Читать книгу: «Fragile Minds»

Claire Seeber
Fragile Minds

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

FRAGILE MINDS Copyright © Claire Seeber 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

Claire Seeber asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9781847562074

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2011 ISBN: 9780007334704

Version 2018-06-18

Dedication

For Fenn and Raffi, again.

All my love, always.

And in memory of my beloved grandpa,

Roy Livingstone Holmes.

Lemonade lollies forever.

Epigraph

‘Whoever takes one life, takes the world entire,

Whoever saves a single life, saves the world entire.’

The Talmud

‘No rescue? What, a prisoner? I am even

The natural fool of fortune. Use me well.’

King Lear, Act IV, Scene VI

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Thursday 13th July Claudie

Thursday 13th July Silver

Thursday 13th July Claudie

Friday 14th July Claudie

Friday 14th July Kenton

Friday 14th July Claudie

Friday 14th July Kenton

Friday 14th July Claudie

Friday 14th July Silver

Friday 14th July Claudie

Friday 14th July Kenton

Monday 17th July Claudie

Tuesday 18th July Silver

Tuesday 18th July Claudie

Tuesday 18th July Kenton

Tuesday 18th July Claudie

Tuesday 18th July Silver

Tuesday 18th July Claudie

Wednesday 19th July Silver

Wednesday 19th July Claudie

Wednesday 19th July Silver

Wednesday 19th July Claudie

Wednesday 19th July Silver

Wednesday 19th July Lana

Thursday 20th July Claudie

Thursday 20th July Silver

Thursday 20th July Claudie

Thursday 20th July Silver

Thursday 20th July Claudie

Friday 21st July Silver

Friday 21st July Claudie

Friday 21st July Silver

Friday 21st July Claudie

Friday 21st July Silver

Friday 21st July Claudie

Friday 21st July Kenton

Friday 21st July Silver

Friday 21st July Claudie

Friday 21st July Silver

Friday 21st July Claudie

Friday 21st July Kenton

Friday 21st July Claudie

Saturday 22nd July Silver

Saturday 22nd July Kenton

Saturday 22nd July Claudie

Saturday 22nd July Silver

Saturday 22nd July Claudie

Saturday 22nd July Silver

Saturday 22nd July Claudie

Saturday 22nd July Silver

Sunday 23rd July Kenton

Sunday 23rd July Silver

Saturday 22nd July Claudie

Sunday 23rd July Silver

Sunday 23rd July Claudie

Sunday 23rd July Silver

Monday 24th July Claudie

Monday 24th July Silver

Monday 24th July Claudie

Monday 24th July Silver

Monday 24th July Claudie

Monday 24th July Silver

Monday 24th July Claudie

Monday 24th July Silver

Monday 24th July Claudie

Monday 24th July Kenton

Tuesday 25th July Claudie

Tuesday 25th July Silver

Tuesday 25th July Silver

Tuesday 25th July Kenton

Tuesday 25th July Claudie

Tuesday 25th July Silver

Thursday 24th July Kenton

Tuesday 25th July Claudie

Thursday Night, 13th July Claudie

Friday 14th July: The Berkeley Square Bomb Claudie

Tuesday 25th July Kenton

Tuesday 25th July Silver

Tuesday 25th July Claudie

Tuesday 25th July Silver

Tuesday 25th July Kenton

Tuesday 25th July Silver

Tuesday 25th July Kenton

Tuesday 25th July Silver

Claudie

Read on for an exclusive short story by Claire Seeber

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise

Other Books by Claire Seeber

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

There are plenty of beginnings, but only one end to my story.

At the police station in the small country town, they brought me tea and toast, but I didn’t touch it; I pushed it away. I didn’t trust them. Any of them, any more.

My feet were cut and bleeding; I didn’t care. They matched my sore hands. In my head I was still running, and the road was cold and rough beneath my naked feet and I didn’t care. The pain pushed me on. I was a streak of white light in a black surround, and then you were beside me, only you couldn’t keep up, so I leant down and carried you, light as thistledown, in my arms. No one could stop us; I would run and run and run—

Someone was behind me. I could feel my heart beating, I could hear the blood thumping in my ears, I could feel the breath squeezing through my ribs and out of me; I couldn’t outrun them.

My feet were hurting badly now and I no longer felt invincible, I could hear the sobs pushing out of me as the car slowed and a blue light flickered across the road between the sand dunes, and the sea hissed to the left of me: ‘Don’t stop, Claudie, or they will get you.’ But I was weak now, too weak—

The man held my arm gently. He was wearing a uniform and he said, ‘Are you all right, love, you’re freezing.’ And he led me to the car with the blue light on top, and made me sit in the back.

