The Perfect Daughter by Gillian Linscott Read Free Book Online

look.
    â€˜You think I’m callous?’
    â€˜I know you’re not. But…’
    â€˜You think I should have taken better care of her?’
    â€˜It isn’t a question of care. You weren’t in loco parentis .’
    â€˜Her father thinks I as good as killed her. A good happy girl, apparently, until I got her involved in politics.’
    â€˜From what you tell me, that’s nonsense.’
    â€˜Yes, of course it is.’
    â€˜So why are you feeling guilty?’
    With anybody else I’d probably have exploded and said I wasn’t feeling guilty at all, why should I be? But Bill had such a matter-of-fact way of looking at things that I didn’t resent it.
    â€˜Doesn’t everybody feel guilty when somebody they know commits suicide? You know – if I’d written that letter, or sent him ten pounds or gone to see him, then he wouldn’t have done it.’
    â€˜Yes, but it’s not rational. Anyway, you did go and see her.’
    â€˜Maybe I should have gone back. But that last time, with the two men there, I could see she didn’t need me. She had her own life. If it had been after that first visit, in December when she hadn’t been in London long, I might have understood.’
    â€˜You thought she was suicidal then?’
    â€˜No, of course not or I’d have done something. Only, she struck me…’ I had to stop and think about it. Bill asked if I minded if he lit his pipe. I liked the smell of his tobacco. It had a musty sweetness to it, like apples stored in a loft.
    â€˜â€¦ she struck me as somebody who’d taken a leap and was close to regretting it. It can’t have been easy for her to leave a close family and the house where she’d grown up.’
    â€˜Why did she, then?’
    â€˜The usual things. Independence. Ambition.’
    â€˜Ambition as an artist?’
    â€˜My guess is that studying art was just an excuse to get out into the big wide world. Then she got there and didn’t know quite what to do. She was asking me about all sorts of things – socialism, pacifism, even anarchism. She struck me as somebody looking for a cause.’
    â€˜Then she found one,’ Bill said.
    â€˜Joining us, you mean? It’s one thing to go on a march or two but that’s not the same as being committed.’
    â€˜If you saw her at that Buckingham Palace riot—’
    â€˜Deputation.’
    â€˜If you saw her there, that’s pretty committed.’
    â€˜I’m not even sure it was her. But if it was, that bothers me.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Let’s assume it was. Even if she’s not in the thick of things, she cares enough to be there. Exactly a week after that, I find her dead. If she was that despairing about things, why bother to go to a political demonstration? Why does anything matter if you’ve decided to kill yourself?’
    Bill lay back and closed his eyes. ‘There’s a story somebody told me once. A man with all sorts of troubles decides to end them by jumping off the pier. Police fish the body out, ask if anybody saw him before he jumped. Oh yes, says the man in the ticket booth. We had an argument. He reckoned I’d given him a dud halfpenny in his change.’
    Music drifted over from the fairground, now Down at the Old Bull and Bush. Two children came rolling down the slope, laughing, nearly cannoning into us. I followed Bill’s example and lay back on the grass, looking up at the grey sky. After all that had happened it was good just to lie there thinking of nothing in particular. Or it would have been, if it had lasted for more than half a minute.
    I said, ‘I could talk to people I know. Find out if it really was her outside Buckingham Palace.’
    â€˜Will that help?’
    â€˜I’d like to know. And I could go back to the student house again. I suppose there’ll be things of hers there. Her mother will want them.’
    I