back then, that was the end of the pretense. She remembers sitting in the little tented house and feeling at a loss. She feels the same sensation now—the same sense of having gotten to the end of a road.
“The bedroom’s upstairs,” says Drew. “Or up the stair, I should say.” She realizes, after a few seconds’ delay, that he was making a joke; one large, wide step leads them to the bedroom door. She looks around at the bed pushed snugly into the corner crevice, the dark red sheets she chose draped over its surface, and the terra-cotta curtains, neatly tied back to frame the window. Drew sees her looking, and touches her briefly on the arm. “Everything all right?” he says.
“Yes,” she says, “it’s fine, it’s . . . great.” She has no idea what she is expected to say.
“Great,” repeats Drew briskly. “I’ll get back to the station, then. You know where your panic buttons are, and you’ve got the new phone, right? Any time you’re concerned, you call.” As he reaches the front door he hesitates and stops. “It takes a bit of getting used to,” he says. His face is kindly and understanding. “But you’ll get there.”
She nods and waves him off, closing the door quietly behind him, and stands in the sudden silence. She thinks, My new home. The words have an unreal ring. Uncertainly, she edges back into the kitchen and fills the kettle with water. She stands listening to the flat, shrill whine as the water boils. Very faintly above she can hear the sound of someone strumming a guitar.
It hits her then—the irrevocability of what has happened, and the absolute finality of the door that has closed behind her. She stares at the pretty little orange tiles that frame the kitchen countertops, and feels blind panic, desperate and childlike. Sharply, she breathes in. The kettle has boiled, but she does not move toward it. She cannot imagine sitting here and drinking a cup of tea. The thought is as strange as if she has broken in with the intention of burgling the place, and has decided instead to take a nap and tuck herself up in her victim’s bed.
Abruptly, she turns and walks fast toward the front door, grabbing her keys and slamming it shut behind her. She heads toward the center of town, going on instinct. It is late afternoon, and the lights are starting to switch on in pubs and bars. She enters one at random. Music is spilling out from speakers and the bar is full, scattered with laughing strangers. She looks from one face to the next, half expecting that she will find one she recognizes. But there is no one.
Slowly, she walks over and orders a vodka and cranberry juice. She sips it. She can see herself reflected in the mirror behind the bar. Dark hair, dark eyes, pale-pink glossed mouth. The sight is still a novelty. The strange thought comes into her mind that she might be dead—that she has been given the freedom, in an afterlife, to roam these streets unseen.
A man is hovering at her elbow, smiling slyly at her. “What’s your name, love?” he says.
She turns to face him, smiling back. For the first time, she says the new name they have given her out loud. She hears how its syllables fall neatly, the new rhythmic cadence of her identity. For a moment, she thinks that he will contradict her, expose her, but of course he’s just nodding and accepting, passing on without comment. And as simply as that, that’s it. Rachel Castelle ceases to exist.
PART FIVE
ALEX
SEPTEMBER 2017
The next day I go to the supermarket to buy some treats for Jade that I can take in when I visit. She must be getting cabin fever in the hospital. The last time I spok
e to Dr. Rai, he told me that she might be discharged in a matter of days, but I haven’t told her that yet. Although I barely want to admit it, I’m not relishing the prospect. She deserves to come back to a safe haven, but how can I give her that, with no livable home and the constant background of a threat I don’t even know how to measure?
At least Natalie has agreed to go to the police at last. We’re going to call in at the station tomorrow, once I’ve had a chance to warn Jade that she may be questioned. We’ll speak to them about the man in the house and the possibility that he may be someone who wants to do us harm. I can’t say I’m expecting miracles; ever since I had that barbed conversation with the policeman who told me about the burn pattern, I’ve heard nothing except for a terse confirmation that their investigation is ongoing. Reading between the lines, it’s obvious that we’re not their top priority. Still, the information that we’ve got should galvanize them—although it’s frustrating not to be able to tell them more. I promised Natalie last night that I wouldn’t make her go into detail about her own past, unless she has to.
Clearly, she doesn’t trust the police. It’s understandable, I suppose—from what she’s told me, she all but sleepwalked into witness protection, placing her trust in the hands of others; relinquishing that kind of control can be frightening. Not as frightening as your wife and daughter being caught in a house fire and hospitalized, though, I can’t help thinking.
I browse the confectionary aisle, thinking about Natalie and the intensity of her expression as she talked, the movements of her fingers as she traced invisible patterns in the air. The unwavering steadiness of her eyes, and the sad, resigned lines of her mouth. It was dark by the time we finished talking and this darkness seemed somehow part of her. It was a side I hadn’t seen before but that I know now is there, a long-suppressed weight with its own gravitational power. I had asked her if she regretted what she had done, and she had blinked once, considering. No. I’d do the same again. You have to do what you feel is right. For some reason I hadn’t expected this certainty, but there were no cracks in this conviction, no room for doubt to seep through, and I found myself with nothing left to say.
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