Too Close For Comfort (38 page)

She didn’t hear it, the coded whisper I was trying to convey underneath the foghorn reminder of how much we had always meant to each other.

‘It’s too late.’

‘Lysette, don’t hang up. You mustn’t trust Kimberley. I know you think I’m being paranoid, but I’m not. She’s caused all of this.’

Lysette gave an exasperated sigh.

‘Goodbye, Mia,’ she said, cutting the call.

This time when I lay down I wondered if I’d ever find the strength to get back up again.

*

It was an hour or so later, when I heard that tentative knocking on the door. By then I’d spoken to Krall, spoken to Roger, proclaimed my innocence. Roger had warned me
about the danger of breathing a word to the press, but I also sensed a certain satisfaction at seeing his new protégée placed firmly at the centre of a front-page case. Krall was more
brusque, my usefulness all but gone now. As he’d hung up, he’d made sure to tell me that my tip about Susan was a complete dead-end. I ignored the knocking at first, wondering if it was
Rita with a curt reminder of check-out time. When it came a third time, more loudly now, I reluctantly crossed the tiny room and opened up.

Her hair was bluntly cut, a spiky blonde frame around her square face, the highlights having a whiff of a supermarket DIY job. Her skin was grey, showing signs of the emotional strain that
radiated out of her dark eyes. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t place her. It would make sense that she worked here, but there was something about her pulsing energy
that told me that she was more than one of Rita’s minions, sent to tell me it was time to pack up.

‘Hi,’ I said, keeping the door at an unwelcoming angle that was neither closed nor properly open.

‘Are you Mia Cosgrove?’

My heart thumped hard in my chest.

‘Why?’

‘You are, aren’t you? I need to speak to you. I’m Jennifer. Peter’s sister. You’re the only one talking any sense.’

‘So how did you find me?’

I’d swept last night’s clothes off the uncomfortable chair in the corner, offered her a cup of tea. The room had a tiny travel kettle, along with a handful of UHT milk pods and some
greying bags. She’d accepted, a fact I was excessively grateful for: it gave me something to do, a way to give this bizarre scenario a recognisable ritual. The room was full of steam by now.
I concentrated on pouring boiling water into the tannin-stained mugs, flicking open the milk with my fingernails. The lumpy home-made manicure I’d given them for the ball was already starting
to peel and chip.

‘Just took a chance,’ she said. ‘I looked at that story, and I thought – if I was you, I wouldn’t be showing my face round here.’ I could hear the hostility
in her tone – I hoped it was more for the ‘here’ than it was for me. ‘There’s nowhere else to stay, and it said you’d been eating in the pub. Snuck up the back
stairs and tried every room till you answered.’

I handed her the mug, noticing how much her hand shook as she took it. I knew then how much of her spikiness was bravado: it had taken a lot for her to get this far. I sat down on the bed,
discreetly smoothing the rumpled counterpane. I wanted her to go. I wanted her to calm down, realise I was an irrelevance, and let me get back to trying to salvage my car crash of a life.

‘You must have really wanted to track me down.’ We made eye contact for a second before she looked downwards into her steaming mug. ‘I’m so sorry about Peter.’

‘Yeah . . . well.’ She ground to a halt. ‘Thanks.’ She looked up again, gathering strength. Her eyes were ringed with inky liner, lashes so thick and stiff
with mascara that they were like tiny spears. A column of gold rings ran up each of her ear lobes, a skull punctuating the left. It all looked so painful. ‘He wasn’t some fucking
pervert. You know that, don’t you? He would never have killed anyone, let alone her.’

I had nothing to give, and yet there she was in front of me, vibrating with grief. I couldn’t harden myself against her.

‘I can’t imagine how horrible it is, reading all those headlines about your own brother. I didn’t give that journalist an interview, just so you know.’ Jennifer’s
shoulders slumped low, and I realised instantaneously that she was the only person who’d hoped that I had. In her mind, I’d been her brother’s staunch defender, a beacon of hope
in a hostile universe. ‘She cobbled together a few things I said in passing. But I do think anyone has the right to be innocent till proven guilty.’

I saw it then – that same look of rabid emotional hunger that had burned from Sarah’s mother’s eyes. ‘Did you know him?’ she demanded.

