When She Was Good, page 34
Each morning I ask her how she slept.
“Fine.”
“Any nightmares?”
“No.”
“How are you feeling?”
By the third question, I get the stink eye, and she says, “Leave my head alone. You are not my therapist.”
I’m teaching her to drive, which will probably end badly. She’ll either steal my car or plow into a queue at a bus stop because she doesn’t listen or slow down. According to Evie, the Highway Code was written by morons. “What’s wrong with overtaking on the inside? Who says a bus should have right-of-way? Why have a horn if you’re not supposed to use it?”
She hasn’t talked to me about what happened in Scotland and the aftermath—the interviews and questions, the lack of action, my failures. I made promises to her. I told her the truth would put her abusers behind bars and set her free. I was wrong. Naive. Culpable.
Evie’s silences are worse than her tantrums. Her feelings are simple, almost linear. When she’s hurting, she lashes out. When she’s frightened, she runs. These are defenses, not reactions, but when she chooses not to speak at all, I feel my heart want to break.
What must it be like—knowing when someone is lying to you? We tell lies all the time, every day, every hour. We lie to people we love, to strangers, to friends, to family. I love your new haircut. You’re looking well. Gee, it’s great to see you. That’s so interesting. I’m five minutes away. I only had one beer. I tried to call. I bought it on sale.… Lying is so fundamental to our existence, it is wired into our DNA. That’s why babies learn to fake cry before they’re a year old and to bluff by the age of two. By four a child is an accomplished liar, and by five, he or she realizes that truly outrageous lies are less likely to be believed.
People usually lie for all the right reasons and with the best possible intentions—to keep families together and to protect relationships and hold on to our friends and make people happy. These are the good lies, not the bad ones.
Knowing all this, I try to imagine how it is for Evie, always recognizing the deceit. Three little words like “I love you” have enormous power in any relationship, but what if it’s a lie? It’s the same with “I’ve missed you” or “I’ll never leave you” or “you’re beautiful.”
This is why I fear for her, because I know she’ll never have a normal relationship or a true friendship; or make small talk with a stranger; or strike a chord with someone new, because their every utterance, no matter how pleasant and innocent, will carry an extra significance when it reaches Evie’s ears. At that moment she will know more than she ever wanted to or expected to.
People think they want the truth, but the opposite is true. Honesty is mean and rough and ugly, while lying can be kinder, softer, and more humane. It’s not honesty that we want but consideration and respect.
My phone is ringing. It’s on the kitchen table. Sacha’s number appears on the screen.
“Are you watching the news?” she asks breathlessly.
“No. Why?”
“Turn on the TV.”
Evie chooses that moment to come inside from the garden and wash her hands in the sink. I press the remote and call up BBC News. On-screen there are images of ambulances and police cars blocking a road. The banner says Manchester. The reporter is live from the scene:
“The vehicle emerged from an underground car park in Deansgate and stopped at a red light, where the gunman approached and began washing the windscreen with a squeegee and a bottle of water. He then knocked on the driver’s window and had a conversation with the man behind the wheel before pulling a firearm from his bucket and firing three shots through the open window.”
In the background, police are erecting a white curtain around a luxury car with open doors. The silhouette of a slumped figure is behind the wheel.
“Earlier the suspect had tried to enter the building in Deansgate through the belowground car park but had been stopped by security before he could enter a service lift. The office block is leased by the Everett Foundation and occupants include a law firm, an investment bank, and several charities associated with the well-known foundation, whose chairman is Lord Phillip Everett.”
Evie is standing next to me. I’m still on the phone to Sacha.
“Who is it?” I ask.
“Fraser Manning.”
“Are you sure?”
“I just had the call from someone on the task force. Manning was pronounced dead at the scene.”
The reporter is still speaking breathlessly from the street corner: “One eyewitness filmed police arresting the gunman only moments after the shooting.”
The scene changes to shaky camera footage of people running across the road and along the footpath, some of them screaming. Drivers are abandoning their cars, weaving and ducking between vehicles, joining the exodus. The owner of the phone keeps up a running commentary as it focuses on the luxury vehicle that is stopped at the lights. A lone figure in a tracksuit top and hood is standing next to the car, the gun clearly visible in his right hand.
Someone yells for him to drop his weapon. He turns at the sound and the camera shakes as the owner ducks behind a parked car, taking cover. He raises the phone above his head, blindly filming. The gunman isn’t in the center of the frame and the image is tilted, but the footage shows him raising his arms, no longer holding the gun.
