The days go by as if I weigh two tonnes; it feels so hard to move my body anywhere. I wake up every morning and my first thought is, I am awake, and then there’s five seconds before I remember what has happened. I think, I wonder if Jonesy is awake, or if she’s going to come into my bed, and that’s when I remember and that is when the sadness comes. It’s so heavy, and I can feel it all over my body. And I just want to go back to sleep because when I am asleep I don’t know she is dead, but when I am awake I do know, and I know I will never see her again and then I start to cry.
I don’t know what to say to anyone. The only thing I can think is that it’s so unfair. I could think of a hundred people more deserving than her to die.
Eventually I start to talk to people again. At first to Eadie, then to the girls in my room. The girls in my room are sad too, but they hug me and hold me tight. Mrs Paterson often comes up to check how I am doing.
At breakfast one morning Mrs Paterson comes and sits next to me. I’m eating my porridge and trying to avoid eye contact with anyone.
‘How are you today, Lesley?’ she asks.
‘Alive,’ I mumble.
‘The police would like to talk to you this morning, if that’s all right with you? They’ve talked to everyone else in the house but they’d really like to talk to you as you were Morag’s best friend.’
‘Fine.’
‘It doesn’t have to be now if you don’t want, you can take your time.’
‘Right.’
‘You don’t have to do it on your own. I can come with you, or Mr Paterson, or Eadie—’
‘Eadie,’ I say.
‘Right, I think she will be on her way over anyway so if you go to your room after breakfast, I will let you know when she and the policeman get here. If you want to go to school afterwards, Malcolm – I mean Mr Paterson – can run you up there in the car, but by no means do you have to go to school.’
I don’t tell her that I want to go to school; I like it at school, when I am in the house I have nothing to do and can’t stop thinking about Morag and crying again, which makes them think I am still not ready to go back to school.
I haven’t been in my room long when there is a knock at the door and Mrs Paterson comes in.
‘Eadie and the policeman are here now,’ she tells me. ‘If at any time you want to stop talking to them you just let Eadie know, and I will be about if you need me.’
‘All right,’ I say.
I walk down the stairs and Eadie is stood by the front door with a man. He’s much smarter than the other policeman; he’s wearing a long brown coat, a hat and shiny shoes. As I get to the bottom of the stairs he takes off his hat and smiles at me. His face is very thin, and his parted brown hair is a bit of a mess from the hat so he smooths it down.
Eadie gives me a big hug. It feels good. She makes me feel safe.
‘Lesley, this is Detective Walker,’ says Eadie. ‘He’s come to ask you some questions about Morag, to get a better picture of her, as no one knew her better than you did. If you could help him by answering them, I am sure it would be really appreciated.’
He crouches down and looks at me eye-to-eye.
‘I know this is going to be really hard for you, Lesley – is it all right if I call you Lesley?’
I nod.
‘I should introduce myself. As Miss Schaffer says, my name is Detective Walker. I’m thirty-seven years old. That’s very old, isn’t it? How old are you?’
‘Twelve.’
‘Twelve? So I am three times as old as you.’
‘And remainder one.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘You are three times as old as me with a remainder of one.’
‘You like maths?’
I nod.
‘It sounds like you might be better than me at it.’ He looks at Eadie who nods as if to say, ‘You are probably right.’
‘Anyway, I am Detective Walker, and if you want to remember that, it’s because in this job I have to do a lot of walking. See my shoes?’
He shows me the bottom of his shoes and they are nearly worn through on the soles.
I smile a little. I don’t mean to, but I can’t help it. He’s talking to me as if I am a baby, but I don’t mind. He’s just trying to be friendly, I can see that.
‘So I am thirty-seven and I have been a policeman for seventeen years, which, knowing you, you will already have worked out how long I was not a policeman for.’
‘Twenty years,’ I say.
He nods. ‘All right, Lesley. I know it will be hard, but it would really help me and the other policemen trying to find who did this if we get as much information about Morag as we can.’
Eadie suggests we go sit at the dining table. As we go through, the detective takes his coat off, then the suit jacket he has on underneath. He puts them on a chair as Cook comes to see if she can get us any drinks.
Eadie and the detective ask for a coffee. I ask for an orange squash.
Detective Walker sits down, gets out his notepad and pen and says, ‘What we are looking for, Lesley, is background. Anything you can tell us about Morag would be useful, any detail you can think of. How long you’ve known her, was she happy, did she have any enemies, who were her friends, all this information could be vital.’
I nod understanding, and Eadie suggests I start by telling him how long I have known Jonesy, and what room she was in.
‘I’ve always known Morag. We call her Jonesy as that is her surname, Jones.’ I realise straight away I said ‘is’ instead of ‘was’.