And then they brought me to the building in the town, and said another man, a man they called Silver, wanted to talk to me.

I didn’t give him time to sit when he came in. I had waited too long already.

‘Something’s not right,’ I said, too fast, almost before he came through the door.

He leant on the wall in his shirtsleeves, hands in his pockets, and looked down at me. His expression was quizzical but I was relieved that he didn’t look amused. He looked tired, perhaps, but not amused.

‘I see. Are you all right though, Claudie?’

I kept my hands in my lap beneath the table, where he couldn’t see me tearing at my own skin.

‘I – I’m not sure.’ I eyed the toast warily. ‘I think I will be OK.’ If only they’d stop poisoning me.

He sat now, directly opposite me. There was a black tape recorder on the table between us, but he didn’t switch it on. His eyes were a little hooded; they narrowed slightly as he studied my face.

‘Have we met before?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘You look a little familiar.’

I shook my head. There was a pen on the table; he turned it round neatly, and then gave me a slight smile. ‘So, Claudie. In your own time, I need you to tell me why you’re here. How you came to be all the way out here. Did someone bring you?’

‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘And something’s not right,’ I repeated, slowly this time. I could feel the shiny crescent moon of skin missing from my thumb where I’d stripped it raw.

‘What?’ he said now. His accent was Northern. ‘What’s not right?’

‘I can’t – it’s hard to explain.’

We locked eyes. Still he did not condescend to me; he didn’t look at me as if I was mad. He just waited, dug in his trouser pocket for something.

‘That sounds stupid, I know.’ I was trying to order my mind. My thumb throbbed. ‘I mean, I can’t quite put my finger on it.’

‘On what?’ He was handsome. No, not handsome even, kind of … debonair. Like he’d stepped from a Fred and Ginger film; his cuffs so white they almost shone.

‘I think I might have done something bad. The Friday before last.’

‘What kind of bad?’ he asked. Long fingers on gum; waiting to unwrap it. He sat back in his chair and looked at me patiently. I could smell his aftershave. Lemony.

‘Very bad,’ I muttered.

‘Do you know my name?’ he asked.

He felt me falter. I shook my head.

‘It’s DCI Silver.’ It was an inducement. ‘Joe Silver.’

A short, stocky woman walked into the room now and stood behind him. She smiled at me, a kind, reassuring smile. I recognised her, I realised. I’d met her before. A woman with funny coloured hair.

‘And what happened to your face, Claudie?’

Automatically I raised my hand to my cheek. ‘Berkeley Square.’

‘Berkeley Square?’ He sat up straighter. ‘The explosion?’

I nodded.

‘OK, Claudie.’ He flicked the gum away into the wastepaper basket and smiled again. He must have kids, I thought. He is used to waiting with infinite patience. His teeth were very straight, almost as white as his cuffs. ‘Why don’t you start from the beginning? Who brought you all the way out here?’

‘I think I might have done something terrible,’ I repeated. I took a gulp of air: I met his eyes this time. ‘I think – I think I might have killed a lot of people.’

THURSDAY 13TH JULY CLAUDIE

It was such an ordinary morning. Afterwards that seemed the most marked thing about everything that followed, that it started as any day that encapsulates absolute normality. Not particularly sunny, not particularly cold – a day on which people get up and eat toast, choose underwear and shoes; argue about walking the dog or taking the bin out, kiss their children and their partners goodbye; catch the 8.13, jostle for space with the same anonymous faces they jostle with every day. A day on which people go about things in exactly the same way as always; not realising life might be about to change forever.

And for me, it was one of the all right days. A day when I had managed to roll out of bed, step out of the house; walk, talk and function. Not one of the pole-axed days. Not one of the splitting days.

One of the all right days.

I got to work early because the yoga teacher hadn’t turned up at the Centre. I walked through the back streets of Marylebone, enjoying the relative quiet of Oxford Street, free of the tourists and maddened shoppers, at one with the street cleaners and the other Londoners not yet soiled for the day by the city.

I wandered up the front stairs of the Royal Ballet Academy in Berkeley Square, between the great white pillars and the huge arched windows, soaking in the ambience of the old building. I loved my job and the Academy was grand enough to warrant its distinguished title, training some of the greatest ballet talent in Europe.

‘The Bolshoi are in.’ My colleague Leila shot past me on the stairs, following a gaggle of chattering students. I caught up with them at the glass wall to watch a little of the guest stars’ technical demonstration, watching a sturdy Russian male fling the Academy’s young Irish ballerina Sorcha into the air during the Sleeping Beauty pas de deux. By the rapt look on the couple’s faces, I guessed it might not be all they’d be demonstrating later.

