The Murderer's Daughter

Destiny did not lead Phil to the shy, thin girl with brown hair, nor did it whisper to Liona to pay attention to the tall man with dark curls, intense blue eyes, and thin serious lips.

Bad luck let Liona lose her virginity standing with her dress pulled up to her waist and Phil's breath heavy on her cheeks. His jeans didn't make it to his ankles. They were caught somewhere in between, like a flag in mid cast.

When Liona stumbled into Phil, she was studying mathematics in College. During school she had been the brightest student. At home her ability had been irrelevant. In the farm and the long slender house which looked like a severed arm, dropped into the middle of green, her short sightedness out passed all correct answers. She was not made for physical work and didn't understand horses.

For years Liona dreamt of getting away, but the degree was harder than she imagined. Math was the only thing she'd been good at all her life. She couldn't confess that she was out of her depth. And even if she could, she had no one to talk to. She lived in an apartment with another girl, Nikki, who worked in a bar and barely glanced at Liona.

Liona's shoulders had started to slump. Her head was kept down. Months into her first year she walked the long corridor with her hands full of books and didn't see the quick determined strides of the young man in front. His rigid arms were like arrows by his side.

Had she noticed him, she would've stopped and given some distance between his exit and hers. Only when he swung the door closed and cursed, did she look up to see the glass flying straight for her, twinkling in the evening sun before it crashed into her face and sent pieces of spectacles dripping from her face like tears. Luckily she had closed her eyes. There were no injuries, only glass frames hanging suicidal from one ear. His hands were on her arm, pulling her out so the light fell on her closed eyelids like a kiss. "Your glasses...can you see without them?"

She shook her head.

"Do you have another pair?"

"At home..." she tried to open her eyes, but the light stung and brought tears. His features were a blur of wavering lines. She thought he smiled.

"Where do you live?"

She gave her address easily, as if she'd spent her whole days opening up, instead of hiding in corners.

"I'll take you."

Holding her hand half heartedly, he brought her to the car. The light sliced through Liona's eyelids like a knife and made him look larger than life. She liked the feeling of being led, of someone taking control. All her life, she hadn't been able to lose herself because she'd been too obviously out of place.

He opened the passenger door, and she slid in. With the directions to her building between them, they drove in silence.

Her apartment was on the first floor. She knew immediately that Nikki wasn't there and fumbled with the keys. He was holding her books. As she stepped inside, his gaze on her back made her uncomfortable. Eyes bore through clothes, and brought blood rushing to the surface. His attention scared and thrilled her. Watching her with more than a little interest, he made her feel small.

"My glasses are in the bedroom..." The words tumbled inside her dry mouth. She felt as if time stood still.

He nodded and waited. Swallowing hard, Liona meandered to her room, her hands grazing the couch and armchair, like a slow motioned high five.

Phil followed with slow and even steps. When he stopped at the bedroom door with his hands empty, she was standing in the middle of the bedroom, facing him with eyes half closed. She had abandoned the idea of getting her glasses, as if it would be easier to see him in outline alone.

"What do you want?" She felt as if she'd been waiting her whole life to ask that question. It was directed towards her hard working mother, silent father, the sister she longed to be like, Pen of the broad shoulders and hands made for horses, it was directed at everyone, but had been waiting for him.

He moved towards her without answering. She forgot to breathe as he zoomed in and stopped inches from her, looking down. She wouldn't fight this.

This decision had been made at the front door, when his attention turned into something calculating. The hand that touched her breast was large and swallowed her up. Fingers grazed her nipple and made her gasp. He moved down her stomach. When he touched her between her legs for the first time, the warmth mixed with fear made her muscles stiffen, like something being locked up.

She felt him bend and the hand move inside her skirt, heard the rustle of his belt and zip, before his breathe was on her cheek, and he was inside her, sending a ripple of pain through her body and a tear down her cheek.

It was over quickly. His moan slipped down skin. Lips brushed her cheek. It was not quite a kiss. Then he was stepping away while fixing his trousers.

She was afraid to move in case everything of her would slither onto the floor. "I need my glasses." Her voice came out shaky and uneven, as if it was tied to that part of him moving down her thigh.

"Where are they?"

She hadn't noticed the deepness of his voice before, how it had the ability to slice through bone. "Bedside cabinet, in the drawer ...

She waited, still as a statue, as he retrieved the case and came back to her. She had become aware of her dry mouth, and realized she'd never been so conscious of her body, the way she stood with feet apart and shoulders slack, arms at her side, palms in. She felt the sweat run through its lines, felt her toes cling to the soles of her shoes. He handed her the case. Her heart quickened as she opened the container with fingers that seemed not a part of her anymore, moving of their own accord, dancing mischievous.

When she put her glasses on, he was watching her. His eyes were the darkest blue she'd ever seen. She could've gotten lost in his gaze because there was nothing there to hold onto. She wanted to believe he was too busy seeing her to reveal himself.

She didn't know if her body felt full or empty, if she wanted to hit him or hold him but she knew she didn't want to be alone. He couldn't walk out as if nothing had happened. Silence would make her crumble helpless to the ground. Without him, there would be no one to help her up. He started to move away.

"Don't..." The plea stopped him. Narrowing eyes made him seem wary of feeling.

He watched her walk with faltering steps towards the kitchen. She felt off kilter but would not think of the blood running down her leg and staining her sock and the way her body tilted away from it. She felt like the leaning tower of Pisa, moving from herself. She took a saucepan from the cupboard under the sink. He was behind her. Words were getting caught in her throat, lost between her heart and mouth. It took a while before, "my names Liona..." crawled out.

"I know... your books"

When she turned to him, he looked out the kitchen window. His change of focus made it seem as if he'd taken a step back. She cooked in silence, and they ate with the sound of their forks hitting the plate.

