The Girl with the Fragile Mind

FRIDAY 14TH JULY CLAUDIE

At Natalie’s neat little house in the suburbs, Ella at least was happy to see me, demonstrating her hopping on one leg, her fair curls bouncing up and down, chunky and solid as her mother but far more cuddly.

‘Good hopping,’ I admired her. ‘Can you do the other side?’ But she couldn’t really, despite gallant efforts.

‘Please, Auntie C, can we play Banopoly?’

‘Banopoly?’ She meant Monopoly. ‘Of course. I’d love to.’

‘You can be the boot if you like,’ she said kindly, swinging on my hand. I agreed readily, because I felt like an old boot right now, and it suited me just fine to not think about real life for a moment.

‘Claudia’s hurt, Ella,’ Natalie said, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was so transfixed by the television, by the rolling news bulletins, that she wasn’t concentrating on either of us, so Ella and I sat in the kitchen, away from the television, and had orange squash and digestives as we set the Monopoly board up. In the end, I was the top hat and Ella was the dog, and I let her buy everything, especially the ‘water one with the tap on’ because I knew if she lost, her bottom lip would push out and she would cry. And I found if I didn’t move too suddenly or dramatically, the pain in my head was just about bearable.

At twelve o’clock Natalie washed Ella’s hands and face and took her round to her school nursery for the afternoon session.

‘Will you be here when I get back, Auntie C?’ Ella asked solemnly. ‘We can watch Peter Pancake if you are.’ And I smiled as best I could and said probably. She had once informed me that my complicated name was actually a man’s, and she had long since stopped struggling with it.

‘Of course you’ll be here,’ Natalie snapped, ‘where else are you going to go?’ and we looked at each other in a way that meant we were both acknowledging the reason why I wouldn’t be anywhere else.

‘And of course, we want you here,’ Natalie managed a valiant finish, retying her fussy silk scarf under her chin.

As the door shut behind them, I slid open the French windows and stood in the garden and tried very hard to breathe deeply like Helen had taught me. Natalie’s pink and green garden was so well regimented, just like everything else in her life, that it felt stifling. The air was heavy, rain was on its way, and a strange hush seemed to have descended. Everyone staying inside and a hush that had settled over the whole city – as if we were all waiting. I felt very small suddenly; tiny, a mere dot on the London landscape.

I made myself tea and I put a lot of sugar in it, and then I tried and tried to ring Tessa, but she wasn’t answering; her phone wasn’t even on. No one picked up at the Academy either, so eventually I gave up, and switched on the News again.

MASSIVE EXPLOSION IN CENTRAL LONDON scrolled across the bottom of the screen, and a reporter who looked a little like a rabbit in the headlights informed viewers nervously that Berkeley Square had been hit by some kind of explosion but at the moment no one knew if it was a bomb or a gas main that had blown up. There was no more information, but then numbers were listed for those worried about friends or family; and we were all asked to stay at home.

‘Do not attempt to travel in central London. As a precaution, police have shut down all public transport systems for the moment. We reiterate, it is only a precaution, but the advice is to please remain at home unless your journey is absolutely necessary,’ the dark-skinned reporter warned us gravely, before throwing questions to a sweaty terrorism expert who began to hazard guesses at the cause of the explosion.

My phone rang again. This time I did answer it, praying it was Tessa.

‘Claudie. I’ve been so worried. What the hell’s going on?’ Rafe sounded furious. ‘I thought you’d be here when I got back.’

‘London’s gone mad,’ I said quietly. ‘It’s all exploding.’

‘Never mind that – what the hell happened last night? I waited for you in the restaurant, and you never came, and then there you were, on my doorstep, frozen and practically unconscious. Were you drunk?’ He was accusatory.

‘No,’ I replied. ‘Definitely not drunk.’

‘What then?’

‘I can’t remember, Rafe. I just – I had this terrible migraine, and then—’

‘What do you mean you can’t remember?’

Now was not the time to tell him about the splitting. In fact, I was realising there was never going to be a time to tell him about it. And yet, I was terrified that I was sliding backwards, back to the place I’d gone when Ned died, when my world had caved in and the nightmare became reality.

‘Rafe, one thing—’

‘Yes?’

