The Wicked Girls by Alex Marwood Page B

without a professional lady of the house like Sue Baker at her table. Kirsty has seen her eyes drift over their sitting room,
     their dining room, seeking out signs of non-conformity or dirt.
    Come on, Kirsty. There’s something you’re meant to do. What is it?
    She presses the peas against the back of her neck and checks the kitchen for signs of disarray. Sue’s the sort of person who
     will insist on helping clear, the better to snoop. Notes, lists, photos, clamped to the fridge door with Sistine Chapel magnets.
     A cork pinboard sporting the kids’ schedules: Sophie piano, Tues 5; Luke football, Weds 6; swimming, Sat 9. Sophie has arranged
     the leftover push-pins in the shape of a heart – her favourite image at the moment, apart from Justin Bieber. They’ve cleared
     the usual packets of breakfast cereal and thrown-down schoolbags from the work surfaces; now, just a bottle of excellent claret
     (two school uniforms’ worth at Tesco), open and breathing, stands below the newly scrubbed spice rack, the dishwasher humming
     beneath. A normal middle-class kitchen, she thinks, tarted up to impress the Lucas-Joneses. My mum would say I was a snob
     because there aren’t any chickens under the table.
    She remembers what else she needs to do. Fills a pan from the kettle, puts it on the stove. God knows what she’d say about
     me serving mange-tout, she thinks.
    Back in the dining room, the conversation has moved on. ‘I just don’t see,’ Lionel is saying, ‘why they should get anonymity.
     That’s this society all over, isn’t it? Everything skewed in favour of the perpetrator, not a thought for the victim. Have
     you been covering this?’ He turns to Kirsty as she takes her seat again.
    ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Lost track.’
    ‘Child F and Child M.’
    ‘Oh. No. Sleaford’s off my patch, I’m afraid. I’ve got a friend who has. He’s been finding it very depressing.’
    ‘Well, I was just saying. It’s disgusting.’
    ‘Yes …’ she says, vaguely. ‘Awful. That poor child.’
    ‘No, not just that. The way the establishment’s swung into gear to protect the little’ – he pauses; he’s obviously been about
     to say ‘shits’ ‘– sods that did it.’
    ‘Well, the whole thing’s s
ub judice
,’ says Jim. ‘You’d want them to get a fair trial, wouldn’t you?’
    Lionel snorts. ‘Fair trial? It’s on
film
, for heaven’s sake.’
    Kirsty feels the blush creep up her cheeks. She always finds conversation of this sort difficult; feels exposed, endangered.
     A small, paranoid part of her wonders if the subject’s been raised because someone knows more about her than they’re letting
     on. ‘And they’ve got siblings,’ she protests. ‘Surely you don’t think the other kids deserve to get mob justice for what their
     brothers did?’
    Lionel snorts again. ‘It’s that sort of woolly liberal sentimentality that leads to situations like this in the first place.’
    She can see Jim’s woolly liberal hackles rising. Don’t, she thinks. Please don’t. You can’t get into an argument. Can’t piss
     him off, let him think you don’t admire every pearl that drops from his mouth. Not when we’ve gone to all this effort.
    ‘More wine, anyone?’ she says hurriedly. The two women assent volubly, praise the choice of grape, fuss over their husbands’
     glasses: they too have read that there’s about to be dissent and join forces to keep things nice. Lionel’s having none of
     it. Kirsty wonders if he’s enjoying himself; if he knows why he’s been asked here and is taking full advantage of the company’s
     powerlessness to contradict.
    ‘The fact is,’ he says, ‘for the good of society as a whole we should identify the murderous little monsters and lock them
     up, and do it
before
they kill someone else’s child. We don’t seem tocare about the victims any more. It’s all about the criminal. Poor little crim, let’s make excuses. And yes, actually – the
     public