The Girl with the Fragile Mind

‘What?’

‘Come on, Claudie.’ She flapped around with the teabags, banging cupboard doors. ‘You know what.’

‘You mean, have I disassociated from reality again?’ I thought of my lost hours. ‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully.

‘Right.’ She looked supremely uncomfortable.

‘Actually,’ I changed tack midstream. I couldn’t do this with Natalie. ‘I don’t think it has.’

She couldn’t handle it, that much was obvious. Not many people could. Not even my husband, Will – so why put them through it? My own mother had been distraught at losing her three-year-old grandson, but more distraught, I feared, at my own descent into hell. ‘Thank God Phillip’s not here,’ I heard her tell my auntie Jean once, ‘it would have destroyed him to see her like this.’ They’d expected me to be strong, and I failed them too.

‘No. I’m fine,’ I said. I put some cream on my sore hands for something to do.

‘Good,’ she looked infinitely relieved. ‘Also, Mum’s been calling. Can you just ring her back, Claudia? I mean, Portugal is not the other side of the world, is it, love, and she’s not coming back for a while apparently, not unless you need her, she says. Just give her a bit of reassurance, and she’ll leave you alone.’

My little sister and I stared at each other, and then slowly I smiled. Perhaps Natalie did understand a little.

‘Sure. I will. Perhaps I’ll go out and see her.’ The idea of the sun on my weary bones suddenly seemed enticing, although my mother’s incessant chatter and home cooking did not.

Natalie reached across me for the sugar bowl.

‘Gosh, what’s that smell?’ she wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s really horrid.’

‘Probably me,’ I joked, but she didn’t smile.

‘My sense of smell’s gone crazy. Must be the hormones.’ She sniffed the air like the small alert dog she sometimes reminded me of. ‘It’s really weird. Like something burnt.’

‘Oh,’ I fingered the locket round my neck. ‘Might be this. It’s a native African herb. Tessa bought me some for my birthday, says it protects you. Old lady’s fingers, they call it.’

‘I’m not surprised.’ She pulled back from me. ‘It’s disgusting. Get rid of it, you hippy.’

‘I can’t,’ I said miserably. ‘Tessa’s dead, Nat.’

Natalie looked down and stirred her tea carefully.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly, ‘I know; I saw. I’m so sorry, Claudie.’ She put her hand over mine. ‘It’s the last thing you needed.’

And for a while we sat there, side by side at that old table, tied together not by choice, but by familiarity; by something more even. From necessity. And all the while the phone was unplugged, looking like an evil plastic toad, squatting malevolently on the coffee table. At least it couldn’t ring.

WEDNESDAY 19TH JULY SILVER

His ex-wife was at the hairdresser’s in Frogley when Silver called. He could hear the chorus of hairdryers in the background, imagined the girls moving in perfect choreographed precision in front of the long mirrors, whilst the immaculate Allana scrutinised her manicure critically. Her shell-pink nails that were never chipped and certainly never naked, her hair all caramel and tawny, streaked within an inch of its life. They had been a well-matched couple in this respect at least; both beautifully turned-out at all times, until Lana had her breakdown, and even then she’d managed perfect hair. It was only beneath the surface things had been so different than they seemed.

‘Lana,’ he twiddled with a biro on his desk. ‘The girl in the photo. The girl you saw on TV.’

‘Jaime,’ she said, calmly. ‘It was Jaime. I knew it.’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s not Jaime,’ he took a deep breath. ‘Jaime’s dead, Lana, we both know that. But it is – it’s Sadie Malvern. Her big sister Sadie.’

‘I know who Sadie is,’ she said. She didn’t miss a beat; she was still calm. He didn’t know what he had been expecting; for her to lose it, start crying and screaming. Of course she didn’t. ‘Sadie was in the car that day too, Joe.’

‘So,’ what else was there to say? Sadie was still alive. Jaime was long dead, but then, Lana had only killed one sister. Sadie had survived; traumatised but alive, and now she was missing. That at least was nothing to do with the Silvers. ‘I just wanted to set your mind at rest.’

Lana said something that he couldn’t catch, the noise in the salon increasing behind her as she spoke, a cacophony of women’s voices fighting the hum of the dryers.

‘I can’t hear you.’

There was a pause; the sound of the salon door opening and closing. He saw her now on the narrow high street, pacing.

‘My mind’s never at rest, Joe. It’s never been at rest. Not since that day.’

‘I know, Lana,’ he sighed. ‘But try not to go back there again.’

‘Where?’

‘To that dark place. To all this self-flagellation.’

She hung up.

Now Silver had satisfied himself that Lana’s worst nightmare hadn’t come true, there was no reason for him to have any more to do with Sadie’s disappearance. He could easily pass it back over to his colleagues and be done with it; he had more pressing matters at hand.

But the situation really bothered him. Seeing Sadie Malvern’s face again after all this time, well, it flipped the proverbial can of worms wide open: and now they were out, they’d be bloody hard to recapture. Right now, in fact, they were slithering all over the damn place. He couldn’t just leave it now to others.

As Silver retrieved his suit jacket from the hanger on the wall, Ian Kelly stuck his head round the door. He’d been seconded for the week from Fraud; Silver had only seen him once or twice since the Finnegan baby case. Silver felt a fleeting twinge of nostalgia for the feisty Jess Finnegan, whose baby son Louis he’d helped recover after a kidnap attempt two years ago.