Too Close For Comfort (23 page)

Alone would turn out to be underrated.

The news crews were back. A man in a nasty stripy tie was preparing to do his piece to camera. He was stabbing his finger towards the school as if it was the building’s
fault, his ‘sad face’ perfectly arranged. ‘Can we do that again?’ he asked, as I swerved my way past them. ‘Can you comment on the latest developments?’ shouted
someone, but I kept my head down, hoped I was still anonymous, and pushed my way through the black metal doors that had swallowed up Peter and Saffron two short weeks ago.

Today was the first time I’d be using the staff room for a session. I always ensure I’m there in the room before my clients, but the hubbub outside the school had held me up, and I
was a couple of minutes late. I needn’t have worried: there was no sign of Janey Sims, just a ring of empty chairs, the fabric covers worn and tatty, arranged around a low coffee table, its
surface punctuated by heat rings. There was a plastic kettle in the corner, a jar of instant coffee with a label on it and a jumble of mugs. ‘Friendly reminder to put your 50p in the tin on
Fridays!’ the label said, in thick black marker. I felt sad for them as I read it: that petty concern would seem like a lost paradise when they got back after the so-called holidays. I filled
the kettle from a half-empty bottle of water that stood nearby, hoping that it hadn’t been sitting there for weeks. I didn’t want tea – or their precious instant coffee – I
just wanted something to distract myself from the strange eeriness of being alone here.

The door swung open behind me. I turned, a smile on my face, then stopped in my tracks. It was Kimberley. Her blonde hair was teased up in the same way it had been on the day of the funeral: it
made the smooth, angular planes of her face, her swan-like neck, even more pronounced than usual. The up-do contrasted with the studied casualness of the embroidered peasant blouse she was wearing,
legs like brittle twigs in her predictably skinny jeans.

‘Hi!’ I said, trying to control the rage that was threatening to erupt. ‘I’ve actually got a session I’m doing in here, so . . .’

‘Surprise!’ said Kimberley, pointing at herself with manicured hands.

‘No, it’s Janey Sims,’ I said, refusing to compute the full horror just yet.

‘Janey couldn’t . . . she’s very upset about what came out today. There’s footage, Peter and Sarah—’

‘I know, I’ve seen it,’ I said, interrupting her.

‘She’s Daniel’s teacher, my older boy. All those vile journalists outside were too much for her. She was crying outside reception class, she could barely get her words out. I
called her a cab and said I’d come and tell you, but then I thought . . . we’ve been trying to do this for ages, haven’t we?’

I looked directly at her, searching her perfect face for any acknowledgement of what had happened between us. She was a crime scene with nothing left to see, a seamless government cover-up
– there was no trace of any of it.

‘Even if it was appropriate, you’d need to formally book,’ I said, icily professional. ‘And it’s frankly too complicated now we’ve got to know each other
socially.’ A memory like a Polaroid: her face, almost feral, as she advanced on me with the heavy gold tube. I cringed inside. ‘Boundaries are a key part of the work.’

‘So were you and Helena very
boundaried
when you went rambling in the woods?’ she said, matching me for ice.

‘Things have shifted since then. What happened at your house . . .’

Her eyes flashed a barely perceptible warning, before a wide smile arrived. She waved an airy hand. ‘That was all a dreadful misunderstanding. I’m sorry if I offended you – if
I misread the situation. It was just a bit of a surprise to find you up there like that!’

We watched each other for a long second.

‘I just don’t think we can . . .’

‘So let’s forget boundaries,’ she said, voice suddenly like caramel. She sank down heavily into one of the ratty chairs, fingers gripping the wooden arms tightly, as if she
were on a pirate ship, liable to be hurled overboard any second. ‘Be my friend instead.’ She looked up at me, wide blue eyes brimming with tears. ‘I tell you what, Mia, I could
really do with a friend today.’

I can see, looking back, that I was in a dangerous trance. The nagging conviction that the darkness spread even further and deeper than was apparent – that it could blot out the friend who
at that moment I hated and loved all at once – wouldn’t let me quit. I was like a gambler, determined each and every hand would finally deliver my winning streak.

‘I’ve boiled the kettle,’ I said, crossing to the corner where it sat.

‘Nescafé and UHT milk,’ said Kimberley, blotting her eyes with the thick fabric of her gathered sleeve. ‘You really know how to treat a girl!’

