The Doll's House - [21]

Pippa living on, as she would have to now, in his memory.

Was it a wise move to stay here? Kristy, his wife, clearly wasn’t sure – ‘Wouldn’t you be better off here with me and the boys?’ – though she left the final decision up to him. It was hard for her, Daniel now thought to himself. Kristy was deeply shocked by Pippa’s death, as they all were, but she didn’t really like Pippa – Kristy felt she was self-oriented and needy – and her grief was necessarily compromised by her feelings, whatever she might say to the contrary.

Even now Pippa was a source of tension between them – someone Kristy didn’t much care for but whom Daniel couldn’t give up on. The ties that bind a parent to a child can never be broken, however awful their relationship might be, those ties just are. Even in death, that doesn’t change, which is why Daniel had to stay. There would be many awful things he’d have to face here – he hadn’t yet been to the beach where they found her – and he hoped he would have the strength to see it through, for Pippa’s sake if not his own.

But looking out over the bleak vista of Southampton, his courage wavered. This place was so alien to him, so threatening. And hanging over everything was the terrible knowledge that out there somewhere, shrouded in darkness was the person who stole, killed and buried his only child.

35

It was chaos. As she had expected it would be. A wall of noise assaulted Emilia Garanita as soon as she entered the hall – a cacophony of shouts, recriminations, laughter and more. Knackered, she plonked her keys down on the hall table and made her way towards the source of the anarchy.

Her father was serving out the remainder of a lengthy prison sentence and her mother had done a bunk nearly a decade ago, meaning that Emilia – the eldest of six children – had been in loco parentis now for more years than she cared to count. She was still young herself, shy of thirty, but she felt much older, particularly today. The briefing at Southampton Central had yielded nothing concrete and the rebuff from Helen Grace had rankled, setting her on edge for the rest of the day. Some days were like that – fruitless, irritating and depressing.

She entered the kitchen to a litany of accusations and counter-claims. The youngest of her five siblings was only twelve, the closest in age to her not twenty-five, so there were lots of fragile, over-sized egos to create conflict and consternation. As ever, Emilia’s presence calmed things and slowly the grievances of the day were put to bed. As the family sat down to eat together – pork and Chorizo stew, a legacy of their Portuguese heritage – Emilia’s mood slowly began to improve. As exasperating as her family were, they nevertheless loved and accepted Emilia for what she was, warts and all. Some people didn’t like her character, other people despised her because of her job and everyone reacted to her face, half of which was badly scarred following an acid attack by her father’s drug-dealing employers. She had learnt to ignore it, then later took advantage of it, deliberately testing people with her disfigurement to see if they’d react. But, as bullish as she was, the frowns her face provoked still hit home. Not here though – not at home – where she was abused, teased and cherished just the same as everyone else.

Slowly, the younger children sloped off to bed. Her closest sister, Luciana, kept her company through Game of Thrones, then she too called it a day. Leaving Emilia alone with her thoughts.

Her career – her life – had stalled. Her disloyalty in selling the sensational Ella Matthews story to the Mail, rather than to her employers, had not gone down well and she had very nearly lost her job at the Southampton Evening News. The job that had been promised at the Mail never materialized, leaving Emilia in the undignified position of having to beg to keep her old job – a job which she still thought was beneath her. She had always hoped regional crime reporting would be a stepping stone to greater things and even her worst enemies couldn’t deny that she was good at her job. But here she was, still stuck in Southampton, with much less chance of getting promotion than she had had before.

She needed a scoop. Something big that could put her front and centre again. The body on the beach had sounded exciting at first, but would probably end up being some depressing drugs murder or the like. And Helen Grace – the one police officer round here guaranteed to create news – was determined to give her nothing. As she drained the last of her wine, Emilia felt sure that the answer to her present conundrum lay with Helen Grace.

She had to get her back onside – by means fair or foul.

36

Charlie took a deep breath and stepped inside the pub. She had been inside the Crown and Two Chairmen so many times – this drinking hole was a second home to most Southampton Central coppers – but tonight she felt nervous. As she made her way through the crowds towards the knot of familiar faces in the corner, she felt the colour rising in her face, the heat of the pub mingling with her anxiety to give her a distinctly pink hue.