‘Can you stay? What about secondary drowning?’
She shakes her head. ‘I can’t be around you.’
My heart sinks as Melissa closes the door behind her. She leaves me with my body in the present but my head in the past. I feel so overwhelmed by what I witnessed in death that now it’s my turn to cry. I sink into my bed, my brain swimming with memories I’ve carried back from the dead like holiday souvenirs. There’s so much I need to unpack, and I don’t know how to do it alone.
This time it’s a girl I saw.
A dead girl with half her face missing.
I turn my head to one side. And there she is, lying next to me.
Chapter 41
Damon
I feel like a dozen knots have been wound around my stomach and they’re all being pulled together. All night, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this third child and how badly disfigured she is. Half her head has been crushed, making her left eye, lower jaw and an ear nearly impossible to determine. A trail of blood drips from a gash in the side of her head, above her ear. It drops down her neck where it has been soaked up by her sodden T-shirt.
She appeared in only one of my life event recollections. She was lying lifeless on the ground, but not in the same place as Callum Baird. However, I can’t identify where. Her blonde hair is spread out behind her head like a halo. It was hard to pinpoint her age as she was so mutilated, but I’d hazard a guess she was a preteen. There was a little, baby-pink gloss on the two half-lips that remained, and liner around her right eye. Emblazoned across her top was the graffiti-style graphic used to promote the 2012 London Olympics. Hanging from her arm was a green backpack with a flag poking out of a pocket reading ‘Archbishop’s Park Fun Day’.
I wrap my arms around myself as if to protect myself from the cruelty of the world and what it has done to the children I haveseen. How many more are left for me to find? I can only hope she is the last. I keep going round in circles because I still don’t know what they want from me. Did I hurt them? Is that why I keep seeing them? Or do they appear because they need something from me? It must be the latter because I’ve never wished ill on anyone. I haven’t been in a fight in my life, neither at school nor as an adult. Violence isn’t in me.
Soon after dawn breaks, I pick up my phone and google keywords that might identify the girl. It takes a few minutes, but I think I have found her in a story dating back sixteen years.
Police searching for a 13-year-old schoolgirl who vanished on her way home from a pre-Olympics family fun day have recovered a body in an industrial estate two miles from her home.
A search party had been deployed around the Lambeth area where Daisy Barber was last seen. A police spokesman has confirmed a body was discovered at 11.30 a.m. yesterday.
It has yet to be formally identified.
‘Daisy Barber,’ I repeat to myself. The name is unfamiliar. Further stories include a report of her last-known sighting. She had spent the day with her stepsisters and their friends at the park, enjoying fairground rides. Then, at some point, they parted ways, and police believed she’d walked home alone. That was when she vanished.
I search again and follow her story in date order. I learn that, almost four weeks after her killing, someone was arrested in connection with her death and was being interviewed by police.They weren’t named for three days until they were charged with her death and made their first court appearance.
And that’s when the coldest of chills surges through me. Colder than the sea I died in and the ice I pour into my baths.
Because I recognise the name of the person who pleaded guilty, admitting to what they’d done.
It’s all too familiar.
Ralf Lister.
My father.
He is the man who killed Daisy Barber.
Part Three
Immersed
Chapter 42
Melissa
Melissa is sitting at a table in one of Northampton General Hospital’s cafés when Adrienne arrives. It’s mid-morning and the area is bustling with staff and visitors, but Melissa might as well be on a desert island for all the attention she is paying them.
‘Hey,’ Adrienne begins, startling Melissa with a peck on the cheek. ‘Are they for me?’ she asks hopefully, pointing to a banana and a cup of green tea with the string and label from the bag still wrapped around the handle.
‘Yes,’ Melissa says, failing to mention that, a few minutes earlier, she wolfed down a Snickers bar, an almond croissant and a can of cherry Coke before dumping the evidence in a recycling bin. Adrienne has put them both on a low-cholesterol, low-fat diet. But Melissa rarely sticks to it. More secrets, more lies. But by no means the worst.
