The Perfect Girl Read online

  DYING JULIA (V.O.)

  I don’t know how he sensed it, but he did.

  LUCAS bursts into the house, and pounds up the stairs, and tries to enter JULIA’s room, but she has locked the door. LUCAS calls to JULIA, he bangs and kicks the door and then throws his body weight against it. When that doesn’t work he gets out his phone and dials 999.

  LUCAS

  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 everything exactly as it was before, in the first scene. LUCAS and CHRIS continue their vigil by JULIA’s bedside.

  DYING JULIA (V.O.)

  I didn’t want Lucas to find me. The idea was that it would be the nurse who discovered my body, and that I would be dead by then. But even this is better than the lingering weeks of decay that Lucas would have had to endure otherwise. My end in this hospital will be as controlled as possible. And it will be soon. But, before I go, I understand that there’s probably a question on your lips right now. How could I leave my son with his father? With the man who isolated me from people, who pounded my head against walls and reduced me to putty in his hands. My answer: I had no choice. My only solace: Chris had never touched Lucas. Yet. And I hoped, I prayed, that if my son understood he must be strong, then Chris never would touch him. It was all I could do.

  The machines suddenly begin to beep again, and NURSES and a DOCTOR rush in. CHRIS and LUCAS are ushered away from the bed and can do nothing but watch helplessly as JULIA slips away. The DNR order prevents intervention and her end comes quickly, and we know this because the NURSES and DOCTOR step away from her bed.

  DYING JULIA (V.O.)

  I had tried my hardest to give my son the best of me, broken, bullied, mocked, little old me. My attempt at suicide, and the DNR order, well they were a final act of love, and the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I did it because the end, after all, was inevitable.

  LUCAS watches blankly, in shock, as the DOCTOR records the time of JULIA’s death, but CHRIS’s face collapses into grief. CHRIS puts a hand on LUCAS’s shoulder, almost as if so surprised by the strength of his own feelings that he needs supporting.

  But LUCAS steps away from him.

  THE END

  RICHARD

  I should be fighting my demons by now.

  Usually, my emotions when I’m sober consist mostly of a cocktail of anger and desperation, garnished with emptiness, and they feel as if they’re embroidered into every cell of my body, as integral to me as my DNA.

  And when I feel like that, alcohol is the only cure I know, the only thing that can wash the misery away. I think of alcohol as being like a slick waiter, clad in black and white, weaving his way through a crowd with a silver tray held aloft, bearing upon it a generous helping of respite, and oblivion, just for me.

  Who could refuse?

  Not I. Not on a normal day, when all I want is some peace; when I would do whatever it took to escape those emotions. Any choice made on a normal day would be a choice to drink. To have a drink seems necessary, unavoidable. The taste of it might not appeal, but the feeling as it goes down your throat is oh-so-good, a physical numbness that anticipates luxuriantly the imminent longed-for dulling of your mind.

  But today, with the baby in my arms, I feel something different. I feel invigorated.

  It’s such an unusual feeling for me that I’m careful around it, especially as this would be the most inappropriate moment conceivable to tell Tessa that I’m feeling a bit better.

  When somebody arrives from the police station with DNA testing kits and they call for us to come and be swabbed one by one, the others look appalled, so I get to my feet and announce that I’ll be happy to be the first.

  The newly arrived officer has a bad shaving cut on his jawline, which I notice as he pulls on blue plastic gloves and scrapes a sponge on a stick around the inside of my cheek. He winces a little as he does it and I feel a tad self-conscious that my breath might be slightly on the rich side.

  When I’m done, Tessa goes in, after passing the baby to me like a relay baton, and Grace and I make our way upstairs to wake Katya, who they want to include.

  She’s asleep face down in our spare room, and doesn’t take kindly to being woken.

  She descends the stairs and enters the dining room with her chin held high and it takes just a minute or two before she re-emerges with an expression of distaste on her face.

  She’s just in time to hear Chris say to one of the detectives, ‘I take exception to being asked to take an invasive test without an explanation of why,’ and as the detective begins to talk about ‘routine investigations’ and ‘helping with our inquiry’, Katya exclaims loudly: ‘I am giving mouth swab even though it is not in my contract, because of deep situation.’

  Chris is momentarily taken aback, and she takes the opportunity to shoot a few more barbs:

  ‘People must do right thing. You must do right thing. You are always business talk yadda yadda yadda, and you never put arm around son.’

  I look at Lucas. He’s watching them anxiously, and his leg is jiggling up and down.

  ‘Make test!’ Katya is shouting now, and pointing towards the room where the young officer sits with his pile of plastic-wrapped kits.

  A dark cloud passes over Chris’s face and I think that this can only end in tears. What man could lose his wife to violent death and then hear this?

  Zoe’s mouth is agape too and I imagine that this shocks her because it’s an outburst the likes of which she probably hasn’t seen before in this new family of hers, where everything seemed to be buried all the time, emotions included.

  ‘Katya,’ I say to her. I put my hand on her arm because even her stance is confrontational, and, as I do so, the baby leans towards her, arms outstretched. Katya can’t resist this. She turns and takes Grace from me. Behind her, Chris sits back down, a tactical withdrawal that I’m glad to see.