A small, dark first-year student called Anita sat against the back wall, limbering up, watching Sorcha like a hawk. One of Tessa’s protégées, I had yet to see her dance, or treat her for any sort of injury myself, but she had a rather glowering intensity that I found unattractive. Her face in repose was simply a downturned mouth. And recently, I’d noticed that she’d begun to trail Tessa in a way that verged on pathological.

‘He’s gorgeous,’ a girl in a blue leotard breathed, fugging up the glass, ‘and look at his arms. His lifts are effortless.’

‘He can lift me,’ her plain friend said, sticking her bony chest out. ‘Any way he wants.’ They both giggled.

Down in the office, Mason was as always safely ensconced behind her desk, keeper of the back-room. God only knew where she had found this morning’s ensemble: a kaftan in vivid black and orange swirls that entirely swamped her skinny frame. I wondered, not for the first time, if anyone else ever thought she looked like a female version of the transvestite potter Grayson Perry.

‘You’re early,’ Mason said. The sleeve of her kaftan trailed patiently after the raddled hand flying across the keyboard. ‘As the esteemed Mr Franklin once said: “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”’

‘Indeed,’ I grinned. Mason’s ability to quote at long and tedious length was legendary, though I was sure she made half of them up. ‘Let’s hope he was right.’

‘Tessa’s looking for you.’ She glanced up, one pencilled eyebrow disappearing into her glossy fringe. ‘Seems a little – anxious.’

As I was changing into my tunic in the staff changing room, Tessa arrived, slightly breathless, her limp a little more pronounced than usual. She looked oddly harried and her spotted hairband was tied too loosely so wisps of fair hair were escaping.

‘Morning. Everything OK?’ I noted the roses of high colour on her cheeks. ‘Mason said you were after me.’

‘I – Claudie. I must just catch my breath. Sorry,’ she mumbled. She sat on the bench beside me, clutching her tortoiseshell walking stick.

‘I’ve got that book you wanted to borrow, by the way,’ I said, ‘the Elizabeth David. Don’t let me forget to give it to you now I’ve—’

Tessa startled me by grasping my hand so hard it made me wince. Her breathing seemed very fast as she peered over my shoulder, dropping her voice.

‘I need to talk to you, Claudie.’ The Australian accent she normally fought to hide was broad today, and something in her tone made me frown. I’d never seen Tessa so tense, although her behaviour in the past few weeks had seemed different, somehow; erratic, even. Recently her star as the Academy’s top teacher had slid into the descendant after an ugly incident involving an irate mother and her hysterical daughter; the board were looking into it and Tessa refused to talk about it, but I’d put her unease down to that. ‘In private, I mean.’ She looked over my shoulder as if she was expecting someone to materialise.

‘I’ve got a full schedule this morning,’ I was apologetic. ‘They’re all overdoing it at the moment apparently, poor loves. End of term in sight, I suppose. Can we talk later?’

‘Lunchtime?’

‘I’m – I’ve got an appointment at lunch.’ I grimaced. I was aware we hadn’t spent much time together recently. ‘Sorry. I can’t really – how about tea this afternoon?’

‘I’m not sure I can wait.’ Tessa was blinking strangely, moving to the door. ‘I’m – I really need to—’ she trailed off as she pushed the door ajar and scanned the corridor.

‘What’s wrong, Tessa?’ I followed her gaze; through the crack, I glimpsed Anita Stuart trailing Sorcha and the Bolshoi dancers up the stairs to the girls’ changing rooms.

‘It’s just – I’ve been – oh God.’ Tessa let the door swing to, biting her own fist. ‘I really wanted to tell you before—’

In a blast of surrealist kaftan, Mason arrived, music swelling and dying down again as she opened and shut the door. Behind her in the corridor I saw my first student waiting outside my room.

‘Ladies. Don’t mind me.’ Mason began sticking up audition notices onto the central notice-board. I knew she was all ears.

I looked back at Tessa; her hands fluttered at her sides like long white butterflies.

‘Look, can we grab a coffee at eleven?’ I suggested. ‘I’ll have about fifteen minutes between sessions.’

‘Yes please.’ Tessa tried to smile, but I thought I saw her bottom lip tremble slightly. ‘Oh, and can you shove my kitbag in your locker? I’ve mislaid my keys. Stupid, really.’

‘Of course.’

Her light eyes were over-bright as I took the bag from her, her mascara oddly clumpy for someone usually fastidious. I felt torn, but Billy McCorkdale was leaning against the wall, only eighteen and already all testosterone and attitude. Starting treatments late meant the whole day became a logistical nightmare.

‘Problem?’ Mason perked up. ‘Can I assist?’

Tessa tried that smile again. ‘No, no.’

