Gilly MacMillan - What She Knew

Then Miss May said, ‘Lucas, can you please get…⁠’ and I watched the teaching assistant go into the corridor and carefully take down Ben’s painting from the autumn display and put it into a plastic folder. Noticing his receding chin and very red hair. Noticing the sweat under his arms.

Then Miss May was offering to help me to the car, but I found my voice and said no, because I didn’t want the fuss of it, and Zhang said we could manage just fine.

Outside in the corridor, with her arm linked firmly around mine, we walked past the new headmaster. He said, ‘I’m so sorry,’ but the way he looked at me made me feel like an exhibit so I didn’t reply. I just wanted to be at home.

Miss May ran down the corridor behind us, her shoes tapping fast, and just as we reached the door she caught up with us. She had an armful of Ben’s books, which she passed to me, and she said ‘I thought you might like these, since you didn’t make it to parents’ evening this week. I thought you might like to look through them.’

So I took them and as Zhang helped me into the car I held them to myself as carefully as if they were an actual baby.

Addendum to DI James Clemo’s report for Dr Francesca Manelli.

Transcript recorded by Dr Francesca Manelli.

DI James Clemo and Dr Francesca Manelli in attendance.

Notes to indicate observations on DI Clemo’s state of mind or behaviour, where his remarks alone do not convey this, are in italics.

FM: So the letter?

JC: We threw everything into it. Obviously.

FM: Was that your call?

JC: It was Fraser’s, actually it was both of ours, and it was the right one.

FM: Was the investigation team excited?

JC: You’re always excited when you’ve got a lead, but you have to be cautious too. You don’t want mistakes. But it was a development and that was good because by then it had been five days and that was getting to people. They were tired; the media were going insane around us. We had the blog to worry about.

FM: What was happening with that?

JC: Behind the scenes Fraser was putting everything she could into finding out who might be behind it. Amongst others we were looking at Laura Saville and Nicola Forbes as possibles for the leak. We knew that both of them were involved in online journalism in some way already, and they were obviously close to the heart of things. She had to be discreet internally though, partly because we didn’t want to put the wind up anybody if they were up to something, and also because everybody working the investigation was feeling the pressure, and that kind of thing is very bad for morale, putting it mildly.

FM: Including you? Were you feeling the pressure?

JC: Of course. There was a kid’s life at stake.

FM: And did you have any strategies to cope with that?

He speaks to me as though I am an imbecile.

JC: A little boy, eight years old, was still missing after five days. We didn’t have time for ‘coping strategies’.

FM: OK. I understand that it must have been a stressful period for everyone involved in the investigation. My question is-

He interrupts me; his temper has risen.

JC: Don’t patronise me.

FM: I’m not intending to. That’s a very defensive reading of what I said. I’m simply acknowledging the fact that you felt under pressure and looking at ways that we might explore what that meant for you, and for the investigation.

JC: You have no idea what it’s like to be in the middle of something like that.

FM: So would it be fair to say that by this point in the case you’d moved on from the attitude that you felt when you took on the case? The ‘bring it on’ attitude?

JC: It would, yes, because have you ever thought about what five days of being removed from your family and living in fear could do to a child? That’s 120 hours and counting. That was on my mind every single second. Why do you think I threw a hand grenade into the middle of that family? Because that’s what it was, making Nicky Forbes confess that stuff to her sister, don’t think I don’t understand that. But I did that for Benedict. Because we had to find him, and if there was collateral damage, then so be it. The letter was no different.

I end our session here, because I fear I’ll push him away entirely if I press him further today. I do wonder whether, if this man doesn’t successfully go through this process, and get back to work in CID, I might fear for his long-term stability.

When I got home, Zhang asked me if I wanted her to come in with me but I declined, saying that my sister would be there, even though I didn’t know if that was true. I still felt detached and strange as if all my senses were dulled and the only thing that mattered were the thoughts that were at a rolling boil inside my head.

Nicky was there. She was sitting in the kitchen and her packed bag was by the front door, her coat draped over it.

‘I waited because I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye,’ she said.

She didn’t notice my disorientation. She did ask me what I was cradling in my arms.

‘Ben’s books,’ I said.

I put them carefully down on the table and then we just stood facing each other and she reached forward to hug me. It was an awkward hug, just as it had been the first morning at the police station, although this time it was worse because her body offered none of the softness that it had before. We were both too wary of each other, and we made do with the minimum of contact, because for the first time in our lives neither of us knew where we stood with the other. And then, as if she knew that was inadequate, Nicky stood in front of me and put her hands on either side of my arms, and rubbed them up and down.

‘Will you be OK?’ she asked.

I nodded.

‘I can come back whenever you want, just call me, if it’s too much being on your own.’

‘I can ask Laura to come over,’ I said, and my voice sounded strange, as if I were speaking with a thick tongue.

She hesitated just slightly before saying, ‘OK, good.’

Then we stood there again and her hands fell away from my arms and she looked at me in a way that made me want to start screaming with the uncertainty and the awfulness of it all, so with the last reserves of my strength I said, ‘Just go, Nicky.’

‘Now I’m not sure I should,’ she said. ‘Looking at you now. You’re not OK, are you?’

And I shouted. I shouted, ‘JUST GO!’ because I felt as if I would implode if anybody said anything else to me, and it shocked her so much that she took a step back, and from her reaction I could tell that my expression must be ugly.

She stared at me, and then started to say something, but I couldn’t stand to hear it, so I shouted ‘NOW!’ and it was more of a scream than a word, and then I ran up the stairs so fast that they pounded and I didn’t hear the sound of the door clicking shut behind her, but I did hear the press badgering her to tell them who had been shouting and why, and if she replied to them she did it very quietly or not at all, because within minutes all I could hear were the sounds of my empty house.

Laura came to mop me up. I didn’t ask her to, she just arrived. As I went to answer the door I heard her chatting with one of the journalists on the doorstep. When I let her in she said, ‘How funny. I trained with one of those guys out there.’ She said it lightly, as if they’d run into each other at a party. I wondered which one of them it was. There were a few regulars. Most likely, I thought, to be the youngest of the bunch, the one who could outrun the others and was the last to stop beating on the windows of the car when I was driven away. I didn’t ask her.