  ‘We’re very grateful to you, this is a horrible situation,’ I tell her. ‘Please know how much we’re sorry that you have to be part of this.’

  ‘I want call my agency,’ she says. ‘I have talk to police, I have make mouth swab, and now I wish to leave and stay somewhere else because sadness is making a strong feeling in my heart.’

  She presses her fist to her breastbone as if in some kind of salute, and Grace puts a clumsy finger to a tear that’s dropping down Katya’s cheek.

  Thinking that she’s probably right, that it’s a good idea if she goes, and that I’ve more or less mastered the basic requirements of the baby so we can do without her, I usher her out of the room, and direct her to the phone, taking the baby back from her as she lifts the receiver.

  Behind us, Lucas says: ‘Dad, are we going to take the test?’

  I can’t resist a quick look back to see Chris respond with a tight nod.

  Crisis averted, my secret satisfaction grows just a little.

  TESSA

  I give the DNA swab, but I want to know why they’re doing this and why my interview was interrupted so suddenly earlier.

  It wasn’t a dramatic interruption exactly, but there was certainly a frisson of something – suppressed excitement perhaps – amongst the police.

  My mind’s racing like a greyhound out of the gate, and I think that I really need to phone Sam now, more than ever, because he might be able to interpret the situation better than me.

  Once Katya has finished speaking to her agency, Richard ushers her back upstairs as if he’s a mother hen, and I take the opportunity to try to get through to Sam.

  But he doesn’t answer. He has a day off today so I can’t imagine why not. I try a couple of times and eventually leave a message saying that I’ll try him again later.

  I try not to feel upset with him for not answering, but part of me thinks it would have been nice if he was on standby, in case I needed him. It’s not like he doesn’t know what’s going on.

&nb
sp; As I replace the handset, I notice that Richard is in the doorway.

  ‘Who are you phoning?’ he asks.

  The best lies are those that are closest to the truth. This is a thought that pops into my head, though I’m not sure from where. I don’t consider myself dishonest, in spite of my affair. My infidelity is the only thing I hide; in all other areas of life I’m squeaky clean.

  ‘I was phoning Zoe’s solicitor,’ I said. ‘Because I wanted to know why they might be taking DNA swabs from us.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He wasn’t there. They said he’s out.’ I think quickly enough to pretend that I phoned Sam’s office, not his mobile.

  ‘He was very hard on Zoe,’ Richard says. ‘Very hard indeed.’

  ‘They know each other well enough for that I’m sure,’ I tell him. Richard was learning to consume alcohol in previously unimaginably large quantities during the time of Zoe’s trial, because he had only just discovered that his professional status had fatally stalled. He never once came to Devon to support them. He never witnessed any of it. That is, of course, yet another source of resentment for me.

  I hold Grace while Richard begins to heat some food from the fridge for her.

  ‘Katya told me she likes this stuff,’ he says, showing me a teaspoonful of intensely orange goo.

  Grace is watching him intently. I can tell that she likes him, and he makes faces for her that make her giggle, but I can’t share the moment because all I can think about is the fact that Grace probably won’t even remember Maria, and may not even be part of our lives in the future.

  ‘I hope we get to see Grace,’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, she’ll go with Chris, won’t she?’

  Richard stands, aghast, looking at me. ‘Will she?’

  ‘He’s her father! What did you think?’

  ‘I hadn’t really thought about it.’ He turns around to stir the purée, and I notice his shoulders have fallen.

  ‘Well, hopefully she can come and stay with us when she’s older,’ he says. ‘And how will Chris cope?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Will Zoe go with them?’

  ‘I very much doubt it. Why would she do that?’

  He catches my tone of irritation.

  ‘Give Grace to me,’ he says. ‘I can do this on my own. You take some time.’

  I’m feeling tetchy because all of this will need to be worked out, and it will be complicated and painful for the children, and probably for us too, and I can’t deal with it now.

  I can’t ignore either the small doubts about Chris that have begun to tug at me. It’s dangerous to let my mind wander down this path, I’m very conscious of that, but I’m beginning to reassess some of his behaviour; in particular the way he folded my sister up in a towel and ushered her away at the end of the evening. To me, that looked loving at the time, but in the light of what’s happened I can’t help but put a more sinister reading on it now. Was it loving, or controlling? His aggression with Tom Barlow at the house, and his treatment of Lucas, the way he told him off in front of us all, would certainly edge me quite firmly towards a more negative reading.

  I want to ask Richard what he thinks, because in spite of everything he’s a good judge of character, or he used to be, but we’re interrupted by the doorbell.

  ‘That’ll be the au pair agency, I expect,’ he says.

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  He tries a small spoonful of Grace’s purée and winces. ‘This is too hot,’ he tells the baby, ‘we might need to wait a bit.’

  ‘What was the number of the solicitor’s office?’ he calls after me, as I leave the room. ‘I might try him again, I think you’re right to ask his advice.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t remember offhand,’ I say.

  ‘No problem,’ he calls, as I reach the front door. ‘I’ll just do redial.’

