Gilly Macmillan - The Perfect Girl

We see a smile creep across JULIA’S MOTHER’s face and then the camera swings around to show us what she sees: it’s the bride and groom leaning in to kiss one another as the crowd claps.

When they break away from each other CHRIS stands with his arm around JULIA, squeezing her tight and smiling broadly.

CHRIS

My wife! I’ve got a wife!

And everybody laughs while JULIA looks a little embarrassed, but very happy.

After the Concert

I stop reading because I hear my mum coming down the stairs, finally. The script is quite interesting but it’s mostly just a love story between Chris and Julia so far and it’s told in the voice of Lucas’s dying mum, which I find really weird, so I’m not one hundred per cent fully interested if I’m honest, also because I don’t see what it’s got to do with me.

Really, I’m not exactly sure why Lucas was so keen for me and Mum to read it.

I put my phone down, in fact I push it down the side of the sofa cushions because the panop thing is still making my palms sweat a bit so I don’t even really want to look at it, and I go and wait in the hall for my mum as she comes down the stairs, her hand trailing on the polished banister. When she gets to the bottom, she first puts her finger on her lips to keep me quiet so we don’t wake the baby, and then beckons me to follow her into the kitchen.

I follow her in there, and she gets a wine glass out of the cupboard and pours herself a hefty slug from a bottle that starts to drip with condensation now that it’s out of the fridge. I wait, listening to the glass chinking on the granite, and I straighten my dress, because since we’ve been in the Second Chance Family she likes me to look nice, and I think I’m probably a bit mussed up from lying on the sofa.

She drinks deeply, twice, then she says, ‘Zoe,’ and I say, ‘Yes,’ and I’m full of fear because this is the moment that she and I have to come together, so that we can decide what we have to do. From the railway-station-sized clock on the kitchen wall I estimate we have about seventeen minutes left to do it in before Tessa and the men get here.

‘I think…’ Mum says, and with her fingers and her palms she makes a motion that smooths her cheeks up; it’s a temporary facelift. And in spite of everything, a tiny part of me glows, because I feel a little bit happy that we’re going to do this together, that we’re going to do anything together in fact, because that hasn’t really happened for a very long time.

And my heart’s pumping like the loud techno music beats that make cars shudder, because now’s the moment, but then she says, and her tone is as bright as Grace’s mobile: ‘Do you know what I think would be nice? I think we should make some bruschetta for the boys.’

At Barnstaple Police Station, when I returned to talk to Zoe after the disclosure, I found her in exactly the same position as before, curled up in her plastic chair, social worker sitting silently beside her.

Zoe watched me come in and sit down, hungover eyes following me like a cat’s under that glass-spangled hair.

‘Hello again,’ I said.

‘Hello.’

‘Now. Have you let anybody know that you’ve been arrested?’

‘They phoned Mum.’

‘Would you like your mum to be in here with us?’

‘No.’

The social worker’s lips pursed, but she remained quiet.

‘Can you tell me why?’

‘I didn’t want her to know.’

‘She’s outside, Zoe, she knows you’re here, and she knows why. You’re not going to be able to keep this a secret from her.’

An immediate firm shake of her head, so I didn’t push it. A fragment of glass fell out of her hair and on to the table in front of her and she put a finger on it, curious, almost hypnotised by the sight of it. It looked like a small diamond.

‘Don’t,’ I said, but I was too late. The glass cut her finger and she pulled it sharply away and put it into her mouth. The little shard skittered away across the table and onto the floor.

‘I’ll get the first-aider,’ said the social worker.

‘It’s OK,’ Zoe said. ‘It’s nothing.’ She held her finger up to show us just a tiny bead of blood welling there, then she sucked it away.

The social worker rummaged in her bag and handed Zoe a tissue. We both watched her wrap it tightly around her finger until the tip went white.

‘Well, if you change your mind at any point then we can call Mum in. What about your dad?’

Another head shake, even firmer this time.

‘Do you feel well enough to talk to me now?’ Close up, she looked worse than I’d thought. They told me that she’d puked at the hospital.

‘Yes.’

‘Your welfare is important to everybody here so you must let me or…’

‘Ruth,’ said the social worker.

‘You must let me or Ruth know straight away if you’re too unwell to talk, or for any other reason. Ruth is here to support you, and I am, as I’ve told you, a solicitor, and that means that I want to make sure you get the right advice to help you in your situation and also to help you understand anything that happens this morning or that happened last night. And, most importantly, and this is why you need to tell us if you’re not coping at any point, I need to make sure that you completely understand what effects any statements or responses you give to the police might mean.’

‘I’m OK.’

I wondered where this stoicism came from. I didn’t yet know about the piano, about her capacity for discipline and self-control, and her hunger for excellence, but the intelligence was beginning to emerge. There was sharp clarity in those eyes.

‘Do you live locally, Zoe?’

‘Between Hartland and Clovelly, at East Wildberry Farm.’

‘Near the Point?’

‘Yes. That’s where we were going.’

‘In the car? To the Point?’

‘To the lighthouse.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Jack said I could use his dad’s car to drive Gull home, but only on condition we went to the lighthouse on the way.’

I thought of Hartland Point lighthouse, because I knew it well. To get to it you had to sneak past some locked gates and descend a rubbly, steep cliff path down to the shore, where black rocks lined the edges of the tide line like shark’s teeth and the lighthouse sat on an outcrop which was fortified by a sea wall, to save it from being beaten away by waves. It was no longer occupied and the light was about to be decommissioned entirely. There were empty buildings beside it, where the lighthouse keepers used to live.

Four drunk teenagers planning to go down there on a dark, cold night sounded like a bad business to me.

‘Why did Jack want to go to the lighthouse?’

She calculated something behind those eyes before she replied. ‘I don’t know.’

I changed tack. ‘How do you know how to drive?’

‘My dad taught me, on the farm.’

‘Why were you driving when Jack was old enough to have a licence?’

‘Jack was pissed. He was too pissed to drive.’

‘But you were drunk as well.’

‘I wasn’t. I only had a spritzer.’

‘According to the police your blood alcohol level was twice the limit.’

‘I wasn’t drunk.’

I left the denial for now. I’d tease that out later. If she somehow didn’t know she was drunk, we might have a defence to build there.

‘Why did Gull want to leave the party?’

‘Because she got sick, and she wanted to go home.’

‘Sick from drinking?’

‘I think so.’

‘Were you with her?’

‘She came to find me when she got sick.’