Page 13 of Dead Fall

Babcia nodded. ‘It must have been even harder for you, the only girl at school without a mama and papa. Having your old granny coming to pick you up’ – this with a wry but loving smile.

Cassie looked away. It was true. In her early teens she had been embarrassed by her gran, with her old lady clothes and uncool perm – while at the same time feeling hot shame for her disloyalty. The other girls’ mums were so cool, with their on-trend outfits, ripped jeans and edgy haircuts. Especially Natasha’s mum, obviously. Natasha was top dog, the capo di capo of the girls at the school, who, even in the dowdy-brown school uniform, still managed to signal her status. Her hair was dyed a dark glossy chestnut and cut in a severe fringe in homage to Katy Perry’s retro style, nails manicured and varnished in a just-this-side of regulation natural, eyelashes dyed, blazer sleeves pushed up to show off her sunbed tan. The fourteen-year-old Cassie had studied her covertly in assembly, or while playing netball, like you might try to catch a glimpse of a celeb. She’d nursed a crush on her, of course she had, but that aside, she could still remember the intense need to be accepted by Natasha and her crew.

Now Cassie could see that her idol was an airhead and a bully. She’d put that horrible year or two behind her long ago, rarely thinking about it, but now she found herself wishing that she could go back and have the chance to play things differently. Especially around Sophia. Sorry, Bronte.

‘What was it like for you at school in Poland, Babcia?’ – realising that she’d never asked her before.

‘Oh it was great fun!’ – becoming animated. ‘We were always boycotting lessons. We all refused to learn Russian, of course. And we loved to bait our history teachers, asking about how Stalin had invaded Poland alongside Hitler. And then there were the demonstrations! When you’re young you don’t consider the risks – the boys would get beaten up by riot cops and a few of us got snatched by the secret police.’

Cassie knew that as a student activist Weronika had herself been imprisoned for helping to organise a demo against the Soviet-backed regime. But it occurred to her that the oppression might have had an upside. ‘You were all in it together, right? So I’m guessing you didn’t get all the backbiting, the bitching about who was cool or uncool – you know the way girls can be together.’

Babcia narrowed her eyes. ‘I’ve never really thought of it that way but you’re right, tygrysek. We were united against a common enemy.’ After a pause she went on, ‘Was it bad for you then, at school? You never said anything.’

What would have been the point? School was a war zone in which adults were unarmed civilians.

‘Oh, it wasn’t that bad,’ she said, getting a vivid image of how Kylie, one of the rough girls, used to grab her lunch box, and pretend to throw up at its contents – Polish sausage and giant gherkins instead of the regulation cheese strings and Wispa bars – making her little gang titter. Sophia came off even worse, like the time Kylie picked up a dolmades, a stuffed vine leaf, out of her box and waved it about in disgust. ‘Oh my God! Look at the disgusting shit Dobby puts in her mouth!’ Kylie had nicknamed Sophia ‘Dobby’ after the house elf in Harry Potter because she was the shortest girl in the class. ‘It looks like an alien dick!’ – positioning it between her legs to demonstrate.

If you were writing the Hollywood movie, Cassie and Sophia – the two outsiders – would make an alliance against the bullies. But in real life it was every teenage girl for herself. And she had to admit that Sophia could be annoying – always giving the teachers fancy boxes of chocs, and acting like she was superior to everyone because her dad was loaded. Cassie could picture her now, nose in the air, getting into his Mercedes outside school.

That’s no excuse for what you did.

‘Leave me alone,’ Cassie muttered. The shrink she’d seen briefly last year had called them intrusive thoughts.

‘Is everything all right, tygrysek?’ Babcia looked worried.

After a moment of hesitation, Cassie told her about Sophia, aka Bronte, killing herself and how they’d been in the same class for a bit at school.

‘God rest her soul,’ said her gran, crossing herself. ‘I saw about that poor child dying on the news but I didn’t pick up on the name.’ She paused, thinking. ‘Angelopoulos you say? I have met her mother, Chrysanthi.’

‘Seriously? Was this when I was at school?’

‘Nie, nie. Just last year. Three or four times we chatted at church coffee mornings. That poor woman!’

Camden had several Catholic churches which had served the Irish community for decades – their congregations swelled by more recent arrivals from Poland – while the borough’s Greek-origin population had four Orthodox churches to choose from. It turned out that Chrysanthi’s church, St Ioannis, and Babcia’s, St Bartholomew’s, had a programme designed to foster interfaith relations, running social events to bring the two communities closer together.

‘What was she like? Did she ever talk about her daughter?’

A troubled look crossed Babcia’s face. ‘Ah the poor thing hardly talked about anything else. Those two had a very difficult relationship. She didn’t approve of her daughter’s singing career – blamed it for the drink and drugs, the bad men. According to her, it was all the fault of her husband.’ She shrugged resignedly. ‘She married him far too young – when she was still a teenager. I gather the marriage went bad very soon afterwards.’

‘But she didn’t divorce him?’

‘Oh, her religion wouldn’t allow that. She is very devout.’

Which would help to explain Chrysanthi’s bitterness against George: for her, marriage was a life sentence with no chance of parole.

‘Did she say what went wrong between them?’

‘I got the impression he was a Lothario’ – pronouncing it with a long ‘a’ in the Mediterranean way. ‘I felt so sorry for her. She was already a bitter woman, the kind who finds it difficult to move on. And now to lose her daughter. I must ask her for coffee, to condole with her.’

Cassie pictured Chrysanthi’s raw grief as she cradled her daughter’s body, her old-young face contorting with fury as she blamed her ex-husband for the death. One thing was certain: the chances of her ‘moving on’ now were zero.

Chapter Eleven

Cassie had gone straight from Babcia’s flat to Camden Coroner’s Court, relieved to have something to distract her from the situation with Archie, and the emotional turmoil that Bronte’s death had stirred up.

Now she shuffled sideways on the back row of the public seating area so she was half hidden behind a pillar. She wanted to be able to see and hear the inquest proceedings without being seen herself. Dr Curzon was already here, sitting where witnesses waited to be called, ready to give his expert testimony, and she didn’t want to risk him spotting her: he already thought she was an uppity minion and although it wasn’t exactly forbidden for a mortuary tech to attend an inquest it would definitely be considered weird behaviour.

She was here because the case about to be heard – the unexplained death of twenty-six-year-old Felix Zuberi – had got under her skin. In the front row sat a professional-looking couple wearing dark suits, their shoulders touching – clearly his mum and dad. Mr and Mrs Zuberi hadn’t viewed Felix’s body at the mortuary, so there was no risk of them recognising Cassie.

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