Child's Play

by Alison Taylor

  ‘If she hasn’t told you herself, she must think it’s unimportant,’ Hester replied, with all the firmness she could muster.

  ‘We’ve hardly had time for more than a brief chat,’ Jack lied.

  ‘I still think we should ask her first.’ Turning awkwardly in her seat, she glanced distractedly about the room. ‘I expected her to be here. Why isn’t she?’

  ‘We felt she ought to be at the school.’

  ‘I see.’ Hester nodded to herself. ‘Yes, you’re right. She should be there.’

  ‘So?’ he coaxed.

  ‘I don’t know—’ Again she hesitated. ‘It seems disloyal to tell you without her knowing.’

  He waited patiently, hoping that the dilemma being worked out behind her gaunt features would resolve itself in his favour.

  Hester frowned at him. ‘Perhaps you were right about her never being wrong. She said Sukie had learned her lesson, but if that were true she would have no reason to kill herself.’ While she wrestled with the shackles of obedience, she fiddled with her rings, turning them this way and that. A diamond suddenly caught the light, throwing out tongues of fire. ‘We only bought Sukie a horse because Dr Scott told us it would be a “positive reinforcement”. We could barely afford her school fees, let alone a horse and its livery. My parents had to chip in yet again.’ She paused once more. ‘Sukie had wanted a horse ever since Torrance Fuseli brought hers to school.’ Suddenly she smiled. ‘She adored Torrance. She idolised her. When Dr Scott suggested she have a horse, I wasn’t in the least interested in positive reinforcement. I simply thought that if Sukie could only learn to be a little like Torrance, her life needn’t turn into one long, miserable, destructive tragedy.’ She covered her face with her hands, her fingers hooked like claws into her hair. ‘Why?’ she moaned, beating her forehead with the heels of her palms. ‘Why couldn’t she have been with Torrance instead of that other bloody girl?’

  ‘Which other girl?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Imogen Oliver.’

  ‘What happened between them?’

  ‘What happened?’ Hester let her hands drop to her lap. ‘If only to God we actually knew! But how can we, when Sukie didn’t know herself?’ She looked close to collapse. ‘Imogen passed her driving test a couple of weeks before last Christmas, and in anticipation her parents had already ordered her car. She’d wanted a Porsche, so she had one, because they’ve never been able to say no to her. I watched her grow up, d’you see, getting what she wanted every inch of the way.’ Pausing to gather her breath and her thoughts, she continued, ‘Imogen and Sukie had always been best friends, so of course, they were out in Imogen’s new car all the time and I was worried sick, because Imogen drove like a bloody lunatic. When I asked her parents to pull her up, they told me to stop being neurotic.’ She laughed joylessly. ‘I imagine they’ve changed their tune now.’

  ‘There was an accident,’ Jack said.

  ‘There was an accident.’ Hester nodded. ‘A horrible, horrible accident.’ She glanced at him, her face webbed with downward-drawn lines. ‘The day after Boxing Day, they went to see my parents and, once they were inside the estate, Sukie took over the driving. She hadn’t passed her test, but that doesn’t matter on a private road, d’you see? We expected them back for dinner. When they didn’t arrive, I rang my parents. They said the girls had left an hour before.’ She fell silent and began to crack her knuckles. Wincing, Jack opened his mouth to ask her to finish the story, but she forestalled him. ‘We called the police, of course, but nothing had been reported. Anyway, my parents organised a search party. Two of the gamekeepers found them. The car had ploughed through a fence and ended upside down in a thicket and the girls were lying some way away in the grass. God alone knows how they got out of the wreck. I suppose it was sheer instinct in case the car exploded. Sukie had a massive concussion that kept her unconscious for over a week and Imogen’s left leg was so badly shattered it had to be amputated above the knee.’

  As ever, Jack imagined one or both of his own daughters hostage to a similarly errant fortune and, feeling both sickened and saddened, he said quietly, ‘It was indeed a horrible accident and they were extremely lucky to survive. But accidents happen, so I don’t understand why Dr Scott regarded it as a problem and talked of containment.’

  ‘Sukie had insisted on driving even though Imogen tried to stop her,’ Hester said dully. ‘The roads were very icy, d’you see? It was all her fault.’

  ‘But how was it her fault?’ Jack persisted. ‘Was she speeding? Was she driving recklessly?’

