Two Little Girls

by Kate Medina

  No. It wasn’t like that.

  She’d tried hard to put her struggle with motherhood, all those negative feelings she’d had, behind her by the time Pamela bought Zoe that repulsive cat. She was four then. Pamela had used her fourth birthday as an excuse for the purchase, but Carolynn knew the real reason. Why were people – her own mother-in-law, for Christ’s sake – still treating her as if she couldn’t manage, couldn’t be a proper mother, even then? And why did Roger let Pamela behave like that? Shouldn’t he have supported her, his own wife?

  Thereafter, did your husband not employ a full-time live-in au pair, even though you were not employed yourself? I put it to you that it was because he was worried about his daughter’s safety if he left her with you alone. With her own mother.

  That’s not true.

  You had severe depression, didn’t you, Mrs Reynolds?

  No. No, I didn’t.

  The prosecuting solicitor had kept interrupting her. Arrogant. He was so arrogant, he wouldn’t let her speak.

  Absentmindedly, she reached out to stroke the cat, but it arched its back, bared its teeth and hissed at her. God, even the cat hates me. The cat who’d been bought precisely because Burmese cats were as loving as dogs. She’d see it sitting on the garden wall, letting every damn stranger who walked up the street pet it, rubbing its head against their hands; she could hear its purr even through the glass window. And yet it couldn’t abide her.

  You were referred to a specialist mental health team because you had such severe depression.

  Making a huge show of putting on his glasses, letting the jurors’ minds linger on the words ‘specialist mental health team’, as if she was mad. He wanted them to think that she was mad. He hadn’t understood. None of them had understood.

  Depression brought on by motherhood. Isn’t that true, Mrs Reynolds?

  There was nothing strange about postnatal depression, so why had they used it against her in court? Tried to insinuate that she was crazy? Mental health was an issue for many people. Some philosopher she’d read had summed it up beautifully. She couldn’t remember the exact words, but it was something about most people leading lives of quiet desperation. Life was mainly struggle, wasn’t it? Hardly surprising then that so many people succumbed to depression, as she had done. She had found motherhood tougher than she had expected it to be. She hadn’t fallen crazily and unconditionally in love with Zoe. Those weren’t crimes.

  Reaching for a tea towel, she flapped it at the cat, which arched and hissed again and then leapt to the floor, scooting a wide path around her legs to dodge the kick she launched at it. She’d find a furry patch on one of the cream sofa cushions in the sitting room later, no doubt. Have to wrap Sellotape around her fingers and pat her hand across the patch to collect up all the stray hairs, pick up the few that had stuck, like pine needles, in the cream cotton with her nails. Roger liked the house clean. We both do – it’s not just him.

  The kettle had boiled and she made herself a cup of green tea, paced as she sipped it, too stressed and upset to sit down, sit still.

  September seventh.

  Lucky seven.

  Seven detestable sins.

  She hadn’t told Dr Flynn in her session this morning that, besides Roger and the odd impersonal interaction with people in shops around the village, she was the only living adult Carolynn spoke with all week. That she would talk properly to no one, bar her husband, until next week’s session. That the sessions were rapidly becoming a beacon of light for her; her only beacon. She recognized a kindred spirit in Jessie Flynn. Flynn wouldn’t tolerate a filthy cat padding over the surfaces in her kitchen. Those surfaces would be spotless – spotless and bright white. Everything in Flynn’s house would be white, Carolynn imagined, and immaculate, just as her own house had been, back when they lived in London.

  Though she was sure that Jessie would be able to disguise her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder from less perceptive patients, she couldn’t hide it from her. Carolynn recognized OCD when she saw it, shared that desire for cleanliness and order, even though she wasn’t a fellow sufferer. She would like to be friends with Jessie. She needed a friend, desperately. Someone who she could talk to, someone who would understand. They couldn’t just keep running and hiding. Keep telling lies.

