Kara Abbott: fifteen years old; blonde; beautiful.
Dead.
Mark tried to focus on Kara as he walked towards the lifts, still in shorts and T-shirt from his early-morning squash game, but her blonde hair kept morphing into darker, more exotic locks, and her slightly chubby face kept thinning out to the beautiful, haunted one that seemed to be shadowing his thoughts.
He had been so mortified last night when Julia hadn’t come back. When Alex had turned to greet them, Mark had had the strange sensation of all his optimism fleeing his body with each deflating exhalation of breath. Worse still had been watching Chloe ramble on for half an hour trying to ignore the empty chair next to her. Tiny particles of her pity had floated across the table with every word she’d uttered and he’d breathed it in until he felt he might choke. And Alex, fucking Alex, who had so obviously upset Julia – who so obviously knew Julia, probably intimately – had said nothing. The least the man could have done was provide an explanation. Mark felt the muscles in his back constrict as he thought about it.
When they’d decided to call it a night – after one round of wine and no food, much to the chagrin of the waiter – Chloe had looked like she wanted to offer more crumbs of comfort, but by that time Mark had been so livid that he was having trouble keeping his voice down and staying civil. ‘I’ll get the bill,’ he’d rasped at her. ‘You two just go.’
She’d guided Alex quickly away and Mark had an absurd longing to head for the ladies’ toilets to see if Julia was still hiding in there. But he wasn’t going to be reduced to a laughing stock for any bloody woman.
Yesterday, as they’d walked into the restaurant he’d felt great, the best in a long time. He’d taken stock of his work, his recent promotion, his finances, and his impending date, and felt he was slowly building himself a concrete plinth. Every day he climbed a little higher. One day he would perch on top of it, looking down in contentment at all he had achieved. Now he felt as though he were halfway up that god-awful Jenga game his young nephews loved playing, and with one false move the whole thing could come tumbling down at any moment.
He had to stop thinking about her; if nothing else she didn’t deserve his attention after she had humiliated him last night. He needed to get through some of the notes in his briefcase pronto, or he’d never get on top of the Kara Abbott case.
‘Get a grip,’ he muttered to himself as he strode along, causing the receptionist to look up in surprise, unused to any sign of a greeting from Mr Jameson.
He loved playing squash, but this morning had been less fun than usual because he was a lot better than Neil so had to hold back, while still playing well and casually enough to make his efforts look natural. It was a load of bull that events on the court wouldn’t impact on working relationships, especially with someone like his boss, who was fiercely competitive and used to winning. Problem was, Mark was just the same, so he had left the court distinctly frustrated.
Neil had made reference to the Abbott case a few times, and each time Mark had felt a small jolt in his stomach at how much he still had to do. Neil was friends with Kip Abbott, Kara’s father, but to Mark’s way of thinking, friendship and business should be kept firmly separate at all times. Neil would never have got away with this if Mark’s father had still been one of the helmsmen of the company. Now retired, Henry had got a whiff of the case on one of his frequent visits to Lewis & Marchant and had said nothing, but Mark could tell by his expression, eyebrows slightly up, jaw tight, that he thought it was a big mistake.
Kara Abbott was the sad end to the kind of bullying story Mark had heard umpteen times. It had started as cruel jibes about her supposed puppy fat. It escalated into pushes, trips, Chinese burns, on one occasion a pencil jabbed into her hand when she moved one of her tormentors’ bags out of her way. There were threats and jeers, which went on and on. When she’d died, Kara had bruises and penknife cuts to her inner thighs, which three perpetrators had enacted on her at the bottom of the long school field, in front of more than half a dozen onlookers. The diary that had been Kara’s only confidante, now tagged Exhibit D, was a slurry of scrawls about her desperation, her loathing of the girls in question, and her incomprehension at what she could have done to have brought all this on herself.
Kip Abbott had been the one to find her, when she wouldn’t come out of the bath. She was fully dressed, blood pooling beneath the cuffs of the shirt of her school uniform. She’d used Kip’s spare razor blades. She was just unconscious then, but by the time they got her to the hospital it was too late. The coroner thought it might have been a cry for help, but Kara didn’t know how to calculate the difference in millimetres of severed skin that would turn her plea into a successful suicide attempt.
Kip had gone to the school the next day, and resigned from his position as the deputy head. Even the kids in classrooms far from the headmaster’s office could hear his shouting from where they sat, taking mock Maths exams. The police had been called.
Kip and his wife, Sally, had initially decided to try to get the girls responsible on some kind of charge. But the school had closed ranks, and the case was deemed impossible to win. So now they were going after the school instead – Kip’s former employers and one of the most sought-after private girls’ schools in the country. And, just to make Lewis & Marchant that extra bit nervous, two of the girls involved in the bullying were children of well-known parents – a politician and his wife, and a TV newsreader and her husband. The media were going to be on them like hungry jackals.
Their chances of winning this high-profile case were deemed, in the legal world, not good, particularly as the inquest into Kara’s death had absolved the school of wrong-doing; in fact, praising it for the steps it had taken to try to help the troubled girl. However, not only had Neil agreed to be subjected to this public mauling, but he’d involved almost everyone in the office in one way or another. Perhaps determined he wouldn’t go down alone, Mark thought ruefully. While Mark specialised in litigation, Chloe had been drafted in to help because she was more used to dealing with passionate and emotive cases in her daily family law work, and they were both down to attend court with Neil when the trial began next month.
Mark was looking forward to working with Chloe, although when she gave that coy little smirk as she talked about Alex, he always wished he could dig up something – anything – to turn that smile into more of a grimace. And now, he realised, it looked like he’d stumbled on something that could do exactly that. In fact, maybe last night hadn’t been a complete write-off, he consoled himself. He checked his watch. Yes, if he were quick, he had time. He headed past his office, and strode along to the one next door.