  ‘I don’t know! She couldn’t remember. She was so dreadfully concussed she didn’t even recall getting up that morning.’

  ‘So you’ve only got Imogen’s word for everything, haven’t you?’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ Hester shivered. ‘She lost her leg, for God’s sake!’ Her mouth worked convulsively. ‘But the police took the car to pieces. They must have known who was driving.’

  ‘Not necessarily, as neither of them was in the car when it was found. The worst of the injuries to Imogen’s leg could have been caused as she struggled out.’ He watched guilt and doubt and remorse criss-cross her face. ‘But rather than argue with a girl who’s just lost her leg, you let Sukie take the blame.’

  ‘Imogen had no reason to lie,’ she replied tonelessly, as if the same argument had churned up her own mind countless times and always rolled round to the same simple conclusion.

  ‘No? I can think of several off the top of my head and I don’t even know her.’ He frowned at her. ‘How did she explain the crash?’

  ‘My parents keep deer on the estate and Imogen thought one of them might have dashed suddenly in front of the car. Deer have a habit of erupting out of nowhere, you know.’

  ‘She only thought?’ Jack asked. ‘Why couldn’t she remember?’

  ‘She was confused!’ There was a hint of hysteria in Hester’s voice. ‘She was utterly distraught!’

  ‘Has she remembered since?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ Hester looked past him. ‘Our families haven’t spoken since the day of the accident. Exactly a week later we had a letter from their solicitor saying they intended to sue.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We didn’t argue. We paid up and shut up. John says it’s always the best policy when you’re on shaky ground.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Six hundred and twenty thousand. It was all we could raise. We had to remortgage the house, but we can’t afford the repayments. The bank’s threatening repossession.’

  ‘And Imogen doubtless received another payout from her own insurance.’

  She shrugged. ‘I expect she did.’

  She looked totally defeated, beaten into the ground by a hail of body blows. She seemed to believe her miserable life was the proof of a self-fulfilling prophecy, yet he wondered if, beset by guilt, she had simply had her capacity for judgement destroyed and let guilt beggar her, metaphorically and literally. ‘If you hadn’t caved in at the Olivers’ first assault, a few more facts might have come to light,’ he pointed out. ‘Tell me,’ he went on, ‘what exactly did Dr Scott mean when she talked of containing the situation?’

  ‘Oh, what does it matter? Nothing matters now Sukie’s dead. I did love her, whatever my husband thinks. I loved her so much it hurt! All I ever wanted was to bring her up myself, but we don’t do things like that. She had to be sent away to school.’ Again she fell silent, clasping her hands in her lap. Then, bitterness stalking every word, she said, ‘In my family, d’you see, your life isn’t your own. It belongs to the family and their history. They make all the rules and your children are nothing more than fodder for that great family history.’

  ‘We were talking about Dr Scott,’ he reminded her gently.

  ‘Dr Scott.’ She nodded her head mechanically. ‘Yes, well,’ she went on, unknotting her fingers, ‘Sukie missed the beginning of spring term because she was still in hospital. I wanted to keep her at home for good, but Dr Scott thought tha
t would be disastrous. She said Sukie needed the security of familiar faces and surroundings after such a traumatic experience, so we took her back. Imogen was already there, bravely hopping around on one leg. We were expected to applaud her “fantastic recovery”, but I simply wanted to grab Sukie and run.’

  ‘What did Dr Scott hope to achieve by throwing them together?’

  ‘Oh, she talked of confrontation and reconciliation but most of it went over me. I could only think of two young girls with their lives in ruins being forced to look on the cause of that destruction every minute of every day.’

  *

  The cathedral clock struck one as Jack ushered Hester into the back of the chauffeur-driven car. John was already there, slumped in the opposite corner, eyes half closed, breath reeking. The look she gave him was more eloquent than a thousand words.

  Jack watched the car drive away, then trudged back upstairs to McKenna’s office to relay the essence of Hester’s disclosures. ‘I’m sorely tempted to go to that damned school now, drag Scott out of her bed and ask her what else she didn’t think we needed to know,’ he finished.

  ‘So that’s what Melville meant.’ McKenna’s face betrayed sorrow and outrage in equal measure. ‘In among his maundering and drunken gibberish, he said Sukie had cost him “an arm and a leg”, and then began laughing like a lunatic.’

