Call Me Star Girl

by Louise Beech

Inside the house, I lead Tom back into their living room and make him sit him on the sofa, where he hunches over, head in hands, sobs still wracking his body. I sit next to him. I feel such a conflict of emotions. Sadness for him. Relief that he might tell me everything. Fear of what that means.

  Do you have any alcohol in the house? I ask.

  He looks at me, eyes red. You need some?

  For you.

  Kitchen cupboard. Under the hob.

  I find a bottle of rum – the kind likely to have been a Christmas gift – and pour generous portions into two tumblers. Tom takes his from me with a shaking hand. He swigs heartily. I sip mine. And wait. The song on the radio seems too loud, intrusive. Without asking Tom, I turn it down so that it’s less distracting and resume my seat next to him.

  Eventually he says, Vicky did come and see me that night.

  I nod.

  Perry returns to the room and leaps into my lap. Surprised, I spill some of my rum. I stroke her head and she purrs. Does she sense my link to Stella? Is she here to comfort me while I hear the truth about that terrible night? Is that what I’m about to finally learn?

  Tom ignores her. He shakes his head, puts it back in his hands.

  I can’t, he whispers.

  You can, I say.

  I wait.

  It was late, he says. I was about to go to bed. There was this soft tapping on the door. I was dead surprised when I saw Vicky on the doorstep. We hadn’t seen each other in, oh, at least nine months. It ended amicably, it really did. He looks at me, pained. No one believes that, but it did.

  I believe you, I say encouragingly.

  When we broke up she said she found me … challenging. Anyway, I saw she was pregnant. That’s another thing I’d never known until she turned up. I asked why she was here so late, and she said she’d been walking around, building up the courage to come. She asked if she could come in – said we needed to talk … about our baby … us. Our baby? I asked her. Ours? Tom shakes his head. God, I should’ve just invited her in. If I had…

  He drinks some more. I wait for him to go on. Perry purrs under my stroking hand.

  I guess I was nervous about Stella coming home in another half an hour, he says, so I got my coat and said we should walk a little, as it might be a bit of a shock for my girlfriend to come home and find my ex here, and pregnant too. Hell, I could hardly take it in myself.

  Tom pauses again. I imagine he’s afraid of getting there; to that moment. Of revisiting it. What if he hasn’t until now? God, the effort that must have taken. The pain of carrying it around, squashing it down. I want to touch his arm and offer comfort, but I don’t.

  We walked around the block a few times, and I let her talk. I guess I was too stunned to say much. I was adding up the months, thinking, is this really my kid? And knowing if it was I’d step up, I would. But I didn’t want Vicky.

  Tom looks intensely at me.

  You have to know that. I loved Stella. I love Stella. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Now … I sleep in her spot in the bed … and I … I try and fill it … and I can’t … she … she gave her life for me! To cover what … and I have to live with that…

  Tom starts to sob again. I take the glass from him. I wait. After a while he calms down a little. I give him the glass back and he swigs more rum.

  Vicky said we should be a family. She said she’d had this helper woman – it was you. I know that now. You were her … what was the word you said?

  Doula.

  Yes. Tom nods. Vicky said her helper had been great, but it wasn’t the same as having the real father with her. The man she loved. Me. She stopped me then and put her arms around me, squashing her belly to me, and said she had never stopped loving me. I wanted to pull away but thought it would be cruel, you know, to someone pregnant. But she must have thought I loved her too … and she tried to kiss me. So then I had to pull away. And she took my hand … and she led me into the alley…

  Tom puts his empty glass down. He shakes his head as though to get rid of the memory, free himself from it.

  She kept whispering that I was her twin flame. I don’t know what she meant but she kept saying it, over and over. She said we were special because we’d made a child; she said she’d do anything, anything, anything to have me.

  These were my words, coming back at me. I had said these things to Vicky. God, I had done this. This was my fault. I wanted to turn up the song on the radio and drown them out. But at the same time I wanted to hear Tom. He continued.

