Too Close For Comfort (10 page)

‘Right,’ I said, playing for time again.

‘But there’s a great deal more we need to look into,’ added Krall, ‘and we’ll need all the help we can get.’

Roger cut in. ‘As you can see, there’s a real need here. You’re already familiar to Sarah’s friends. The school’s headmaster has also specifically requested help
for him and his staff. If you could get the ball rolling, handle the immediate aftermath, the local authority will look at more long-term bereavement-counselling options.’

‘The fact you’ve already been part of a police investigation . . .’ started Krall. This time it was my turn to cut in.

‘But I wasn’t, not formally. I was leant on.’

‘By your now fiancé!’ added Roger, dry.

‘Yes, but it was incredibly difficult to keep the boundaries in place. I need to know that people can talk to me in confidence.’

Krall gave a reassuring smile. ‘Absolutely. If someone tells you something that’s critical to the police investigation then you’d be duty bound to share it if they refused to,
but that seems unlikely. There’s no reason for anyone you’d be seeing to be hiding anything, and you can be clear about your legal responsibilities up front.’

There was a lengthy pause. I could see his logic – I could see why, if a person chose to talk to me, it wouldn’t make sense that they’d have something to hide – and yet,
something deep inside was screaming at me to step back from the edge.

‘But what about my clients?’

Roger had an answer for everything. ‘It’s holiday season now and you’ll only be three weeks or so. There’s Skype, phone sessions . . .’

‘I suppose . . .’ I said, still unsure.

‘You’d be doing real good here, Mia,’ said Krall.

Could I make a difference? Max whispered across my consciousness, the way he’d earnestly, painfully described his friendship with his Woody doll. Bereaved children were a bit of a
speciality of mine – could the briefness of my stay make the idea of therapy palatable to his brusque father?

‘Those conferences you’ve been speaking at – adolescent mental health.’ Roger’s voice was soft, cajoling. ‘That last case rocketed your profile, triggered
those invitations. The grey areas are what makes it interesting. You know now how to navigate them. And other people will no doubt want to learn from your experiences.’

He knew – he could sense the part of me that was like a mirror for him. The part that was hungry for it. The part that feared that, once I had a family, I’d never get to push myself
like this again. I stood up abruptly, grabbed my handbag.

‘I just need to nip to the bathroom.’

*

‘Sweetheart, you’ll be amazing. Don’t forget I’ve seen you in action.’

I was crammed into a tiny cubicle, perched on the loo, the lid down. Just the sound of Patrick’s voice, tinny and indistinct though it was, was allowing my heartbeat to slow to something
approaching normal.

‘Will I? Didn’t go so well last time, did it? And . . .’ It was so hard to wrap words around my discomfort, my sense that there was a bigger storm approaching.
‘Lysette’s being so odd. Why wouldn’t she have told me they were having an affair?’

‘Didn’t want you to think badly of her friend?’

It seemed like a logical explanation, and yet something about it felt wrong. ‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘Thing is, you want to stay on for her anyway. So you may as well help them out.’

‘I do, I really do, but . . . She was vicious to me at the funeral, Patrick.’ I could hear the emotion I’d been unable to express up until now leaking out in my
voice. ‘She said a couple of really horrible things.’

‘Did she say you had a fat arse?’

Patrick never failed to make me laugh: his pure, unadulterated silliness was one of the things I adored about him. Stress ran off me, professional confidence surging up in its place.

‘I promised you I’d only be gone a few days,’ I said.

‘It’s fine.’

I tucked my feet up on the seat, winded by an unexpected rush of insecurity. ‘Aren’t you bothered?’

Was he glad I was gone, relieved to be able to slide back into workaholic bachelordom without interruption? I checked myself: a childhood spent watching my mum staring at the door, willing my
terminally unfaithful dad to reappear, had made me prone to paranoia. The fact my dad and I were speaking after years of estrangement was partly thanks to Patrick’s gentle loyalty: I
didn’t need to punish him for those early crimes. He laughed softly, knowing better than to indulge me.

‘Darling, three weeks is nothing. I’ll come and visit you.’

‘What, and snuggle up on my lilo?’