  ‘Didn’t you ask him what he meant?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ McKenna said curtly. ‘I decided to have him escorted to his car.’

  ‘Probably for the best, in the circumstances,’ Jack remarked. ‘We shouldn’t really interview people when they’re the worse for wear.’ He fell silent, fiddling with the papers on the desk, trying to find expression for the feelings Hester had evoked in him. Presently, he said, ‘What happened between those girls reminds me of a Greek tragedy, but we mustn’t assume that it’s relevant to Sukie’s death.’ Stifling a yawn, he rubbed his eyes. ‘Even though,’ he went on, ‘there’s a compelling motive for suicide in there.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? Sukie believed she’d destroyed her best friend’s future. She must have been eaten up with guilt.’

  ‘I rely on you to keep off the psychological bandwagon,’ McKenna told him, grinding his teeth. ‘As you said, we’ve got to keep an open mind, so don’t start spouting claptrap just because you got too close to the Melvilles’ emotional meltdown. I don’t know which of them needs treatment the most.’

  ‘A helping hand springs to mind, rather than treatment,’ Jack argued. ‘Hester’s development was obviously cauterised at some crucial stage. She’s utterly pathetic.’

  ‘And her husband’s an upper-class English twerp hoping to find his balls at the bottom of every bottle of Scotch he uncaps,’ McKenna added, with wholly uncharacteristic vulgarity.

  ‘I imagine he’s given to snide remarks about Paddies and so forth when he’s in his cups,’ Jack ventured.

  McKenna’s eyes gleamed. ‘He wanted to talk to an English policeman.’

  ‘He probably only wanted to talk to someone who’d offer comforting answers to the nasty questions his daughter’s death has raised, but that’s not your style. You’d rather cause an explosion and see what settles with the dust.’

  ‘It must be my Irish genes,’ McKenna retorted.

  ‘You Celts do like to flaunt your background,’ Jack commented wearily. ‘Dewi’s so unbelievably Welsh he probably bleeds daffodil yellow.’

  ‘Or leek green,’ said McKenna, with a crooked smile. ‘He’s no longer “Dewi”, by the way. He’s now “David”, because Torrance, our glitzy American with the toothy smile and Rapunzel-like hair, can’t get her pretty mouth around “Dewi”.’ The smile evaporated. ‘She seems to have true cross-gender appeal.’

  ‘Why? Because Sukie “adored” her? That’s schoolgirl stuff, surely.’

  ‘You said Hester also thinks very highly of her,’ McKenna reminded him. ‘However, Dr Scott doesn’t. Nor does Matron. Interesting, eh?’

  ‘Only up to a point,’ Jack said. ‘I’m far more interested in the accident and Imogen’s paper-thin explanation.’

  ‘Quite.’ McKenna began to tidy his desk. ‘And if she has been lying, she had a first-class motive for murdering her erstwhile friend, especially if Sukie was getting her memory back.’ He paused. ‘Then again, the motive is equally strong if she’s been telling the truth. I’d feel murderous towards someone who lost me one of my legs.’

  ‘But could she have done it without help?’ Jack wondered. ‘Anyway, we can’t go too far down that road until Eifion confirms cause of death. But whatever, forcing those girls back together was the worst thing anyone could do. Hester should have heeded her instincts. Poor bitch! Her daughter would still be alive if she had.’

  ‘Considering she gave you quite a hammering,’ McKenna said, eyeing Jack’s scratches, ‘you’re being extraordinarily sympathetic.’

  ‘She expected to get arrested. She finds you terrifying. Pity Scott doesn’t feel the same way, isn’t it?’

  12

  After the meeting in the sixth-form common room, Vivienne went downstairs for supper with the others but, sick in heart and stomach, returned almost immediately to her room. At the head of the first flight of stairs she encountered Matron and the headmistress on their rounds. When she gave way, pressing herself against the wall, Matron stalked past as if she were invisible, but Dr Scott paused momentarily to stare coldly into her eyes. Feeling like a sickly fox marked by the hounds, Vivienne scuttled up the next flight and, once in her room, rammed a chair under the doorknob.