  I told Vicky I didn’t love her anymore, that I loved Stella; but it didn’t stop her. She kept kissing me, so I shook her off. Her hands were all over me. Up my back, in my pockets, you know. I tried to pull her off, but I was scared of being too rough with her. I just wanted to calm her down and get her home, but there was no appeasing her. She cried out suddenly then and I thought I had hurt her. But she’d cut herself. It was that bloody key Stella got me…

  Tom looks at me.

  I loved it, I did, the meaning behind it, but that key had cut me so many times. Vicky pulled it from my pocket. The blood from her finger was on it, smeared over the S. I think it incensed her, seeing our two initials there. She looked at it and then at me. And … she…

  She what? I ask gently.

  He shakes his head.

  What? I push.

  She put the sharp point of the key against her…

  Her what? I ask.

  Her wrist.

  You mean?

  Tom nods. He is trembling again. Perry looks at him, wary.

  She held it there and she was yelling, ‘My baby, my baby, don’t you love my baby?’ I yelled that I did, I would, and I’d be there for it, I just didn’t love her, but please give me the key. I don’t know if it was hormones, but she was wild. She said she’d rather not be here if we couldn’t be a family. I tried to approach her to hold her, to calm her down, but she pressed the key harder to her wrist. I said I’d walk her home … that we could talk more calmly tomorrow…

  What happened, Tom? I ask.

  His eyes beseech mine.

  It was Vicky. The words rip from him. She did it.

  What do you mean?

  It was Vicky. It was her … she did it … but I can’t … who would believe me?

  Tell me, I say firmly. I’ll believe you.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  Just tell me exactly what happened.

  As he tells me I see it vividly. See it as though I’m there. As though I’m Stella, passing by on her way home from work, watching in horror from the shadows and seeing what must have looked like murder from afar. My poor girl. Poor Tom. Poor Vicky.

  She moved it, says Tom. The key. She backed away from me, into the hedge and she put the sharp corner … Jesus … she put it to her neck. I reached to stop her, I did, but she yelled that she’d do it, she’d really do it, so I backed off a bit. I just wanted to calm her down and get us both home safely. That’s all. She said … she said, ‘Tell me you’ll be with me.’ But I couldn’t. I should have. I should have just lied. And she pressed it harder to her neck and this little bit of blood trickled down her hand. Jesus, I panicked then. Tom’s voice is wild now. I leapt at her, to stop her, and she did it. She did it! I must have scared her! It was my fault!

  No, no, I say softly. It wasn’t. You were trying to save her.

  Tom looks at me like he has forgotten I’m there. The blood, he cries. The fucking blood! It was everywhere! Spilling over her hands! Down her neck! And she was making these awful gurgling sounds. Jesus!

  Perry jumps out of my lap and escapes the room as though it’s too much for her.

  I tried, Tom cries. I put my hands over her neck to stop the blood, but it was … Jesus … I’ve never seen anything like it. Her eyes were wild and she couldn’t talk and she was clawing at me. Then she went white and she fell. I went with her. Tried to stop her falling too hard. And … oh God … she … it was so fast. She wasn’t breathing and the light in her eyes died
. She died. Right in front of me…

  Oh Tom.

  Finally, I touch him, gently on the arm. He leans into me and I put my arm around him while he sobs.

  So much for you to have carried around all this time, I say gently. Why didn’t you tell anyone? You didn’t do anything wrong.

  Who’d believe me? he cries, looking up. Her blood was all over me and my fingerprints are all over that key! I had my hands over hers on her neck! Even Stella thought I’d done it. I know how it must have looked in the dark! Me leaping at Vicky, my hands over hers!

  What did you do afterwards? I ask calmly.

  Tom sits up, away from me, closes his eyes. Vicky had taken her coat off when we were walking, and it had fallen when she … when she … so I picked it up. He opens his eyes and looks at me. I put it over our baby. Over her stomach.