Later, that smile haunted me.

Later, my abiding memory was that it was one of fear.

THURSDAY 13TH JULY SILVER

DCI Joseph Silver was just about to step into the shower at the sports club when his work mobile rang. He felt particularly disgusting at this moment, sweat dripping down his back, his t-shirt saturated, having just thrashed it out with his colleague DI Lonsdale in a match that was ostensibly part of the station tournament, but was really about Serious Crime vs Homicide. And in fact, even more so in this instance, about proving the North/South divide was well and truly alive and breathing. Lonsdale stood for everything Silver despised in the force; a supercilious Southern bastard with a daft goatee who drove a Volvo, wore ever-clean Timberlands, and bleated about his paternity rights every other day.

Silver ignored the phone. It rang off, and then immediately started again.

He swore quietly and fumbled in the pocket of his neatly folded trousers, tentatively holding the phone to his sweaty ear, trying not to soak it. ‘Silver.’

‘Guv.’ It was DS Lorraine Kenton, the newest member of his team. ‘Sorry to bother you, but Malloy’s on the rampage.’

‘Go on.’ Sweat trickled down his cheek and dripped onto the filthy floor. Silver suppressed a fastidious shudder. He might have just proven that the North bore tough and tenacious sportsmen who were unafraid to slam their own bodies into brick walls in the name of gamesmanship, but he was also the same copper who couldn’t abide mess and dirt. OCD, his ex-wife Lana called it, invariably to wind him up, though she wasn’t too far behind him in the cleanliness next to Godliness stakes. Not that either of them had ever followed the God bit – but their house had been truly sparkling.

‘Just a quick one.’ Kenton cleared her throat. ‘Missing girl, Misty Jones. Malloy wants to use the GMTV and Crime Live! appeal tomorrow morning for her.’

‘Why?’ Silver tasted the salt on his own lips. ‘It’s meant to be for that Down’s Syndrome lad.’

‘Bobby Elwood. I know. I did say that. But the thing is,’ Kenton cleared her throat again, a habit Silver was beginning to recognise as a nervous one, ‘Malloy thinks Misty Jones is more—’

‘Don’t tell me – photogenic. Pretty, is she?’ Which meant his boss thought they’d get more response to the appeal, which meant a quicker result, which meant better statistics. ‘Brilliant.’

‘Is that – are you being serious, sir?’ Kenton asked nervously.

‘I’m being entirely sarcastic, Kenton. Which is the lowest form of wit, someone once told me. Poor retarded lad traded in for pretty lass. Have we even looked into the case properly?’

‘Not really. Flatmate reported it. Can’t trace the family.’

‘But it’s a fait accompli, as those learned French say. Doubt I have much choice, do I?’

Kenton looked at her email inbox, where the GMTV producer had just mailed her to thank her for the Jpeg of the missing girl, and asking for a few more details. Favourite pet, younger siblings, anything that would help the nation’s heart bleed. None of which Kenton could immediately answer.

‘Er—’

‘That was rhetorical, Kenton. Who the hell is Misty Jones anyway?’ Down in the shower room, Silver could see Lonsdale approaching. He wanted to get into the shower before his competitor. He didn’t fancy chit-chat from a cheating Southern bastard with a wispy chin who’d quibbled over every point.

‘Look, if Malloy’s given you the word, then do it, kiddo. We’ll have a chat in the morning. Or at the weekend, any road. I’m off tomorrow.’

Reason not to be cheerful no. 87. Silver shoved his phone back into his sports bag and made for the shower. He might just have won, but he had no desire to engage in back-slapping camaraderie with a secretly seething colleague, or be invited to go for a drink, which he’d only have to turn down. He was knackered, and his mood was dark. Bed and solitude called.

THURSDAY 13TH JULY CLAUDIE

Tessa didn’t show up at eleven and by lunchtime, I’d been distracted by a first-year student falling in class and a possible elbow fracture. I forgot about my friend and her earlier anxiety as I hastened to sort the subsequent hospital referral, and then to reach my own appointment in Harley Street.

Rushing back to the Academy at the end of the lunch hour, almost late for my next student, I found Anita Stuart lurking outside my room, her feet sketching movement on the spot as someone down the hall played the opening suite from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet score over and over.

‘Have you seen Tessa?’ she demanded, fiddling with a small silver dove on a chain round her neck. She was a little surly, as ever, and her rather lazy left eye gave her an unfortunate lopsided look.

‘No, ’fraid not.’ I unlocked my door. ‘She’s probably in class, no?’

Anita was clutching something, a pamphlet of some description. I caught the words ‘Redemption’ and ‘Light’ before she shoved it in her pocket.