‘Sounds exceedingly sexy.’ Patrick paused – I could sense the cogs turning down the phone line. ‘You know that thing you say sometimes? About how everyone has their Spidy
skill?’ Your superhero power – the thing you can do better than anyone else – it’s a pet theory of mine that we all need to know what ours is. Patrick continued.
‘Well, I think yours is making people feel safe when nothing else in the world does. If they want you there, you should do it.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, suddenly feeling way too emotional for the inside of a police station toilet. I pulled my knees up, hugged them to my chest, my cork wedges teetering on the seat.
‘I should go back in there.’

‘Sure. Who’s the DCI trying to talk you into it, anyway?’

‘Lawrence Krall, he’s called. Bit odd. I feel like he’s sauntered out of a moody French film.’

Patrick whistled. ‘Krall?’

‘You know him?’ Everyone seemed to know him: I got the distinct feeling, even from the tone of his whistle, that Patrick liked him less than Roger did.

‘Strange decision. He’s a proper murder guy – solved a big serial killer case up North last year. If they think this is an open and shut case, I don’t know why
they’ve parachuted him in.’

I can’t deny I felt it: that whisper of unease, that shivering sensation – the kind of tiny sign I always implore my patients to heed.

I didn’t. I chose not to listen. So in a sense, all that came in the wake of that decision was down to me.

They came from nowhere, their cameras clicking and flashing, their shouted questions like white noise. It was so stupid, so naive of me, not to have prepared myself for this. I
tried not to shrink, tried to keep a steady path, my eyes fixed on the two policemen who were stationed at the school gates. Then I swept my way across the bare playground, not wanting to give
myself the chance to think about the last time I’d trodden this tarmac. The tight knot of mums, Saffron’s small hand in mine, Peter’s gentle presence. Now he was gone, and the
world of the school had stopped turning, at least for now.

Patrick had somehow managed to send me a suitcase of clothes – there was no way I could exude professional authority in my two pairs of grubby jeans – and my wedges click-clacked
against the floor as I passed through the echoey corridors towards the headmaster’s office. I looked into the classrooms en route, splodgy artwork decorating the walls, tiny chairs empty of
tiny bottoms, and wondered which one was Saffron’s. His name was stencilled on the wall in the last one:
MR GRIEVE
. I stood there, rooted to the spot by the sight of
those black letters, then jumped in fright as I saw movement in my peripheral vision. She stood slowly, uncoiling herself from the carpeted corner of the room – it was Kimberley. Of course it
was Kimberley. She smiled widely, carefully made her way towards the door.

‘You survived the mayhem at the gates?’ she asked.

‘It’s unbelievable.’ The story was igniting, a slow-news summer suddenly transformed. A blonde, photogenic wife of a cabinet minister sweeping through the school gates on Day
Two could have only thrown petrol on a blazing fire. ‘They must’ve been all over you.’

She gave a self-deprecating shrug. ‘I’ve got used to navigating it. Ian’s going to be so pleased you’re here.’ She touched my shoulders, lightly grazing each of my
cheeks with her lips. She was wearing a pair of leg-lengthening skinny jeans topped off by a V-necked grey marl T-shirt, her skin as fresh and luminous as it always was. Now I felt overdressed,
like I’d come for a job interview in a provincial bank. ‘Shall I show you where his office is?’

‘Don’t worry. He said it was down there and to the left in his text.’

She paused, cocked her head, brooking no argument.

‘No, let me. I’m just sorting through the books. I organise an auction every summer term, and the book fund’s a big part of where the money goes.’ She exhaled. ‘I
need to feel like I’m doing something useful here. Does that make sense?’

‘Of course it does.’

‘This was his classroom.’

She moved backwards as she said it, and I stepped in, without really wanting to. How did she do it, take total command of any space she occupied?

‘Was he a good teacher?’ I regretted the question as soon as I’d asked it. It felt callous, bald. Why did I feel the need to fill the space?

‘He definitely made the children feel special. He always went the extra mile.’ She gave a smile which didn’t reach her eyes. ‘Which should be a good thing,
shouldn’t it?’

