PROLOGUE
JULY
1965
A family was struck by tragedy when their young son drowned while on holiday. Two-year-old Caspar Lewis fell into a lake in full view of his ten-year-old sister, Isabel. He was rushed to hospital, but was pronounced dead on arrival. Local police said that the death appeared to be a tragic accident. Last night, his parents, Michael and Barbara, were being comforted by relatives.
It had been so easy to drown Caspar.
She
hadn't planned it, for she could never have known that her parents
would leave her to “keep an eye on him” for a few minutes. And
in any case, drowning wouldn’t have been her preferred method of
disposing of her little brother. She had dreamed of strangling him,
of placing a pillow over his sleeping face and sitting on it, of
perhaps pushing him down the stairs. But drowning had never occurred
to her. In any case, until now, she had never really intended to put
any of her ideas into practice.
But
then suddenly, there it was. The perfect opportunity. She and Caspar,
alone on the jetty, watching the boats
'Look,
Casp! Look! Fish!”
And
he had leaned over, squatting in his pale blue dungarees, his bobbing
blond curls (oh, how she had hated those curls!) reflected in the
pale surface of the lake.
Such
a little push; such a small splash. And he was gone. There was no
fuss, no scream, no bobbing back to the surface, no sign of any
struggle (afterwards, they had said that his body had become caught
in reeds); just a single starfish hand, raised as though in
valediction before disappearing altogether in the murky depths of the
lake. Caspar's small, perfect life had ended in a small, perfect
death. Neat. Unobtrusive. Almost apologetic.
She
had waited a few minutes, just to be sure, and then she had run
screaming back up the bank.
'Quick!
Come quick! Caspar's fallen in the lake!'
It
was as simple as that.
Her
parents had blamed themselves . They shouldn't have left the two of
them together; it hadn't been fair. She was too young to be
responsible for so young a child. What could they have been thinking
of! Poor Isabel. Poor little Bel. She would carry that terrible
memory with her for the rest of her life. They must be strong. They
must keep going. For Isabel.
After
a while, it was easy to imagine that it really had been an accident;
that it had had nothing to do with her at all. Caspar had stumbled
and fallen; it had been nobody’s fault. And her guilt had sunk,
like Caspar's tiny body, and been submerged in the soothing waters
of the myth which had been woven around it.
Why
had she hated him so much? She had begged and pleaded for a baby
brother or sister, perhaps safe in the certainty that none would be
forthcoming, but when he had finally arrived, she had been
overwhelmed with jealousy. She grew to hate her perfect little
brother with his perfect manners, his blue eyes, his seraphic smile,
and those blond curls, Wherever they went, Caspar had turned heads
and attracted compliments. He was a clever, child, too. He knew all
his colours and could count up to fifty, while in those days, Isabel
had struggled at school. He even had more names than she did. Caspar
Llewellyn St.John Lewis. That was a name that was going places.
Whereas she, plain Isabel Mary, wasn't going anywhere.
Once,
she had asked why Caspar had been blessed with all those names, and
been told that her mother had “had everything taken away” after
his birth, and there would be no more babies. So it seemed that all
the names that might have been given to future brothers had been
lavished upon Caspar, so that none should be wasted. She had never
asked about girls' names. She couldn’t imagine that her parents
would ever have wanted another girl.
And
so the memory of that afternoon had become clouded, and had finally
disappeared. If she thought of it at all (and she tried not to), she
had a vague recollection of Caspar running off, of herself shouting
after him, getting to the jetty too late to save him. In her own
mind, she became as much of a victim as Caspar himself; the older
sister who had been the luckless witness, unable to reach her little
brother in time. The coroner's verdict had been “accidental
death”, so that was what it had been. A tragic accident. It had had
nothing to do with Isabel at all.
She
wasn't to know that one day - one far-off day - she would be tempted
to kill again.
