The woman’s demeanour changed perceptibly, almost as if revisiting her daughter’s memory somehow took away the pain.
‘She liked to read. When she wasn’t at school or swimming, her head was constantly stuck in a book. She thought about being a teacher. She was good with little ones.’
Lilli Devine closed her eyes, knowing that teaching was yet another thing Caroline would never do.
‘What else, Lilli?’ Kate said, trying to keep Lilli’s mind on her daughter.
Lilli sighed and started again. ‘She loved swimming and it was a great way to use up her energy – even from a small tot she was always full of beans. You could never keep her easy for long. She’d go to the Rathmines pool, the one nearest her school, at the weekends with her friend, Jessica. Sometimes she’d even go to the pool before school.’
‘So she was happy?’
‘Yes, of course, she was perfect.’
‘And what about her computer, did she spend a lot of time on that?’
‘Ah, you know what kids are like.’
Kate looked over at O’Connor. She knew the Computer Crime Investigation Unit, CCIU, hadn’t turned up anything of value on it.
‘And her friend, Jessica, they were close?’
‘They were always together.’
Lillie paused, and when she spoke again her voice was hard, the anger that had been hovering underneath rose to the surface. ‘She called in here with her mother when they heard the news. I couldn’t look at the girl.’
‘Go on.’
‘I couldn’t look at her mother either for that matter. I just kept thinking, you’re so lucky, so lucky to still have her. Almost as soon as they arrived, I wanted them both to leave. I kept thinking, what if it was the other way around, what if it had been Jessica who’d been taken? All I wanted to do was turn the tables, tell her she’d got it wrong, that it was her daughter and not mine who’d been buried in that hole up there.’
Kate watched Lilli’s hands as she twisted them in her lap. She spoke as softly as she could. ‘Lilli, I know how hard this is.’
‘Do you?’ Lilli shot back at her. ‘Do you really know? Have you lost a child, Ms Pearson? Are you experienced in these matters?’
‘No, Lilli, I’m not, and please don’t think that I’m trying to undermine how you feel in any way. I’m just trying to put all the pieces together, to find something that might stop something like this happening again.’
‘It won’t bring her back,’ Lilli said in a dead voice.
‘No it won’t, I know that.’
Lilli looked at Kate, and then nodded. ‘Go on, ask your questions.’
‘Was there anything about Caroline’s behaviour that had changed over the last while?’
‘No, not really, other than—’
‘Other than what?’
‘Well, you know, it was nothing really. She was never overweight. I mean, she was a fit girl, what with the swimming and everything. But lately she’d started to go on about the types of food she wanted to eat – no carbohydrates, no bread, wouldn’t touch chocolate or any of “that rubbish”, as she called it.’
Kate remembered how thin Caroline had looked, and what Morrison had told O’Connor about there being very little fatty tissue on the body, that it was practically skeletal-like in certain areas.
‘Do you think she felt under pressure to lose weight?’
‘No, no, I mean she wanted to be healthier, that’s all.’
Kate could tell there was an element of doubt in Lilli’s last sentence, an anxiety that, as a mother, she might have missed something.
‘She’d lost lots of weight.’
All four of them turned to the teenager standing by the door, surprised by her sudden contribution to the conversation.
Kate didn’t waste any time. ‘Why do you think that was, Emily?’
‘Same reason as most, I suppose.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘To be like everyone else.’
‘Do you think Caroline worried about being like everyone else?’
‘Listen …’
‘Kate, call me Kate.’
‘I don’t see the point in all this. We’re not going to be able to ask her now, are we?’
Peter Devine looked over at his daughter and then to O’Connor. ‘That’s the hardest part, Inspector, we all feel it, just the three of us here, it’s all wrong. Caroline should be with us, bounding in through that doorway. There’s always been the four of us and now she’s not here, she’s gone, and we can’t ask her anything, we can’t bring her back, no matter what we do.’ He broke off, crying, his shoulders shaking.
‘Peter, please stop.’ The softness had returned to his wife’s voice.
Kate purposely avoided looking at either Peter or Lilli, and instead kept eye contact with Emily. ‘Emily, did Caroline say something to you about it?’
‘About what?’
‘About why she was losing weight?’
‘No, not about that exactly, but I knew she wasn’t happy.’
‘How?’
‘Emily, if you have something to say, then for God’s sake just say it.’ The softness had left Lilli’s voice and she was looking at her eldest daughter with a look that was somewhere between fear and frustration.