They round a corner, and Miles leans in towards her. He’s talking, but not in any orderly way. Every sentence he utters has vaguely the same meaning as the one before it, as if he needs to keepsummarising recent events in order for them to be true.They found me not guilty. I’m a free man. I can’t believe it’s over. It’s finally over.
‘You better get used to it,’ says Carl, their dad, from the front passenger seat. ‘It never should have got this far. This whole thing has been a giant waste of everyone’s time.’
Polly senses her father is beginning to go off on another of his rants. Carl has been like this ever since Miles’s arrest. While Miles defeatedly bemoaned his bad luck, their father was bullish and indignant, focusing on the injustice of it. He was furious at the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. The charges were laid, he said, not because the police really thought Miles did it but because there were no other suspects, and they were under pressure to act. The onus should never have been on Miles to prove his innocence but the police to find the person who did it. Carl is now making the point for the umpteenth time. ‘At least the jury saw it for what it was,’ he says. ‘A complete bloody sham. Now, we all have to put this behind us.’
Polly wonders for a moment how straightforward that will be: to put it all behind them. But now isn’t the time for such thoughts. Instead, she chooses to comfort her mum, Zara, who is sat to her right, with tears streaming down her face.
Throughout this whole thing, Zara has been so stoic. But now it’s all coming out. Polly suspects her mother reacted to Miles’s arrest in the same way as she did: silently fearing the worst. She knew how badly this could have ended. At times, Zara seemed to feel Miles’s stress and turmoil as acutely as he did. Maybe even more so. In a strange way, Zara had almost as much to lose as Miles. Other than for her brief career as a dancer and fashion model in the eighties, she has dedicated her entire life to the well-being of her family. And this could have broken their family beyond repair.
Miles rests his head gently against Polly’s. ‘I’m not dreaming, am I? It really is over?’
Polly pinches the skin on her brother’s hand. ‘Feel that? You’re not dreaming.’
He smiles. ‘It’s such a relief.’
‘I know.’
‘We reallyaregoing on the trip, aren’t we?’
Polly says nothing to that, just smiles and nods with what she hopes looks like genuine enthusiasm. She assumed that once the verdict came in, he would move on from the whole idea of the trip. But apparently not.
His eyes are wide and wet. Childlike. ‘You were right about everything, Pol. Soon we will be on a flight to New Zealand, and we’ll forget about everything that’s happened.’
Polly pats him on the thigh. She can’t allow him to carry on like this – not right now. But if he does, she’ll have no one to blame but herself. Over the last eleven months, Polly has mentioned New Zealand more often than anybody. But that doesn’t mean she ever actually thought it would be a good idea to jet off the minute he got acquitted. Talking about New Zealand was simply the single easiest way of distracting him from the real issue he was facing.
It was largely symbolic. Before Miles was charged, he’d been planning his trip for a while. When he got arrested, those plans obviously got shelved. Even if Miles had somehow remained in the mood for a holiday, his bail conditions didn’t allow it. Carl had to put down a lot of money as a bond to prevent Miles from being locked up on remand. If Miles had skipped the country, they’d have lost the lot. So, instead of going on holiday, Miles found himself giving notice on his flat and moving back home. Polly has spent a lot of time back here in Bristol, too. A family must stick together in a crisis, and she instinctively felt that Miles needed his big sister around. Before the trial Polly came back from London pretty much every weekend, to check on him. Sometimes she even came during the week, if her brother was due in court. Other than for those court appearances, Miles spent almost an entire year almostcompletely housebound as he waited for the trial to begin. The mood in the house was torturous, and Polly found herself using the trip to take his mind off it. ‘Soon, this will all be over,’ Polly would say, ‘and, before you know it, you’ll be on a flight to New Zealand.’
It was something vivid and exciting for him to focus on. Something positive. A sort of therapy. Miles had developed an ominous fixation on prison, so Polly would sit him down in front of travel programmes and encourage him to visualise himself among mountains and forests; floating through fjords; swimming in cool oceans – anything but picturing himself in a cell. Youwillget there, she told him. Andsoon. She did her best to sound more certain than she really was.
Now though, Miles has been found not guilty, and there’s no reason to use the idea of the trip as a distraction. And he certainly doesn’t need to be flying anywhere. What he needs is to focus on a return to normality.
She’ll make all this clear to him, soon. But now isn’t the time.
They’re halfway home, and Miles has gone quiet, staring out of the window. Polly gives his arm a squeeze. She’s so relieved for her brother. He’s had an utterly miserable year. She’s relieved too for their parents, who have been to hell and back. And, quite honestly, she’s relieved for herself.