While inside her, under the table and away from prying eyes, a sperm was whooping with delight, and racing toward an egg that had run out of places to hide.

The next day Liona stayed at home. She couldn't face lectures or the people in her class. Her eyes were sore from crying, and curled up in the bed, she let her body go hungry.

Phil came back that evening. Nikki opened the door to him on her way to work. When she looked at him, she saw his jaw tighten in irritation and walked out without saying anything to her flat mate about her visitor. The hardness of his gaze against her back made her steps quicken and brought a moment of hesitation at her car. With the key in the door, she looked back to see him watching her, and concern for the boring girl she had the misfortune to share the apartment with, changed to icy discomfort.

She slipped into the car as Phil disappeared into the apartment. From where she sat, Nikki could tell he closed the door slowly and quietly.

Liona was lying on her side, trying to read when she felt his presence and looked up. He was studying her without censorship. It was impossible to speak as he walked to the foot of the bed. When his hand went to his belt, she stayed focused on the blue eyes. "Were you thinking of me...?"

She imagined him restless, that tall body pacing back and forth with need of her.

He didn't answer but holding onto the blue stillness of his gaze, Liona drowned in everything she needed to believe. Her legs floated to lie open on the tossed duvet. Kneeling behind him on the bed as he put on shoes, she found out his name. "Phil what...?"

"Lappin..."

"Phil Lappin," She liked the sound, "what are you studying."

"Pharmaceutical chemistry..."

He started to leave and she rose on knees, so she resembled a begging dog. "Aren't you hungry?"

He stopped, his shoulders were loose. She could see the shrug in them.

"Hang on."

She went to the bathroom and stood in the bath naked from the waist down, humming a tune to herself as she washed. She'd already discovered the strength of his smell. That first day, she fell asleep and woke shocked at how the scent between her legs had filled her bedroom.

Liona stopped going to college. She spent her days waiting for Phil. He always arrived when Nikki had just gone to work. Sometimes Liona felt he was watching the place, waiting for the moment of opportunity. It was hard for her to understand how she felt about his stalking. Walking cautiously to peep out the window, she didn't know if she yearned to have those serious eyes devouring her, or see open space.

When she wasn't looking for him, she was running to the bathroom. Her stomach wasn't right. A week after meeting Phil she could barely hold anything down. Mornings saw her kneeling by the toilet in homage. She thought she was love sick, until Nikki stopped her one day and asked rudely, "Are you shagging that weirdo?"

Liona pulled from her grasp and walked away, but her legs had started to tremble.

The realization crashed down on her, as if the embryo had only now found its place in her belly. The weight of her pregnancy was suddenly unavoidable.

"I just know." She told Phil when he stood before her. The irritation in his eyes made them flash like sirens.

"That's ridiculous." He snorted, before darting for the door. Liona was off the bed, grabbing him with two hands. "Don't go." Her tearful sobs dropped between them but he didn't miss a stride, just pulled that bone filled arm away and was gone, to leave her a weeping mess on the floor.

He found her there, curled up, half asleep, her nose running down her chin.

His shadow fell over her before the test landed on her shoulder and rolled off to lie grinning on its side. "I'll wait." he said and watched her stand.

She came out of the bathroom minutes later with the test in her hand as if it was an injured bird. He knew the minute he looked at her. "You want to keep it."

She nodded. "We should get married." Her shaky smile fizzled with his stare. It was a wall separating them. When he turned to leave, she couldn't stop him. It seemed all her will had been peed onto a stick, to leave her voiceless.

He came back two days later, found her lying on the bed unwashed and groggy. The test lay beside her like a sleeping baby.

Late that night, Nikki found Liona waiting on the couch. Her smile was half fright, half excitement. "I'm getting married."

"...Because you're pregnant."

"No, we're in love."

Nikki shook her head and left the room.

The next week, while Phil was getting dressed and Liona lay on her stomach watching him, she asked him to drive her to the farm. He looked back at her. "Why?" He seemed softer, almost vulnerable and she thought it was the near nakedness that opened him up.

"Because I need to see my parents and buses are a nightmare..."

He shrugged. She felt her heart bang against her chest. She couldn't do it alone, but she didn't want to tell him in case it would frighten him away. "Fine..."

She jumped up, stretched in a smile. He stood before her arms made it around his neck. Looking down at her, he finished buckling his belt. "I'll pick you up Saturday around 10."

She nodded, afraid to say thanks and push him away further. When he was gone, she allowed her exhilaration to come out and play. Friday night she barely slept from nerves.

She had never taken a boy home before, now here she was barely nineteen and getting married. He picked her up early and they drove with the radio filling the space between them. Glancing at him every now and again, she tried to read how he felt, but the flat eyes and easy mouth gave nothing away. With her legs moving with the music, her nervousness rebounded of windows and she thought part of it came from him.

Parked outside her parent's house, Phil's focus stayed on the front window, following the progress of bird shit that had hit them just as the engine stopped. Liona took it as good luck until he told her. "I'll wait outside."

She held onto his arm, leaned so close she thought his cheek ruffled with her breath. "You can't wait out here, it'll look bad."

"I'm staying here."

"I can't go in without you."

"Fine, don't tell them." Phil turned the key just as her mother appeared at the front door. "Please, come with me."

"I don't need their approval."

"But I do..."

He looked at her with hard eyes, "That's not my problem."

When her mother took a step towards them, Liona got out of the car, though all she wanted to do was drive away, and watch the tall figure recede into the background.

She went straight into the kitchen, where her dad was making tea, and sat at the table with the matriarch barring the door. The woman's squinting eyes said enough, curiosity squeezed out of them like puss from a zit.

