The Wrong Mother

‘I want to go to the theatre again now,’ Lucy insisted. ‘I want to go out for di

Still, at least now I know. Whether I’m kind or utterly selfish makes absolutely no difference. Even if I try my hardest, I ca

I have never hit her. Not because I disapprove of hitting children-I have pinched and flicked Oonagh O’Hara several times without Cordy noticing-but because sometimes I want to hit Lucy so much and I know I would have to stop almost as soon as I started, so what would be the point? It would be like opening a box of delicious chocolates and only being able to eat one.

In an ideal world, parents would be able to give their children a good, satisfying kicking-a really thorough, cathartic battering-then snap their fingers and have the effects of their violence disappear. Also, it would be good if children, while being beaten, didn’t feel pain; then there would be no need for guilt.

Instead they are delicate and vulnerable, which of course is their most effective weapon. They make us want to protect them even as they destroy us.

14

8/10/07

Sellers knocked on the back of the computer Gibbs was using. ‘Come on, we’re late.’

‘Don’t wait for me, or you’ll be even later.’

‘You don’t want to miss this one.’

‘Why? Something happened?’

‘I’ve just spoken to Tim Cook,’ said Sellers.

‘Is he still shagging that gra

‘I doubt it. They’ve been living together for nearly ten years.’ Silence. ‘You’re supposed to laugh at that. I suppose you haven’t been married long enough.’ No response. Sellers tried a new approach. ‘The dental records were a match. The two skeletons are Encarna and Amy Oliva. Were,’ he corrected himself.

Gibbs looked up. If Sellers was right, he might as well stop what he was doing. But since he’d got this far… ‘You go,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch you up.’

‘There’s more. Amy Oliva’s na

‘I’m in Yahoo Mail at the moment.’ Gibbs gri

Sellers gave up.

Once he’d gone, Gibbs typed in his ID and password. Amy Oliva was dead. Her body had been found in Mark Bretherick’s garden. It was optimistic to assume she might have replied to the e-mail Gibbs sent her yesterday.

She hadn’t. The only new message was from Gibbs’ sister. He opened it, saw that it had to do with arrangements for Christmas and closed it again without replying. It was August. Christmas wasn’t until December. You had to draw the line somewhere.

Porn sites. He sniffed contemptuously. Sellers had to be one of those sex addicts he’d read about, like… was it Kirk Douglas or Michael Douglas? The HTCU lot probably had a file on Sellers twenty inches thick. Gibbs thought about Norman Grace, who wore pink shirts and thin stripy scarves wound round his neck. And slip-on shoes. Kombothekra had entrusted the hard disk of Geraldine Bretherick’s laptop to a man who dressed like a woman. Once, Gibbs had seen Norman in the canteen reading a fashion magazine. If he was gay it wouldn’t be so bad, but the dickhead was straight, had loads of girlfriends-fit ones, too. So what was he playing at?

Gibbs was about to get up when he had an idea. Another job for Norman. Come to think of it, he probably didn’t need Norman. He could have a stab at it himself. He went to the Hotmail site. When the sign-in box appeared, he typed in Amy Oliva’s e-mail address, [email protected] /* */ Then he clicked on ‘Forgot your password?’. If it was anything like Yahoo Mail…

It was. Gibbs smiled when he saw the security question: ‘Who wrote Heart of Darkness?’ He typed in ‘Blondie’ and swore under his breath when it didn’t get him in. He tried Debbie Harry, Deborah Harry and Debra Harry before remembering that the Blondie song was called ‘Heart of Glass’. Bollocks. He went to Google, typed in ‘Heart of Darkness’ and discovered that it was a book by a bloke called Joseph Conrad. He clicked back to the Hotmail screen and gave this name he’d never heard of a try.

Result. He had to create a new password for the account in order to read the messages, since he’d claimed to have forgotten the old one. He decided on ‘Debbie’. In honour of his wife, not Debbie Harry.

Amy Oliva had three new messages. Gibbs clicked on ‘Inbox’ and waited. His eyes widened when the next screen appeared. The unread communications were highlighted in yellow to distinguish them from the ones that had been opened. The first of Amy’s new messages was from Oonagh O’Hara. The second and third were from Great Western Hotels and the Halifax bank-junk mail.

Gibbs’ message, the one he’d sent from St Swithun’s yesterday, was the fourth one down. It wasn’t highlighted in yellow. He shivered, rubbing the back of his neck. He’d e-mailed a dead girl, believing her to be alive, and she’d opened the e-mail. Or someone had, probably the person who had killed her.

Gibbs looked at the names beneath his own. Oonagh O’Hara was a frequent correspondent, as was somebody called Silvia Ruiz Oliva-a relative, presumably. The rest was spam.

Silvia turned out to be Amy’s grandmother: her messages were all signed ‘Gran’. He read them all, finding them increasingly interesting as he took in the cumulative meaning. There had obviously been a family row. Silvia kept asking when she might see Amy. In one she had written: ‘Please tell Mummy that if she’s cross with me, I’m sorry.’ Gibbs scrolled down to see if there were any messages from Amy attached to the bottom of Silvia’s. There weren’t. He went to the ‘Sent Messages’ page. Nothing. Not a single message had been copied to the folder.

He opened one of Oonagh’s messages. Nothing out of the ordinary, if you didn’t count the fact that its recipient was no longer living when it was written and sent. He read to the end, then breathed in sharply when he saw that Amy’s original letter hadn’t been deleted. Gibbs scrolled down further and found, beneath Amy’s section, another message from Oonagh, probably one that was also in the inbox. Beneath that, another message from whoever was pretending to be Amy. A lengthy back-and-forth correspondence, all trailing from this one message. Oonagh’s e-mails, Gibbs noticed, contained the odd spelling mistake. Amy’s written English was faultless.