Perfect Death: The gripping new crime book you won’t be able to put down!. Helen Fields
‘Is it Astrid?’ he asked. ‘I knew she wouldn’t leave me alone forever but walking in here, after what she did …’
‘It’s not her,’ Ava said. She knew how hard it would have been for Luc to have faced Astrid – the woman who had set him up on a false rape charge. In many ways, seeing the woman waiting for him downstairs was going to be even worse. ‘Luc, I don’t know what’s happened. She hasn’t offered any explanation for why she’s here, but your mother is downstairs.’
Luc ran a hand through his hair, looking for words but finding none.
‘I don’t want to see her,’ he said finally, as Ava made her way around her desk to stand nearer to him.
‘I understand,’ Ava said. ‘You’ve every right to feel like that. She abandoned you when you needed her …’
‘It wasn’t just abandonment. You couldn’t possibly understand. I was accused of a rape I didn’t commit. It was devastating. I wasn’t even sure I had the strength to make it through to the trial. My mother was the one person who should have known, without question, that I didn’t do it, that no part of me was so monstrous. When she left as I was going through the trial preparations, I even started to doubt myself. There were times when I thought that maybe I had raped Astrid and just invented another reality in my own mind. How could I have been innocent when my own mother couldn’t bear to stay with me and support me through it?’
‘Luc, I’m sorry this has come as such a shock. But she’s here. Downstairs, right now. There must be a good reason why she’s come. Don’t you want to find out what that is?’
‘Not particularly,’ he replied.
‘Do you want me to go down and talk to her first?’ Ava offered.
‘She changed her mobile number,’ Luc said. ‘I phoned her, left voicemails, texts. I emailed. I wrote letters. Every silence I got in return was a nail in the coffin of our relationship. It was months, Ava. Months from when she left to when the court case collapsed and I was told I was free to go. Even if I could understand why she wasn’t able to support me before the trial, she’s had more than a year to contact me since it ended. There’s no excuse, no possible explanation for treating your own child like that.’
‘Luc, please. I lost my mother. By the time I knew she was dying it was too late to get the years back when I’d been too busy, too obsessed with myself to spend time with her. I never had the chance to forgive her for all the petty, perceived slights of growing up. I don’t want you to make the same mistake,’ Ava said.
‘Ava, this is my life, not yours. And these aren’t perceived slights. These were body blows. I’m not making any mistakes,’ he said.
‘I get it. Really, I do. But go down there and face her. If nothing else, tell her how you feel. Find an ending to it all. There’ll come a day when you need it,’ she said. Luc walked towards the door. ‘So you’ll speak with her?’
‘I’ll treat her exactly the same way she treated me,’ he said. ‘I’ll let her talk to her heart’s content. She can beg for forgiveness, tell me she needs me, whatever. Then I’ll cut her out of my life forever.’
‘I can’t stay indoors any longer, Christian,’ Lily’s sister, Mina, whispered into her mobile. ‘I’m getting out of this house once my parents are both asleep. Can you meet me?’
‘Mina, your parents need you. If they wake up and find you gone, they’ll be terrified,’ he said. ‘You know I’ll come if you need me, but I’m not sure it’s the right thing for you to be going out in the middle of the night.’
‘It’s suffocating me. Lily’s room’s right next to mine. Mum insists we keep the door wide open, as if shutting it pushes her further away. But I walk past it and see something of Lily’s – a scarf, a pen, a bloody hair band for God’s sake – and it starts again. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never stop crying.’
‘All right, I’ll be there. Wait in the bus stop up the road from your house. Just do me a favour and leave your parents a note explaining that you needed a break. It’s not fair to risk them finding an empty bedroom,’ Christian said.
‘You’re right. I will. Just please come.’ She rang off.
Christian went to shower and change his clothes. He’d spent the earlier part of the evening in a dive bar that held open mic evenings with a covert smoking room at the back and now his clothes reeked of cigarettes. Mina would hate it and he wanted to be able to comfort her the way she needed. Pulling on a denim shirt and black jeans, he wrapped a scarf around his neck and grabbed a thick duffle coat. He grabbed a book on the way out, throwing it casually onto the back seat. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was one of next term’s texts for Edinburgh University’s Masters in US Literature course. Mina was always fascinated with what he was reading.
His car was the typical student vehicle. It had scraped through its most recent vehicle check, had the lowest insurance policy available and inside you could pretty much see the springs coming through the seats but it was functional and avoided breaking down, most days. Before he left his flat, he made two hot chocolates, put them in reusable takeout mugs (Mina was ever conscious of the environment), and picked up a bag of marshmallows he’d been saving. He couldn’t do much to put a smile on Mina’s face right now, but he could do that.
She was waiting for him in the rain, just her head poking out from the bus stop as Mina looked for his car. Christian pulled over and flashed his lights, wiping condensation off the inside of the passenger window so she could see it was him.
‘Hey you,’ he said, as she threw herself into the passenger seat. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘Could we just drive for a while?’ Mina asked. ‘I need to feel as if I’m moving. Everything else has stopped.’
‘Sure,’ he said, ‘we don’t even have to talk. Where are we going?’
‘Take me as close as we can get to Arthur’s Seat,’ Mina said. ‘I have to see. I want to figure out why the hell Lily did what she did.’
Christian put a cup of hot chocolate in her hands before setting off.
‘Mina, are you sure about going to Arthur’s Seat? I’m sure Lily would have hated the thought of you hurting yourself like this.’
‘Yeah, well you never met her, so please don’t tell me what she would or wouldn’t have liked. Oh God, Christian, I’m so sorry. I don’t know where that came from.’ Mina looked away, out of the passenger window. ‘I’m not sure I even know myself any more. Shit, listen, you can drop me off if you like. I’ll understand if you just want to go home. And thank you for the hot chocolate. I don’t deserve it. Or you.’ Mina dashed an already rain-wet sleeve across her eyes.
Christian looked at her hunched shoulders, her hair that hadn’t seen a shower or a brush in the two and a half days since her sister’s body had been found, at her feet twisted in towards one another as if her body was literally trying to make itself disappear. He reached into the driver’s door compartment and retrieved the marshmallows.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said. ‘But I am going to insist that you eat at least a dozen of these. You need sugar and you need a friend. You’ll have to do more than snap at me for a second to make me desert you.’ Mina turned her face back towards his and did her best to force a smile. ‘If going up to Arthur’s Seat is what you need, then that’s what we’ll do. There are no rights or wrongs when you lose someone you love. There’s only getting through each day. Perhaps you will feel something. Let’s find out.’
They drove for fifteen minutes, the traffic less of a problem than the driving rain, until Christian parked up on Queen’s Drive as close as he could get by road to the area