  She had a packet of cannabis taped behind the bed frame and another stuffed inside a padded coat-hanger but, desperate as she was, dared not open either, for the pungent smoke was sure to alert the policeman guarding the fire exit at the end of the corridor. She collapsed on the bed, wondering where it would all end and, with one of those fearful perceptions her addiction could induce, she realised that the girl she had once been was now only a decaying memory inside the dead thing she had become.

  Imogen must feel the same way, she thought. The girl who returned to school early in the spring term to receive Lancaster’s house captaincy as consolation for losing her leg had already suffered a sea change in her personality that shocked even Vivienne’s blunted sensibilities. The always nice, often kind, sometimes reckless, rich kid Imogen once was disappeared with the amputated leg. Bitter, morose and despairing, her surrogate yawed through the remaining weeks of term on one leg and her crutches while the artificial leg gathered dust in the corner of her room.

  Hope seemed to flare briefly the day school reopened after the Easter holiday. Vivienne was in her room when the Olivers’ car drove on to the forecourt. As the chauffeur opened the rear door, she watched with something like joy as Imogen put two feet and a silver-topped cane on the ground, waved away the chauffeur’s helping hand and pulled herself upright. Then she heard the headmistress’s horrified voice.

  ‘My dear girl!’ Dr Scott exclaimed. She came into Vivienne’s line of sight, striding elegantly in high-heeled shoes, and grabbed Imogen’s arm. ‘Where are your crutches?’

  ‘In the boot,’ Imogen replied. She was rock steady on the prosthetic leg.

  ‘Get them,’ the headmistress instructed the chauffeur. ‘This minute!’

  Imogen protested. ‘I don’t need them.’

  ‘But you do, my dear. You do! I’ll tell you when you can do without them.’ Taking the cane from Imogen’s hands, she put her arm round her shoulders and began walking her towards the door. ‘You shouldn’t have done this,’ Vivienne heard her say. ‘You’re not ready. A little at a time, Imogen, a little at a time. Trust me, my dear. I know what I’m doing.’

  But obstinately, Imogen persevered with her new leg, except when she was in the swimming pool. There, she cleaved the silvery water as clean and fast as ever, and although her wake had lost its old symmetry, her tapering silhouette made her resemble a mermaid. When she hauled hersel
f back into the human environment she became a cripple once more, and she clearly mourned, weeping often both with grief and with a pain that was closer to agony. She also wept with misery, for the headmistress condemned her self-determination as treachery and, under the onslaught of a displeasure as pernicious as a foul smell, Imogen’s spirit withered towards another death. Vivienne was not surprised, for only sour and poisonous plants thrived in Dr Scott’s greenhouse.

  Sukie also grieved. Her friendship with Imogen, an entity in its own right, was suddenly, like Imogen’s left leg, not there, but its absence was mystifying. The girls went out of their way to avoid each other and, if inadvertently, they found themselves together, Imogen would hobble away with downcast eyes. Vivienne perceived guilt in one and raw sorrow in both, but doubting her befuddled impressions, could only ache to help them.

  She was jolted from her reverie by scuffles and whispers outside the door. The knob turned slowly, the chair rocked slightly and she heard the vile, vicious, predatory Nancy titter. She clutched her stomach, wanting to vomit with fear.

  ‘McKenna’s sussed you out, Dopehead.’ Nancy’s voice slithered into the room. ‘He’s after you.’

  Then she heard Charlotte’s breathy tones. ‘When did he say that?’ She sounded confused. ‘I didn’t see him talking to you.’

  ‘He didn’t,’ Nancy replied. ‘Dr Scott told me.’ Her nails beat a tattoo on the door. ‘You’d better believe it, Dopehead,’ she hissed. ‘Your days are numbered.’

  *

  A dim glow from the outside security lamps lit the cavernous dormitory Daisy shared with seven others. In the next bed Alice muttered, adding her nocturnal voice to the quiet, comforting chorus of grunts and sighs. They were like animals in a den, Daisy thought, loving the familiar sounds. When she was at home, the nights were a lonely torment.

  A soft, uncertain wind scuffled among the trees, and she hoped it heralded one of those wonderful storms bursting with the promise of devastation and excitement. During one of last winter’s gales she had watched an ancient Douglas Fir snap like a matchstick, and crash to earth in a tumult of flying needles and broken branches. Alice tried to flee its screaming death throes, but Daisy grabbed her arm, dragging her towards the impending disaster simply to relish the experience.