Girl A: an astonishing new crime thriller debut novel from the biggest literary fiction voice of 2021

by Abigail Dean

  That night, I kept Olivia on the veranda for as long as I could. Past midnight, and after the music from the yacht had died; into the second bottle and then the third. ‘I’m retreating,’ she said, close to two, her palms held up in defence. ‘And my strong advice is that you should, too.’

  She returned one more time, with her toothbrush hanging from her mouth.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘you don’t even have to go to this stupid wedding.’

  ‘Goodnight, Olivia.’

  ‘Go to bed, Lex.’

  Sleep was unfeasible. I cleared the table. I showered. I opened my bedroom window and lay on top of the covers, surveying the night. I was too drunk to read. The silence of the house extended on every side, out to the ocean and to the road; to Delilah and Ethan, alone in rented rooms; up to the town and to the venues in wait. It seemed that everybody else on the island was asleep. For something to do, I hung my wedding suit from the bedroom door and surveyed the hollow clothes, as if they might entertain me. Double-breasted blazer and wide, slack trousers. Flamingo pink.

  Let them look.

  When there was nothing left to do, I thought of the three a.m. things. My last meeting with Dr K, when I had told her that I was looking forward to landing in New York. My parents’ petition at the kitchen table, and the cross-mattress wrangling which would have led to it. What I had said to Delilah. Not in the Romilly, but the time before it.

  It was the last of our miserable family meetings. Each session was held in some form of centre, with bright, obvious objects intended to distract us. There had been a facilitated conversation and a group exercise; now we were in Free Time. Ethan was revising, with a hand held to his forehead, and a pen tucked behind one ear. Gabriel was focused on his PlayStation: a biped rat was fleeing from a boulder, and was crushed on each run, without exception. I was beating Delilah at Scrabble.

  ‘What’s your house like?’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your house. Where you live.’

  ‘It’s nice,’ I said. ‘Really nice.’ I thought about it. ‘I have my own bedroom,’ I said.

  Delilah snorted. She was surveying her letters, in disgust.

  ‘Everybody has their own bedroom,’ she said. ‘What about your parents? Are they strict?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, I can do what I want. Can you?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Sometimes?’

  She was watching me, her whole body still. Coiled. I returned to my letters.

  ‘I saw them, when they brought you in,’ Delilah said. ‘The people who adopted you.’

  I looked up.

  ‘They’re kind of old,’ she said.

  I thought of Mum and Dad: how they had accompanied me on the train to London that morning, with homemade sandwiches and two copies of the same newspaper. I was wearing a new dress which Mum and I had selected, at length, for this meeting, and which had started to itch as soon as we left the house.

  Delilah wore ripped denim and a hooded sweatshirt.

  ‘I suppose that’s what happens,’ she said, ‘when you’re the last one left.’

  I took the edge of the Scrabble board and threw it in her direction. The board missed her, and folded on the floor. Letters careened across the room. A few bounced from her face, and landed, anticlimactically, in her lap.

  ‘How did you get to survive?’ I said. My voice embarrassingly loud in that little plastic room. ‘When—’

  Doors were opening; hands were reaching for us. In that moment, Delilah was wounded. She wiped her mouth with her hand, as if checking for blood. As if I had hit her.

  ‘You should have died in there,’ I said.

  I started calling for Evie, then. It was the shock of her absence in the room. In each family, you have your allies, and mine was lost. After all of my efforts, I was alone and ashamed, with old parents and a cheap dress. I called for her as I had done in the early days in the hospital, like she was waiting just behind the windows. Delilah held to a minder, and Ethan held to his desk. It came to them slowly, in the nights that followed. I called for her like you only call for somebody you’re expecting to come.

  All up to the church there was a queue of cars. There had been a series of printed signs on the way – Two miles to the wedding! One mile to the celebrations! – so that Olivia had turned to me, deadpan, and asked if I was sure we were going the right way. Now we joined the procession, caught between a Bugatti and a dusty cab, crawling towards the square.