  5

  The seagulls were agitating Detective Inspector Bobby ‘Marilyn’ Simmons, unsettling him. There was a flock of them, circling overhead, like vultures orbiting a carcass, as if they knew there was a dead child inside that tent, as if they could smell the blood, sense death.

  Later, he would accept that they were attracted by the people, himself included; a Pavlovian response after a summer of beachgoers tossing chips, burger buns and the fag end of sandwiches in their direction. But the sight of them, that ear-splitting squawking, made his nerves and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He was tempted to grab a handful of stones and hurl them up into the sky, throw stone after stone until every single one of the vile creatures had scattered, but that would give the smattering of reporters who had got the early wire about the little girl’s murder exactly what they wanted: DI Simmons demonstrating he was taking this case far too personally. Day one, an hour in, and already it had burrowed right under his skin. Even if he could continue to kid himself that he wasn’t yet drawing parallels with Zoe Reynolds’ murder – two years ago today, he had realized a micro-second after he’d heard that the body of a young girl had been found on West Wittering beach – the press wouldn’t be so forgiving. They would forensically examine in print any actions on his part that weren’t entirely by the book, seizing on anything that could be interpreted as proof that he wasn’t coping, that he couldn’t be objective.

  Stripping off his overalls and overshoes and handing them to a CSI officer, Marilyn turned his collar up against the spitting rain and slid down the dunes on to the tidal flats, sucking the salt-laced air deep into his cigarette-ravaged lungs, grateful to be out of that claustrophobic InciTent and away from the sad, desecrated little body. Her green eyes were clouding over with a death film already, wide open, but seeing nothing, recognizing nothing.

  Though civilization was barely five hundred metres away – £5,000,000 houses owned by city bankers who had cashed in their chips and retired down here with their families for the quiet life, others heading here at weekends – it always surprised him how startlingly remote this peninsula was, tied to the main stretch of the beach by a narrow bar of sand and extending like a bloated finger into the mouth of Chichester Harbour. Fifty acres of silky soft sand dunes topped with knee-high marram grass where children could play for hours, disappear for hours, even when the beach in front of the dunes was packed with holiday-makers. The local police had fielded many calls over the years from frantic parents whose children had gone missing on this stretch of coast. Most turned up an hour or two after they’d disappeared, having simply lost track of time. Years ago, when he was starting out in the force as a PC, before he’d had his own children and experienced parental worry first-hand, he’d done his fair share of trudging through these dunes, sand penetrating his brogues and gritting between his toes, calling out Noah or Amelia’s name, itching to clip the little sod’s ear when he or she was finally found.

  The location should have been God’s gift for footprints, but that forensic avenue had been frustrated by the time of year and the weather: a rainy afternoon following on from a sunny morning and a string of sunny days before that, at the end of the summer holidays. Adults and children’s footprints criss-crossed his crime scene as if a herd of demented cattle had passed through; it would have taken forever to process each and every one, had the rain not obliterated the whole lot.

  What was the little girl doing all the way out here anyway? Had she been in the dunes when she met her killer? Had she come under her own steam, playing with friends or wandering alone, or had she been brought here? And if she’d come with her killer, had she done so voluntarily, or had she been bribed or coerced? Easy to bribe
a child of that age with sweets, easy to force them with threats. Simple for an adult to convince a child who knew them well to come and play on the beach for an hour.

  According to the initial estimate from Dr Ghoshal, the pathologist, she had been dead for between one and two and a half hours, which meant that she had been killed sometime between three-thirty and five p.m. Whoever the child’s killer was, he or she had chosen well, both in terms of location, weather and timing.

  He didn’t even know who she was. Only nine or ten years old and yet no one had come forward to claim her. For Christ’s sake – what kind of home did the poor little mite come from?

  6

  Just one glass. There was nothing wrong with having a small glass of red wine before Roger came home. It was a quarter-to-seven – perfectly respectable. She used to drink all the time in her old job: nip to the pub at lunchtime with her colleagues, pop out for drinks after work on Fridays as a reward for making it through another emotionally draining week dealing with all those traumatic cases.