‘She’s not,’ Anita scowled. She smelt odd; it seemed familiar but I couldn’t place the scent. ‘I thought she might be having lunch with you.’

‘Sorry. Can’t help.’ I let myself into my room, relieved to get away from the scowl and the odd smell. But Anita was too fast.

‘What’s she said to you?’ She stuck her foot in the door so I couldn’t shut it behind me.

‘About what?’ I frowned.

‘About—’ She stopped and stared at me. Thought better of it, perhaps. ‘Never mind. But if you see Tessa, tell her I’m looking for her.’

‘Yes, Madam,’ I muttered at her departing back. What an unpleasant girl, I thought, and closed my door behind her.

At five, as I was signing out, I had a quick look for Tessa, but she wasn’t in class or in the staffroom. I needed some fresh air now, my back was aching from standing for so long, and I was dying for a cigarette. I searched my bag for a nicotine patch, applying it with a sense of slightly defeated relief.

‘Seen Tessa?’ I asked Leila, who hadn’t, and Mason, who immediately raised her non-existent eyebrows in an entirely suggestive way.

‘What?’

‘She was ever so stressed. I heard her on the phone. I was trying not to listen but—’ Mason’s letterbox mouth snapped shut dramatically. ‘Well.’

‘Your speciality, not listening.’ Leila winked at me. ‘Walls have ears, eh, Mason?’

‘Let’s just say Tessa was more than a little fraught. She was meant to be covering Eduardo’s 4 p.m. but she made some sort of excuse and just left. Jenny had to do it.’

Leila and I exchanged glances. Mason was unperturbed.

‘She’s not best pleased, shall we say. Jenny. Still, “The busy man is troubled with but one devil, the idle man by a thousand.”’

‘Oh dear.’ I gathered my things, feeling guilty I hadn’t found Tessa earlier. ‘I hope she’s OK.’

‘Oh, Claudie,’ Mason barked as I opened the door to leave. ‘I completely forgot. She left you a note.’ As she bent to retrieve it from the pile on her desk, Mason knocked over her coffee, soaking everything with dark brown liquid. ‘Oh, damn and blast.’

After a bit of wrangling, Mason passed me the soggy bit of paper, but it was almost pulp already. I could just make out the words ‘Take’ and ‘the necklace’. The last word in the paragraph looked like it was possibly ‘Sorry’ with a big curly y.

I held it to the light but it was no good, it was illegible. I balled the note, tossing it in the bin. From the set of Mason’s expectant head, I could tell she had read it, she was dying to be asked; but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. If it was important, Tessa would call me, I guessed. ‘See you guys tomorrow.’

‘Ta ta for now,’ Mason sniffed. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t with that gorgeous Rafe. I know what MPs are like.’

‘Leaves me wide open then,’ I grinned at her, shouldering my bag, and left.

The summer afternoon was warm and the air outside seemed to almost shimmer. I suddenly felt more cheerful about life, almost euphoric even. Things were going to get better. They simply had to.

I had no idea of the level of my delusion.

But on the bus to meet Rafe, stuck at red lights, I felt less than euphoric and increasingly racked by a headache. I stared out at an Evening Standard billboard on the street which read ‘Dancer, 20, Missing or Dead?’; but the words moved up and down with alarming speed as I tried to focus.

Disoriented, I was jolted into a memory that terrified me. I felt like I had last year; my self fracturing into pieces – but it couldn’t be happening again – could it? I was over the worst, surely? I leant against the window, my head pounding so badly now I thought I might actually throw up, and I thought vaguely that maybe I should get off the bus before it was too late – only the idea of walking right now seemed a little like scaling Mount Everest. I looked down onto the pavement, onto the worker ants of London, and my phone was ringing in my bag. I tried to pull it out, the flickering lights in front of my burning eyes bewildering me until I felt like I was losing consciousness.

I woke in the dark, almost dribbling, absolutely freezing, my hands curled round my bag strap so tightly I had to fight to unfurl them. I could hear voices, and then Rafe was there, peering down at me, saying, ‘Oh my God, Claudie, what’s happened?’ And I found I could hardly speak, I was so disoriented, but I managed to croak something about my head, and he was saying, ‘Oh Christ, you’re frozen, how long have you been here?’ and practically carrying me up the few stairs to his flat. He gave me a warm drink of something tasteless, and laid me down on his sofa with a cashmere blanket – it was so warm and homely that I drifted off again.

FRIDAY 14TH JULY CLAUDIE

I came to in the early hours caught in the desperate state between sleep and consciousness; hearing frantic voices whispering in the dark, a woman’s voice too now, and I thought perhaps it was Tessa, and then I realised I was dreaming.