  Before I can stop myself, and as I’m opening the front door, I shout, ‘No!’ at him, because I know the call will go through to Sam’s personal mobile. The representative from Katya’s au pair agency gives me a quizzical look, as does Richard.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say to her.

  She offers me her hand. ‘Tamara Jones, West Country Elite Au Pairs. We always aim to respond to emergencies immediately.’

  Behind me, I can feel Richard’s gaze on my back and, as I take Tamara Jones upstairs to find Katya, I can see that he has the baby in one arm and the phone in the other.

  ZOE

  I don’t want to be near Chris after what I’ve read.

  I don’t want him near me, and I don’t want him near Lucas and I never want him near Grace again.

  I wish he’d never, ever been near my mum, because I have a horrible feeling creeping over me that he might have killed her with his violence.

  I’m struggling really hard to stay calm with that thought filling up my head. I desperately want to talk to Lucas about the script, to tell him that I understand now why he wanted me to read it so badly, and to say how I’m so sorry about what happened to him and his mum. But Lucas won’t even look at me right now. All he’s doing is sitting, and staring at his fingers and picking at the red skin around his bitten nails.

  I also want to tell somebody else, I’m desperate to, so they know what Chris is really like, but I don’t know who to choose, because I don’t know if they’ll believe me. Right now, I’m not one hundred per cent sure that Lucas would want me to share the script, because I can see that Chris can be very bad, but he’s also Lucas’s dad.

  While I’m trying to think about it, we’re all sitting together on the sofas: me and Lucas and Chris and Tess and the Liaison Officer who’s eating a sandwich that stinks of fish, and nobody is speaking. Richard’s feeding Grace in the kitchen. My dad’s gone back out into the garden with his phone. When I came down and gave his phone back to him I tried to tell him about what I’d read in the script but he said, ‘Not now, Zoe.’

  The detectives have gone for now, but they said they’d be back later to ‘have a bit more of a chat’. Katya has just gone too; she was collected by a lady from her agency. I’m sad and also not sad about that. I don’t like her, obviously, but her going made everything feel even more real, and even more final. It made it all squeeze around me just that little bit tighter.

  That panicky feeling is rising now, making me want to scream out what I know, and to flee from the room so I don’t have to sit near Chris, so I’m looping a bit of advice from Jason in my head: ‘Don’t always react to everything the instant it happens, Zoe. Think before you speak.’

  The problem is that I’m afraid I might not be able to hold any of it in any longer, so I go for the person I think is safest to tell.

  ‘Aunt Tessa…’ I start to say, because I want to ask her to come out of the room with me, so I can tell her about it in private, because I think she’s the best person, the one I trust most. I feel like I blurt out her name when I say it, but my voice must have actually been quiet because Tessa just turns to look at me as if to say, Did you say something? and, before I can explain, I’m interrupted by Chris, who says: ‘Can I use your phone, Tessa? I think it’s probably sensible if I book a hotel room for us tonight.’

  ‘Us?’ she asks him.

  Chris frowns, as if that’s a stupid question, and then says, ‘For Lucas and Grace and I.’

  ‘You’re welcome to stay here,’ she says.

  ‘It might be easier if we got out of your hair.’

  ‘It’s fine, really.’

  ‘No, I won’t hear of it. You’ve done enough already letting the police in here, and having us all.’

  ‘Well, do you want to leave Grace here?’

  ‘She’s my daughter.’

  ‘But it might not be easy looking after her in a hotel room. Very cramped. We’re happy to keep her here for now, with the garden, and Richard is enjoying looking after her, I know he won’t mind.’

  ‘I plan to book a suite. We’ll be fine, thank you.’

>   It’s a pretty final statement.

  ‘May I use your phone?’

  She waves her hand towards the kitchen. ‘Go ahead.’

  She looks as gutted as I feel, and I wonder if her heart is pumping as fast as mine is and I think that if it’s not now it definitely will be when I tell her what I know about Chris.

  I don’t get to talk to her about it though because Richard appears in the doorway just as Chris is about to leave the room. He’s holding Grace and she’s covered in orange purée. It’s on her face, her clothes, her hands and in her hair. It’s on a lot of Richard too.

  ‘Bit of a catastrophe,’ Richard says.

  Chris looks at Grace. She shows him the palm of one of her hands, which has food all over it, and then she squeezes it into a fist, demonstrating how the orange goo squishes out between her fingers. She’s delighted. Grace loves mess.

  Chris makes no move to take her from Richard, but I get there in two strides from the sofa.

  ‘I’ll take her for a bath,’ I say. I look at Chris. ‘You can’t take her like this.’

  Because he mustn’t have her.

  ‘Take her where?’ I hear Richard asking, but I don’t hear the answer because I carry sticky Grace up the stairs and into the bathroom as fast as I can, and I lock the door so it’s just me and her, and I turn on the taps of the bath and I let her help me squeeze some bubble mixture in. When that’s done we sit on the mat on the floor together and I say, ‘Grace, you are so gross,’ and I imagine that my mum would have laughed if she could have heard me say it.

  And I wonder how long I can keep us locked in here so that Chris can’t take her away.