“Why did she say you took photographs?”
“That was her father. He thought he could get money out of me.”
“Where is the girl now?”
“Her family moved to Leeds.”
“Another rink?”
“Just so.” He pauses. “Why are you asking me about her?”
“The pathologist thinks he can get a DNA profile from Jodie’s unborn child. They’ll be able to identify the father.”
He shrugs ambivalently.
“Aren’t you interested?”
“Not particularly.”
“May I ask why?”
“It won’t bring Jodie back.”
Something about his attitude annoys me. I can’t tell if he’s mourning the loss of his niece or the loss of a future champion, his ticket to reflected glory.
“It must be a very close relationship—a coach and his student. Working together, traveling to events, staying overnight . . .”
His body tenses and his eyes are fixed on mine.
“What exactly are you suggesting?”
“Did you have separate rooms?”
Whitaker’s face goes through a transformation from amazement to anger, as the red mist descends. His features become tighter and smaller, rushing to the center of his face.
“How dare you suggest—how dare you think . . .”
“It’s a question that has to be asked.”
“It’s a question that could destroy my career,” he says angrily. “Even the merest hint of something like that and I’d never coach again. You have no right. You . . . you . . .” He can’t finish. “The suggestion that I slept with my niece is obscene. You have a sick mind. A sick, sick mind.”
36
* * *
ANGEL FACE
* * *
I’ve been watching them talking, but I’m too far away to hear what they’re saying or decide if they’re lying. Neither would be very good at poker. Too many “tells.” Cyrus is holding his emotions in check, but the coach is all over the place.
When people swear on the Bible, promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that’s bullshit. Everybody lies. Lawyers. Social workers. Counselors. Doctors. Foster carers. Teenagers. Children. It is what people do: they breathe, they eat, they drink, and they lie.
I once did a survey at Langford Hall, keeping count of how many porkies I heard in a single day, and I came up with an average of eighteen per person . . . before lunch. These were only the obvious lies, not the small fictions that people tell to keep others happy. I love your new haircut. What a cute outfit. I didn’t take your yogurt. Others were lies they told themselves. I’m not so fat. I’m not too old. Nobody will notice that missing. I know what I’m doing. If I had more time I would . . .
The obvious lies are the easiest to pick. Others are better hidden or so close to the truth that the dividing line is blurred. Some lies are selfish. Some inflate or conflate or mitigate or simply omit. Some are told for good reason. People lie because they think it doesn’t matter. They lie because telling the truth would mean giving up control, or the truth is inconvenient, or they don’t want to disappoint, or they desperately want it to be true. I’ve heard them all. I’ve told them all.
Walking between the tiered seats, I follow the passage to the changing rooms. The two skaters I saw on the ice are putting on their street clothes. One of them is in a hurry to leave, angry with herself, slamming the door of her locker and limping out. The other is still unlacing her skates.
“You were very good,” I say. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone skate. Up close I mean. When you see it on TV, you don’t realize the speed or hear the sound of the skates on the ice.”
I sit down on the bench opposite her. “I’m Evie, by the way.”
“Alice.”
“How long have you been skating, Alice?”
“Since I was five.”
“Have I left it too late?”
“Anyone can skate. Most people just do it for fun.”
“Is it fun for you?”
“Today, yeah. Ask me tomorrow.”
Alice pulls a heavy fleece over her head, lifting her hair out from the collar.
“Did you know Jodie Sheehan?” I ask.
“Sure. We trained together.”
“With the same coach?”
Alice nods. “Mr. Whitaker.”
“Was Jodie his favorite?”
A cloud of uncertainty passes across her face. “He pushed her harder than the rest of us.”
“Why?”
“Because she was so good.”
“I wish I could have seen her skate,” I say, running my finger over one of the blades. “Can we play a game, Alice?”
She glances up nervously. “My mum is picking me up.”
“This won’t take long. It’s a bluffing game called two truths and a lie. I tell you three things about me and you pick which one is a lie.”
“OK.”
“My real name isn’t Evie. I’m a twin. And I can fit four boiled eggs in my mouth all at once.”
“That’s a lie.” Alice laughs.
“You mean about the eggs? No, that’s true. I could prove it to you if we had four boiled eggs. Now it’s your turn. You tell me three things about Jodie—two truths and a lie.”
“Why Jodie?”
“It makes things harder.”
Alice begins thinking. “OK. Jodie wanted to quit skating, she had a secret boyfriend, and she once screamed so loudly at a horror film that the girl next to her peed her pants.”
“That’s hilarious,” I say. “Were you the girl?”
Alice nods, blushing. “How did you know?”
“I guessed. Why did Jodie want to quit skating?”
Alice looks over her shoulder and back again, whispering, “The headaches. She had three concussions in a row.”
“From falling?”
Alice nods. “She was trying to learn to triple axel.”
“Did Mr. Whitaker force her to keep trying?”
“Jodie didn’t want to disappoint him.”