When I woke properly about six, Rafe had already gone. He was a gym addict, and there was a note, telling me to help myself to anything I wanted, and that he’d see me later, and he hoped I was feeling better.

The headache had gone, but I didn’t feel better. I just felt frightened. I’d lost a few hours from last night; I remembered leaving work, being on the bus and then – what? Waking in Rafe’s porch; being carried into the flat. An overwhelming sense of anxiety pulsed through me. Images from yesterday flickered through my mind, like a camera shutter opening and closing too fast. I sat on the sofa, my head in my hands, and tried to breathe.

Was it happening again?

I washed my face and hands beneath the expensive lighting in Rafe’s stark bathroom and, trying to calm my tousled hair, I opened the medicine cabinet above the basin, looking for what Rafe called ‘product’. A packet of Well Woman tablets fell out. I picked them up, frowning. Next to them, a pink electric toothbrush, and a jar of Clinique night cream.

I shut the cabinet door, and walked into his bedroom. It all looked the same as ever, until I opened the drawers by the side of the bed. There was a pale blue hairband and some expensive hand cream.

It underlined something I had been avoiding … that Rafe and I were really only a stopgap. Meeting by chance at the Sadler’s Wells charity do in January, it had always felt a little like I was one of his pet projects; that we were keeping each other warm on cold winter nights.

But now it was summer.

Grabbing my stuff, I ran down the stairs and buzzed myself out, the fortress door slamming behind me. I stood at the top of the shiny steps to the street. A milk float trundled slowly down the deserted road, and a ginger cat cleaned its ears discreetly as it sat beneath the frothy mimosa tree; it looked at me with disdain and then carried on licking. And I remembered Tessa’s soaked and illegible note in my hand yesterday afternoon and I had this sudden overriding feeling that I should be somewhere, and I felt a rising panic, because I just didn’t know where.

FRIDAY 14TH JULY KENTON

How the hell she had ended up having to do this alone, she would never know. Cursing quietly, DS Lorraine Kenton backed the car into the small space, knocked the adjacent Audi’s mirror and then looked around guiltily to see if anyone had noticed. It had taken over half an hour to find a parking space because the bloody NCP was shut for some reason, and she was seriously over-tired and crochety. She’d slept badly because all night she’d kept dreaming that she’d forgotten what she was meant to say in the TV studio and no one would tell her the lines so she just sat frozen in fear on the famous cream sofa of Crime Live!, opposite the immaculate ice-maiden presenter who stared at her blankly.

At six, Kenton had woken with relief, before realising with horror she really did have to go on TV today. In an effort to rouse herself, she’d drunk too much black coffee in a foolish attempt to get those little grey cells working and thrown half a mug of it down her new white shirt, which meant she had to plump for the crumpled stripy one. She didn’t have time to iron it because she’d nicked the fuse out of the plug last week for her hairdryer, which had been unused for at least two years prior to her first date, on the Southbank, with Alison from the dating website Guardian Soulmates. Now the only consequence of all that coffee was a mismatched outfit and a horribly pounding heart, her brain exactly as slow and sludge-like as when she’d first woken.

The television studio was on a small side street off Berkeley Square. Kenton checked the A-Z and, grabbing her jacket from the back seat hoping it would cover the crumpled stripes, wondered for at least the forty-eighth time this morning why the hell she’d volunteered to replace Gill McCarthy from the Press Office when she had become ‘unavailable’ at the last minute yesterday evening (for unavailable read: had just found out her boyfriend in Organised Crime was screwing McCarthy’s number two, Jo Reid, who wore a wanton look, too much red lipstick and her dresses practically slashed to the waist. Obvious, maybe, but Kenton could definitely see her appeal).

Her phone rang. Her pounding heart slowed and sank. It was DI Craven.

‘I’ll meet you there, pet,’ he said. ‘At Audley Street. Running slightly late.’

‘Really? I thought I was—’ Kenton collected herself, ‘I didn’t realise you were coming too.’

‘Boss thought you might fuck it up,’ he said smugly, and hung up.

Kenton counted to ten slowly and then dug her iPod out to begin the walk west, shuffling the wheel for the Meditation CD Alison had rather shyly suggested she try for stress.

‘Breathe deeply. Now imagine yourself in a safe, secure place. Somewhere you are entirely comfortable,’ the man’s voice droned unconvincingly. ‘Perhaps you are in a childhood—’

Someone pushed Kenton so violently from behind that she stumbled, just righting herself in time before she fell; her iPod hitting the pavement hard.