"I'm getting married." The teaspoon twinkling in the sink sounded like a weak yelp.

Her mother walked towards the table, caging her in. She was always good at making her daughter feel small. "To that man outside...?"

"His names Phil..."

"I don't care what his name is," Liona glanced at her father leaning against the sink. He was looking at his crossed feet. His hair, which had started to turn grey when she was a child, fell around his slender face. He had a way of being absent when present, of staying far enough away that she could never ask for help.

"Why is he waiting outside? Does he think he's better than us?"

"He's just shy."

"Shy...?"

"You could invite him in." Her words barely made it to the table before being blown apart by her mother's guffaw. "He wants us to go out to him...are we supposed to owe him something."

Liona's head shook.

"Well?" Her mother's attention made her crumple. Hands went automatically to her belly, to save the child from the fall.

"Oh God, you're pregnant!"

She couldn't answer.

"And he has the gall to drop you here like a piece of used baggage. What about college? Are you going to give that up too, use this as an excuse?"

"It's not an excuse."

"Get out." The even calm hit Liona like a fist. If there had been rage she would have something to argue against. Anger was easier to fight than resolve.

"Dad...?"

Her father drank down his tea, dropped the mug in the sink, took his jacket from the back door and walked out. Liona felt the sickness rise and catch in her throat. With a hand on her mouth, her mother's sigh made her stand on shaky legs.

Once in the car, she commanded Phil to go without looking at him, and spent the entire journey staring out the front window. He never asked her what happened and she couldn't bring herself to tell him. It was easier to pretend she didn't want them in her life.

Three months of knowing each other, when her belly had started to swell slightly, Phil and Liona married in a registry office and moved into a two bedroom apartment close to college grounds. Within a year he stopped wanting her so often, once or twice a week he might arrive home with a hunger that she would try to fill and would inevitable leave her empty.

The arrival of their little girl Beatrice helped Liona fill the days as she waited for Phil to come home, and the silence once he arrived. With her daughter's help, Liona became lost in fairy tales and weaved them to suit the hard edges of her life. So by the time Phil was finished his Phd and they moved to the large four bedroom house four miles from town, Liona imagined they were happy.

Liona's breathe would snuggle into the curves of Beatrice's ear like babies in the womb as she made up stories. "On my wedding day I wore a white dress that came all the way to my ankles, your father wore a smart suit and looked so handsome, it's the only time I saw him wear a tie, there was flowers and music and a lovely cake, everyone cheered."

"And danced..."

Liona nodded, "until we could dance no more...now off you go. I have to get dinner ready..."

Beatrice hopped off her mother's knee and ran with fairy lightness to the sitting room as Liona humming a tune was lost in a memory that never happened. She believed in her lie so thoroughly she forgot about her wedding photo, which was angled on the mantle piece, so her photographed eyes were focused on the door and made it look like she wanted to jump from behind glass and escape.

After months of searching for some softness in Phil, Liona's apprehensions were pushed forward on her wedding day. As she said the words, 'I do' her heart threw objection after objection, so by the time she signed the registry book and the camera clicked, she was at her most honest. The one time she allowed herself to acknowledge the truth; it was recorded with a pale expression and rigid mouth, so no matter how she tried she couldn't deceive her daughter.

With her mother's humming following her, Beatrice passed below the mantle piece, like a shark testing waters. Eventually however, her eyes were almost level with her parent's.

She pulled her mother to the image, "what's this?"

Liona looked down at her daughter and tried to smile.

"Where's the cake?" Beatrice's eyes were beginning to fill.

The hand pulled away from her, and Beatrice felt loneliness hit her like a thump in the belly. The pain left her breathless.

"I have to get dinner," the words were too light and airy, as if her mother wasn't really there.

Beatrice watched her walk out, and with the sounds of banging saucepans allowed herself to cry. She would never ask her mother about her romance again.

At seven years of age, Beatrice started to see the world with grown up eyes, and knew it was her mother's detachment that made this happen, as if they had to balance each other out. The more her mother moved inward, the more the heavy, morbidity in her father's silence had the ability to touch Beatrice. She noticed with the sound of his car in the evening, her mother busied herself, so when Phil came in, Liona could turn her back from the gaze that slipped off her as if she was someone come in to do a job. Beatrice didn't know who she disliked most, her father for his distance or her mother for her inability to bridge it.

Still no matter how vulnerable Liona seemed, Beatrice couldn't forgive her need to pretend. It was impossible for her to understand how Liona didn't realize her deceptions would be discovered. Didn't she know that the little girl with her father's dark blue eyes and dark hair would find the holes in her story the moment she looked at Liona, not yet twenty sitting at a table in a white blouse with a ruffled collar? There were no flowers the day her parents married, only a large book opened up on the table in front of them, where they had to sign their name. As Beatrice got older, the idea that her mother was signing on the wrong side and going into debt for no reason at all, hit every time she looked at the young woman's face.

Without her daughter's believing eyes and excited questions, Liona's body started to go against her. She wasn't strong enough to keep up the pretense alone. She suffered headaches and couldn't sleep.

Before Beatrice's eighth birthday, Liona found herself outside the doctor's with palpitations that made it impossible to get out of the car. She sat for two hours feeling like her heart was being pushed out of her. Her hands slipped off the steering wheel and her legs were weightless. When she managed to get into the surgery, she broke down in the waiting room, her sobs seeping through all her cracks. The doctor prescribed xanax and melatonin for her. When she took her first pill, standing outside the chemist, she had a flash of Phil moving inside her, and so began the second love affair of Liona's life.

