her for years, I still don’t think I’d have recognized her. Hair dyed black, covered with tattoos and … the state of her body …’
He didn’t need to say more. I had seen her.
‘Calling herself “Celeste” by then. I only found out her real name because I had to check through some paperwork about her hospital admissions.’
‘How long had she been going to ReProgramme?’
‘Last year, I suppose.’
‘And where was she living?’
He shrugged. ‘Friends’ places. With other druggies. On the streets sometimes.’
‘You’d think, with a father who doted on her like that, someone who was so rich … he wouldn’t have let her get into a state like that.’
‘I gather he would have supported her, but she cut off contact with him. Went underground.’
I remembered when I had first met Kerry, the blonde, beautifully groomed Daddy’s girl, perched intimately on the side of his chair. ‘Why would she do that? Why would she cut herself off from him?’
‘I’m not absolutely certain, but I think she needed a change of identity.’
‘Why, though?’
‘To avoid trouble with the police.’
‘Oh?’
‘I pieced this together from a lot of conversation with Celeste … Kerry. They were pretty garbled at times, but I think I got the main outline. She made no pretence about her background, she said that she’d come from a rich family. I think she intuited that she and I might have something in common in this respect, so she kind of bonded with me. Other staff at ReProgramme were very keen on that, developing personal empathy with the clients. It offered the chance of being able to get to the root of their problems. Anyway, Celeste said that her father had always been generous, but she didn’t want to push him too far. She didn’t, basically, want him to know about her habit, to let him preserve the image of her as Daddy’s precious little girl. She said she stole some stuff from her father, and jewellery from her stepmother, but she couldn’t take too much or they’d start to get suspicious. But she had a habit that was getting increasingly expensive.’
‘So, what did she do?’
‘She started stealing from her father’s friends.’
‘Ah.’
‘Friends apparently from some golf club he belongs to.’
‘The West Sussex. Bruce Tallis is very proud of his membership there.’
‘Well, apparently one of his golfing chums surprised Kerry in the act of stealing his wife’s jewellery. And when that came to light, other members also reported thefts, and it seemed pretty likely she was responsible for those too. Kerry’s father apparently offered to reimburse them for what was missing, but the one who’d caught her red-handed was of the old school. Thought she ought to be arrested and go through the courts. That’s when the blonde Kerry Tallis disappeared and a black-haired Celeste started hanging round on the Portsmouth drug scene.’
‘Do you know if her father was still in touch with her? Did he somehow continue to send her money?’
Dodge shrugged ignorance. ‘Don’t know anything about that.’
‘Still, at least the fact that she was going to the ReProgramme meetings meant she was trying to deal with her problem.’
Dodge twisted his lips in disagreement. ‘Maybe. She was a very irregular attender. She’d come along to the sessions and, you know, when she wasn’t drugged up, she sounded very rational. Cut-glass vowels, like talking to one of the genteel matrons of Chichester. Then she’d start using again and … disappear for weeks, be totally incoherent when she came back.’
‘What brought her along to ReProgramme in the first place? Was that just her trying to get her life sorted?’
‘Maybe a bit of that. But no, first time a friend brought her. That’s the way it usually happens. Someone gets on the scheme, starts to make some progress, thinks of a mate with the same problem, brings them along. In Celeste’s case, it was a guy called Les.’
‘A user?’
‘Yes. And dealer in a minor way. Had served time for dealing more than once. Just come out of Gradewell when he first came to ReProgramme. Really seemed to have seen the error of his ways, wanted to make a new start. We had hopes for him, thought he might go through with the training as a counsellor and join the staff. That’s how most of us came in; had some bad experiences, thought maybe we could help people with similar problems.’
‘Your tone of voice implies that Les didn’t complete the training.’
‘No. It was all going well, but … I think it was meeting Celeste that put paid to