Two Little Girls. Kate Medina

vexed tears that had been poised behind her eyes since the moment they had snapped open this morning, were creating a film across her corneas now, furring Roger’s face, softening the uncompromising light in his eyes.

      ‘And I think that you should stop seeing that psychologist. She’s too close.’

      Carolynn gasped; couldn’t help herself. In the short time that she had been seeing Jessie Flynn, she had come to live for those sessions, looking forward to them days before they happened and sinking into depression the day after at the prospect of another week dragging by before she’d get to chat again. Really chat.

      ‘Maybe just one more session.’ That plaintive tone again; she hated herself for it. That tone wasn’t her, she never used to be this needy and dependent.

      ‘After today, you won’t need to.’ His voice was firm.

      After the second anniversary of her death, was what he meant. As if life would miraculously return to normal when they woke tomorrow morning. As if life would be wonderful for the 364 days that followed, until the third anniversary, the fourth …

      Carolynn dipped her gaze to the swill of burgundy liquid in the glass. ‘I’ve been careful,’ she murmured. ‘She doesn’t know who I really am. But I think we could be friends. I’d like her as a friend.’

      ‘A friend?’ He laughed, a bitter sound. ‘You’re paying her, Caro. Actually, let me correct that: I’m paying her. That’s why she’s listening to you. A woman like that will have loads of friends.’

      How did he know what Jessie Flynn was like? Oh. She remembered now. He’d collected her after her third session. It had been Flynn’s final appointment of the day, and she’d walked out with Carolynn. Roger had been leaning against the car, warming his face in the late afternoon sun, and she’d noticed even then, though she hadn’t liked to admit it to herself, how his eyes widened when he clocked her psychologist.

      ‘Christ, I might book a few sessions with her myself,’ he’d muttered, half under his breath, as they drove away.

      She shouldn’t have been surprised at his reaction. Jessie Flynn was stunning. She even made those women on the TV chat show look ordinary, with that jet-black waist-length hair and those spectacular ice-blue eyes.

      ‘I’m only protecting you, Carolynn. You know that, don’t you?’

      She gave a faint nod, tuning him out. She could be friends with Jessie Flynn. Tons of her old friends had been like that – cool, edgy, beautiful – when she had lived and worked in London, before motherhood, before Zoe. She had been like that too. Before.

      ‘Let’s save the wine, eh?’ Stepping across the carpet, he laid his hands on her shoulders. ‘I’ll change out of my work clothes, have a shower and we can have a glass together.’

      As he dropped a hand to take her glass, the words on the television cut into Carolynn’s consciousness. She hadn’t even noticed that the chat show had ended.

      ‘… The body of a young girl has been found at West Wittering beach. Details are still coming in, but police believe that her death was not due to natural causes. A doll was found by her side. Detective Inspector Bobby Simmons of Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes has warned parents to be vigilant.’

      The wine glass slipped from her fingers, every rotation in its tumble to the carpet freeze-framing in her mind, like individual pages in a flip-book. The glass hit the cream wool and cartwheeled, once, twice, red liquid fountaining out of it, spraying Roger’s pale mustard boots, peppering the wallpaper, coating the carpet in blood red. A sliver of her brain registered the damage and knew that Roger would be furious about wine stains on his brand-new nubuck Timberlands, but all she could think was:

       Another dead girl. Another doll.

       7

      The figure in the background was unmistakable, his black suit and hair so stark against the white quartz sand that he resembled an overgrown crow. His presence made it impossible for her to take in what the reporter speaking to camera in the foreground was saying.

      West Wittering beach, wasn’t it? Jessie recognized it from a couple of months ago, when Callan had booked them a day of kite-surfing lessons. It had been a disaster. She had been unable to grip the bar properly because of her ruined hand and had ended up storming off in a fury – blaming Callan, of course, transferring all her frustration, her anger at her own impotence, on to him.

      It was raining down there too. The sky above the beach was metallic and wetly luminous, water pooled in shallow dips in the sand. Her eyes moved from Marilyn to the InciTent, where Tony Burrows, his lead CSI, toddler-rotund in his white forensic overall, was massaging his bald spot with a latex-gloved hand. Though she had only met him once, she recognized the tic as tension. Yellow ‘Police Do Not Cross’ tape flapped in the wind, sealing a section of the dunes off from the press and a handful of local gawkers.

      So, it was suspicious death or confirmed murder – must be, to get the police and press out there. Christ, that will keep Marilyn happy, she thought cynically, recognizing a moment after the notion entered her head how the last six months had coloured her attitude to everything, hating herself for that negativity. She was good at helping her patients move on from trauma, pitifully poor at heeding her own lessons. Physician heal thyself – what a joke that was.

      ‘ . . . the body of a young girl has been found in sand dunes at West Wittering beach …’

      Oh God. A dead child. Now I really hate myself.

      The picture switched suddenly to the Channel 4 News studio and Jessie froze. The view of the beach on the screen behind the presenters had been replaced by a photograph of a woman. A confident, healthy-looking woman, late-thirties, size ten or twelve, a sensible weight, blonde hair cut in a glossy bob, clear brown eyes focused on something just to the left of the camera. Her head was tilted and she was smiling, showing a perfect row of pearly white teeth.

      The name displayed beneath the photo – Carolynn Reynolds – was not the name Jessie knew her by. The face and body had changed, too. In fact, the woman in the photo was barely recognizable as the woman Jessie had seen five times in her consulting room, the fifth time only this morning; the woman who had never met her gaze directly with those lightless brown eyes.

      Nevertheless, she was sure that it was Laura. She had spent five hours studying her facial features, every nuance of her expression, her body and its language.

      ‘Do you want a glass of wine?’

       Laura.

      She held up a hand to silence Callan. ‘Shhhh, I’m listening.’

      ‘I’ll take that as a rude, ungrateful yes,’ he muttered, planting a soft kiss at the base of her neck, which made her shiver despite her focus on the television screen. Then he padded barefoot into the kitchen, naked except for a pair of white boxers, his sandy blond hair dishevelled from bed. He’d worked forty-eight hours straight on a trafficking case, had got home at lunchtime and retired to bed for the afternoon. When she’d got home from work, she had stripped off and slid under the duvet, waking him up by sliding her hand into his boxers. They had made slow and languorous love before he had crashed and she had pottered downstairs in his dressing gown to flick through some patient files with the television turned on in the background.

       Laura.

      ‘… the death of this young girl echoes that of little Zoe Reynolds, whose body was found in the dunes at West Wittering beach two years ago today, only a hundred metres from where this child’s body has been found. Zoe’s mother, Carolynn Reynolds, was tried for Zoe’s murder, but acquitted nine months ago due to lack of evidence. No one has been charged with Zoe’s murder. Detective Inspector Bobby Simmons of Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes, who led