‘I didn’t meet him properly – I only saw him at the funeral. And once outside the school.’ I paused, not wanting to cross an invisible line, masquerade as what she hoped
I was. ‘He was very sweet with my god-daughter.’

Could you stop being a godmother, or was it only God who had the power to take that away? My gaze flicked unconsciously downwards to my left hand: to that tiny, twinkling diamond that I also
refused to stop believing in. Then I thought about what had been taken away from her at a stroke. And now what was left: her memory of who her brother had been was being taken by stealth, brick by
brick.

‘You must’ve known, just from that,’ she said firmly. ‘Must’ve been totally obvious to a shrink that he’d never do something like that.’

‘I . . .’

Jennifer saved me, running on before I could come up with the kind of fudged reply I was duty bound to give her.

‘He loved kids, he was amazing with them. Well, apart from when he was one himself. He hated school, got bullied. He was too soft.’

‘Maybe it was the softness that made him such a brilliant teacher?’ I said. ‘Lots of people have said that about him, you know.’

I wanted her to hear it, to know there was more than one narrative going around about who he was. What I didn’t tell her was how strange the energy felt when people acknowledged that
brilliance, the postscript left unspoken.

‘He always wanted to be a teacher. He’s the only one of us who got to university.’ She rolled her eyes, her fingers worrying at the hem of her denim jacket. ‘Had debts up
to his eyeballs.’

The cramped bedroom felt soupy and airless, but I didn’t want to break her flow by crossing the room and opening the tiny window. It only let in a little sunlight, the room dingy and
claustrophobic.

‘Do you have more siblings?’ I asked her.

‘No, I meant our mum and dad. It’s just me and Peter.’ His name caught in her throat, and my heart clenched in silent reply. ‘I was gutted when they came back with a
little brother for me.’ She gave a quick, pained smile. ‘Wasn’t what I ordered. I used to put him in my old dresses when he was little. Probably didn’t help with the
softness.’

‘Were you always close?’ She gave a half-shrug, her face shadowed by complicated memories. I could sense survivor guilt: that inevitable bargaining – the belief that if
you’d only played your part differently, the world would have moulded itself into an entirely different shape. ‘I think it can be hard when someone dies, not to feel like you’re
duty bound to only remember the good bits.’

A sooty tear fell from Jennifer’s eye. I scooted into the tiny en suite, handed her a wad of thin, scratchy loo paper.

‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid it’s the best I’ve got.’

She fought hard against her tears, but they traced black lines down the contours of her face. I knelt on the scratchy carpet at her feet, wishing there was a second chair I could pull up.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, hiccuping through the sobs. ‘I didn’t come here to cry on you. I don’t want a free appointment or anything.’

‘Please don’t apologise, I imagine it’s completely overwhelming. You’re going through hell – losing a sibling is tragic enough. But with everything else
that’s happened, it must feel unbearable.’

Jennifer gave me a look of damp gratitude, words starting to tumble out of her. ‘I loved him, no question, but he could bug the shit out of me too.’ Her dark eyes pleaded for
absolution. ‘He was so worried about every little thing, what everyone thought of him. I think he was a bit OCD, if I’m honest. It was me that persuaded him to go to the doctor and
now . . . now they’re using that to make out he was some kind of fucking psycho.’

I looked up at her from my vantage point on the floor.

‘The stigma around mental health is kind of medieval. I have so many people – particularly men – who come to me feeling ashamed of asking for help, when it’s the bravest
thing they can do. You did really well to get him through the door.’

Jennifer’s hands balled up into tight fists, the chunky silver rings she wore glinting like knuckledusters. ‘It didn’t do any fucking good though, did it?’

Her anger was so palpable that it felt like the third person in the room. Or maybe the fourth. Sometimes acknowledging the obvious is all you can do.

‘It must feel so unfair.’

‘It’s not what was meant to happen, you know?’ Her voice swung upwards with emotion. ‘We were driving up to the church in that big black car – I remember him being
christened there, he screamed his head off – and I was thinking, this was meant to be your wedding. I’m not meant to stand up there and talk about you being dead. No one else wanted to
do it, but it wasn’t what I signed up for either. And there were all these photographers . . . fucking vampires.’