Silence in Beatrice's house became propped up by the elastic, dazed smiles of her mother and her father's thorough lack of imagination. By the age of ten she spent as little time as she could there and sought solace in her best friend's home, which was across the road. At night she and Valerie would speak to each other in code, lights flashed on and off and reached out from opposite windows.

She had known Valerie since the day they moved to the area. Joanne came over to welcome the new family and was holding Valerie's hand. The moment the four year old girl stepped into their new neighbor's kitchen she was gone from her mother's side and laughing with Beatrice.

They were inseparable from that day forward and the mothers would take turns minding the children as they played together. As the years went by and independence saw them stepping away from their mothers and into their own little world Valerie rarely came to Beatrice's house.

"Why don't you want to come to my house for a change?"

Valerie shrugged. She was honest to a fault and Beatrice didn't know if she wanted to hit her or hug her when she looked towards the ground.

"Well!" It was easier to be mad.

"We're not noticed at my house so much."

Which was true, Liona would knock on the bedroom door, inquiring if they wanted cookies or to rent a movie, and recently she had started to peek inside the room, like someone in their age group, to ask if they were okay. It embarrassed Beatrice and made Valerie feel guilty for the pity that rose for the woman, an emotion she felt towards the shy, square girls at school, and shouldn't feel for her best friend's mother.

"That's not the reason." Beatrice argued.

"What are you talking about?" Valerie asked.

"I know my parents are weird."

"They are not, your mother's nice."

"She is not, she's..." She couldn't think of the word. Delusional was not in her vocabulary. "She's a liar."

"That's a bit unfair."

"No its not, bet everything she told me was a lie, even how she met Daddy, she said he broke her glasses because he was so nervous when he was asking her out to dinner."

Valerie's chuckle annoyed the other girl. "What?"

"I can't imagine your dad nervous. He's too boring, remember that time we dressed up as witches for Halloween and tried to scare him."

Beatrice felt the ripple of laughter ease her. "Yeah, he didn't even notice."

Her friend shuffled closer to her on the bed and put her arm around her. "We're your family too."

"It's not the same," made Valerie straighten in defiance.

"Course it is, we're sisters."

"Really..?"

"You know we are."

Beatrice nodded, her face beaming, "yeah, sisters..."

"Forever..."

"Forever..." Beatrice agreed. They hugged until Valerie's father came between them with the promise of cream buns that had just been taken out of the oven.

Joanne ran her own bakery from the large, commercial kitchen at the front of the house. Two ovens emitted the aroma of freshly baked bread every morning. It smelt like home.

When a boy asked Beatrice out for the first time, she came into Joanne's kitchen with red cheeks and unable to stop smiling. With Valerie's mother she giggled and told them about Pete waiting for her outside the school gate with a compilation album he had done for her. They had walked into town together and when his hand slid into hers she thought she'd been plugged in.

Valerie was in love with Pete's friend Aaron, whom half the population in their year liked. With Joanne sitting across the table, their excitement at the prospect of him asking her out made them jump constantly in their chairs, like flies caught in a glass jar.

That evening Beatrice went home and showed none of the thrill that been oozing out of her in the other house. She was afraid her mother would hold onto her new romance and mould it into something false.

For eleven years Beatrice treated her neighbors as her chosen family.

But things began to change with an early morning phone call from Joanne. Half asleep, she answered her mobile. "Valerie, do you know what time it is?"

"It's not Valerie. She's isn't here, and her mobile's turned off." The concern in Joanne's voice made Beatrice sit up in bed.

"I had an early morning delivery so I didn't go into her room until half an hour ago. What happened last night?"

"She left early because Aaron was with some one else. She said she'd get a taxi."

"She was supposed to get home with you and your dad..." Under the sobs, Beatrice could discern the hard tone of blame.

When Beatrice stumbled into the kitchen, her parents were having breakfast. "Valerie didn't come home last night."

Liona's back straightened. Flustered, her gaze went from her daughter to Phil, who brought the newspaper down to show an unconcerned face, which made her relax. "I'm sure it will be okay."

"You're not sure of anything..." Her daughter mumbled before she ran out the door.

Joanne was staring at her phone when Beatrice knocked and entered. She was a slim woman with thick brown hair tied in a messy pony tail. "How could you let her go alone"?

"She wouldn't let me go with her." Beatrice pleaded. She could hear water dripping from the loose tap as green eyes finally settled on her. They were the same colour as Valerie's "Nick's gone to look for her. There's no one else to phone, is there?"

Her head shook as she stepped closer. Though her instinct was to keep a distance she couldn't do it. Joanne was like a mother to her. "Maybe she fell somewhere..."

"You would've seen her."

"No, Dad was late, he had a flat tire" Beatrice said, feeling the irrelevance of the statement, though in the following weeks she would whisper it again and again, as if said enough times she would believe it.

"Go home Beatrice."

She felt as if her heart had stopped. She had wanted Joanne to tell her everything would be okay. But the woman, who had always been so strong and certain, would barely look at her.

Beatrice ignored her mother's curious gaze as she walked through the kitchen. Sitting on her bed, with her body folding inwards as if it was enough to protect from Valerie's absence, she discovered her friend's phone was turned off. She kept dialling the number. Each failed attempt made the horrible sick sensation grow, so when she heard the high pitched screaming, she felt the vomit move through her throat in hot gags. Her hand went to her mouth, her eyes stung with tears.

The thorough despair in the voice that landed on the bed beside her was like nothing she'd every heard before. Joanne's grief made her want to curl up, and hide, but somehow she made it to the open window, where the sight of Joanne struggling with two police made her breathless.

Squirming out of their grasp, the woman darted to Beatrice's house, and started kicking Phil's Volkswagen Passat. Mud was encrusted on its rims; tell tale signs, like chocolate around the mouth of a thieving child.

