And now?
‘I was born with webbed feet … ’
The memory of Carolynn’s words stirred another: a patient from her NHS days, not one of hers, but a colleague’s, a conversation she’d overheard at the coffee machine. Dropping the pregnancy test into her bag, she dug out her mobile and Googled, scanned the list that the search returned and found what she was looking for. Her stomach knotted as she read.
Jesus. What if Marilyn had been right about Carolynn all along?
63
‘I’m not paying you to spend the day at the beach sunning yourself,’ Marilyn said, in response to another loud squawk from the seagull, bereft at the disappearance of the tantalizing white stick.
‘You’re not paying me at all, yet,’ Jessie countered. ‘Listen, Marilyn, did you ever check Zoe’s DNA against Carolynn and Roger’s?’
No response. She waited, knowing that the silence wasn’t driven by Marilyn’s need to trawl through his memory. Every detail of the Zoe Reynolds murder case had been committed to his memory, an encyclopaedic index at his mental fingertips. She recognized it for what it was, an – Oh fuck, what is she going to say next? – pause.
A guarded tone. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I didn’t need to. The identification box was ticked by Roger Reynolds coming to the morgue and confirming that the little girl’s body was that of his daughter, Zoe. Not that we had any doubt before, as we’d found Carolynn Reynolds on her knees in West Wittering car park clutching Zoe’s body and screaming. There was no need to check her DNA. Procedure had been followed, protocol met. Why?’
Jessie had never before heard Marilyn use the terms ‘procedure’ or ‘protocol’. His resort to them now was driven by defensiveness, she recognized. Defensiveness and intense apprehension.
‘Do it now, please, urgently.’
‘What’s going on, Jessie?’
She looked at the seagull. Her seagull. They were mates now. He was balancing on one webbed foot, the other tucked into his tummy feathers. He looked happy and relaxed, even a bit smug, perhaps. He’d done his job, helped her out.
‘I believe that Carolynn is sterile,’ Jessie said.
‘What?’
‘I’ve just added the two and two from something Carolynn said to me during one of our sessions and come up with four. I didn’t pay attention at the time, because I didn’t believe that what she told me was relevant to her psychology, or at least, not relevant to the event I believed was responsible for her psychological breakdown – her daughter’s death in a car accident.’
Raising her hand in a ‘stay’ gesture to the seagull – Did they share dog psychology? She had no idea – Jessie stood. The seagull tilted his head and eyeballed her quizzically as she clambered up the pebbles to the concrete walkway.
‘I think that Carolynn was born with Turner syndrome,’ she continued, walking towards the Fisherman’s Hut. ‘It’s a genetic disorder that affects around one in two thousand females, so it’s not uncommon. A girl with Turner syndrome only has one X chromosome instead of the usual two. Sufferers are characterized by a range of physical symptoms, which can include webbed feet. But the most important thing is that girls with Turner syndrome usually have underdeveloped ovaries and are sterile.’
‘Carolynn had postnatal depression, Jessie.’
‘Sure, but postnatal depression isn’t confined to biological mothers because it’s not only caused by hormonal changes. Postnatal depression can be driven by a range of factors such as having unrealistic expectations of the joy of parenting, difficulty in bonding with the child, or being disappointed with the child. The symptoms of postnatal depression in adoptive mothers who experience it are the same as those displayed by birth mothers. Carolynn may well have had postnatal depression, but that doesn’t mean she was Zoe’s biological mother.’
The sound of Marilyn’s tense, choppy breathing echoed down the phone. ‘So, if what you’re saying is true, Carolynn would have no biological connection to Zoe.’
Jessie reached the Fisherman’s Hut and scanned the menu.
‘Jessie.’
‘Yes. No. None.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Multi-tasking.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind, you wouldn’t get it.’
‘Because I’m a man?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
Tapping a finger in the middle of the list of ‘Today’s Catch’ chalked on the blackboard, she bought half a pint of peeled prawns in a polystyrene cup.
‘Are children who are brought up by parents who aren’t biologically connected to them, more likely to be abused or killed by those parents?’ Marilyn asked.
‘It’s a complex and controversial area,’ she said, as she slid carefully back down the steep pebbles to the sand. ‘Lots of studies have been carried out, but the results have been inconclusive. From a sociological point of view, whatever that’s worth, genetic preservation is at the core of human behaviour.’
‘And neither Carolynn or Roger had any genes to preserve.’
‘Right. But more important than that – much more important, I’d say – is that this was yet another lie, or at least a very major omission of the truth. And an unnecessary one, unless they omitted that truth for a reason.’ Another fairground funhouse mirror that revealed Carolynn, freak-show distorted.
Jessie’s seagull had obeyed her command and maintained a ‘stay’. Balanced on one leg, still happy and relaxed, he tilted his head with interest as he watched her approach with the cupful of prawns. She wished that she could say the same for herself; she felt strung to snapping. She needed to do her job properly now, do it right. Get into Carolynn’s head in a way that she had singularly failed to do in their sessions, understand what the hell made the woman tick, and whether that tick was the tick of a time bomb that had already exploded twice, or that of a benign bedside-table clock. Disturbed, but ultimately harmless.
‘I’ll check the DNA database now,’ Marilyn said. ‘What are you