What did that even mean? I couldn’t waste energy decoding it: instead I took in the room, the project they’d obviously been doing on the environment, the clumsy crayon drawings of
birds and animals, a big orange sun, a recycling bin with an ostentatious tick. Emotion surged up in me, and I looked downwards, not wanting her to see my face. She hadn’t exactly ambushed
me, but she’d caught me off guard. It all felt so close suddenly, Saffron’s chaotic paint splatters lost somewhere in that jumble.

‘Let’s go and find Ian,’ I said.

‘Sure thing. I’ve got my police interview this afternoon. I need some time to psych myself up. Deep breathing, is that what you’d recommend?’

It always felt like she was mocking me, her pinches so light they left no bruises. God, I missed Lysette in that moment – she’d normally know if I was being oversensitive, and not
make me feel like an idiot if I was. It’s humans’ fatal design flaw, the way we only appreciate the ordinary once it’s no longer ordinary at all.

‘I tend to find breathing helpful in most situations,’ I said.

She smiled, didn’t say anything for a beat longer than was comfortable.

‘I really must come and see you, mustn’t I?’

*

I looked at my watch as I followed Kimberley down the corridor, conscious that Lysette would be in her police interview at this very moment. By the time I got back from my
meeting with Krall, the news about the cameras had leaked out, which was kind of a relief. I’d hoped it might bridge the gap I’d felt opening between us in the preceding days, the
confirmation that her hunch was right, but if anything she felt more distant. Her way of psyching herself up for her interview was to get progressively angrier, convinced they’d be out to
malign Sarah.

‘They weren’t having an affair,’ she’d said, yanking the cork out of a bottle of wine like a cowboy drawing his gun. I saw a look cross Ged’s face as she did it,
but he didn’t say anything. ‘I know that’s what everyone’s going to say, but it’s bullshit.’

‘But for him to do that to himself – he must’ve been obsessed with her?’

She flung up a dismissive hand.

‘Everyone was obsessed with Sarah, Mia. She was that kind of person.’

I tried not to feel the sting, the sense of competing with someone impossibly perfect. An anarchic saint. Maybe dying young was the only way to square some of those impossible contradictions of
being a woman.

‘But it sounds like he did have problems,’ I added. I was desperate to ask her about the complaint that Krall had alluded to, but I didn’t want her to think I was poking around
for gossip.

There was an edge to her. ‘Look at you, with the inside track.’

‘Lys, if you don’t want me to do this . . .’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s not that. I’m really glad you’re here.’

It doesn’t always feel that way, I thought, but then I looked down at the chaos around us, her living-room floor a sea of garish plastic toys. Saffron had made me some plastic fried eggs
earlier: I should’ve cleared them away, rather than behaving like room service would come and do it for me.

‘I’m not part of the investigation. I’m just here to offer people a bit of support. Be someone to talk to.’

‘I want you to be someone for
me
to talk to.’

‘I’ll always be that,’ I promised.

Promises can be foxing – how often do we make them in a lifetime and really know they’ll hold fast?

*

Ian’s door was firmly shut when we got there, and Kimberley made sure that she was the one to knock. She opened it before there was a response, pushing her blonde head
through the gap.

‘Ian, Mia Cosgrove’s here.’ It felt odd to hear my whole name come out of her mouth. How had she learnt it?

‘Come on in,’ said a stressed-sounding voice. ‘We’re wrapping up.’

The office was small and poky, with a view of the round-about in the playground and the fields that ringed the school. Ian Gardener was wedged behind his desk like it was a barricade; a man and
a woman sat on the other side on boxy armchairs that looked too brown and synthetic to be comfortable – I guessed immediately that they were plain-clothes detectives. Ian probably
wasn’t much older than me, but he was pasty and well padded, his hair thinning at the crown, plastic glasses perched high on his sweaty nose.

Once the detectives had made their exit, Ian turned his focus onto me.

‘So you managed to cross enemy lines?’ he said, attempting a weak smile.

‘The photographers? God, they’re like swarming rats, aren’t they?’

‘I feel like that’s unfair to rats,’ he said. His voice sounded nasal to my ears, each word delivered at a similar flat pitch. ‘We’ve got a couple of white ones in
Owl class, they actually make very good pets.’

We sat there for a few seconds in silence. I like to let a first session unfold without me forcing it. Where the client instinctively wants to lead us tells me far more than I’ll glean
from their answer to some question I’ve cleverly constructed.