"She should have come home with you," Joanne's screeches drifted with trembling precision towards the glass, and brought Beatrice to life, so she dashed passed the room where her father stood looking out the window with hands in his pockets, and lips in a tight line.

Beatrice ran down the stairs and out the front door. "Where's Valerie?

"They found her in a ditch" Joanne howled, "she was supposed to come home with you and they found her in a ditch".

Valerie had been discovered in the woods by a walker, her white legs luminous on brown soil.

The police were at Beatrice's house within minutes. Sitting in her kitchen, Beatrice could hardly look at them as they questioned her. "When was the last time you saw Valerie?"

"At the night club..."

"What time did she leave..?"

"Twelve thirty..."

"What time did you go home?"

Before she could answer, Phil's lie bounced across the table and smacked Beatrice in the face. "I picked her up at 1 am."

When she looked at her father, who was sitting at the head of the table, the muscles around his mouth remained firm and his eyes were fixed on the detective in charge of the inquiry. "Why are you wasting time with us, shouldn't you be talking to taxi drivers?" He protested, and Beatrice wanted to believe he hadn't told the truth in order to prevent needless investigation.

Beatrice cried for days in her bedroom, and left so many smudges on the framed photo of herself and Valerie, it was difficult to see the arms draped around each other. The emptiness was incredible. They had done everything together. Every morning she used to look at her friend's house with a smile, now it loomed behind curtains with dark sadness.

She avoided her parents. Her mothers soothing noises grated her senses. That Liona should think, 'it'll be alright' was fitting for the murder of a teenage girl made Beatrice want to slap her, her teeth clenched with it, once she felt the nails tear against the skin of her palm from her mockery.

Phil barely looked at her. He moved through his days as if nothing had happened. He never mentioned Valerie. One evening in the sitting room, Beatrice started to cry when her friend's favorite show came on. Phil glanced at her. There was nothing held in it, no concern or curiosity, just a mild glazing over that made her feel as if a stranger sat beside her.

It was a relief to go back to school two weeks after the funeral. She hadn't considered her classmates had been waiting for her to return, while rehashing what happened to Valerie, as if she was some character in a movie, rather than a girl they had talked to.

While Beatrice walked down the tree lined avenue with her head down, girls appeared by her side, "are you okay? Would you like to talk about it?" She saw the fascination skim across eyes, before they reined it in with fake concern. Fuck you, she thought, and they saw it in her tightened mouth.

At break, girls with the smell of cigarettes on their breath eased beside her, "Do you know what happened to Valerie?"

The hardness of Beatrice's smile made them flinch, before she asked. "Want to know the nasty details?" Her eyebrows moved in mockery, but they lingered, unable to say 'yes', and unwilling to say 'no' just in case they would be given something to devour. Beatrice's ensuing silence eventually made them slip away.

She had never been sought out before. She and Valerie were hardly noticed off the basketball court. Now fame surrounded them. The possessive glances made it difficult to breathe, but she hated more than anything, the way people believed they owned Valerie because of the way she died. Her strangulation robbed her of privacy.

Beatrice stayed far away from people, so nothing of Valerie would be coaxed from her.

As she walked to the back of the school for a cigarette, always alone, wary of even the slightest friendliness, she couldn't admit it was her father's lie that forced her away.

Beatrice could not tell any of those girls the truth. She could not tell them about her father swerving to pick her up outside an empty nightclub an hour late.

Every night she dreamt of Phil in soaked clothes, and every night his inability to meet her eyes made her moan. Beatrice's nightmares rose from her bed and moved through walls so her mother began to toss and turn.

Liona started taking more pills. When Phil didn't come home from work for the second time in a month, she took two melatonin and left Beatrice to sit on her bed and watch the clock alone.

Before Valerie's death, Beatrice had never known her father to stay out late.

When she was younger, she never liked seeing him in the white coat he wore at the pharmacy. It made his hands look too large. The finger nails, always perfectly clean, seemed to have the ability to swallow her reflection. He was too tall and stiff, so she'd concentrate on his face where his sharp features were softened by his generous mouth and lips, or his long neck which looked proud to her, regally bearing the balding head.

As she watched the night back away, she tried to imagine him in the pub, saw him coated in white and knew it didn't fit, enough to make her cry.

The next morning the alarm clock sounded shrill and brought a moan from Beatrice. She hit the off button and sat up. The photo of Valerie was the first thing she saw. The sight was followed by her father's voice reaching from outside the door. "Breakfast will be ready in five..."

She listened for Phil's retreat down the stairs before rising.

Her parent's room was beside her. The door was ajar. Beatrice walked inside. The curtains were open and light spilled on an empty tossed bed. A sound came from the en-suite and Beatrice walked towards it. Liona was standing by the cabinet with her hand on the door.

"Can you drive me to school today?" Beatrice's voice was shaky but her mother didn't notice as she took down a bottle of medicine and unfastened the lid. Two capsules fell into her palm, and looked as innocent as snowflakes until she put them into her mouth. She bent to take water from the cold tap, rose and swallowed before turning to her daughter.

"I can't."

"Because you took those stupid pills, you could have waited."

"No I couldn't, and why are you asking me? Dad always brings you."

"You never want to do anything" Beatrice answered, and moved quickly to look inside the medicine cabinet. Liona's mouth opened in a feeble attempt to argue, but only resigned breath made its way out.

"You sure you have enough pills?"

The woman, old before forty, walked away without answering and sat on the bed, facing her daughter. Beatrice watched her in silence until Liona started to fidget a little, unnerved by the attention, and her daughter knew she would soon be gone. She was good at slipping out of a room.

"Dad was home late last night."

"Was he?

"Don't pretend you don't know."

