Disaster has struck! Mummy caught John and me in bed this afternoon. She was supposed to be at one of her charity meetings but she wasn’t feeling well and came home early. It was a terrible scene with Mummy and John shouting at one another and I didn’t like to see John at all behaving like that. I thought he was going to hit Mummy in the end but he broke a vase on the wall and a piece of pottery cut Mummy’s face. Then when he’d gone Mummy said I absolutely must not see him again or she would tell Daddy. Then she cried and put her arms around me and I felt sorry for her. John said such terrible things, called her such horrible names and said he would do things to her I won’t repeat even here in my private diary. I don’t care if I never see him again. I hate him. He’s gross. He even stole things from our house. He’s just a common thief. A thief and a thickie. What could I ever have seen in him?
August 27
Michael came to the house today while Mummy and Daddy were out. He was absolutely livid about the other day with John. I didn’t know Mummy had told him. He called me names and I thought at one point he was going to hit me. It was then I told him. I couldn’t help it. I told him I’d read his journal about me and called him a dirty old man. He went so white I thought he was going to faint. Then he asked me what I was going to do. I said I didn’t know. I’d just have to wait and see. Wait for what? he asked me. To see what happens, says I.
August 28
Michael really is rather handsome. And much more intelligent and sophisticated than John. Mary Taylor at school told me last term she had an affair with a married man, a friend of her father’s, who was 38 years old! And she says he was wonderful and considerate at sex and bought her presents and all sorts of things. I think Uncle Michael might be even older than 38 but he’s not fat and ugly or anything like most old people.
September 1
Michael came for dinner tonight. Mummy and Daddy were there, of course. I wore a tight black jumper and a short skirt. Out of the corner of my eye I could see him looking at my thighs and breasts when he thought I wasn’t watching. It really is amazing how he can seem so normal and ordinary when we’re all together, but when there’s just him and me he’s so passionate and can hardly control himself!
September 3
Michael came again today when everyone was out. He told me he felt such powerful desire for me he didn’t know if he could control himself. That was the word he used: desire. I don’t think that anyone has ever desired me before. It feels rather exciting. Of course, he wanted to do it, and when I said no he got all upset and said if I let a no-good lout like John Spinks do it to me why wouldn’t I let him? I must admit I don’t know the answer to that. Except that he’s Uncle Michael and I’ve known him all my life.
September 6
This is getting to be quite an adventure! Saw Michael again today and let him kiss me again. It made him happy for a while, then he said he wanted to kiss my breasts. I wouldn’t let him do that but I let him touch them over my jumper. While he was doing it he took my hand and held it to the front of his trousers so I could feel he was really hard. I started to feel a bit scared because his grip was so strong and then I felt him go all wet and he gasped as if somebody had hit him just the way John used to do. Gross. I can’t explain why I felt it then, but I started to panic a bit because I’d just been teasing really and this was UNCLE MICHAEL, and even if he isn’t really my uncle I’ve still known him since I was a little girl. I just couldn’t let him do it to me. It wouldn’t be right. After he’d finished he went all quiet so I left.
September 8
School again. Sad, sad, sad. Saw Mucky Metcalfe in the corridor. Wonder if he knows I know he’s been doing it with the vicar’s wife?
There were no more entries until October, and Banks assumed that Deborah had been getting settled in at St. Mary’s again in the interim. But even by late October, Michael Clayton still hadn’t got the message.
October 24
Can’t Uncle Michael understand that whatever it was we had is over now? I’ve told him I don’t love him, but it doesn’t do any good. He keeps coming to the house when he knows I’m here alone. Now he says he just wants to see me naked, that he won’t even touch me if I just take my clothes off in front of him and stand there the way I did in the bath at Montclair. I suppose it’s flattering in a way to have a sophisticated older man in love with you, but to be honest he doesn’t seem very sophisticated when he keeps wanting me to touch that hard thing in his pants. I don’t want to play any more. I suppose he must still be living in hope, but doesn’t he understand that summer’s over and I’m back at school now?
Obviously he didn’t, thought Banks. It hadn’t been just a summer romance for Michael Clayton; it had been a dark, powerful obsession. And beneath all the veneer of sophistication and experience, Deborah had simply been a naive teenager misreading the depth of an older man’s passion; she was just a girl who thought she was a woman.
But even as Deborah grew worried by Clayton’s persistence, she always kept her secret, always lived in hope that he would simply give up and stop pestering her. She clearly knew what dreadful consequences would occur if she told her parents, and she wanted to avoid that if she could. But Clayton wouldn’t give up and go away. He couldn’t; he was too far gone. Her final entry, dated the day before she died, read,
November 5 (Bonfire Night)
Yesterday Uncle Michael grabbed me and held my arm until it hurt and told me I had stolen his soul and all sorts of other rubbish. I know it was cruel of me to tease him, and to let him kiss me and stuff, but it was just a game at first and he wouldn’t let me stop it. I want him to stop it now because I’m getting frightened, the way he looks at me. You still wouldn’t believe it if you saw him with other people around, but he really does change when he’s only with me. It’s like he has a split personality or something. I told him if he doesn’t promise to leave me alone I’ll tell Daddy when I get home from school tomorrow. I don’t know if I will I don’t really want to tell Daddy because I know what he gets like and what trouble it will cause. The house won’t be worth living in. Anyway, we’ll see what happens tomorrow.
Banks pushed the diary aside and lit another cigarette. The gaslights around the market square glowed through the gaps in the blinds. The quartet was reaching the end of its final movement now, the moving, introspective passacaglia, written when Britten was approaching death.
Why do we feel compelled to record our thoughts and feelings in diaries and on tape, Banks wondered, and our acts on video and in photographs? Perhaps, he thought, we need to read about ourselves or watch ourselves to know we are truly alive. Time after time, it leads to nothing but trouble, but still the politicians keep their diaries, ticking away like time bombs, and the sexual deviants keep their visual records. And thank the Lord they do. Without such evidence, many a case might not even get to court.
When the music finished, Banks sat in silence for a while, then stubbed out his cigarette. Just as he was about to get up and go for that pint before last orders, the telephone rang. He cursed and contemplated leaving it, but his policeman’s sense of duty and his even deeper-rooted curiosity wouldn’t let him.
“Banks here.”
“Sergeant Rowe, sir. We’ve just had a report that Owen Pierce is at St. Mary’s vicarage.”
“Who called it in?”
“Rebecca Charters, sir. The vicar’s wife. She says Pierce is ready to turn himself in for the murder of Michelle Chappel.”
“But she’s not dead.”
“I suppose he doesn’t know that.”
“All right,” said Banks. “I’ll be right there.”
He sighed, picked up his sports jacket and hurried out into the hazy darkness.
Acknowledgments
I would first of all like to thank several people for reading and commenting upon the manuscript through its several drafts: my agent, Dominick Abel; Cynthia Good, from Penguin Books Canada; Natalee Rosenstein, from Berkley; and my copy editor, Mary Adachi.