Polly’s ordeal might not have been anywhere near as traumatic as her brother’s, but the last few weeks have been particularly dreadful, especially given the amount of media interest the trial has generated. But that is all behind her. Tomorrow, she won’t be forced to go to court. She won’t have to decide which outfit she wants to be in when the press photographers shamelessly train their lenses on her. That’s something they don’t tell you when your brother’s charged with murder: that you’ll be photographed to the same extent he is, simply by virtue of the fact you are young and female. During the trial, images of Polly made the papers every day. Every. Single. Day. Once, she was even on the front page, as if it were her at the centre of this awful crime. One ofthe papers did a profile piece about her.The article, which contained a number of inaccuracies, now serves as the top search result about her on the internet, so that when anyone – a prospective client, for example – googles her name they’ll immediately link her to a notorious murder. One doesn’t have to work in PR, as she does, to know that’s decidedly inconvenient.
Polly still doesn’t know where the information came from, but the profile piece did manage to get a few things right, and some of her life’s minutiae was recorded with an uncomfortable level of detail. It said she was based in London, but got the wrong area (her flat, which she hasn’t seen the inside of for two weeks, is in Hammersmith, not Pimlico), and gave the address of her office, presumably in case any stalkers fancied tailing her on her way to work. They got her age right: thirty-three. And it was true that she habitually bought a £4 chai latte whenever she passed a Pret. It also said she was single, which wasn’t true at the time of publication but is now. The piece was about five hundred words long, although the bulk of it was about her clothes. It pored over her wardrobe in great detail and included hyperlinks to stores where readers could buy some jacket or accessory she was wearing to court.Get the style of a murderer’s relative!it seemed to be saying. It was surreal and dehumanising to read about herself that way, as if she were a public figure, a commodity, a celebrity even. As a naive teenager, Polly daydreamed about being a celebrity. But she never imagined this. What she’s got can’t even be described as fifteen minutes of fame; she’s not famous – she’s infamous. And there’s a big difference.
The car turns on to their honey-stoned Georgian terrace and pulls up about three-quarters of the way down. Miles sits up straight, his body trembling with energy. Suddenly, after being so downcast and moping for the last year, it’s like he’s a different person. He turns to Polly and places a hand on her shoulder before opening the door. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘We can look up flights when we get in.’
Chapter 5
George
George sets a magnum of champagne on the step and rings the doorbell to the Deverills’ place. He’s glad to be back; it’s nearly a year since he was last here, but he’s always been made welcome by Miles’s family. Their home is a five-storey townhouse facing the park, in one of those terraces built when developers still cared what housing looked like, and whoever built this one gave it the full beans: limestone front, multiple balconies, tall sash windows – the works. He expected a media scrum outside, but it’s all quiet. Maybe now they’re finally getting left alone. Down the street, to the west, the sun is setting, and the sky is peach and mauve above ragged rooftops and a cathedral spire.
Miles closes the door, and George stoops to pick up the champagne. ‘A gift from Ma and Pa,’ George says. ‘From my family to yours.’
Miles accepts it with a small smile. His whole aura seems diminished by his ordeal; it’s robbed the colour from his cheeks and the zest from his movements. ‘Cheers,’ he says. ‘Although, I don’t think it’s going to be that kind of night.’
George raises one eyebrow. ‘You’re a free man again. You’ve got your life back. If that’s not worth a glass of Bolly, I don’t what is.’ He slaps his friend on the back and follows him into the hallway. It’simmediately warm and familiar: the oak parquet floor solid under his feet, the elaborate cornice work, the sweeping balustrade staircase. Home from home. They go to the rear ground floor, where a slow chatter echoes out of the kitchen. There are eight people in there: Miles’s parents and sister, a few people from his legal team, and Miles’s actor friend, Elis. There’s a pleasant smell of baking, but the vibe is more solemn than he expected. It’s not gloomy, just a little restrained, the wine and finger food being consumed almost apologetically, like at the beginning of a wake. It’s strange, how some people can take an occasion as happy as this and still manage to suck the spirit out of it. Miles is lucky to have a friend like him, who can cheer the mood up a bit. But, even so, he’s got his work cut out trying to spark joy in the miserable lot gathered in front of him right now.
As if the embodiment of a tough crowd, Miles’s sister is staring at George, her arms folded. ‘Congratulations, George, you’re famous,’ she says, and adds something under her breath. George didn’t hear it but has no doubt it wasn’t complimentary – Polly never has minced her words.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You haven’t checked the news, then?’
