Marie never came home, and six weeks later, my lovely, tired mother was dead. In the brief window between her diagnosis and her death, my mother and Helene had agreed that I should live with her from now on – as if there was anywhere else I could go. My grandparents didn’t even come over for the funeral, which was a small affair made up of some former models from my mother’s early years in London, a few of her work colleagues and Jimmy’s parents John and Sophie. We toasted her at the local café where we used to go for hot chocolate on Saturday mornings when we needed to escape the damp and cold of our flat. And with that, my childhood was pretty much done. I moved to Helene’s flat in Kensal Rise, and had my own bedroom for the first time – a small space which used to house her clothes and long since abandoned old exercise equipment. The fish came with me, its bowl dumped on a dressing table. Helene never envisaged a teenager in her life, but to her credit, she did as well as she could by me. There was always food, and she gave me money for travel and clothes. I never said it out loud, in case I was struck down by some vengeful deity, but it was a much better standard of living than the one we had in our depressing bedsit. I moved to a school nearer her flat, and became pretty independent almost immediately. Helene worked at a modelling agency, and was out a lot, so I would walk around the local park for hours after school to pass the time, or go and sit in the local Costa and nurse a tea. Anything rather than go back to the empty flat and think about all that I had lost.
Helene had cleaned out my mother’s flat, and although there was nothing of much value to give me, she did make sure to pass on Marie’s favourite opal ring, which fitted my thumb perfectly, and which I would rub constantly throughout the day. She also gave me a box of letters, documents, and photos from Marie’s younger days, including her prized Kookai poster. I never opened them. Apart from the ring, I’m not hugely one for sentimental relics （of course, I was never immune to keeping a few prized tokens after a murder, but that could hardly be called sentimental）。 But one day, while foraging around under Helene’s bed for her hair straighteners, I found another box. This was unlike the one I had in my room, which was decorated with flowers and hearts. This one was like those I was used to seeing in my head teacher’s office – sturdy and formal. And it had something written carefully on the spine in red ink: ‘Grace/Simon’。
Obviously I was going to look inside. I didn’t even hesitate. I still pay no heed to the supposed privacy of others – if you leave something around me, I will look at it, soak it in, commit it to memory. I expect growing up relying on just one person means that I need more information than a normal person when it comes to trust. Or maybe I just want to get inside your head and gain an advantage over you. It doesn’t always work, I’ve been looking through Kelly’s diary since I landed in this prison, but it’s hard to gain an insight into someone’s innermost thoughts when they’re so completely devoid of any original ones.
I slid myself down Helene’s door and wedged myself there, just in case she came home. My mother’s friend witnessed the whole of my parent’s brief relationship, but she’d never given me any information on it, even when Marie died. I know she felt it wouldn’t help, that she was protecting me, so I didn’t push it. But this box might tell me more than she could anyway. Helene was kind, but she was hardly a great intellect, and had a fairly basic level of insight. Her favourite shows were all on ITV, if that makes it at all clearer.
Inside was a bundle of papers in no discernible order. I saw various newspaper clippings, letters, and photographs all jumbled up, and began sifting them into corresponding piles. Once done, I started looking at the photos properly. A few were of my mother and her girlfriends on nights out at dark clubs around London. Marie and Helene in minidresses, both smoking, mid-dance. Girls I didn’t know holding bottles of champagne and spraying it around. As I flicked through them, the girls slowly vanished, moving blurrily to the edges of the pictures, as Simon stepped onto the stage. There were photos of Simon with other men, all in white shirts and expensively distressed jeans, big gold buckles on their belts. They had their arms round each other’s shoulders, just like the boys at school, but chomping on cigars, holding shot glasses, leering at the camera. Then there were photos of just my mum and Simon, him twirling her around, her polka-dot skirt blurring but her expression perfectly clear. She was rapt, twisting her head around to maintain a direct look at my father. He wasn’t looking at her though – he was smirking at the camera. He wasn’t looking at her in any of the pictures, instead he was grinning at his mates, who all seemed to desperately gaze up at him like Marie had, or mugging for the camera, slamming shots, dancing on a table while people cheered, and putting a harassed-looking waiter in a jokey headlock as the crowd around him creased their faces and applauded.