  I nod. I realise that I put the coat over Stella too late as well. I loved her most when she was gone.

  And then? I ask.

  God, it’s a blur. I must have left her. I would have looked a state. I had blood all over my top and hands. I walked home. I can’t even remember it. I threw the key away. Stupid, I know, and I can’t even remember exactly where. Some wasteland on the way home. I went back the next day, when I was thinking straight but I couldn’t find it.

  What about when you got home? To Stella?

  With his head in his hands again, muffled so I can hardly hear, Tom tells me how he got home first, showered away all the blood and hid his top at the bottom of the bin, under a rotten chicken carcass and potato peelings. He says that when Stella got home he pretended to be asleep. That he didn’t know then what she thought she had witnessed. In his own horror he would have been blind to hers.

  Didn’t you see Stella in the alley? I ask.

  No. I didn’t see anyone. But it’s long and it bends. She could easily have hidden once she … once she saw us…

  She never said anything?

  Tom says no, she never said anything, and he didn’t either.

  We just played the game, he adds, looking at me. I had to bury what had happened. And I did. Somehow, I did.

  Tom is trembling, his face a picture of pain.

  Stella and me … we did things … intense things … things I suggested because I needed to distract myself from what had happened. Things to make her think we were the same as we always had been … to let her know my love was as intense as it always had been. Tom wrings his hands. But she had seen what she thought was … She had been going through all that … and she … God, she died for me. She died to cover for me. If I’d only had the courage to confide in her! She’d still be here!

  Suddenly we hear Stella’s voice, soft and ghostly from somewhere.

  So … I guess this is goodbye. I’m going to have to face the music now.

  Is she here? My heart stops. Tom looks towards the radio, his eyes haunted. The news again. Why must they keep playing her final words?

  I miss her, he says desperately.

  Me, too.

  I take his hands and say, None of this is your fault. I mean every word. It’s mine. I was the one who encouraged Vicky to get you back when I was her doula. I was the one who left Stella and made her what she was. Made her think she had to do such a thing to prove how much she loved you.

  Tom stands and goes and turns the radio off. Perry comes back into the room, perhaps sensing the worst is over, and leaps into my lap again.

  We could go to the police, I suggest. Tell them what really happened. I believe you and they will. Surely – I pause, not wanting to be insensitive – they’d be able to prove that it was Vicky’s own hand that cut her neck?

  Wouldn’t they have determined that already? Wouldn’t they have said?

  I don’t know, I admit. But the case isn’t officially closed, is it? Maybe that’s why? And what about this new evidence Stephen mentioned earlier?

  What if it’s the key? Tom says.

  He doesn’t sit down again. He seems calmer, as though, now he has shared the truth, he’s free to think straight.

  That key will incriminate me. But I can live with it. I just don’t want…

  What?

  Imagine what it will do to Vicky’s family, says Tom, sadly.

  What do you mean?

  If they find out it was … suicide. Wouldn’t that hurt more than thinking it was someone else? Jesus.

  Do you have anywhere you can go? I ask suddenly.

  What do you mean?

  Somewhere … not here.

  My mum and dad live in northern Spain. They retired there five years ago. Tom looks at me, frowning. Why?

  Leave. I stand and join him in the middle of the room. Go now, before they come for you again. If they’ve found that key, they will. I’ll go to the police now and say it was me. They already questioned me because I was her doula. I’ll tell them I lied then, and I did see Vicky that night.

  Tom looks afraid, doubtful.

  I take his hands in mine, say firmly, Stella wanted to protect you. Now I’ll do it for her. She’ll want you to be free. She’ll be watching us from wherever she is now, knowing you didn’t kill Vicky, and she’ll want you to be free. This is the only way. Let me do right by my daughter. Let’s both make her happy.

  Perry leaves the sofa and curls her body around my legs.

  I’ll take her, I say to Tom, and pick her up. You need to go.

  I have to put the last coat over Stella.

