awkward scene in the kitchen? The thought never even entered their heads.
Frightened, we grabbed one another by the hand. All we could hope for now was that Lucy’s mother would shortly hitch a ride home. As soon as she walked in, everything would go back to normal again. But as Duco went on staring at the flames as if paralyzed, and Lucy began to sob under her breath, it finally hit home: we had probably seen the last of her, for the time being.
The authorities promptly started showing up. Lady social workers in grubby sweaters with their hair in a bun marched in and out of the rectory. They took notes and wrote reports. They had to grudgingly concede in the end that it would be best for Lucy to stay where she was. Especially in light of the fact that the Luducos had immediately stepped up to the plate and offered to look after her. A mother accused of murder—it was such a dreadfully traumatic thing for a six-year-old to have to go through that further changes in her living conditions could prove dire, if not fatal. Peace and quiet, and an orderly routine in a familiar environment: that was the ticket. At least for the duration of the preliminary investigation, which could drag on for months.
They signed their report with a flourish, and left.
We read, The dog has a bone. We read, What do I hear? We read and we read, as if the only way we could keep the world turning was by deciphering new words and learning their meanings. Miss Joyce slowly paced back and forth among our desks. Every time she walked by Lucy, she’d tug her plaits straight or fold her collar down neatly. At recess she sometimes gave her a banana.
Lucy wouldn’t speak. She chewed on her fingernails. All her drawings had prison bars.
Thomas had returned to school with a note from his mum. The teacher had read it, nodding sadly, and then assigned him a new seat at the back of the classroom. There he now sat every day all by himself, being what he forever would be: a fatherless boy. You could hear it in his voice when it was his turn, when he droned in his rapid but vapid monotone, ‘See, the fox is in the box. The fox sees the dog. The dog runs up the tree. The tree is in the wood.’ You could tell how much he missed his father, especially when he read the words ‘tree’ and ‘wood,’ and he was starting to scare us—his sadness scared us, his anger and his despair. During break he went off by himself in the playground, kicking at pebbles the way he had once kicked at clumps of grass in our field. Lucy, slumped against a wall, watched him, her eyes burning in her pale face like two pieces of glowing coal. He ignored her. He looked right through her. As far as he was concerned, she didn’t exist.
The rest of us, who used to know everything there was to know about Lucy, now knew next to nothing. Day in, day out, we’d hang around, trying to wangle some information out of her. More than once we spotted the detectives’ car parked out in front of the rectory. What were they doing there?
She wouldn’t answer us. She bowed her head and kept her mouth shut.
We tried to imagine her mother in a smoky interrogation room, a blinding spotlight trained on her face. The thought gave us hope. The interrogators were bound to fall head over heels in love with her, that was a given. She’d end up winding them around her little finger. She would simply roll them up and tuck them in her pocket. Before we knew it, she’d be home again. And then Lucy and Thomas would sit together again in the front row in Miss Joyce’s classroom, as usual. Lucy would be talking a mile a minute again, glaring at anyone who so much as thought of mocking her fiancé. It would probably annoy the hell out of us; still, anything was better than this quiet, dazed Lucy with the bowed head. This was a turn of affairs we’d certainly never asked for. None of us was any the better off for it.
Our parents bought Christmas trees in the town square. They treated us to doughnuts in a pedestrian mall that was so draughty that the powdered sugar flew everywhere. Then we went window-shopping; Mum grabbed Dad’s sleeve firmly when the jeweller’s window display came into sight.
For weeks, festive lights twinkled indoors and out, angelic music played, bells went ding-a-ling, the world smelled of pine needles, mulled wine, and toasted almonds.
On New Year’s Eve we had our first glass of champagne. Our fathers got to their feet to toast the new year, one that would hopefully prove safer for everyone, with more police patrolling the streets. ‘We’re lucky; we still have each other,’ said our mothers. ‘Let’s always remember that, and be thankful for it, too.’ Then we had to pretend we had the hiccups, if we wanted to avoid a round of hugs and kisses.
Next came a cold spell, with deep snowdrifts. We were pulled to school on our sleds. We got ice skates, because when you were six it was high time you learned to skate. You’d thank your parents someday. You could hear the water slapping softly against the ice from below. It was scored with grooves that tripped you up. It was just a question of gritting your teeth and trying to keep going.
Sometimes we’d spot the Luducos pulling a listless Lucy across the ice. Methodically, assiduously, the Luducos would swing their legs, left, right, left, as they dragged her along. At the far end of the pond they made a pirouette, then they skated back smartly, with Lucy in the middle. Over the open ice they went, left, right, left, the Luducos in hats that probably dated from the First World War, and our Lucy with a scarf tied across her mouth. A scarf that said: I will not talk.
What was she keeping from us?
Sometimes Thomas’s mother would come to the pond, too, to watch from the sidelines. After all, bacteria are killed by the cold. But she never spoke to anyone, and in the end, people gave up trying to get her involved in the fun on the ice.
There was no one to pull Thomas across the dark expanse, nobody to teach him how to dig the toe of your skate into the ice to come to a screeching halt. Half the time he’d just stand and watch next to his mother on the frozen grass, with such a look of yearning in his eyes that the rest of us were inclined to press our foreheads into our own dads’ stomachs. But Dad shook us off; he was busy trying to impress the new lady next door, who had no idea how he smelled when he got up out of bed in the morning. He was talking in this cool, amused way. Out of the corner of his mouth came a message meant only for us, a message we had to lip-read so he wouldn’t have to say it out loud: Scram. Go on, scram, get lost!
And when the ice melted and everything turned green again, the criminal investigation was finally completed and the trial could begin.
Soon enough, the newspapers talked of nothing else.
-
F is for the Facts
Indignant about the verdict—surely a terrible miscarriage of justice—our mothers immediately started circulating petitions. If it had been their daughter, they said, they would have done the exact same thing as Lucy’s mother. Now that the motive for the murder was known, they had only one thing to say, and that was that they, too, would have stabbed the living daylights out of Thomas’s father with whatever object happened to come to hand.
Our fathers scratched themselves somewhat uneasily behind the ears. They’d never realized they were married to women who approved of murder and homicide under certain conditions. In a reasonable voice they tried to object, saying the law did exist for a reason. The woman could have filed a complaint against Thomas’s father—that’s the way these things were handled in a law-abiding society. If not, democracy would soon become a free-for-all. Civilized society would go to hell in a handbasket. Taking the law into your own hands was contrary to the principles of international human rights. Every person had the right to a fair trial; the legal recourses were perfectly adequate.
Our mothers placed their hands on their hips. Oh yeah? Oh yeah? And what if it had been our own Vanessa, our Safranja, or our Sara? What if it had been our little girl? Poor Lucy, only six years old and
