Nicci French - Secret Smile

There was quite a long pause. Katherine Dowling was probably starting to regret what she'd let herself in for. I blew my nose and sat up straighter in my chair. Outside the window, the sky was a lovely pale blue.

'This,' she pointed at me. 'This is called grief. Do you hear me?'

'He even made me into his fucking alibi,' I muttered. 'God, he must have laughed!'

'Listen!' she said and I subsided again. 'People come to me and often what I do is help them find patterns, make shapes out of chaos, make stories of their lives so that they can understand them. But here I am going to say something quite the opposite to you. You are making a pattern that isn't there. You are trying to find a meaning, an explanation, tie everything up neatly, take responsibility, place blame. In the past few months, you have lost two people whom you loved a great deal. And you have been through a painful and disturbing episode with a man. This Brendan. Because these things have happened together, you connect them, like cause and effect. Do you understand?'

'I do connect them,' I said.

'Now: we can talk about what happened with Brendan; in fact, I think that might be helpful. We can talk about your bereavement, and why you feel such guilt. But we will be looking at you - at what is going on inside you after these traumas. We will not be looking at why these two young people had to die one after the other. They died. Now you must mourn.' Her voice grew gentler. 'You must let yourself mourn. Not cast around for explanations.'

'But if…'

'It takes time,' she said. 'There's no easy way.'

I made myself consider what she had said.

'Sometimes I have felt that I was going mad,' I said at last. I felt like a rag doll lolling on the chair. 'I used to have this life that I understood. Things made sense. I could work out what was going to happen next and make plans. I feel I've lost control. Anything could happen. Everything seems hostile and out of kilter. It's like a nightmare, but I can't wake up out of it. It just goes on and on.'

'Well, we can talk about that too,' she said. 'We should. Would you like to come again, Miranda?'

I nodded. 'Yes,' I said. 'I think I would.'

'Good. This time next week would suit me if that's all right with you. Now, as your brother's watch will show you, it's time for you to go.'

Before I had time to find excuses, I changed into my running clothes and stepped out into the spring afternoon once more. I ran to the Heath. I ran up the hill where I had last glimpsed Laura, but I didn't stop. I ran until my legs ached and my lungs hurt and I had a stitch in my side.

When I got home I had a shower and made myself a bowl of pasta with olive oil, chopped spring onions and Parmesan cheese over the top. I ate it and stared around me. Everything was drab and neglected. I'd been stumbling through my life, coming back here just to sit staring out of the window, then crawl into bed at nine o'clock and sleep for hours and hours. I'd been sleeping for ten or eleven hours every night, sometimes even more, and still woken in a fog of dreary, heavy-eyed, leaden-limbed fatigue.

I thought of Katherine Dowling pointing her finger at me. 'This is grief,' I'd let myself become clogged up by grief, sodden and hopeless with it.

I stood up and put my bowl in the sink. Then I filled a bucket with hot, sudsy water and started to wash the windows, to let in the light.

The next morning I woke early and knew before I even opened my eyes that it was a warm and lovely day outside. The strip of day between the curtains was blue. There was a warmth in the room. And, for the first time in a long while, I didn't feel clogged with tiredness, but alert, as if there were something that I had to do. Although it was a Saturday and I didn't have to go to work, I got up at once.

I stripped my bed and put the sheets in the washing machine, then put on my running clothes. I went to the Heath again, but this time ran to the wilder part, where the trees are thick and you can even fool yourself that you're not in the city with millions of people around you in every direction. The sun, still low and pale, shone steadily. There were primroses and tulips among the tangle of bushes, fresh, unfurling leaves on the branches above me. I ran as hard as I could, until my legs ached and, as soon as I stopped, sweat trickled down my forehead. I felt as though I were cleaning out the inside of my body, making the blood run faster, the heart pump stronger, opening up my pores.

Nearing home, I stopped at the baker's and bought a loaf of wholemeal bread that was still warm. I had a quick, hot shower, washed my hair vigorously and pulled on a denim skirt and a shirt. I put on Troy 's watch, but for once the sight of it didn't make my eyes well up with tears. I made a cup of peppermint tea and tore a hunk of bread from the loaf, eating it just as it was, chewing slowly and letting the doughy texture comfort me. I vacuumed the carpets, plumped up the pillows on the sofa, piled old newspapers and magazines into a box and opened the windows to let in the bright day.

Before I could change my mind, I pulled on a jacket and walked to the underground.

Kerry was already behind her desk when I walked in. Someone was sitting across from her, leafing through brochures and pointing things out, so she didn't see me immediately, and when she did her face flickered through various emotions: surprise, discomfort, pain, welcome. It smoothed out again into politeness as she turned back to the woman.

I watched her as she leaned across the desk, pointing at pictures with a finger whose nail was a delicate pink. She looked much better than I'd been expecting. I'd grown used to seeing her pinched and blotchy. Now she looked rosy and plumper. She was growing her hair again, and it fell in blonde waves round her smooth, pale face.

'Fancy a cup of coffee?' I said, when the woman left, clutching a pile of brochures, and I eased myself into her seat. I smelt Kerry's perfume, something subtle and sweet. Her skin was satiny, her lips glossy, and she had tiny gold studs in her ears. Everything about her seemed considered, delicate, well cared for. I looked down at my hands on the desk, with their dirty, bitten nails. I saw the cuffs of my shirt were slightly frayed.

Kerry hesitated, looked at her watch. 'I don't know if I can.'

'Go on,' called a woman at the next desk. 'We'll be busy soon and then you won't have the time.'

She looked at me and gave a nod.

'I'll get my coat.'

We didn't talk until we got to the cafe down the road. We took our coffee downstairs, where they had a sofa and armchairs, and looked uncertainly at each other over the rims of our steaming mugs. I said something about the new flat she was renting, and she said something about being frantic at work. We lapsed into an awkward silence.

'Sorry I haven't been in touch,' I said eventually.

'You've been busy.'

I waved away the polite words.

'That's not the reason.'

'No, I suppose not.'

'I didn't know where to begin.'

'Miranda

'You said something to me – just after he, you know… just after Brendan walked out. You said everything was ruined and he'd just kicked over the last standing stones. Something like that.'

'I don't remember.' She put her mug down on the table. There was the faint red semicircle from her lips on its edge.

'Of course not. Why would you? I don't know why it stuck in my mind, but it did, maybe because of my job – that image of him razing everything to the ground until we were all just standing in the rubble of our lives. That's what he did to us.'

'You shouldn't think about him so much, Miranda,' she said. 'You should let him go.'

'What?' I stared at her.

'I have,' she said. 'He's out of my life. I never want to think about him again.'