*

We were sitting opposite each other now, Kimberley’s pretty face cupped in her right hand.

‘I don’t know how you do what you do,’ she said. ‘All those secrets you must have to carry around.’

Her eyes lingered a little too long. Who was it really, holding on to too many secrets? I didn’t think the irony was lost on her.

‘I try not to carry them around,’ I said. ‘I have supervision, where I get to talk it all through with my boss.’ The thought gave me a pang of guilt: Roger had been
fruitlessly chasing me for a few days now. I couldn’t – and shouldn’t – avoid him much longer.

‘Therapy for therapists? Sounds like heaven. I think I might need to get myself some of that supervision.’

She took a quick sip of her coffee, eyes darting out of the window. She was gambling too – I just hadn’t yet discovered what game she was playing.

‘What do you mean? Does it feel like bog-standard therapy wouldn’t touch the sides?’

Kimberley gave a mirthless laugh. ‘You could say that.’ Her eyes met mine. ‘Seeing that footage today – I mean there’s a certain relief to knowing, but still,
seeing her so close to death . . .’ Her mouth formed a suitably shocked round, a pale hand laid across her heart. ‘Although far worse for Lysette, I’m sure.’

Her gaze rested on me a second too long. News had travelled, I was sure of it. I felt myself drawing up straighter in my chair, my voice honeyed and professional.

‘I don’t think it’s ever useful to invalidate our experience by playing the comparison game with painful emotions. What did it make
you
feel, seeing
it?’

‘It sounds silly, I’m sure, but it reminded me of the Peter I thought I knew.’ Just Peter now – Sarah had already been expunged from her narrative. ‘The way he sort
of loped when he walked, his arms swinging. A bit like the orangutan in
The Jungle Book
.’ The smile she gave at the memory was pure sunlight, which only served to
demonstrate how many of them were like winter. She meant it.

‘I did like him very much, and Lucas adored having him as his teacher. That’s why . . .’ She ground to a halt. I let the silence linger.

‘Why?’ I asked eventually.

‘Why I didn’t take it further.’ She looked at me. ‘You’re no dummy, Mia, we know that. I’m sure you’re aware of what happened.’

I nodded. ‘I know that there was a bit of an issue between you.’

‘That’s putting it mildly.’ She sighed. ‘He was young. It was puppy love that had got out of hand. He didn’t need to lose his career for it.’ She gave another
mirthless laugh. ‘And it did get very out of hand.’

I took a sip of instant coffee – there’s power in the pause. ‘Out of hand, how?’

‘He was obsessed with me,’ she said, increasingly animated. ‘I don’t know
why
. I’m – I was – fifteen years older than him.
I’ve got a mum tum.’ She patted her taut stomach. ‘But it didn’t seem to matter to him.’

‘What, so texts? Calls?’

‘All of that. He even came to the house. We had to get Ian involved. We had no choice.’

‘You and Nigel?’

‘Yes. I mean – imagine if it had got into the press.’ She gave a delicate little shudder. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘Is it a lot of pressure, being a politician’s wife?’

‘Oh yes!’ she said unconvincingly. ‘I hate being on show, it’s so not me, and Nigel’s away such a lot. Although he was there – that night. I have to go to the
UN with him, and he has to go to the St Augustine’s quiz night! He gets a pretty raw deal, all in all.’

The blurriness was starting to make me disorientated. Here we were, back where Jim had taken me, at the quiz night. I didn’t want to be the interfering bitch that Lysette had accused me of
being, and yet it was hard not to keep probing.

‘Kimberley, I’m aware that none of this is my business . . .’

My words barely registered. Her hands flung themselves upwards, her cheeks as flushed as a feverish child’s.

‘Nigel was actually chairing it, I think that’s what set Peter off.’ I’d seen Nigel on
Newsnight
recently giving forth on ‘economic
migrants’, batting away the other guests and their opinions like they were midges that he’d been brought on to swat. I was sure that the chance to chair anything – even a rural
quiz night – would’ve made him giddy with joy. ‘It was unfortunate – we both went to the loo at the same time. Coming face to face with me like that, he just – he lost
it. He was shouting, crying.’ She angled her face, held my gaze. ‘You saw the state of him at the funeral: he was a very fragile person. Ian had to manhandle him out.’

‘Was the aftermath very difficult?’