  Cupping the wine glass, she wandered into the sitting room and switched on the television. It was an early-evening chat show, five glossy women with expensive highlights, dressed in clothes that Carolynn would have worn for a night out in central London, in the days when she had friends to go out in the evening with, sitting behind a pink panelled desk. The women, all her age or older, looked immaculate even under the harsh studio lights; they were so removed from the image she saw in the bathroom mirror every morning, they might as well have been aliens from another planet. She had looked like that once though, hadn’t she? Dewy-skinned, bright-eyed and sleek. Before the pain took its toll …

  At the sound of the front door, her shoulders stiffened, the muscles under her skin bunching into tense knots. Roger’s footsteps echoed across the tiled hall as he walked into the kitchen, then stopped. She heard the sound of his breathing and, though he said nothing, she knew he was surprised that she wasn’t in the kitchen preparing dinner. A good meal was important to him after a long day at work. Uneasy, Carolynn looked quickly for somewhere to stow her wine glass, out of sight. But before she’d taken a step, she sensed rather than heard him standing in the lounge doorway, felt his eyes on her.

  ‘I, uh, I didn’t expect you back,’ she murmured, pasting on a poor impression of a smile as she turned.

  A shadow crossed his face when he saw the glass in her hand. ‘I left early so that I could be with you. Because of … you know.’ Because of today.

  Carolynn nodded, feeling like a reformed drug user, caught sneaking a hit. ‘I … I just fancied a small glass,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a bit early, Caro.’

  They stood, facing off against each other across the living room. ‘It’s nearly seven, Roger, and it’s only a small glass.’ Her tone sounded like that of a child defending the state of their room.

  ‘I don’t think you should be drinking alone.’

  ‘It’s just one.’

  ‘One leads to two, then three.’ He puffed air into his cheeks and blew noisily out of his mouth, like a balloon deflating. ‘What did you do today?’

  I went for a run. I go every day. You couldn’t expect me not to go today of all days.

  She didn’t say it. She had changed out of her running clothes, as she did every day before he got home from work, had taken a shower, put on a dress. He liked her to look pretty, feminine. He hated to think of her punishing her body with that obsessive running. He didn’t realize how much she needed it, how it was the only thing keeping her sane.

  ‘I popped to the supermarket,’ she said. ‘I bought steak for dinner. I thought it would be nice to have something tasty, expensive.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to that.’ His tone was flat.

  When had their relationship become more about what wasn’t said, the undercurrent, than the words actually spoken?

  Carolynn chewed a fingernail. ‘I want to integrate a bit, Roger,’ she said. ‘Make some friends … a friend, at least.’ Dr Flynn. Jessie.

  His forehead creased. ‘We came here precisely because we didn’t want to integrate.’

  ‘I know, but I’m lonely.’

  ‘You have me, Caro.’

  ‘You’re out at work all day.’

  He shook his head. ‘We have each other.’ There was an edge to his tone. ‘You don’t need anyone else.’

  Carolynn nodded, feeling like one of the spring-necked plastic animals in the box on the counter in the pound shop, placed there to tempt small children as their parents were paying at the till.

  ‘We came here to escape, to protect you. I can’t keep you safe if you make friends. Friends ask questions, they need to know about your past, your history. What would you tell them?’

  The vexed tears that had been poised behind her eyes since the moment they had snapped open this morning, were creating a film across her corneas now, furring Roger’s face, softening the uncompromising light in his eyes.

  ‘And I think that you should stop seeing that psychologist. She’s too close.’

  Carolynn gasped; couldn’t help herself. In the short time that she had been seeing Jessie Flynn, she had come to live for those sessions, looking forward to them days before they happened and sinking into depression the day after at the prospect of another week dragging by before she’d get to chat again. Really chat.

  ‘Maybe just one more session.’ That plaintive tone again; she hated herself for it. That tone wasn’t her, she never used to be this needy and dependent.