“What about her boyfriend?”
“That was supposed to be a lie,” says Alice. “I couldn’t think of one.”
“It’s hard to think of a lie when you need one,” I tell her. “Do you know his name?”
“No.”
“Why was he a secret?”
“I think he was older.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I mean, she wouldn’t talk about him, so I thought . . .” Alice’s phone is beeping. She glances at the screen. “I have to go.”
She puts her skates away, forcing them into a crammed locker.
“Did Jodie have one of those?” I ask.
Alice nods and leads me around the corner, where she points to a locker with blue-and-white police tape crisscrossed on the diagonals.
“They searched that one,” says Alice, “but missed the other one.”
“What other one?”
“Jodie managed to get two. Natascha quit during the summer and she gave her key to Jodie, who never gave it back.”
Alice takes me along the row and points to an unlabeled metal door.
Her phone beeps again. She’s late. Slipping her arms through the straps of a small backpack, she raises her fingers in a wave. “If you really want to learn to skate you should come back when the rink is open to the public.”
“I will,” I say, still looking at the locker.
I’m alone in the changing rooms. The muffled sound of classical music permeates from the rink. Leaning my back against the metal door, I pull at the handle, testing the strength of the padlock. Reaching into my hair, I slide a bobby pin free from against my scalp. Bending it back and forth until it breaks, I bite off the plastic tips, exposing the metal ends. Sliding the sharpest point into the barrel of the padlock, I feel it bumping over the internal mechanism, forcing down the sequence of pins.
A kid called Fora
ger taught me how to open locks. We called him Forager because he used to break into the kitchens at Langford Hall and steal packets of biscuits, juice boxes, and the chef’s private supply of chocolate. Forager could open almost anything. He began teaching me, but I gave up after mastering padlocks because I kept getting caught and punished.
This one is easy. I hear a telltale click and the shackle releases, falling open in my hands. Inside the locker I find ballet shoes, leggings, socks, and a fleece-lined jacket with a badge saying: “British Junior Figure Skating Team.” I check the jacket pockets and upend the shoes. On the lowest shelf, pushed to the back, I find a padded yellow envelope with a torn flap. Inside is Jodie’s passport and a handful of SIM cards, still in their packaging, as well as a cheap mobile phone. Tipping the envelope upside down, I discover a pen-shaped object with writing on one side and a small circular window with two pink vertical lines. I know what this is—a pregnancy test.
A door opens somewhere out of sight and I feel the slight change in the air temperature. I close the locker and lean against it, slipping my hand behind my back and securing the padlock. The envelope is tucked under my right arm, beneath Cyrus’s loose-fitting denim shirt.
“What are you doing in here?” asks a woman. She’s one of the coaches I saw on the rink.
“I needed the bathroom.”
“This is for academy students only.”
“I was busting.”
The woman eyes me skeptically but I try to match her stare, opening my palms, as if to say, “nothing to see here.”
“I think you should leave.”
“Don’t get all shitty on me.”
“What did you say?”
“I said don’t get shirty. I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”
I flounce confidently between the benches, turning right through the door, cradling the envelope under my arm. Along the tunnel, up the stairs, through the exit doors, I don’t look back until I reach Cyrus, who is waiting in the foyer.
“Where have you been?” he asks, sounding relieved.
“Loo.”
“You shouldn’t just wander off.”
“Why? Am I a prisoner? Did you want to follow me to the ladies’? You could watch me. Some men get a kick out of that.”
He doesn’t answer.
Side by side, we cross Bolero Square. I have to lengthen my stride to keep up with him.
“Jodie Sheehan wanted to quit skating,” I say, making it sound like a revelation.
“Who told you that?”
“Alice. She’s one of the other skaters.”
Cyrus stops and turns. “How do you know Alice?”
“I talked to her when she came off the rink. Alice said Jodie had a boyfriend. He was older, she said, but didn’t know his name.”
Cyrus is staring at me, unsure how to react.
I pull the envelope from inside my shirt. “You didn’t tell me that Jodie was pregnant.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“I found this in her locker.”
37
* * *
CYRUS
* * *
Yelling at Evie is like shouting at a TV or at a car that won’t start. I can hear myself getting more and more worked up, while she regards me with utter ambivalence or worse, complete disdain.
“Have you any idea of how many laws you’ve broken? The position you’ve put me in? That was someone’s private locker. You stole possible evidence. You could be charged. I could lose my job. Bad show, Evie! Bad show!”
She gives me a dull stare. No regrets. No remorse. Whatever warmth or connection may have existed has gone, replaced by an icy wasteland that I might never cross again.
I order her into the car. She doesn’t react. Pedestrians are watching us, drawn by my raised voice. I’m clutching the yellow envelope as though it’s going to explode in my hands.
The wind lifts hair from Evie’s forehead and makes her eyes water, but she doesn’t blink. It’s as though she is closing down her mind, going somewhere else. I stop myself and swallow my anger. Evie isn’t ambivalent or unmoved. She is doing what she’s always done when under attack—she’s escaping to a safe place. This is how she survived years of sexual abuse.
