Girl A(37)

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘No.’

Delilah’s victim impact statement: the great twist to Mother’s trial. Ethan’s statement was terse and condemning. He did not look Mother in the eye. My statement was read by Dad, while I was at school. Gabriel’s statement was delivered by his adopted mother, and a well-used handkerchief. But Delilah: Delilah gave the people what they wanted. She was flanked by two police officers, who made her look smaller. Somebody had laminated her script, and the noise of it wobbled across the courtroom. She loved her parents, she said. They had wanted to protect their children – to do God’s work. While they had made terrible mistakes, she recognized their intentions, and she had forgiven them. In the dock, Mother slumped amidst hair and tears. The newspapers described Delilah as sorrowful and conciliatory, which made me smile, even then.

She observed me, faint disdain in the lines between her eyebrows. ‘It isn’t good for you,’ she said. ‘It isn’t healthy.’

A slight shake of her head.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘do you have any coffee?’

On the phone, the overnight receptionist was bemused. ‘Didn’t they arrive?’ he asked.

‘They arrived,’ I said. ‘Two more.’

‘You must be having a difficult night, Miss Gracie.’

‘Yes. That’s true. Thank you.’

Delilah was appraising the room. She opened the wardrobe and ran her index finger along the dresses and suits. She took the complimentary body lotion from the side of the bath and squeezed it into her palm. At the desk, she read the note of consent and waited for me to hang up the phone.

‘A community centre,’ she said.

‘There are two assets,’ I said. ‘The house at Moor Woods Road, and twenty thousand pounds—’

‘Alexandra Gracie,’ she said. ‘Philanthropist.’

‘Are you happy with it or not?’

‘It was our home,’ she said, ‘and I’ll be glad to see it used for such a good cause.’

She had retained her small, self-satisfied smile.

‘The money’s more interesting,’ she said. ‘Not least – where did it come from?’

This development, I enjoyed. Bill had emailed over the documentation when I was on the train back to London, and had phoned me right away. The money was attributed to the sale of a handful of shares in a technology corporation, he said, which Father had purchased decades before. ‘If he had bought a couple of hundred,’ Bill said, ‘you’d be millionaires by now.’

A success, after all of this time. He would probably have declared himself the last major prophet. ‘It’s the pioneers who get slaughtered,’ I said to Bill.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘No. Nothing.’

‘The money,’ Delilah said, ‘should be divided between us.’

‘The way I see it,’ I said, ‘is that the house is pretty worthless without some money to transform it. The council will want to see that we’re committed – that we’re willing to make a personal investment.’

‘It’s not for me,’ she said. ‘Although I know that’s what you expect. I’m married now, Lex. He’s a good man – an important man. But he’s specific about his causes. And this – it’s for a cause which is close to both of our hearts. But not to his.’

Ethan had found the wedding announcement on the Telegraph website. Delilah’s husband was the heir to Pizza Serata, a chain of pizzerias marching north from Maidenhead. The marriage had taken place quietly, on a Friday afternoon. All I knew about Pizza Serata was that they had been exposed as donating to anti-abortion charities across the Atlantic, and that the pizzas were mediocre.

Delilah lay down on the bed and rested an arm over her eyes.

‘How to explain,’ she said. ‘We were a family. Weren’t we? At Moor Woods Road. Mother and Father – they tried to protect us. And there are consequences – aren’t there? – to tearing a family apart? Removing that protection. Some people learn to live with it. But others don’t.’

The coffees arrived. They were delivered by a new waiter in a clean, crisp uniform. A visitor from the land of the living. Delilah threw him a smile. ‘You’ve saved my life!’ she said.

The coffee was too hot to drink. We sat for a moment, cradling the cups and saucers. Delilah’s hair fell around her face.

‘Even me,’ Delilah said. ‘I struggled, at first. Alone for the first time, somewhere unfamiliar, and without our family. Mother out of bounds, and what happened to Father. There were things which I questioned, too. But God waited for me.’

She was convincing, Delilah. If you spent long enough listening to her, you could appreciate how she had convinced herself.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘What do you need it for – the money?’

‘It’s Gabriel,’ she said. ‘He isn’t well.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Not so fast. You don’t get to start caring now.’

She held her coffee to her chest, like something she wasn’t willing to share.

‘He’s in a hospital,’ she said. ‘A private hospital. He came to me out of desperation, I think. He knew that I would help him. And he’s doing OK. I had enough money for the first month or so. You know that I won’t beg you, Lex. But you need to understand that I care for him. And you have to accept responsibility – for what you changed.’