"I took two sleeping pills, I didn't hear a thing."

"Maybe I should take some."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"I'm not being ridiculous.

She watched as her mother went to the dresser. She seemed fragile as she took a pair of socks from the drawer, before sitting on the end of the bed to put them on. "Please bring me to school."

"I told you I can't."

"You won't.

"What is wrong with you?" Liona asked.

"Come on, breakfast." Mother and daughter stood in a bedroom with Phil's voice between them like an extra presence.

"You can't just hide away mum, not this time."

Liona stood. "I don't know what you're talking about." She tried to be certain but she'd lost that ability after her first day with Phil. Breaking from her daughters stringent gaze, she was at the door when Beatrice said. "We lied".

Liona's movement faltered, as if Beatrice's words had the ability to trip her up but she continued out, and disappeared.

Beatrice ate breakfast with her mother hovering like a dark cloud. Her father didn't notice the curious looks thrown at him, though Beatrice willed them to go through newspaper, and find a place on his chest. She thought he looked ragged.

In the car, an uncomfortable silence pushed Beatrice against the passenger door. Cradling her school bag she glanced at his sharp profile but there was no reaction. He seemed innocent of her discomfort. There was no effort in his face, while she was a ball of tension. She couldn't keep silent, "Where were you last night?"

"At work..."

"Until 2am...?"

The grip on her bag tightened, as he veered to the side of the road. He parked with the tail hanging out and turned off the engine. The road was narrow. Bushes lined its edges. The sky seemed to move down on them. She felt tightness in her chest. The nose of the car touched grass, and she thought of the woods two miles away. She thought of the car swerving on another rainy night, when Valerie should have been with them, instead of thrown naked by the side of the road. Flashes came to her, so she couldn't look her father in the eyes. She felt his gaze on her cheek, and was sure he was smiling. She could feel his enjoyment as if he had laughed out loud. "Do you have something to say to me?"

She shook her head.

"You're just like your mother." His voice mingled with the new born engine.

"I am not." she cried.

As the car sped through country side, she insisted, "I'm not like either of you." And thought she saw a hint of a smile come onto her father's face. His skin looked pale, and she had noticed the red in his eyes when he looked at her. She couldn't think of one friend he could have been with last night and it scared her. It was too unlike him, something was wrong. As the green fields turned to shops and houses, she felt she was in the midst of falling and there was no way to stop it.

When they reached the large arched entrance of the school, she felt his prodding attention on her cheek and got out quickly, mumbling thanks as if he was a stranger doing her a favor.

She watched her father turn the car and drive off, remembering all the mornings when Valerie was beside her and everything but their friendship fizzled to blurring background.

It was impossible to go inside the school and face the curious glances when she didn't know what had happened last night.

"You not going in...?"

She hadn't seen the small chubby girl arrive from behind and the voice startled her.

"Sorry," Louise chuckled, "Do you want company?"

Beatrice shrugged, "sure." She wanted to hit Louise for the delight that was so out of place this morning. Instead she asked, "Got any cigarettes." She knew Louise wouldn't dream of smoking. The girl's smile retreated. "No."

"Never mind..." Beatrice began to walk towards town and Louise ran to catch up. She was inches shorter with thick curly hair falling onto her shoulder, the color of a field mouse. They were in the same class but barely knew each other. Louise hung around with Siobhan, the smartest in the year, and they kept quietly to themselves, though Beatrice liked that they were never part of the morbid gang as she thought of the girls who came fishing for information about Valerie. She didn't want to think about Valerie now. So with her class mate's inquisitive gaze bouncing off her cheek, she felt the anger mount until she stopped with eyes flaring, arms rigid, to stare Louise down, "I thought you were different. What do you want?"

The girl flinched; her averting eyes showed worry which only proved to infuriate Beatrice. She was beginning to think no one was entirely innocent.

"Are you scared?"

The question made Beatrice back up. She felt her stomach move inward as if it had been pushed against a wall, but held her face steady, a mask of nothing, "of what?"

"They haven't caught the guy who did it."

Beatrice turned from the wide eyes and the excitement that she saw everywhere and made her want to puke, but Louise followed her.

"Another girl was found half an hour away. She was dumped in the same way."

She whirled around and stopped the Louise short. "Did you even know Valerie?"

"Kind of, she was nice"

"She was more than nice. She was like a sister to me. How can you use the word dumped"

"It's what happened"

"Yeah and everyone thinks they own her because of it, well they don't. Nobody in that school knew her like I did. And no one has the right to speak of her so freely now, not even you.

"I'm not talking about Valerie, I'm talking about him."

"We don't know if it's a man."

Louise looked sceptical. Beatrice was hit with the revelation that this was how she would appear as an adult, slightly dubious with her place in the world.

She started to walk but Louise wouldn't give up. "I didn't mean to upset you. I just wanted to tell you what we think." She stopped walking, "I thought you'd be relieved."

A smile came onto her face when Beatrice turned. Her curiosity was not from what Louise had said, but the authority in it.

"Why should I be relieved?

"He doesn't even try to hide them, he wants to be stopped".

"How do you know?"

"My dad reads a lot about serial killers.

"It's not a serial killer."

Louise shrugged, as if they were discussing a class assignment. "Okay, technically there has to be three or more victims.

"You sound disappointed."

"Two girls have been killed. I'm afraid something else is going to happen and I thought that's why you looked so worried".

Beatrice felt herself closing up, and with it realised how much she wanted respite from this girl and her advice, but it was impossible to get it from anywhere. "You don't know how I feel."

"Right, sorry"...

"Stop apologising"

Beatrice watched the small mouth open, but nothing was said. She imagined her 'sorry' was stuck in her throat. After a few moments when the idea of being alone scared her, she asked, "What else does your dad think?"