Her voice was soaked with emotion. ‘You have to try to be compassionate. It’s something Nigel’s work – the things he sees – has really taught me.’ Her eyes
locked with mine: flirtation seemed as natural to her – as vital – as breathing was to us mere mortals. ‘But you’ve pretty much got a degree in compassion, haven’t
you?’

‘Yeah, in a way, but . . .’ I knew I was probing too much. The real story felt tantalisingly close, as if all I needed to do was grab hold of a loose thread and it would unravel
before my eyes. ‘It doesn’t make me immune to emotion.’ I tracked her with my eyes. ‘Presumably you’d told him to back off by then? To have that happen in front of the
whole village. For it to be so public . . .’

Rage mangled her features, made her momentarily ugly. Her voice shook. ‘He didn’t have to behave like that.’

My skin felt cold suddenly, chilled by the venom in her voice. ‘But you got through it?’

She’d regained control over herself by now. ‘We did. Nigel’s a very special man. I’m extremely fortunate.’

Her words sounded more like a public service announcement than a declaration of love.

‘So do you think the same thing happened with Sarah?’ Kimberley’s expression invited me to carry on. ‘He got obsessed, and this time it escalated even further?’

My words suddenly brought me up short. If that was the case – if that was what she thought – could she be wrestling her own survivor guilt? The suspicion that she’d left a
killer in their midst? I needed to be more generous.

Kimberley sat up now, ramrod straight. ‘I didn’t see it with Sarah,’ she said. ‘They were a similar age. They were chums, you know?’ She shrugged. ‘But he was
still in a tremendous amount of pain about what had happened, so . . .’

‘So you don’t think that he killed her?’ I said, my voice gentle.

‘There’s no other explanation.’

‘Or at least, no one’s found another explanation yet,’ I said.

‘And it did turn out there was a similar incident at his previous school. That’s partly why I didn’t want to make an official complaint. He’d never have been allowed to
teach again.’

He kept sliding back into my memory, the automatic way he dropped to his knees to find Saffron. That Peter kept defying this Peter, refusing to slot neatly behind him in the deck.

‘But you still don’t think he could’ve been harassing Sarah? Or even – I know she was married, but – we can all be tempted.’

Kimberley arched her immaculately threaded eyebrows, smirked. ‘Can we indeed?’

Did she know? Had someone spotted Jim and me having lunch in the pub?

‘You know what I mean,’ I said, prickling with discomfort. I’d done nothing wrong and sinned beyond measure, all at once. Nothing in Little Copping submitted itself to a simple
explanation.

‘If Sarah had got involved with him, I’m sure it was a momentary weakness.’ There was poison in her words. ‘Trust me, she wasn’t exactly backward at coming
forward.’

‘But don’t you think that everyone has secrets?’ Max flitted across my consciousness, his shoulders held high at his ears, his book a protective tent. ‘Could it be that
nobody knew how far it had gone?’

‘I think
you
think that because of the job you do,’ she said.

‘Whereas your job’s about getting it all out there, forcing people to listen to you.’

We contemplated each other for a long second. My brief rush of compassion had all but evaporated.

‘Sarah was a hedonist,’ she said. ‘She hated any kind of rules. Like Lysette said at the funeral, she’d run red lights on purpose.’ She smiled coldly. ‘But
she never lost her licence.’

‘So she can’t have been that bad.’

‘It’s a metaphor. She thought rules didn’t apply to her. That was why Max was late every single day. She got a formal warning.’

‘So she was scatty?’

‘It wasn’t scattiness,’ she said, her words crossing mine in her haste to get them out. ‘It was a statement of intent.’

It’s our own shadows, the parts of ourselves we abhor, that we hate the most in others. I thought again of her advancing on me, lipstick held in her ring-decked left hand. It didn’t
seem like she was such a fan of rules either.

‘It sounds like it annoyed you,’ I said.

‘I just think that these things have consequences. It’s easy to forget that when . . .’ She stopped herself. ‘She used her phone at the quiz night. It made a nonsense of
it.’

I nodded sagely: the FBI’s most wanted list had clearly found its newest target. No – this was a metaphor too.

‘But did it go further than Googling number one hits of the ’80s?’

Was it the drugs she was edging towards?

‘You’d have to ask her, only she’s not here to ask.’ She paused. ‘Nor’s Peter,’ she added, more softly.