* * *
Just before lunchtime the next day I’m sitting at the dining room table with a box of pastels and some large sheets of paper. I need to work on my Beardsley self-portrait. I start out just like I intended, drawing myself as Salomé with John the Baptist’s severed head. But in this version Salomé isn’t triumphant that she’s been brought his head, she’s weeping. She wishes she never ordered his killing but it’s too late and all she has is regret for what might have been.
There’s a knock at the door, which Martin answers, and then he, my mother and a stranger come into the dining room.
“A police officer to see you, darling,” my mother says.
It’s a plainclothes officer. He’s wearing a gray suit and has a gingery mustache, and his eyes are somber. Martin takes a seat at the table as if to offer me his support, but I ignore him. My mother stands in the doorway, arms folded, face pale. The officer explains that they’ve arrested a student from the Slade and charged her with stalking and unlawful detainment.
“We were able to match some of the drawings she sent you, thanks to your last security officer, against pieces in her folio. When he went through all the hate mail you’d received a second time he noticed that some seemed to have been drawn by the same hand. She confessed quickly once confronted.”
“Who was it?”
“A young woman called Celeste Fontaine. It seems she was an old school friend of Miss Connie Masters, back when they were twelve.”
My stomach clenches. Celeste was my friend. I thought the culprit had to be a student I barely knew who hated me from afar without really knowing me. It was a cold and calculated act, locking me in the storage room without my insulin, though she seems to have regretted doing it almost immediately considering she texted Dieter my whereabouts. Maybe she remembered I was diabetic or found the insulin pen in my bag. She didn’t want me dead, at least, just frightened.
If she was a friend of Connie’s, it must have been so painful for her when she died and the Herald used the tragedy to sell even more papers. It must have been easy to hate me and see my behavior as an extension of my father’s.
I turn to the officer. “If it’s possible I would rather not press any charges.”
He looks at me steadily, betraying neither approval or condemnation. “That is your prerogative, Miss Westley.”
“Are you sure?” my mother interjects. “I know you must want this ordeal to be over—”
“She confessed, Mum. I didn’t speak out against what Dad did for ages and it must have upset her when she thought I considered myself a victim. I did a pretty good approximation of one.” I chew my lip for a moment, looking at the officer. “Will she get any help? Any counseling or anything?”
He closes his notebook and stands up. “I believe her parents are keen for her to see someone, though it’s up to her. Goodbye, Miss Westley.”
I pick up a pastel and swipe it against a piece of scrap paper, wondering if I’ve made the right decision.
Later, I’m standing in the kitchen drinking a glass of water when Martin comes in.
“You right there, Ade?”
My nose wrinkles at the nickname. I detest being called Ade and I feel no desire to get to know this new bodyguard. I wonder what Dieter’s doing right now, and whether he knows I’m not pressing charges against Celeste. If he were here he’d probably have all sorts of opinions about the decision and we’d talk through them until I felt better again. If he were here.
“I’m all right. But I miss Dieter,” I say, too tired for anything but honesty.
Martin doesn’t seem to be offended. He nods and says, “He’s a good security officer.”
“You know him?”
He folds his arms and gazes out through the French doors with me. “Oh, yeah. We were in the army together—the regular army, before he joined the SAS. Lost touch with him for a few years but we reconnected after his accident.”
I think about the parachute jump that broke Dieter’s back, and I realize I know very little about it. “How did it happen?”
Martin rubs the shaved back of his head. “The parachute didn’t open properly and he hit the ground, hard. It happens on rare occasions, nobody’s fault, but Dieter always insisted he made a mistake. Said he didn’t run through his checklist properly. Swore he’d never show such poor judgment again.”
Chapter Twelve
“Darling, your collar isn’t straight. Come here.”
I swat her hands away. “Would you leave it, Mum?”
Behind her dark glasses I see her cast her eyes to the heavens. We’re waiting for takeaway coffees just round the corner from the Old Bailey, and we’re both tense. My father’s trial is drawing to a close and today the jury will decide: guilty or not guilty?
We’ve been in attendance most days, which means the London newspapers have cast us in the role of dutiful mother and daughter, supporting their beloved husband and father. Meanwhile, my parents’ divorce papers have been signed and I haven’t had a single phone call or letter from Dad. It hurts, but I half-expected this to happen.