  From the road to the church was a canopy of flowers, and beneath it a purple carpet across the cobbles. I surveyed the guests, waiting in bright, beautiful huddles, taking photographs of one another. There was nobody I knew; that was to be expected. ‘I’ll wait up for you,’ Olivia said, and I clambered from the car, before I could change my mind.

  I had been considering how I would greet Ethan. At the church doors, the light dipped, and he was the first thing I saw in the shade, tuxedo and sincerity, with a queue for his attention. He didn’t look nervous. The man he spoke to was nodding; laughing; nodding again. I stepped past them, slid into an empty pew, and arranged a benign smile. At the front of the church, Christ surveyed me with his hands spread, unconvinced. Like: Oh, please.

  Dr K and I had talked of religion, at times. ‘How do you feel about it?’ she asked. It was the same question she asked about everything else.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘God,’ she said. ‘For example.’

  I laughed. ‘Sceptical,’ I said.

  ‘Not angry?’

  ‘What’s the point?’

  We waited.

  ‘It wasn’t exactly his fault,’ I said. ‘Was it?’

  ‘That might depend whom you ask.’

  ‘No. It wouldn’t.’

  The doors of the church were closed. Ethan took his place at the end of the aisle, alone. The priest was here.

  I set my hands together. It’s OK, I thought. My usual prayer: I don’t blame you. In the silence before the priest began to speak, I glanced up. Over the bowed heads and hats, Ethan was watching me.

  Once the confetti was thrown, we thronged the streets of the town, all the way to the hotel. A tangle of cables and ivy above us. Strangers waving from precarious balconies. The sun flashed between the buildings, and the shadows were starting to lengthen.

  I found Delilah in the hotel gardens. The land was staggered: first a terrace, where the tables were set for dinner; then a grassy verge, with a swimming pool and a set of tepees, down to the town walls. Delilah sat at the edge of the earth with a glass of water and a cigarette, in a black dress which exposed the dimples of her spine.

  ‘Wasn’t it beautiful?’ she said.

  ‘I was very moved,’ I said, and sat beside her.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I think they might actually have married for love.’

  ‘As opposed to what?’

  ‘Oh, all sorts of things. Do you think it’ll last?’

  ‘For so long as it’s useful to Ethan, I suppose. Have you seen the drinks?’

  ‘They’re hiding them in the room next to the toilets. Get me one, will you?’

  On the way, I passed Peggy and Tony Granger. They were sitting at a table in the shade, with sunscreen and their anonymous sons. Peggy fanned herself with the order of service. I suspected that Ethan had invited them not for their company – they weren’t nearly important enough for that – but to display the splendour of his life. As I passed, Peggy glanced at me, and when I smiled, pointedly, she looked away. I collected four glasses of champagne and returned to Delilah.

  ‘Have you seen that Aunt Peggy’s here?’ I said, and Delilah rolled her eyes.

  ‘Did you read her book?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, Lex. You know that I’m not a reader. But put it this way. It wouldn’t be the first book I would try.’

  ‘She did everything that she could to save us.’

  Delilah laughed. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Fuck me.’
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  ‘How’s Gabriel?’

  ‘He hasn’t killed himself yet.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose it is.’

  She rested her drink on the ledge, the alcohol slanting right to the brim, and peered over the wall.

  ‘You must have thought about it,’ she said.

  ‘All of the time.’

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I spent so long looking through the Bible for something which forbade it. Something he could hang onto, I suppose. And what is there? Fuck all.’

  We drank for a while, in quiet.

  ‘Delilah?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Seeing what you’ve done for Gabe – I’m sorry about what I said. At the last of our get-togethers. It was a terrible thing to say.’

  ‘It was rather dramatic,’ Delilah said, ‘I admit. But you never liked me very much, Lex. You don’t need to start now.’

  I waited, with nothing left to drink.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘In fact – looking at it cynically – it’s in my interests to believe in forgiveness.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  She started another glass and another cigarette, all hands and vices.