Before she could pick it up, she was pushed again. Heart racing, she turned to see who her attacker was, but they had run on. There was some sort of commotion on the far side of the square behind her, beside the big Swiss bank – but she was too far away to see exactly what it was; the railings round the green blocked her view, so she could only see the edge of the building site beside the bank. About fifty metres away, a woman in a burqa stood on the edge of the pavement, about to push a buggy across the road. Now the woman began to run towards the group of people at the bus stop.

As Kenton neared, adrenaline flooding her veins now, she could hear shouting and then another, more eerie noise: a high-pitched wail not unlike the keening of the bereaved at an Arabic funeral.

A bus pulled in, blocking her view again; and then a woman was screaming and shouting something unintelligible and Kenton saw people on the bus look out, and then stand up, a man pointing, pointing out of the far window and then—

All was chaos and noise and white, exploding light.

FRIDAY 14TH JULY CLAUDIE

I stood on the quiet street outside Rafe’s flat. The church clock on the green struck seven, and a double decker slid into place at the bus stop in front of me. Unthinking, I climbed on. I didn’t check the destination, I just slapped my Oyster card on the reader like it was a dead fish, and I sat in the first seat I came to.

I kept thinking I need to be somewhere only I couldn’t seem to collect my thoughts; and when I did manage to assemble them a little, I found I was thinking of Ned, and then of Will. I fiddled anxiously with my locket, realising I had a sudden urge to see my husband. Oh the sweet irony: an irony Will would not thank me for.

The old lady beside me smelt high, as if she’d been ripened especially for months. She kept grumbling about the driver, on and on she droned. ‘He’s trying to scare us, that lad, you mark my words, it’s because they don’t learn to drive here, they learn in Africa, too many holes in the roads, those jigaboos.’ After a few minutes, I said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t share your horrible opinions,’ and I moved to the back, stumbling against the other commuters who stared at me with empty eyes.

We reached Russell Square. Tessa; that was it; that was what I had to do. I changed buses and boarded a new one. It seemed to take forever to reach Oxford Street where we became one in a line of nose to tail buses, crawling at tortoise pace – something was holding us up, but we couldn’t see what; until eventually I knew, I knew I had to get off the bus NOW. I began to smash on the doors until the other passengers stepped back in fear, until the driver thought I was truly mad, and gave in, and let me off.

And I ran, ran, ran towards Berkeley Square.

FRIDAY 14TH JULY KENTON

Somehow the bus protected her. Forever after she would be grateful; she would look on London’s famous red double decker as some kind of lucky charm; some kind of talisman to her.

Instinctively, Kenton had hit the floor when the explosion ripped through the north side of the square. She had lain motionless on the pavement with her hands over her head for a minute or two, until the noise settled, the rumble stopped, and there was quiet across the square. A strange pocket of silence in the city, broken only by the incongruous sound of birdsong.

And then a new noise began. Now it was the alarms that filled the air: the cars, the shops and flats; the electrics triggered by the huge explosion. There was thick dust swirling in the air, making Kenton cough as she thought absently of 9/11 and the survivors staggering about covered in white like ash-covered ghosts.

She tasted it in her mouth and spat a few times, trying to find some moisture. She stood slowly, trembling, and began to walk towards the mutilated bus that had inclined fatally to the right, towards the crying and the wailing – towards the devastation, glass crunching underfoot. Her inclination might be to run back, but she knew it was her duty to go forward. She stopped for a moment, and breathed deeply and then pulled her phone from her pocket to ring for help. Afterwards, she couldn’t remember the conversation, or whom she spoke to, but soon after, the air was filled with police sirens.

Nothing could prepare her for what she was about to witness. In her mind’s eye, she imagined her late mother, smiling with encouragement from her usual place at the kitchen sink. ‘You can do it, Lorraine,’ she heard her mother say, snapping off her yellow Marigolds. ‘That’s my girl.’

The smell of burning filled the air as Kenton stepped over something, walking towards the bank in the far right corner. She looked again: it was a hand. She retched into the gutter; the pavement nearest the bank was red with blood. She held her phone tighter. She looked for the first ambulance. She saw another mutilated body. She kept breathing. She didn’t retch this time.

A blonde woman was lying on her back, face bloodied and blackened, one foot extended gracefully; glassy eyes open. Dead. Most definitely dead. Another woman lay at a right angle to her; this one was alive, whimpering in terror and pain. Kenton knelt beside her gratefully.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

‘Maeve,’ the woman whispered. Her face was entirely drained of colour. ‘Maeve O’Connor.’

‘You’re going to be all right, Maeve.’ Kenton had no idea if the woman would be all right but it seemed the thing to say. ‘Where does it hurt?’