“Please get in the car,” I say, softening my voice.
Evie looks at the open door.
“I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I’m sorry.”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Do you want to go back to Langford Hall?”
“Is that what you want?” she whispers.
The question thumps into my chest. I should say something to reassure her but I’m too angry. What am I to do with this girl? I know practically nothing about her, despite having read her files. She is surly, ungrateful, stubborn, and her presence in my life makes it seem impossibly overcrowded. I want to yell, “Don’t be a child! Grow up!” but Evie had no childhood. This is it.
We drive through steady traffic and spitting rain to the sound of my wiper blades slapping against the side of the windscreen. When we reach the house, Evie goes upstairs to her room. An hour later I stand outside her door, unsure of whether to knock. I press my ear against the panels of wood. Nothing.
Retreating to the library, I empty the contents of the envelope onto my desk—the pregnancy test and the SIM cards and the cheap mobile phone, an old-fashioned Nokia with a flip screen, most likely secondhand.
I should give the envelope to the police. How would I explain it? If I tell them that Evie broke into Jodie’s locker they’ll send her back to Langford Hall and I’ll likely be investigated and lose my job.
Perhaps I could post the envelope anonymously or leave it on Lenny’s doorstep. Evie’s fingerprints will be on the contents. So will mine. Shit!
The police already know that Jodie was carrying a second phone on the night she died because she kept receiving messages after her own handset was turned off. Now we have proof of a third cell phone and multiple SIM cards. Why would a fifteen-year-old girl need different phone numbers? And what was she doing with six thousand pounds?
Yesterday at the Whitakers’ house, Brianna hinted that Jodie wasn’t as innocent as everybody made her out to be and said I should talk to her brother. It sounded like teenage bitchiness but hinted at more. Felix Sheehan could be the key to this.
In the meantime, I have to do something about the envelope. Opening my laptop, I put a Skype call in to Lenny. She answers on her mobile. I hear laughter in the background.
“Am I interrupting?”
“Sunday lunch. It’s like feeding time at the zoo.”
“I have a package that belonged to Jodie Sheehan. You can’t ask me how I came upon it.”
“I can, and I will,” says Lenny, not in the mood for games.
“Someone left it on my doorstep.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Cyrus.”
“I need this favor.”
Seconds tick by. I can hear her breathing.
“Where is this mystery package?”
“You should send a car.”
38
* * *
ANGEL FACE
* * *
I’m sitting in the lee of a bus shelter, head down, hood up, listening to the traffic swish past on the wet road. My anger is so hard against my front teeth that I can taste it in my mouth. Cyrus had no right to shout at me. I was trying to help him, to do something nice. I don’t need his lectures or his charity or his sad eyes or his psychoanalysis. Fuck him!
A bus pulls up and the doors fold open. I hesitate for a moment.
“Are you getting in?” asks the driver in a thick accent. I step on board and hand him money.
“No cash,” he says irritably. “Card only.”
I remember Cyrus gave me some sort of travel pass. I search my pockets and hand it over.
“Tap. On reader. Box. Here.”
“How should I know?” I mutter as the bus pulls away. I sway down the aisle and choose a seat where I can’t see my reflect
ion in the mirror. Beneath my overcoat, I’m wearing the dress that Caroline Fairfax chose for my court appearance, but I’ve unpicked the high collar and undone the top buttons, making it look sexier. Mascara and eye-shadow have made my eyes look bigger and my lashes thicker.
Chloe Pringle once told me that lipstick was supposed to emphasize a woman’s sexuality by echoing the color of her labia. I thought this was disgusting and stopped wearing lipstick for a month.
Reaching into my coat pocket, my fingers close around my roll of banknotes—my stash, my stake. Soon I won’t need charity or Cyrus or anyone else.
The old brick warehouse is squeezed between a minicab office and used-car yard, close enough to the railway line for the whole building to shake when the freight trains roar past. Opposite is a vacant lot where a handful of cars are parked amid mounds of rubble and patches of weeds.
The bouncer on the door is wearing a neck brace that makes him bend from the waist when he looks down at me.
“What do you want?”
“I’m looking for a cash game?”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“You got proof?”
I shrug off my coat, revealing my dress and boots. I’ve bundled my hair on top of my head, trying to look older.
“Nice try,” he says. “Piss off!”
I peel off two twenties and slide the notes into his trouser pocket, letting my hand brush over his groin.
“How old do I look now?” I whisper.
When he flinches, I duck under his arm, through the doorway, and up a set of stairs before he can stop me. The cashier is a large woman with peroxide-blond hair that seems to glow in the dark. She’s sitting in a wooden booth behind a glass window. I hand her the roll of banknotes and watch her count out stacks of colored chips that she takes from a drawer. Cupping my hand over each stack, I pick up the chips and let them drop through my fingertips, counting by touch.
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