‘Thanks for this,’ said Lilly, and strapped Sam into the back of Penny’s new Range Rover. ‘Can I give you something towards the petrol?’
Penny crossed her arms. ‘My husband is a hedge fund manager and I drive past your house on the way to school.’
‘It’s still good of you to take him for me.’
Penny shut the car door and turned her back so the children couldn’t hear. ‘You know it’s no problem for me, but I’m still not sure this is a good idea.’
Lilly had had to confide in her friend when it occurred to her that she couldn’t leave Anna alone during the school run, and she certainly couldn’t take her back to what was effectively the scene of the crime.
‘It’s only for a week, two at most,’ said Lilly.
‘But this is your home,’ said Penny.
Lilly touched Penny’s hand. ‘I know it seems like a step too far.’
‘No shit, Sherlock.’
‘But if you knew what Anna had been through you’d understand,’ said Lilly.
‘Don’t be too sure about that.’
‘It makes your foster kids look like they’ve been living with Jamie Oliver.’
Penny nodded. ‘Just don’t let anybody at Manor Park find out you’re subletting to the opposition. Luella says there are hundreds of journalists still hanging around and you wouldn’t want them finding out, now would you?’
When Penny started up the engine, Lilly tapped on the window and waved at Sam. He looked the other way.
‘Tell me how you came to England.’
Anna looked startled, a fox in headlights.
‘I can’t defend you unless I know all about you,’ said Lilly.
It felt strange to be conducting an interview in her kitchen, and Lilly wasn’t sure she liked it. True, it was convenient to have a kettle and tea bags to hand, and she hadn’t needed to pull on more than her jeans, but there was something uncomfortable about discussing murder in the place where she normally baked cakes.
Anna spread her palms on the kitchen table. ‘My father paid a man.’
‘Did you leave Kosovo with Artan?’ asked Lilly.
Anna shook her head, slowly, deliberately. ‘No. I left with my brother, Brahim.’
‘What happened to Brahim?’
The words were flat, almost mechanical. ‘We were separated on the journey. I don’t know what happened to him.’
‘Have you tried to find him?’ said Lilly. ‘Has he made contact with you?’
Again, Anna shook her head.
‘And the rest of your family?’ asked Lilly.
‘Mother and sisters burned. Father missing.’
‘So you have no one here?’ asked Lilly.
‘No one.’
Lilly thought of Artan’s body sprawled on the ground, the whites of his eyes milky and still. If he was all Anna had left how must she feel now he was dead?
‘Why did Artan do it, Anna? Why did he go to the school?’
The girl closed one eye and rubbed her brow bone with the fleshy part of her thumb. ‘My head hurts,’ she said.
Lilly could almost reach out and touch the terrors that had driven Artan to kill but she needed to know what Anna thought of his actions.
They sat in silence until the doorbell rang.
Lilly opened the door. Her hair was a crazy mass of curls.
‘I come in peace,’ Jack said, pulling a Yorkie from the inside of his jacket.
She eyed him coolly. ‘Unimpressed.’
He pulled a Mars Delight from up his sleeve.
‘Getting there,’ she said.
And finally a Toffee Crisp from the back pocket of his Levis.
She threw her head back and laughed, the sound as welcome to him as spring.
‘Come on through, we’re in the kitchen.’
We? Jack thought. Surely not the ex-husband? Jack knew Lilly liked to keep tight with him for Sam’s sake but the bloke turned up more often than the milkman. Please God, it wasn’t bloody Milo, that would be worse still.
As he rounded the doorway he realised she meant the girl. God, he was some sort of eejit.
‘Hello,’ he said.
She didn’t answer but got up from the table. ‘I watch TV upstairs.’
Lilly nodded and they followed her tiny frame with their eyes as she backed out of the room.
Jack sat down and placed the bars on the table.
Lilly unwrapped the Yorkie. ‘I know this isn’t ideal, but I had to do it, Jack.’
‘Did you?’
She snapped off a chunk. ‘I didn’t do it to be difficult, to make things hard for you.’
‘I know,’ he said. And he did.
Lilly was many things—impulsive, hot-headed, argumentative—but she never meant to hurt. He smiled, content in the knowledge that she did care for him.
They sat for a moment, Lilly eating her chocolate, Jack chasing stray grains of salt around the table with his thumb. Now he was here, he didn’t know what to say. Or at least he couldn’t find the words. How do you tell a woman that they make you feel whole? That without them you’d unravel?
‘So how did Rupinder react?’ he said.
‘I haven’t actually told her.’
Jack roared with laughter. ‘Jesus, woman. If you thought I was pissed off you ain’t seen nothing yet.’
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. Every word seemed wrong. Should she grovel? Not Lilly’s style. Should she resign and hope Rupinder wouldn’t accept it? There was always the chance that she might.
When Jack had left he’d still been chortling over how Lilly was going to tell her boss that she was babysitting the defendant. Although Lilly had stuck her nose in the air and informed him she’d just give her a call, she hadn’t, of course, actually dared to do it. An hour later she deleted the sixth email she’d drafted.
‘There is problem?’
Lilly looked up at Anna.
‘You make serious face,’ she said, and screwed up her nose, which made Lilly laugh.