‘Who is she?’ I stared at my bare feet. The ground beneath them was shifting again and life was not going to be the same now, I realised. My silver nail varnish was very old and chipped. I must do something about it, I thought absently.

‘Who?’

‘The owner of the pink toothbrush. In the bathroom cupboard.’

‘No one.’ There was a long pause. ‘It’s not what it looks like. I mean, she’s just an old friend.’

‘Yeah right.’ I felt so tired I could hardly speak.

‘She stays sometimes when she’s in town. That’s all.’ He was both contrite and angry in turns, as if he hadn’t quite decided the best form of defence.

‘It’s fine. Look, I’ve got to go, Rafe. It’s up to you what you do.’

‘Claudie—’

I hung up. I tried Tessa again. Nothing.

I was frightened. I was fighting panic. Why couldn’t I remember this morning clearly? I debated ringing my psychiatrist Helen, but I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. I couldn’t go running to her every time something went wrong. And she might think I was deluded again, and I wasn’t sure I could bear that.

I switched the News on again, the explosion still headlines, the first pictures I had seen. A bus lay on its side in hideously mangled glory, like a huge inert beast brought down by hunters. The newsreader emitted polite dismay as I stared at the pictures in horror.

‘Speculation is absolutely rife in the absence of any confirmation of what exactly rocked the foundations of Berkeley Square this morning at 7.34 a.m. Immediate assumptions that it was another bomb in the vein of the 7/7 explosions five years ago are looking less likely. Local builders were working on a site to the left of the square, the adjacent corner to the Royal Ballet Academy, on a new Concorde Hotel. The site is situated above an old gas main that has previously been the subject of some concern. The Hoffman Bank has been partially destroyed; at least one security guard is thought to have been inside. So far, Scotland Yard have not yet released a statement.’

At least, thank God, the Academy seemed untouched by the explosion. I tried Tessa one more time, and then Eduardo; both their phones went to voicemail now. I turned the News off and went upstairs, craving respite. I heard Natalie and Ella come in, Ella chattering nineteen to the dozen. I felt limp with exhaustion. I’d tried so hard to stay in control recently, and yet something had gone very wrong.

In the bathroom I rifled through Natalie’s medicine cabinet: finding various bottles of things, I took what I hoped was a sleeping pill. I went to the magnolia-coloured spare bedroom with the matching duvet set, shut the polka-dot curtains against the rain that had just started, and invited oblivion in.

FRIDAY 14TH JULY KENTON

Silver had insisted DS Kenton was checked out by the paramedics, but she knew that she wasn’t injured, only shocked. He wanted her to go home, but Kenton wasn’t sure being alone was the right thing. She kept seeing that hand in the middle of the road, bloody and raw, and the body sliced completely in two, and every time she saw it, she had to close her eyes. She felt numb and rather disconnected from reality; she sat in the station canteen nursing sweet tea and it was a little like the scene around her was a film, all the colours bright and sort of technicolour.

The person Kenton really wanted to speak to was her mother, but that was impossible. So she rang her father, but he was at the Hospice shop in town, doing his weekly shift, and he couldn’t work his mobile phone properly anyway, so he kept cutting her off, until she gave up and said she’d call later. She didn’t even get as far as telling him about her trauma. She drank the tea and stared at the three tea leaves floating at the bottom, and then on a whim, she rang Alison.

Alison didn’t answer, so she left her a rather faltering, stumbling message.

‘Hello. It’s me.’ Long pause. Not wanting to sound presumptuous she qualified: ‘Me being Lorraine.’ Oh God, now she sounded like an idiot. ‘I’ve been in a – in the – I was there when Berkeley Square, when it exploded.’

She panicked and hung up.

On the other side of the canteen she saw Silver stroll in, as calm and unruffled as ever, his expensive navy suit immaculate, not a hair out of place. She could understand why women’s eyes followed him; not particularly tall, not particularly gorgeous, perhaps, but just – assured. Commanding, somehow.

‘Lorraine.’ He bought himself a diet Coke from the machine behind her. ‘How you feeling? Time to go home, kiddo?’

‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was trembly. She cleared her throat. ‘I keep thinking about the hand.’

‘The hand?’ Silver snapped the ring-pull on the can and sat opposite her.