"That he knew Valerie."

"That's crap".

"Wayne Clifford Boden knew his victims." Louise told her.

"Who the hell is he?"

"Canada's vampire killer, he liked biting breasts"

"That's gross." The thought propelled Beatrice into movement, though her steps were tired and heavy, and egged Louise on.

"And Ed Gein knew his victims, I think."

"This isn't some stupid movie, this is real life."

"They were real too. That's why I wanted to tell you. I couldn't say anything after the funeral. You talked to no one then, and anyway it was only after the second girl that we thought it. Dad thinks the first was an accident."

"Her name was Valerie, she's not some statistic. – And do you really think the police wouldn't have said this to me already. They came to my house to talk to me after that girl. God I should know her name. "

"What do they think?"

Beatrice steps quickened. The road was wide with a factory on one side and a large furniture shop on the other. A poster for Samaritans peeled from the shops side wall and looked desolate. Beatrice felt tiny against the sorrowful face peering down from paper, and the memory of the detective's eyes delving into her. His stare had the ability to cut her up.

"Well," Louse persisted and there was hunger in the pronouncement.

When Beatrice started running, she hardly heard Louise call after her and didn't notice the two students, walking in the opposite direction, stop, nudge each other and look at Beatrice as if she was something escaped from a zoo.

All she saw was the grey haired detective and the anger tightening his lips, which was nothing compared to the frustration that ran across his eyes. He leaned across her kitchen table, his hands in mid air as if he could pluck the lie out. She knew the moment she answered her front door to him that he'd timed it to find her alone.

"They were naked Beatrice, do you understand what I am telling you. Two girls, one of them your best friend and they were found with no clothes. Who ever did this knew what they were doing and they WILL do it again."

Beatrice sprinted with tears flowing down her cheeks and hair flying in every direction, though sitting at the table the dark strands had hung onto her shoulders, as frightened as she was.

The detective sat back, "I think you know something."

She wanted to tell him, 'I'm just a kid, why me?" But knew sympathy for her would have disappeared with cold, clammy skin and dead eyes.

Beatrice ran up the street and turned left. She passed a cinema and shop, in a tear filled haze. At an intersection, a police car was waiting at the red lights. The sight stopped her, and she turned, biting her lip, feeling the truth seep out from the tiny gap, just as the lights changed and the car took off.

She was still until the vehicle disappeared. A cardboard cut out of a girl. Her breathe brought her forward. She crossed the road to the bakery on the corner, pulled by the colour in the window, so she didn't notice a middle aged woman emerge from the shop. With her dyed brown hair and light covering of make-up, Mrs Clarke was an attractive, pristine woman. She was wearing a long skirt. A grey coat was closed with a belt around her slender waist. A bag of pastries hung off her wrist.

When she noticed Beatrice, her face softened "Beatrice, are you okay?

The young girl's nod was weak.

"Would you like one?"

Beatrice's attention went back to the window, "No thanks, I just wanted to look at them. They're pretty."

"I suppose you need some prettiness after everything that's happened. I couldn't believe it when I heard the news this morning."

Beatrice looked at the woman with eyes that were starting to glisten. Her stomach was suddenly sick and she was sure if she asked the question, she would vomit all over the pavement. It was impossible to miss her anxiety. Shame reddened Mrs Clarke's cheeks and made her change the subject. "I didn't see you at rehearsals Thursday."

"I only went because Valerie wanted me to..." Her gaze went back to the window, and she mumbled, "She liked Aaron".

"The pantomime might do you good."

In the silence Beatrice felt Valerie between them, raising her eyes to heaven as she used to do when Mrs Clarke turned her back. Pete had been in the pantomime too. He had stood beside Beatrice any chance he got, squeezing between her and Valerie.

The last time she saw him was at the funeral. With a bowed head, he told Beatrice he couldn't see her anymore. It was his fault that Valerie left the disco alone. Beatrice wanted to stay with him because it was their one month anniversary, what crap he said, then added that they should suffer for the loss of her.

Beatrice cried saying she was suffering enough, and received an unforgiving glance before the boy turned his back on her.

Maybe he was right and she hadn't been punished properly for letting Valerie walk into the night alone. She stepped closer to Mrs Clarke and asked, "What news did you hear?" As she saw her head shake with concern before the immaculate mouth opened to let the words fall on Beatrice like dirt burying her, she thought the penance was only beginning.

Beatrice could barely nod her head when the woman had finished. She watched her disappear before she managed to move. The people passing weren't noticed. Her footsteps were automatic. Like a muffled auto pilot, she didn't realise she'd made the decision until she found herself outside the large yellow building full of glinting windows.

Liona was in bed when Beatrice came home. She shook her curled form. "You have to get up. I went to the police. They'll be here once Dad gets home."

"What...?" Drowsiness surrounded Liona like a fog.

"He lied."

"Hmm.."

"Mum, please..."

Beatrice fingers tensed, but she was afraid if she shook Liona again, she wouldn't be able to stop, and the ball in her stomach would rise to make a terrible sound.

The grip on her mother eased with the flash of white on the dressing table. Beatrice grabbed the bottle of pills. It was more solid than the woman lying in the bed, something to hold onto when everything else had been blown asunder. Her best friend had been taken from her, and with her, the woman she had considered as her mum. The 'For Sale' sign across the road felt like another grave stone.

Liona was only getting up when the police arrived that evening. Phil was standing at the sitting room window. "Did you tell them?" he asked his daughter who hadn't been able to enter the room. She was studying him from the hall. "Yes."

"Why didn't you ask me first?"

She searched his face for anything but the calm assurance in which he questioned her and made her feel as if she was the one on trial. With her silence, he smiled, "because you knew..."

