Girl A(38)

My brain was heavy, laden with last night’s rust, but it was starting to grind.

‘You didn’t even know about the inheritance until today,’ I said. ‘So what was going to happen then?’

Delilah combed back her hair. Behind it, she wore her little smile. ‘God loves a cheerful giver,’ she said.

‘You had already decided to ask me for money,’ I said. ‘Hadn’t you?’

‘Why else would I be here? It’s an added convenience, I suppose, that now there’s something you actually owe me.’

And Ethan wouldn’t have helped Gabriel. A few weeks after he became the headteacher at Wesley, after the articles and the interviews, somebody broke into the house in Oxford in the middle of the day, when he and Ana were at a fundraising lunch. A witness had seen a man carrying a record player and television out of the front door; ‘I didn’t report it,’ the witness said, ‘because it was the man who lives there.’

‘It could have been anybody,’ I said.

‘Come on, Lex,’ Ethan said. ‘You know exactly who it was.’

I nodded to Delilah.

‘I’ve got the money,’ I said. ‘We don’t need to use what Mother’s left. And I can pay, for a recommended time frame, if you sign that form. But I want the name of the hospital. I need to speak to him myself.’

Delilah downturned her lips and wrinkled her forehead, in a freakish parody of my concern. She had made that face before, I thought, when we were children. We looked just similar enough for the impression to be accurate; that was why it hurt. ‘You’re so serious, Lex. You were always so serious. Whatever. Show me where to sign.’

She printed out her name at the bottom of the document, carefully, like a child in the term’s first exercise book, and I took the paper to check it.

‘I never did change my name,’ she said, ‘but I was always surprised that you didn’t change yours.’

‘The hospital, Delilah.’

I handed her the hotel notepad, and she wrote down the name of a well-known psychiatric hospital, an hour or so from London. Well, I thought. This will be expensive.

‘I’d get to him quickly,’ she said, ‘if I was you.’

‘And why’s that?’

‘The company Gabriel keeps – I don’t think you’ll be the only person after his cut.’

She looked around the room, retrieved her jacket, and crossed to the threshold.

‘But you wouldn’t know that,’ she said. ‘Would you?’

She had always walked with inverted feet. When she was little, it gave her a kind of bashful charm, but over time, Father became frustrated, and admonished her whenever he saw her toes beginning to turn. Now, I could only just make it out; she must have worked to correct it.

‘I suppose I’ll see you at Ethan’s wedding,’ she said. ‘So we have that to look forward to.’

‘Before you go—’

She had been standing in the darkness of the hallway, but now she stepped back towards me, into the early light.

‘You don’t really believe it,’ I said. ‘Do you? That they loved us? That they were trying to protect us? After everything that happened? You tried to escape, Delilah. I heard it. You and Gabriel. I heard what happened to him, that night in the hallway. The things that were done to us—’

Her face was changing.

‘We each believe what we want to believe,’ she said. ‘Don’t we? You more than anyone.’

A kind of resolution set across her features, then. It was the face that a child makes on the highest board at the swimming pool, when they decide to jump.

‘Yes,’ Delilah said. ‘You like to pretend that you know best. But let me tell you what I think. I think you’re the saddest one of all of us. When we were children, and we had all of those … supervised visits. Who were they protecting us from? Girl A. The craziest of the lot.’

‘I’ll sort out the money,’ I said. ‘And I’ll let you know how long we can afford.’

‘Do you remember what you said to me the last time we spoke?’ she asked. ‘How things became this way? I bet that you can’t even remember that.’

‘Goodbye, Delilah.’

‘I’ll pray for you, Lex. I always pray for you.’

‘Well. Thanks.’

When I was sure that Delilah would have left the hotel, I walked through the lobby and up to Harley Street. Dr K’s office was set back from the street, behind the branches of a spindly pear tree. I knew it from the blue plaque, and an old stone shell above the door. Karl Ghattas had lived there: Philosopher, Surgeon, Painter & Poet, said the plaque. ‘I think that you should take it down,’ I had said to Dr K when I first visited. ‘That’s enough to make anyone feel inadequate.’ The street was still entombed in shadow, and I rested on the steps of the building and caught my breath. I found the windows of Dr K’s office, with the curtains drawn. It would be hours before she arrived, and she could be travelling, or on holiday. Besides, it was Monday. It was time to go to work.

Here is another story. Mother was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, before a full courtroom. When the judge announced his decision, he clarified that one of Mother’s victims had made a specific request to approach her before she was taken from the dock. There was Delilah, with her arms outstretched. Ethan called me from the court steps, to castigate the whole hysterical process, and the next day, despite Mum and Dad’s protests, I bought every newspaper and read the reports. A court artist had captured the embrace. The judge is grave. Mother’s features are smudged with distress, and a fast pencil. But all you can see of Delilah is the back of her head. She could be weeping for the parents whom she had forgiven. She could be smiling into her noble, Motherless future.