‘I don’t even know where to start,’ Lilly said, and closed the lid of her laptop. She watched Anna fill the kettle with water and sighed. ‘What I don’t understand,’ she said, ‘is why you had a gun.’
Anna pressed the switch with a long, pale finger.
Lilly pressed on. ‘I understand that Artan was disturbed. He’d been through too much and one day he cracked.’
Anna took two cups from the cupboard, her hands trembling.
‘He told me that those boys had hurt you,’ said Lilly.
Anna placed the cups on the counter.
‘Did he kill that boy because he raped you?’ asked Lilly. ‘Was it revenge?’
Anna tilted the kettle, steam escaping from the spout.
‘To be honest, I suspected he might do something,’ said Lilly. ‘But I never dreamt he’d involve you.’
The kettle slipped from Anna’s hand and crashed onto the work surface. Hot, angry water splashed towards her. She screamed and jumped away, holding her hands in the air.
‘Lilly jumped to her feet. Are you hurt?’
Anna didn’t speak but kept her hands in the air.
‘Did you burn yourself?’ Lilly asked. ‘Anna, are you okay?’
The girl’s body began to shake. A staccato jerking that progressed to violent convulsions until her legs buckled and she dissolved to the ground.
Lilly knelt down and took Anna’s hands. She checked the palms and turned them over. They didn’t seem to be burned. Lilly kept them in her own until Anna’s shudders slowed.
‘I know it’s hard, but if I’m going to help you I have to know what happened. You have to tell me about the rape and why you had a gun if I’m to make people understand.’
‘But how are you going to do that?’ asked Anna. ‘When I don’t even understand myself?’
‘Got anything for me, Posh?’
Alexia sighed. Would she be sitting here if she had?
Her boss breathed out his disgust in a plume of blue smoke, his frustration building like a boil. Any second it would burst and cover her in yellow poison.
Un-bloody-believable.
She’d been the only one inside Manor Park and got the exclusive before all the nationals. Yesterday she’d weighed into the scrum outside the court. What total bedlam that was. The skinheads on one side, asylum seekers on the other. She’d hoped for a bit of argy bargy, but they’d limited themselves to hurling abuse and the odd empty can.
Even so, she’d put together a fantastic piece. Steve was never satisfied.
‘I got you the best fucking story this rag has ever had,’ she said.
‘Yesterday’s news, today’s chip paper.’
‘So what do you want from me?’
‘I want that girl.’
Alexia shook her head. He was being unreasonable. No reporting was allowed in court because the defendant was a child, so there was no way of finding out who she was or where she’d gone. A source in High Point, the nearest women’s prison, had confirmed she hadn’t gone there. The other women’s prisons claimed to know nothing about her. The police had given the usual bullshit that said a lot but told absolutely nothing. ‘Don’t you think everyone from the Guardian to Hello is looking for her?’
‘What about the lad’s parents?’ asked Steve.
‘They’re saying zilch.’
‘Have you tried?’
Alexia fixed him with a stare. ‘No, Steve, I left a message on their answer machine, and when they didn’t get back to me I thought, “Ah well, I won’t bother with that then.”’
‘What?!’
She shook her head in despair. ‘Of course I tried. The number’s been discontinued.’
‘Probably done a deal with a tabloid,’ he said.
Alexia smiled to herself. It wouldn’t occur to her boss that the bereaved parents of a murdered teenager might prefer to keep a dignified silence.
Steve threw his fag end into a cold cup of coffee. It died with a hiss. He was cut from the same mould as her father. Pedantic and petulant. A bully.
‘Maybe I should pop down to Noodles and Rice,’ she said. ‘Get us a Chinese.’
Her boss’s penchant for greasy chicken floating in MSG made her stomach churn, but she hoped it might alleviate his temper.
‘Maybe you should pop into the job centre on the way back.’
‘Steve,’ she looked him right in the eye, ‘you’re being a twat.’
He flared his nostrils. ‘Find me that girl.’
‘Everything all right?’ asked Lilly.
Penny ruffled Sam’s hair as he jumped out of her car and raced past Lilly without a word. ‘He’s seriously peed off about Anna staying here.’
‘He’ll come round,’ said Lilly.
‘Are you sure about that?’
Lilly gave a half-hearted smile. Penny wasn’t exactly being supportive about Anna but, then again, why should she be?
‘You don’t think anyone could have guessed she’s here?’
Penny shook her head. ‘The papers all said that in a case like this she’d be remanded into custody.’
‘Who tipped off the press?’
‘Could be anyone,’ said Penny.
‘You wouldn’t think parents would want their kids’ school splashed all over the papers.’
‘Maybe they think it will do some good.’
Lilly gave a hollow laugh. ‘How?’
Penny shrugged.
‘And in the meantime there’s this.’ She pressed a letter into Lilly’s hands. It was from the school. A service was to be held for Charles Stanton.
Bloody marvellous. The mothers would be whipped into a frenzy.
Could anything else go wrong?
To: Lilly Valentine
From: Rupinder Singh
Subject: The Maudsley Hospital
As you know, the above is an establishment for the mentally ill and I am booking a place for you as I type, as I can only assume that you have lost your mind.
If you have another explanation you need to offer it before we open tomorrow.