"No." She wanted to scream, but her voice came out low and quivering.

"Of course you did"

His eyes were tearing her apart. They roamed with contempt. For those moments standing in the hall, wishing she could shrivel up and disappear, she forgot what he had done. All she saw was a father who had no love for her. "I didn't mean to hurt Valerie..." His voice traveled to her in slow motion, each word pronounced with a clarity that hit her in the stomach. "But your silence was deliberate."

With the door bell, he was moving towards her. She stopped breathing, not wanting to in take his scent and let it mix with her blood. There was too much of him inside her already.

He opened the door. There was relief in the looseness of him, while the three men standing outside were like stone. There were two uniforms and the man whose hair was cut tight and sprinkled with grey. When Phil moved to allow entry, the detective barely shook his head but the movement mixed with the grey steel of his eyes shouted authority. "Not here, at the station."

Then Liona was there, hands on the banisters, wavering lines, quizzical eyes, a child.

"What's going on?"

"It's okay." Phil lied.

"No, it is not okay." The detective corrected, and Beatrice's skin twitched as a chill ran through her. When Phil stepped out of their house a cold air followed him. Beatrice believed it was the three dead teenage girls finally being able to leave. "Where are you going without your jacket?" Liona complained.

Phil stopped. She ran to get it for him, still playing the dutiful wife. Even when he told them everything, she refused to let her fantasies go.

When they were gone, Liona told her daughter. "It'll be okay."

"No, he did it." Beatrice screamed. She wanted to hurt her mother. It was her fault for being so obliging and patient. She never questioned anything. "You knew something was up, that's why you took more pills"

She looked at her daughter, her eyes bright with pleading. "There's a bit of a difference between having an affair and..." she stumbled over the unspoken word.

"And what Mum. Can't you say it..."

"We did nothing wrong." Liona protested.

No one believed that.

When Beatrice returned to school, girls looked at her as if she was a murderess and she wanted to scream, 'it's not my fault', but that was a lie. She'd kept silent for too long, and two families had girls stolen from them. Beatrice had no defense against the mumbles that rose behind her, "can't believe she could show her face," "Jesus, it was her best friend."

Valerie's death was as malleable as play dough in the hands of an infant. What had, only weeks earlier, intrigued her peers, now disgusted them. The fascination was still there, shown with no pretense as girls stopped, stared and nudged. There was no need to disguise the interest, now they were better than her.

Beatrice lasted through two classes before she phoned her mother. Liona collected her at the school gate. Her mother hadn't wanted her to go back to school and glancing at her thin face, Beatrice saw the slight curve of her lips from the belief that her daughter would never leave her now. The delight that rode in the car between them made Beatrice's stomach turn. In the kitchen, watching her mother step lightly towards the fridge, she waved away any notion of food.

Beatrice lay on her bed with her uniform discarded on the floor like old skin, and dialled the number. She wanted a second opinion and had no one else to ask.

"Hello the Samaritans." It was a young male voice.

"Do you think we're just like our parents?"

There was a brief pause. "Why do you ask?"

Beatrice sighed "Can't you just tell me?"

"You sound angry." On a different day Beatrice would have heard his slight tremor of uncertainty. "You're really good at your job, you know that."

"Has something happened?"

She turned on her side, legs curling into her stomach before answering, "I don't want to talk about it."

"Why did you ring this number then?"

"I thought I'd get an honest answer. Can I be different to them?"

"Yes."

She wanted to believe him, "How? They made us, and we learn from them"

"Only what we want to learn."

"We can't just pick and choose. I read once that if a husband is abusive to his wife, there's a chance the son will repeat his actions."

"Is that what you're worried about? Are you afraid of hurting some one?"

She closed her eyes to the pale wall winking back at her, "yes."

"You can control it." he counselled.

"My Dad told me the urge was so strong he couldn't help himself. If he couldn't fight it, how can I? He's stronger than me."

"That's not true." the voice seemed distant now, like it was travelling to her from a different world, a place she had started to close the door on.

"The first murder took him 35 years. Want to know how long the second one took".

She heard only breathing coming down the line. "I'll tell you anyway, three weeks..."

A pause...

"My father is a killer, if you were me would you be scared?"

"What about your mother?"

"Can't you answer a bloody question?" She screamed, and felt sound ricochet off the locked bedroom door, so it hit the young man twice.

"Alright, yes I'd be scared"

She smiled sadly, "Thanks."

"Wait!"

"Too late".

She hung up.

Liona hadn't worried about pills disappearing from her bedside closet. She convinced herself that Phil, in a flurry of concern, had whisked them away.

Beatrice sat on the bed. In the oval mirror on her dresser she studied her curly hair, skimmed her small nose and red lips, which were thin like her mother but long and foraging like her dad's. For the first time since sitting opposite her father at the wooden table whose surface was scarred by other men's crimes, and wishing she could feel something more than the hollow indifference that was mirrored in the man before her, she looked into her eyes. Their stillness took her breath away. The stranger looking back at her smiled, just as the first pill went into her mouth.



It was a starting to drizzle when Valerie walked out of the disco. She wrapped her coat around herself and strolled towards the taxi rank. When she saw there were a few people waiting she kept going. In the open, with no-one watching, she let the tears come. Aaron had kissed another girl in front of her and it felt good to let go. 

Phil was on his way to collect them, early as usual, when he saw her. He stopped the car and told her to get in. She slid into the seat

"There's time yet. We should go for a drive." 

It was said innocently but she tensed, and he smelled it, like any animal with some primitive instinct moving to the fore. Still there was a chance that it would only be a tease. She would guffaw at his attempt to scare her.

But when he pressed the central locking, Valerie didn't smile. 

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