Читать книгу The Girl with the Fragile Mind - Claire Seeber, Claire Seeber - Страница 24

I switched off the landline, so they rang my mobile instead.

Natalie first. I didn’t answer the phone.

I tried Tessa’s number. Just in case. Just in case it was all a big mistake, I tried it. Nothing.

I lay on the sofa. I stared at the ceiling.

Rafe rang. He was at the House of Commons; he sounded pretty keen to hear from me, but I didn’t answer the call. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say yet. I couldn’t help feeling like I’d been a challenge to him and he didn’t want to admit defeat.

I got up again and ate some stale Jammy Dodgers. I threw a dead spider plant away I’d always disliked. Its dead leaves trailed from the bin like fingers.

I tried Tessa again. The silence was deafening.

I paced the flat. I had that feeling again that someone was watching me from the corner of the room. I was fighting the paranoia and the memories of what had happened so dramatically to me when Ned died. I had to find an answer to this mess.

Helen rang. ‘Call me, Claudie, please. I’m worried. You’ve missed an appointment.’

I looked at my photos, I turned the big one of Ned back up again. Sometimes it hurt too much to look at him, but now I stared into his laughing eyes. What should I do?

My head was beginning to ache again; I was becoming my headache. Why couldn’t I remember Friday morning?

Listened to the rain outside. Got dressed, turned on the television.

There was yet another news conference taking place, headed by the Commissioner of the Police; blindly I stared at it. Next to him sat a bullet-headed man with the bluest eyes, grim-faced, glaring at the cameras, and beside him a gently weeping woman, face in her hands, and a plain middle-aged man wearing gold-rimmed glasses and an expensive but nondescript suit, his receding grey hair pushed back, talking about the Hoffman Bank and how they would rebuild despite the tragedy. After a while, the Commissioner stopped talking and the bullet-headed policeman called Malloy was asking for the public’s cooperation as confirmation was still awaited re bomb or explosion, and our patience whilst they worked on the difficult task of identifying the missing and wounded as quickly as possible. Once again help-line numbers were flashed up.

An unsmiling photo of Tessa floated behind the man’s head.

‘One of the confirmed dead was ballet teacher Tessa Lethbridge,’ the bullet-headed man said vehemently. ‘We need these deaths not to go unmarked. If you know anything at all about the events of Friday morning, if you saw anything, were in the area, please, don’t hesitate to get in touch. You will be doing your public duty.’

Now the weeping woman began to talk about her missing brother. I turned the television off, rubbed my aching head fretfully. Fear was building in me until I felt like I might explode. I banged my head desperately with my flattened palms, palms that were itching desperately, the eczema flaring again. Why could I not remember? Why did I feel like I had done something very bad?

I returned to the sofa. The sun set over the rooftops, sliding into cloud, tingeing the sky with a pink luminescence. I felt an ache like a hard stone in my belly. I couldn’t cry any more. Something was very wrong and I didn’t know what. Tessa was slipping into the darkness, and she didn’t belong there.