“Do you have a bomb?” yells a voice. The police.
“What?”
“A bomb. Are you wearing an explosive vest?”
“No.”
“Take off your top.”
The gunman moves slowly, pulling the tracksuit from his shoulders and arms. The hood falls away, revealing the tangled grey hair and wrinkled face of Clayton Comber.
“Get down on the ground,” says the officer.
Comber struggles to get to his knees, using the bonnet of the car for support. Evie gasps and reaches for the screen, as though she’s trying to help him.
“On your stomach,” yells the officer.
Within moments Comber is surrounded by people. One officer is sitting on his back and the other on his legs. Frisked and handcuffed, he is hauled to his feet. The camera footage stops and the reporter cuts back to the live coverage, showing the deserted street and forensic tent now shielding the car and body.
Sacha is talking to me on the phone. “The scarecrow.”
“What?”
“When we spoke to Clayton Comber at his community garden, the scarecrow was wearing a tracksuit top. It’s the same one.”
I remember it now.
“He said he’d do anything,” says Sacha.
“But how did he know?”
Evie is no longer watching the TV. She is staring past me, as though the kitchen has disappeared and she can see into the distance, where she’s searching for someone: a child in a secret room or crouching in the hull of a fishing trawler or shivering in a bedroom above the stairs at a Scottish estate; a child who survived, but still watches the world like a mouse hiding in the walls.
“Evie?”
She’s not listening.
“We should talk about this.”
“I have to water the seeds.”
I watch her leave and return to the garden, where Poppy follows her to the tap and drinks from the running water as she fills a watering can.
I’m not sure if I can save Evie. No amount of love or tenderness or passing time will erase the horrors of her past, but she’s still here, fighting like a demon and a caged lion. Fighting like a girl with the face of an angel and a thousand invisible scars.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Like many of my previous novels, When She Was Good is written in the first person in the present tense with the story unfolding in real time. It is set in 2020 but was written before the global COVID-19 pandemic turned our lives upside down. For that reason, there is no mention of the virus or lockdowns or social distancing. It was too late to alter the story significantly, and it would have spoiled many of the most important plot elements of the novel. I hope this doesn’t distract from your reading experience and you can enjoy a world without the coronavirus, at least for a few hours.
I am supported by a wonderful group of editors, agents, designers, marketing reps, and publishers who work very hard to bring my stories to readers. Without them I’d be a grumpy hermit, surrounded by piles of unfinished manuscripts. I wish to acknowledge Rebecca Saunders, Colin Harrison, Lucy Malagoni, Mark Lucas, and Richard Pine, who read the early manuscript and gave me their fearless and considered advice. None of it was welcomed, but every bit was appreciated.
As always, I wish to thank my backroom staff: daughters, Alex, Charlotte, and Bella, who are spread all over the world, navigating their own paths. And my wife, Vivien, who is coming to terms with a near-empty nest and being isolated with me. God love her, because I do.
Stay safe everybody. We will meet again.
More from the Author
Good Girl, Bad Girl
The Secrets She Keeps
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© TONY MOTT
Michael Robotham is a former investigative journalist whose psychological thrillers have been translated into twenty-five languages. In 2015 he won the prestigious CWA Gold Dagger for his novel Life or Death, and has twice been short-listed for the Edgar Award, in 2016 for Life or Death and 2020 for Good Girl, Bad Girl. Michael has twice won Australia’s top crime-writing award, for Lost in 2005 and Shatter in 2008. And he has twice been short-listed for the CWA Steel Dagger, in 2007 for The Night Ferry and 2008 for Shatter. He lives in Sydney with his wife and a diminishing number of dependent daughters.
SimonandSchuster.com
www.SimonandSchuster.com/Authors/Michael-Robotham
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ALSO BY MICHAEL ROBOTHAM
Good Girl, Bad Girl
The Secrets She Keeps
The Suspect
Lost
The Night Ferry
Shatter
Bombproof
Bleed for Me
The Wreckage
Say You’re Sorry
Watching You Life or Death
Close Your Eyes
The Other Wife
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Copyright © 2020 by Bookwrite Pty. Ltd.Originally published in Great Britain in 2020 by Sphere
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-9821-0363-7
ISBN 978-1-9821-0365-1 (ebook)
Michael Robotham, When She Was Good