She clamped her hand across her heart, shrank backwards in the chair, as if she could somehow ward off what had already happened. She was pale, visibly shaking, the memory too visceral to allow
tears. I stood up, put a tentative arm around her denim-clad shoulders. She softened to my touch, a shuddering sob suddenly erupting from her body. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her jeans
jacket.

‘Sorry, that was disgusting!’ she said, laughing for the first time.

‘No, I’m a terrible host. You needed some more bog roll from the cash and carry and I didn’t get it for you.’ Now we were both laughing. ‘Do you want another cup of
tea?’ I asked her gently.

Jennifer nodded, sweeping the tears from her face and finding her poise. She was brave, I could tell. ‘I didn’t come for this, I really didn’t. I came because I know he
didn’t do it. My mum and dad have given up, they’re just broken by it. I couldn’t save him. I’ve got to get this bit right.’

I nodded, trying not to convey to her the hopelessness of her fight. I see it again and again, the bargaining that goes on with death. The desperate fight for control that the bereaved wage
against an unseen tormentor.

‘What do you think happened?’ I said, still fussing with the kettle.

Jennifer was sharp again. ‘I think he got fucked over, that’s what happened. I told him to leave, but because of that other school he said he’d never get another job. Our
parents used all their savings to get him through uni—’

I cut across her, wanting to make sure the lines were clear. ‘Listen, Jennifer, I’m not working on this case. I’m happy to talk, but you need to know that. I can’t help
in a practical way.’

She gave a sharp nod, the words barely registering. I handed her the mug, and she took a swift sip from it.

‘They’re making out he was some kind of sex pest, but he just got involved with a woman who was getting divorced at the other school, and the headmistress made a song and dance about
it. So when she started pestering him, with who her husband was . . .’

I sat back down on the bed. ‘What, Sarah?’

‘No, the other one.’ She spat the words out. ‘Madam. You know, Kimberley Farthing.’

‘What, Kimberley was harassing
him
?’

She positively vibrated with conviction.

‘Yes! I know everyone thinks it was the other way round, but it’s bullshit. Did you not know? From your mate? I thought that might be why you were standing up for him.’

My mind was spinning. ‘Harassing him how?’

‘Whole thing – sending him all these WhatsApp messages about what she wanted him to do to her. Calling at night. Touching him. You know, just a little bit too long at
drop-off.’

I saw a flash of that manicured hand, the vice it formed around Jake’s bicep in The Crumpet. The cow eyes at the ball. He couldn’t afford to throw her off either.

Jennifer carried on. ‘He started thinking it was something he’d done. He was good-looking, but he didn’t ever feel like it. Think he still felt like the little shrimpy kid no
one wanted to pair up with in PE.’

Her eyes were far away, back there with the little brother she hadn’t been able to protect – had probably shaken and cajoled, shaming him without ever meaning to. One thing I know
from my work is that tough love is overrated.

‘So what about that whole quiz night thing?’ I asked.

‘He said she followed him out to the toilets, tried to kiss him. He pushed her off, and she went storming back in and told her husband he’d grabbed her.’ Jennifer’s face
twisted with anger. ‘Poor her, she hadn’t wanted to tell him, Peter had been harassing her for months.’

‘But didn’t he have the messages?’

‘He was scared. He’d already deleted them, hoped it’d go away. I think he blamed himself a bit too – he got himself all screwed up about whether he’d led her
on.’

I felt a stab of anger – it was the same way Kimberley had made me feel, like I was the one who’d committed a crime when she’d tried to stick her tongue in my mouth.

‘Jesus. Poor Peter.’

‘The headmaster was fuck all help, too scared of offending his celebrity parents.’ I thought back to Ian; the half-sentences that tailed off, his lack of enthusiasm about going deep
with the work, despite his obvious trauma. It made sense. ‘The one person who believed him was Sarah.’

‘Were they already friends?’

‘Friends is one word for it. I could just tell for a while that he was hung up on someone. He was such a soppy thing, he’d just get this look in his eyes, you know? But he
wouldn’t talk about it – not till after the quiz night. Then he needed a big sister.’

I watched as a wave of pain crashed over her, too big to contain – it felt as though it soaked both of us to the skin.