  50

  ELIZABETH

  NOW

  My Darling Stella,

  The only other letter I’ve ever written you was that terrible one I left on the table when I abandoned you. It’s long gone now, but I remember I wrote that I did love you, I just didn’t think it was enough, and that one day I’d tell you why. Now you know why. Because I put my love for someone else first.

  I’ve finally put my love for you first, but far too late.

  I wrote that letter because I was leaving. I’m writing this one because you’re the one gone. I finally got you back, but today I have to let you go for the very last time. It took so long to get your body, what with all the procedures they had to follow and the things they had to do. Then once I had you, I didn’t know what you would have liked me to do. I decided on cremation.

  I couldn’t talk to Tom about it, though I knew he should have a say. I know that’s what you would have wanted, but he isn’t here now. I tried to continue the thing you began. I tried to make sure Tom was okay.

  You wanted everyone to believe you’d killed Vicky, but I didn’t, and I just couldn’t have the world thinking you were guilty of a brutal crime when I knew absolutely in my heart that you weren’t. Wherever you are now, you probably know that Tom told me what really happened. The sad truth is that you gave your life for him, but he hadn’t done it. My beautiful girl, to love like that.

  I went to the police station after I’d been to see Tom. They questioned me for hours. I could tell they weren’t convinced by my story and were just humouring me. Stella, I don’t have your wonderful way with words.

  While I was there they told me a new piece of evidence had been found – one that suggested it wasn’t me; that contradicted my story. They showed me it and asked me what I knew about it. I said nothing, even though I knew exactly what it was. Tom’s key. The one identical to yours. I knew they would test it, and that Tom would be all over it.

  They have done. It was covered in Vicky’s blood, and Tom’s fingerprints and DNA were on it too. They have released that info to the public now. They are still calling it murder. I have to hope that the fact that the case isn’t closed means they’re not one hundred percent sure. That they are exploring other possibilities. That they might still get to the truth.

  It’s still all over the radio every day. I try to avoid it, but I listen to WLCR because, now you’ve been cleared, they sometimes play the best bits from your shows. I never get tired of your voice. You could be here in the room with me. Oh, Stella, I wish you were, and I could sa
y all the things I never did. Make right all the things I did wrong.

  I was released and cautioned that day at the police station for wasting their time. I’d been given one of those free solicitors; she told them I was in emotional turmoil, that I’d lost my mind. I suppose it’s true. I did. I have.

  But at least they know it wasn’t you.

  They think it’s Tom now, which breaks my heart.

  And they are looking for him.

  He left England the day I went to see him. I gave him full permission to do it. I know it’s what you would have wanted. As he closed the door that final time, he thanked me for listening to him. For believing him. I’m glad he had the courage to unburden himself. I think he wanted to protect you from the truth, just as you were trying to protect him. I told him all I’d wanted was for the world to know that you were no killer, Stella.

  And now they do.

  Someone who is wrong for the world can be perfectly right for you. I felt that about Harland. But Tom isn’t wrong for the world. Neither were you. The world was just wrong for you.

  I don’t know if Tom went to his parents in Spain. Stephen Sainty said on the news yesterday that someone reported a sighting of him there, but I can’t imagine he would want his mum or dad in the headlines. I can’t imagine he stayed with them for long. You never mentioned his family, but I wonder if Tom ever talked about them to you. I suppose with the parents you have it might not have been a topic you wanted to broach.

  I don’t know if anyone can run forever, but whatever happens, I’ll look after him for you in any way I can. I know he can’t contact me, so I can’t tell him that. But I think he knows.

  You told me when you were on the roof that when I wasn’t around you used to think I was with the stars. You’ve always liked them.

  I think of you when I look at the star perfume. I finally have it back now. It’s a bit more battered than it was, but when the light hits it there are still stars everywhere. It sits next to me on my bedside cabinet now, and it reminds me of your father, and of you.

  I miss him. But I miss you more.

  I have to say goodbye, though.