Desperately Kenton looked again for an ambulance. Where the hell were they? She held the woman’s hand, and she tied her belt round the woman’s bleeding leg. Then she spoke to a young man; a builder from the neighbouring site. He seemed delirious, worried he’d lost his hard hat; his face was speckled with shrapnel cuts. Other people were coming now; moving amongst the dead and injured. Kenton looked up. The front and side of the Hoffman Bank were gone; it looked naked, like a half-dressed man. The building site beside it had lost its front hoarding; gentle flames licked the side of it. The dust flew in the air.

When the ambulances finally arrived, and the police cars and fire engines, and there were no injured left to talk or tend to, Kenton sat on the kerb in the debris until she was moved off, like any other member of the public, and after a while, she wept.

FRIDAY 14TH JULY CLAUDIE

I came to in St Thomas’s A&E, on a bed in a curtained cubicle, with no memory of what or who had brought me here. Concussion they said, but I’d be fine. I’d collided with a cyclist ten minutes – quite literally – after the ‘major incident’ that had apparently just shut central London. I couldn’t remember any of it, but the cyclist lay in the next cubicle with a twisted knee. My head was hurting even more than it had last night, and I kept trying to say I didn’t know what had happened, but they thought that was normal. I wasn’t sure they were listening; they kept saying it was just shock. And the pain, it was different to last night; a dull throb, and the nice nurse who had treated me delivered me to the waiting area, and patted me on the head like a well-behaved puppy. She propped me up with a print-out on concussion and a vial of painkillers, and told me to hang on, someone would be here soon.

‘You’ll be all right,’ she said, in an accent that was probably Nigerian. Her bobbed wig was slightly askew; I wanted to straighten it. ‘You got a hard head, child. Praise the Lord you were not nearer the incident.’ She glanced up to where God obviously resided. ‘Go well, Claudia. And don’t forget to ring through for your results in a few days.’

The consultant’s single concession to my confusion and mention of blinding migraines had been to give me a blood test.

‘The confusion is probably partial concussion.’ He looked about ten, slightly nervous, hardly old enough to have left school, and his ears protruded at alarming right angles. ‘Which is what you must watch for now. Tell your family, OK? Re: the migraines, well, I haven’t got time to do a full set of bloods now,’ he filled in a form, which is what he had to find time for, ‘we’re too stretched. But let me just do a test for your hormone levels. It could explain a lot. We’ll have to wait for the results of course.’

And I hadn’t been in a hospital since that terrible day two years ago, the day that Ned had finally given up on life; and it was even worse than I remembered. There was an air of flattened panic throughout the building and everyone who entered through the sliding doors seemed almost shifty; they would check the room quickly to see who else was here as if they were casing the joint: the walking wounded, the traumatised. A constant stream of ambulances arrived in the bay outside the doors; the seriously injured were whisked somewhere we were not allowed. After a while we all averted our eyes because it was simply too much.

And the sirens; the sirens were a constant chorus of the morning, screaming through the stultifying air. The doctors and nurses walked with a different tread, faster, and they seemed different to how they would be in a normal Emergency Room; quicker, more energised. Frightened.

About an hour after I had been led to that shiny orange chair, my younger sister trotted through the doors at a fair pace, like a circus pony, anxious to perform.

‘Oh, thank God!’ she said. She was almost breathless with fear and excitement, her fair hair tumbling around her broad, friendly face, only missing its circus plume. ‘Are you OK? Isn’t this awful?’

‘Thanks for coming, Nat.’ Gingerly I stood, clutching my medication and my bag. ‘I know you’re busy.’

‘Of course I’d come.’ Her face was flushed and she had put her pink lipstick on crooked. ‘Who else would? Though I didn’t want to bring Ella into the zone, you know, the danger zone,’ and I almost laughed. ‘I left her with Glynnis next door. Such a nice woman. She understood.’

What exactly Glynnis had understood, I wasn’t sure.

‘We’d better get out of here quickly.’

‘It’s not Afghanistan you know,’ I said, but perhaps it was; perhaps this crisis that I did not understand yet was the start of something truly terrible. Natalie rolled her eyes, guiding me towards the car park now.

‘Well, who knows what it is yet, Claudia? They haven’t said. They’re saying nothing on the radio, just that it was an explosion, and don’t go into town. The traffic’s appalling. Oh God I was so worried, it’s right beside your work isn’t it? Thank goodness it happened so early.’

‘I should have been there,’ I said. I should have been there, I should have been there. ‘I was on my way in.’

‘You should? Oh my goodness, Claudia!’ she exhaled noisily. ‘You must be in shock. I would be. Your poor face. I’ve got a thermos of tea in the car.’ My ever-efficient little sister, the prizewinning Girl Guide, the soloist chorister, the parent rep. ‘You know, I can’t stop watching the news. It’s so horrific. We need to ring Mum. Let’s get home.’