  ‘You asked me before,’ she said, ‘about whether we tried to escape. Me and Gabe.’

  ‘I heard you. One night – near to the end—’

  ‘We didn’t try to escape, Lex. I can see why you’d like to think it. That we couldn’t stand it – the same way you couldn’t. But that isn’t what happened at all. Gabe and I – we were so bored. I’d come up with these missions, just to entertain us. You know Gabriel. He would always do exactly what you told him to. Just stupid stuff. Get out of the bindings. Who can touch the lowest stair? That kind of thing.

  ‘And that day – I decided that it was my birthday. Uncelebrated, obviously. Undiarized, too. I’d been trying to count from Christmas, so I might have been close. And it was one of those days with the cake smells in the house. You know those days. I’m not a glutton, and I wasn’t then – but those could be long days. So I proposed this idea, that perhaps Gabe should get me a present. Not seriously, of course. I was expecting him to turn around and tell me where to go.’

  ‘He wouldn’t ever have said that to you,’ I said.

  ‘There I am, talking about presents, and candles, and how this is the worst birthday ever. And that day – the bindings are loose. He’s off the bed, and he’s through the door, with that smile – you know it – like he’s champion of the world.

  ‘I guess I thought he’d be OK. Father was asleep. Mother was with the babies, in their room. So I lie on the floor, and watch him go down the stairs. Lower than we’ve ever gone. He looked back at me at the bottom, and he’s still smiling, and – I mean this, Lex – I remember thinking: he’s got this.

  ‘So then he’s in the kitchen, and I’m lying there on the floor, on stake-out, waiting for him. When he comes back out, he’s carrying two of the biggest pieces of lemon cake I’ve ever seen. I mean – slabs. And I’m already thinking: Gabe, you’re not covering this one up. But it wasn’t like there was any going back. I’m just willing him to make it up the stairs, and then – once he’s in the room – we can figure it out. We can make a plan. And on the second-to-last step – because he can’t see a fucking thing, of course – he tripped. Lemon cake, everywhere. Gabe all over the floor. And whose bedroom door opens?’

  She looked back at Ethan, who was surveying Ana with studied devotion, as the photographer had instructed.

  ‘I thought he’d help us,’ she said. ‘In those first few seconds – I really thought he would.’

  ‘But he didn’t?’

  ‘Oh, Lex. You know the answer to that one. It was one of the reasons I agreed to come today. I thought that I might be ready to forgive him.’

  Here she stopped, mustering the rest of it. This was the part of the story that she couldn’t make funny.

  ‘Gabe never mentioned my birthday,’ she said. ‘It went on all evening, and he never mentioned it. Father told me to turn around – to protect me, I guess – and I did. But you could still hear it. He was different after that. The fits started. He was the best little boy, and that was the end of him.’

  I thought of the noises that I had heard, all the way along the hallway, and how they might have sounded in the small, dark room, with your face to the wall. In the sunshine, Ethan was gathering Ana’s family for a photograph. The flower girls vied for his arms; he plucked one of them from the ground, and swept her, squealing, over his head.

  ‘And was he there then?’ I asked. ‘Into the night?’

  ‘Come on, Lex,’ Delilah said, and for a long moment I didn’t look at her, knowing that the answer would already be there, on her face. ‘Who do you think held him down?’

  Ana insisted that we have a family photograph of our own. She summoned us across the reception with eager, unignorable gestures, and Delilah and I exchanged a glance.

  ‘I don’t think they’re optional,’ I said.

  We carried our glasses up to the swimming pool, where an archway of flowers divided the terrace from the grass. I slid my sunglasses back over my eyes. We waited for Ana’s family to finish up: they had been split into two ranks, with half of them kneeling down at the front. The flower girls sat happily in the dust. ‘Now a silly one,’ the photographer said, and Ethan flung Ana over his knee and kissed her, while her family cheered.

  Then it was our turn. Delilah stood beside Ana, and I stood on the other side, next to Ethan. The weight of his arm on my shoulder felt crushing, like a little world. ‘Is this everyone?’ the photographer asked, and Ethan nodded: Yes, this is all of us.

