Two Little Girls. Kate Medina

sliding both hands down the curtains in unison this time.

      Again – three.

      ‘What the hell are you doing, Jessie?’

      ‘I’m just looking at the stars, like I said,’ she managed. ‘They’re stunning tonight.’

      The curtains were straight. She knew in her logical mind that they were straight, but the electric suit still hissed and snapped.

      Four.

      Quickly – five. Still no release.

      Perhaps if she ran her hands down the curtains seven times, lucky seven, she’d know they were straight.

      ‘Enough now,’ Callan said, his tone one of suppressed anger. ‘Come back to bed.’

      ‘In a minute.’

      She had to reach lucky seven, then the curtains would be straight, the electric suit would die down, she’d be able to return to bed, make love with Callan, not think about Carolynn and the lies that she had told. Not think about two little dead girls.

      ‘For fuck’s sake, Jessie,’ Callan muttered, subsiding back against his pillows.

      How many times? Four? Had it been four?

      She couldn’t concentrate, knowing that Callan was watching her. Her rational mind acknowledged that her behaviour, the need, was abnormal, but the compulsion to perform the ritual was too strong to resist.

      Four? No – no, five.

      ‘I can see Gemini,’ she managed, running her hand back down the curtain again. Yin and yang. Light and dark. Good and evil.

      ‘Stop now, Jessie.’

      Without answering, she shook her head.

      She was pretending to look at the night sky, but Callan knew exactly what she was doing, recognized the compulsion that drove her to perform the ritual even as he found it impossible to understand. The curtains were perfectly aligned, but that didn’t seem to matter. Her OCD had worsened since she’d been invalided from the army and he had no idea what to do about it, how to help her.

      Seven. The heat from the electric suit died, as if she’d found the secret emergency ‘Off’ switch.

      When she returned to the bed, Callan was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Sliding under the covers, she shuffled across, closing the space between them and pressed her chilled body against his. Curling an arm over his chest, a leg over his thighs, she buried her face into his neck. His body was warm, but she could only feel his bones and the muscles that wrapped around them. Nothing yielded to her touch.

      ‘I need to go to the bathroom,’ he said, rolling away from her.

      He locked the bathroom door and switched on the shower. His erection had died, but his balls were aching. Stepping under the jet of warm water, he tilted forward, resting one hand against the cool tiles, letting the water run down his back while he masturbated. Jessie would know what he was doing, but he didn’t give a shit.

      When he climbed back into bed she was lying motionless, staring up at the ceiling as he had been while she’d been fiddling with the curtains. Though he knew that the compulsions were out of her control, he felt unreasonably angry. He had been so ready to make love to her that it hurt.

      ‘I’m sorry, Callan,’ she murmured, shifting on to her side to face him. Reaching out, she traced her fingers across his cheek, to the scarred rose of the Taliban bullet wound on his temple.

      ‘It’s fine,’ he muttered, not moving, not responding physically.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I’m a pain. I know that I’m being a pain. More than a pain.’

      He sighed. ‘It’s fine, Jessie. I understand.’ Though he didn’t.

      ‘I love you, Callan.’

      Sliding an arm around her, he pulled her close and kissed the top of her head, the slight dampness left on his skin from the shower, warming between them.

      ‘I love you too, Jessie. Now go to sleep.’

      ‘Night, Callan,’ she murmured.

       Now go to sleep.

      But would she? Could she? Her mind was starting to race again.

       12

      The only view that Buena Vista benefited from was a three-sixty of other static mobile homes, so close on all sides that a swinging cat would have had its head caved in. Buena Vista itself was dark cream, a tarmac parking area to its left-hand side, empty of cars, an ankle-high white plastic picket fence demarcating a narrow, rectangular garden to its right. Lights shone through grey net curtains that covered a full-width window at the near end, and other smaller aluminium framed windows dotted the caravan’s carcass, casting yellow rectangles on to the surrounding mobile homes. Though nothing about him or Workman overtly said ‘police’, their combined forty-plus years in the force must have left some indelible external mark, because he sensed that they were being watched by multiple pairs of eyes as they skirted Buena Vista to locate the front door.

      In the narrow garden, a rotary dryer sagged under the weight of washing, limp in the cool night air, and someone had planted a few perennials, most of them wilted from neglect. But it was the child’s pink bicycle leaning against the concrete steps leading to the door that tightened Marilyn’s throat. He plucked at the knot of his tie to loosen it, the result fruitless, the constriction in his airways undiminished.

      Before he knocked, he glanced over his shoulder at Workman. Her expression was detached, her gaze fixed resolutely on what would have been his back, if he hadn’t turned unexpectedly and caught her eye. She wasn’t the only one who appeared devoid of emotion. As he turned back to knock, he met his own faint reflection in the rectangle of mirrored glass set into the door panel, recognized the studied expression of neutrality that he’d become so adept at fixing to his face when the situation required it.

      The woman who yanked the door open before his fist had connected was a little over five foot tall, heavy in a solid, shapeless way. Her dark hair, pulled into a tight ponytail, was dyed a few shades too dark, accentuating the paleness of her skin. ‘Indoor’ skin, Marilyn found himself thinking, despite her living right by a stunning beach. Green eyes – the little girl’s eyes, Jodie’s eyes, Marilyn recognized immediately – ringed with red, met his. He raised his warrant card and Debs Trigg stepped back from the door, her face collapsing in on itself.

      She had called the police when she had discovered Jodie’s bed empty and unslept in, and seen Marilyn’s appeal to identify the dead child on a news channel. She must therefore have had a strong suspicion that the murdered girl was her Jodie, but their poker-faced presence at her door was the final big nail in the coffin of her hope.

      An animal yelp of pure pain rooted Marilyn to the spot. Jack-knifing on to the sofa, Debs Trigg scratched clawed fingers down her cheeks, raising bloody red weals in their wake. Workman shoved past Marilyn, knocking his shoulder in the cramped space, and caught Trigg’s wrists.

      ‘Don’t, love, don’t do that. Please don’t hurt yourself like that.’

      He should have stepped forward himself, he knew, should have grabbed her wrists himself, but from the moment he had set eyes on her all he could think of was Zoe Reynolds, his mind spinning back to Carolynn on her knees in the beach car park cradling Zoe’s limp body and howling, and later, sitting opposite him in the interview room at Chichester police station, so composed by then, so closed-down. He had been wholly unable to see anything in those dark eyes, or to decipher the secrets buried in the brain behind them. A second child was dead because of his ineptitude.

      His gaze moved past Debs Trigg and Workman to the photograph of Jodie on the shelf behind the sofa, a ten by eight colour shot of a laughing child,