Twenty-five years earlier
I’m in an interview room. The two policemen are opposite, their hands folded around huge white coffee mugs with drippy brown stains down the sides. One has very chunky hairy fingers and the other is rocking back on two legs of his chair—my history teacher would be barking at him to stop it if she were here.
Next to me is a woman from social services they’re calling an “appropriate adult.” Apparently she has to be present for my questioning because I’m under eighteen. I don’t know what’s so appropriate about her—her gray hair, her flowery blouse?—or what an inappropriate adult might look like in comparison.
As the questions begin, I see a ghostly twin of myself hovering beside me. The twin is telling the truth. Each part of her confession makes her lighter so she floats into the air, higher and higher like the part in Mary Poppins I used to love, where the old man levitates to the ceiling.
Except the real me is rooted with terror to her chair. Denying everything, as I’m pretty sure Becca’s round eyes were urging me to do, before we were led to separate rooms. They ask me if I know what pills Becca was taking at the time, and it seems safest to say I’m not sure. They want to know whether Becca liked Nick. “She thought he was okay,” I tell them. “She didn’t really know him that well.”
Then they want to hear all about that Friday night again.
“I went to meet Mum at Costcutter.”
“What time was that?”
“Um . . . probably about five?”
“Can anyone confirm you were out of the house at that time? Other than your mum?”
I’m struggling to grasp the significance of all their questions. I want to stick as close to the truth as possible—apart, of course, from the words my ghost twin is mouthing.
“Linda. We saw our neighbor Linda Clarke on the way home.”
The policemen write this down, then without explanation disappear from the room. Mrs. Appropriate offers me a reassuring smile but the pink flowers on her blouse make my eyes ache.
At last the policemen return. “Thank you, Miss Thomas. You’re free to go.”
Really? I can go? What does that mean? What will happen next?
Mrs. Appropriate rises to her feet. “I’ll show you back to Reception, Kate.”
Mum’s waiting, looking small and slumped in a black plastic chair against a big white wall. She was questioned just before me, by the same two policemen; we weren’t allowed to talk to each other in between. She gives me a searching look as I approach.
“I’m allowed to go home,” I say.
“Good . . . that’s good.” She pats my shoulder but her anxious frown sticks in place. “Let’s get out of here.” She stands up, glancing around. I think of my visit here almost two months ago. I’m glad nobody seems to recognize me from that.
“What about Becca and Auntie Rach?” I ask.
As if on cue, we hear Auntie Rach’s voice. We turn to see her at the far end of the reception desk, leaning toward the woman behind the screen. Her words carry: “I want to see my daughter.”
“What’s going on?” I ask Mum.
“I don’t know, love.” Mum walks forward and I shuffle along beside her.
Auntie Rach looks up as we get near. Her face is red and shiny, like a glazed cherry.
“They’re keeping Becca in,” she says. “I think I need to get her a solicitor.”
Everything smears. All I can see is a blur of light with the negatives of my aunt and Mum emblazoned onto it.
Mum and I come home while Auntie Rach stays at the police station. When we get back to the flat I turn freezing cold and can’t stop shaking. Mum puts me to bed, brings me a hot Ribena, lays her hand on my forehead, like I’ve got flu. I think she’s going to speak but she stays quiet, her palm a heavy blanket on my skin. I’m almost asleep by the time I hear my bedroom door hitch on my lumpy carpet as she closes it behind her.
Sometime during the night I half wake to the hiss of an argument. I swim up through layers of sleep, disentangling myself from a net of bad dreams, and I make out Auntie Rach’s voice, and Mum’s . . . but no Becca.
Mum saying, Trouble ever since she got here . . .
And then . . . pills. They were Becca’s pills, and they killed him.
Sleep drags me back down. When I next open my eyes, the silence feels solid. There’s a clear expanse of carpet where Becca’s sleeping bag should be. I haul myself out of bed to find that Auntie Rach is gone. So are all her things, Becca’s too.
The news comes a few days later. Time has become elastic by then, a rubber band stretching from the point at which I stirred the pills into the beer and eggs, forever in danger of snapping back. Mum and I barely talk. Often I catch her looking at me sideways, a question in her eyes. She’s as pale and tired as she was before he died and the weight’s still peeling off her.
The phone rings while I’m in the bath. I hear Mum’s footsteps travel toward it but can’t tell what she’s saying once the ringing stops. I get out, pull on some clothes and venture into the living room. Mum’s perched on the arm of a chair, twirling an unlit cigarette.
Her eyes slide toward me. “Becca’s been charged.”
“What?”
“With Nick’s murder.”
“Murder?” The word burns. I can’t swallow it, must spit it out, but it won’t shift and I’m running out of air. “But . . . no . . . that’s crazy . . .”
“Is it?” Mum pinches each end of the fag, little crumbles of tobacco escaping. “Becca’s always been unpredictable. And she’s had an obsession with Nick since she got here.”
I shake my head. “No. The pills . . . he took them accidentally, surely . . .”
“Then why would she lie about her meds? Why would she change them, try to cover it up?”
There’s a falling in my chest. “I don’t know.”
Tears shine in Mum’s eyes: the first I’ve seen since Nick died. “I should’ve made her leave when she started saying all that stuff about him.” She starts to sob, then folds over and cries so hard she can’t keep herself upright.
I can’t stand to see her so upset, can’t stand to think of Becca in a cell, can’t imagine what will happen once I’ve confessed. Because I have to now. How can I live with myself if I don’t?