  ‘After today, you won’t need to.’ His voice was firm.

  After the second anniversary of her death, was what he meant. As if life would miraculously return to normal when they woke tomorrow morning. As if life would be wonderful for the 364 days that followed, until the third anniversary, the fourth …

  Carolynn dipped her gaze to the swill of burgundy liquid in the glass. ‘I’ve been careful,’ she murmured. ‘She doesn’t know who I really am. But I think we could be friends. I’d like her as a friend.’

  ‘A friend?’ He laughed, a bitter sound. ‘You’re paying her, Caro. Actually, let me correct that: I’m paying her. That’s why she’s listening to you. A woman like that will have loads of friends.’

  How did he know what Jessie Flynn was like? Oh. She remembered now. He’d collected her after her third session. It had been Flynn’s final appointment of the day, and she’d walked out with Carolynn. Roger had been leaning against the car, warming his face in the late afternoon sun, and she’d noticed even then, though she hadn’t liked to admit it to herself, how his eyes widened when he clocked her psychologist.

  ‘Christ, I might book a few sessions with her myself,’ he’d muttered, half under his breath, as they drove away.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised at his reaction. Jessie Flynn was stunning. She even made those women on the TV chat show look ordinary, with that jet-black waist-length hair and those spectacular ice-blue eyes.

  ‘I’m only protecting you, Carolynn. You know that, don’t you?’

  She gave a faint nod, tuning him out. She could be friends with Jessie Flynn. Tons of her old friends had been like that – cool, edgy, beautiful – when she had lived and worked in London, before motherhood, before Zoe. She had been like that too. Before.

  ‘Let’s save the wine, eh?’ Stepping across the carpet, he laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘I’ll change out of my work clothes, have a shower and we can have a glass together.’

  As he dropped a hand to take her glass, the words on the television cut into Carolynn’s consciousness. She hadn’t even noticed that the chat show had ended.

  ‘… The body of a young girl has been found at West Wittering beach. Details are still coming in, but police believe that her death was not due to natural causes. A doll was found by her side. Detective Inspector Bobby Simmons of Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes has warned parents to be vigilant.’

  The wine glass slipped from her fingers, every rotation in its tumble to the ca
rpet freeze-framing in her mind, like individual pages in a flip-book. The glass hit the cream wool and cartwheeled, once, twice, red liquid fountaining out of it, spraying Roger’s pale mustard boots, peppering the wallpaper, coating the carpet in blood red. A sliver of her brain registered the damage and knew that Roger would be furious about wine stains on his brand-new nubuck Timberlands, but all she could think was:

  Another dead girl. Another doll.

  7

  The figure in the background was unmistakable, his black suit and hair so stark against the white quartz sand that he resembled an overgrown crow. His presence made it impossible for her to take in what the reporter speaking to camera in the foreground was saying.

  West Wittering beach, wasn’t it? Jessie recognized it from a couple of months ago, when Callan had booked them a day of kite-surfing lessons. It had been a disaster. She had been unable to grip the bar properly because of her ruined hand and had ended up storming off in a fury – blaming Callan, of course, transferring all her frustration, her anger at her own impotence, on to him.

  It was raining down there too. The sky above the beach was metallic and wetly luminous, water pooled in shallow dips in the sand. Her eyes moved from Marilyn to the InciTent, where Tony Burrows, his lead CSI, toddler-rotund in his white forensic overall, was massaging his bald spot with a latex-gloved hand. Though she had only met him once, she recognized the tic as tension. Yellow ‘Police Do Not Cross’ tape flapped in the wind, sealing a section of the dunes off from the press and a handful of local gawkers.

  So, it was suspicious death or confirmed murder – must be, to get the police and press out there. Christ, that will keep Marilyn happy, she thought cynically, recognizing a moment after the notion entered her head how the last six months had coloured her attitude to everything, hating herself for that negativity. She was good at helping her patients move on from trauma, pitifully poor at heeding her own lessons. Physician heal thyself – what a joke that was.