  At dinner, I was placed between Delilah and one of the bridesmaid’s husbands. He wore black tails, and as soon as he found his name card, he took a napkin from the glass at another setting and mopped the sweat from his face.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Who do you girls know?’

  ‘Ana,’ Delilah said.

  She reached for my knee, and squeezed it.

  ‘We’re old friends,’ she said. ‘I met her at a gallery.’

  ‘Artistes, then,’ he said, and poured three large glasses of wine. I wondered how often Ethan dined with people like this. Did he suffer them with subtle mockery, or had he actually started to enjoy their company? He and Ana were walking between the tables, hand in hand, each fixated on the other, and our companion leant forward, conspiratorial.

  ‘How much do you know about him?’ he said, after the applause. ‘Other than the obvious thing.’

  ‘The obvious thing?’ I said.

  He swallowed. ‘You don’t know?’ he said. ‘The child abuse thing.’

  He paused, waiting for us to take it in.

  ‘It was big news,’ he said. ‘Huge. Ages ago. There were these parents keeping their kids like animals. Cages, starvation. It had been going on for years. Somewhere up north, of course. And – I’m not making this up – he was one of the children.’

  ‘That’s a little dark,’ Delilah said. ‘For a wedding.’

  ‘I feel unwell,’ I said, ‘just thinking about it.’

  ‘What does that do to a person?’ Delilah said.

  ‘That’s exactly my point,’ he said. ‘How do you trust somebody like that?’

  ‘Can you pass me the bread?’ I asked.

  ‘What happened to the rest of them?’ Delilah said.

  ‘God knows. A lifetime of therapy. You know, I think a few of them might have died.’

  ‘Just a few,’ Delilah said to me, and shrugged.

  ‘What do you do?’ I asked.

  ‘I work in money,’ he said, as if whatever it was, I wouldn’t understand it.

  I said: ‘I’m a lawyer.’

  ‘A good one?’

  I was eating. Delilah leaned across me. ‘The best,’ she said, and that was the end of it.

  The dance floor was assembled at the bottom of the gardens, where Delilah and I had been drinking bef
ore dinner. Generations of Ana’s family, moving in time. The flower girls darted between them, or else rolled in the grass, snatching at one another’s dresses. Somebody had thrown Ethan into the pool, and now he was in the centre of things, hair slick and bow tie unbuttoned, dripping across the dance floor. I was sinking into myself, I knew. Becoming sadder and softer. Something about the dancing.

  Delilah collapsed into the chair beside me.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I got the impression you were looking for someone.’

  ‘No. Just watching.’

  She closed her eyes. ‘Always watching,’ she said. ‘What about dancing?’

  She rested her head on my shoulder.

  ‘That man,’ she said, ‘at dinner. Who did he remind you of?’

  He was at the edge of things, talking to a girl in a dress which looked cheaper than everybody else’s. Her head was tilted, as if she was trying to decide whether to be impressed or dismissive.

  ‘Father,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the thing, you see,’ she said. ‘The world’s full of them.’

  She stood up and swayed, and I offered my hand to steady her. She lit a cigarette and lifted her drink, and backed away from me, starting to move and at the same time starting to laugh, reaching back for me. For a while, I watched her dancing, smiling at the absurdity of her – at the way that everybody moved out of her way. At the end of the song, she turned back to me and made a heart with her index fingers and thumbs. Love. That was Delilah: an easy convert to whatever the celebration required.

  At two o’clock, I retrieved my blazer and bag. The dance floor was quiet; the last guests sat in huddles in the garden, or drinking from wine bottles on the terrace. I found Ana lying in a tepee, sharing a Magnum with a bridesmaid.

  ‘Where’s Ethan?’ I said, and she shrugged.

  ‘Come here,’ she said, and opened her arms, like a child waiting to be lifted. I held her from above, my face in her hair, and like that, close enough for secrets, she said: ‘Today was a good day.’