‘We’ve both been in Cottage 5 since we were three and I dinnae remember before then, so as far as I can remember I’ve always known her. She slept in the junior girls’ room in the bed next to me. She was always my friend, my best friend, we did everythin’ together, other than school as I go to a different school. Even then she would sometimes come and wait for me to get off the bus when I came back in the afternoon.
‘She was a fidget, a real fidget, quite often she would go to bed in my bed and it was always really hard to get to sleep because she would twitch when dropping off and she was even worse when she went to sleep. She would go still, and then suddenly jump like she was being attacked.
‘She loved her doll, Maggie. It’s so manky, but she always had it with her when she went to sleep. She would bring it into my bed. It’s in my bed now. She hated having it cleaned, but it had to be sometimes, as it got horrible. She left it in my bed the night before she died and I will be able to keep it, won’t I?’
‘I’m sure you will,’ says Eadie.
‘Good. So she was lovely and bubbly and she had lots of energy, and she wanted to do everythin’. And she was so nice and why would anyone want to do anything to her?’
‘Did she have any enemies?’ Detective Walker asks.
‘Naw. I mean, not really. There were people who didnae understand her, thought she was a bit out there, a bit crazy, but not anyone that properly didn’t like her. Not like me. People don’t like me cos I go to the grammar school. If anything, they’d ask her why she was hanging out with me. No, people liked her even if they found her a bit much.’
‘Sure, sure,’ the detective says.
I look at him. I really look at him. What is he thinking? Is he trying to work out if someone thought she deserved it?
‘And what did she think of the other incidents?’ he says.
‘You mean the murders?’
‘The other deaths; was Morag scared?’
‘She was scared, we all were, but also excited.’
‘Excited?’
‘I know, she was a bit crazy, but any big news made her excited. She wasnae perfect but why would anyone want to kill her?’
At that point I catch Eadie’s eye. ‘Why would anyone want to kill her, Eadie?’
And then I start to cry. Eadie gets up and puts her arm around me.
‘It doesnae make sense,’ I say between sobs.
‘I know,’ says Eadie, ‘I know.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ says Detective Walker. ‘When I was your age, I had a best friend called William. We were inseparable. But he caught pneumonia and died, and I just couldn’t understand it, how someone who was always there wasn’t there any more. I knew old people died, but I had never known anyone young die, and he was only ten. And I couldn’t help thinking how and why, and I had to fall back on my faith that God would have a plan—’
‘But if God has a plan,’ I say, ‘why would he have a plan to kill Jonesy? That’s just rubbish, that’s a rubbish plan.’
‘We may not know why he does what he does,’ the detective says.
‘Well if he does know then I hate him and I don’t want anythin’ to do with him.’
‘Don’t say that,’ says Detective Walker.
‘Why not? Whit’s he going to do, kill me too?’
‘All right, I think we’ll leave it there,’ says the detective, and he gets up and puts his jacket and coat on. He tears off a piece of paper from his notepad and writes a number on it next to the name ‘Frank Walker’.
‘If you can think of anything that might help us, feel free to call us any time at the incident room. Ask for me and if I’m not there leave your name and number and I’ll call you back.’
He squats down again, puts a hand on my arm and looks me straight in the eye. ‘Lesley, we are going to do everything we can to get whoever hurt Morag. We have many people working on this, and we are going to find that person and they are going to be punished. I am not going to rest until they are caught. You have my word on that.’
I thank him and he gets up and leaves. I am left in the dining room with Eadie. After a few minutes of silence she leans over and says, ‘You did well, Lesley, you did really well.’
I force a little smile. ‘Why would God do that, though?’ I ask her. ‘No one will explain why. If I ask the minister, whit will he say?’
‘I don’t know, Lesley, everyone has their own opinion when it comes to religion.’
‘And whit’s yours?’
‘It’s not for me to say, my view is personal.’
‘Why won’t anyone give me a proper answer?’
‘Because the answer is different for everyone, Lesley; the answer depends on what you believe.’
‘All right, so I am asking what do you believe?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Believe … in the whole God thing.’
‘You think it’s made up?’
‘Yes. I’m more science- and fact-minded.’
‘But that’s whit I sometimes think. I thought that before, and that’s whit I was thinking now, cos, like, why would God do something like that and anyway how would he do it, and like, no one has ever seen him? It must be made up.’
‘Who’s to say what’s right? But listen to me, Lesley, this is very important: you must not tell anyone what I’ve just said. Religion is very important at the Homes and I would be out of a job, immediately, if anyone found out. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’
Mrs Paterson comes into the room and I go a little red as it feels like Eadie and I are talking about something top secret and I think Mrs Paterson can tell.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ Eadie suggests, and we go off round the grounds and have the most amazing talk, like she is talking to me as if I am a grown-up, which no one ever does. If it were possible it only makes me think more of her. She doesn’t think what people tell her to think, she thinks for herself. I vow to myself that from now on I will do that too.