Good Girl, Bad Girl(4)

“How is that Evie’s fault?”

“Every time I talk to her, I want to curl up in a ball and sob. I took two months off earlier in the year—stress leave, but it didn’t help. Now my wife is threatening to leave me unless I agree to see a marriage counselor. I haven’t told a soul that information, but somehow Evie knew.”

“How?”

“How do you think?” Guthrie doesn’t wait for me to respond. “Believe me, Cyrus. She can tell when people are lying.”

“Even if that were true, I don’t see why I’m here.”

“You could help her.”

“How?”

“Evie has made an application to the court to be released, but she’s not ready to leave Langford Hall. She’s dyslexic. Antisocial. Aggressive. She has no friends. Nobody ever visits her. She’s a danger to herself and others.”

“If she’s eighteen, she has the right to move on.”

Guthrie hesitates and tugs at his collar, pulling it away from his neck.

“Nobody knows her true age.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s no record of her birth.”

I blink at him. “There must be something—a hospital file, a midwife’s report, school enrollments . . .”

“There are no records.”

“That’s impossible.”

Guthrie takes a moment to finish his beer and signal the barman for another. He drops his voice to a whisper. “What I’m about to tell you is highly classified. I’m talking top secret. You can’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”

I want to laugh. Guthrie is the least likely spy in history.

“I’m serious, Cyrus.”

“OK. OK.”

His beer arrives. He centers it on a cardboard coaster and waits for the barman to wander out of earshot. A shaft of sunlight is slanting through a window. Full of floating specks, it gives the pub the ambience of a church and that I’m hearing Guthrie’s confession.

“Evie is the girl in the box.”

“Who?”

“Angel Face.”

Immediately, I understand the reference but want to argue. “That can’t be right.”

“It’s her.”

“But that was . . .”

“Six years ago.”

I remember the story. A girl found living in a secret room in a house in north London. Thought to be eleven or twelve, she weighed less than a child of half that age. A mop-headed, wild-eyed, feral-looking creature, more animal than human, she could have been raised by wolves.

Her hiding spot was only feet away from where the police had discovered the decomposing body of a man who had been tortured to death, sitting upright in a chair. The girl had lived with the corpse for months, sneaking out to steal food and sharing it with the two dogs that were kenneled in the garden.

Those first images were flashed around the world. They showed an off-duty special constable carrying a small child through the doors of a hospital. The girl wouldn’t let anyone else touch her, and her only words were to ask for food and whether the dogs were all right.

The nurses dubbed her Angel Face because they had to call her something. The details of her captivity dominated the news for weeks. Everybody had a question. Who was she? Where had she come from? How had she survived?

Guthrie has been waiting for me to catch up.

“She was never identified,” he explains. “The police tried everything—missing persons files, DNA, bone X-rays, stable isotopes . . . Her photograph went around the world, but nothing came back.”

How could a child appear out of nowhere—with no record of her birth or her passage through life?

Guthrie continues. “She became a ward of the court and was given a new name—Evie Cormac. The Home Secretary added a Section 39 Order, which forbids anybody from revealing her identity or location or taking any pictures or footage of her.”

“Who knows?” I ask.

“At Langford Hall—only me.”

“Why is she here?”

“There’s nowhere else.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She was placed in a dozen different homes, but each time she either ran away or they sent her back. She’s also had four caseworkers, three psychologists, and God-knows-how-many social workers. I’m the last one standing.”

“What’s her mental health status?”

“She passed every psych test from Balthazar to Winslow.”

“I still don’t understand why I’m here.”

Guthrie sucks an inch off his pint and looks along the bar.

“Like I said, Evie is a ward of the court, meaning the High Court makes all the important decisions about her welfare while the local authority controls her day-to-day care. Two months ago, she petitioned to be classed as an adult.”

“If she’s deemed to be eighteen, she has every right.”

Guthrie looks at me plaintively. “She’s a danger to herself and others. If she succeeds . . .” He shudders, unable to finish. “Imagine having her ability.”

“You make it sound like a superpower.”

“It is,” he says earnestly.

“I think you’re exaggerating.”