Helen Callaghan - Dear Amy

Unaccountably, it seemed to have the opposite effect. I have had many dealings with people who work in mental health, and I’d wager I can recognize all of their strategies, at a pinch.

‘So,’ she said, and she had the bright chirruping accent of someone from the Home Counties, who had doubtless played a sport like lacrosse at some discreetly expensive private school. ‘I understand you’ve been receiving some distressing letters, Margot.’ She laced her plump little hands on her lap, and I realized that the thing I’d been dreading was this – that I was once more going to be given the third degree.

I nodded.

‘How upsetting for you.’

‘It was a shock initially, but it doesn’t upset me,’ I answered, quickly and possibly somewhat impatiently. ‘Or at least it doesn’t upset me as much as it appears to upset the person sending them.’

She peered at me, as though I had just said something very interesting. ‘I see.’

The silence gathered, and I fought the urge to babble out something to fill it. Next to me, Martin shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat.

‘I suppose I’m wondering,’ she said, after a minute or so, ‘why you’re the one receiving these letters.’

I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve no idea.’ I gestured over at Martin. ‘I’ve gone over my notes from the Examiner- ’

‘The Examiner ?’ she asked sharply.

‘Yes,’ I said, aware that she must already know this, but deciding to make it easy on myself by volunteering everything up front. I explained about receiving the first letter, the steps I’d already taken to find the author, while Martin sat with his arms crossed, refusing to meet anybody’s gaze. Something was bothering him.

As for Greta, she leaned forward, regarding me with bright, brittle attention as I finished. She wore a slight smile, as though she was waiting for me to inadvertently blurt out that I was the one holding Bethan Avery captive.

‘You checked in with the local psychiatric units, then?’ she asked. ‘Do you have contacts there?’

I eyed her. ‘Yes, I do. They’ve been very forthcoming with advice and materials for the column.’

‘And how did you meet them?’

I paused at this, a thin squirmy stirring moving across the tiny hairs at the back of my neck. Martin was frowning at Greta, deep lines framing the corner of his mouth. ‘I think most of the staff would help someone out with information on request,’ I say carefully, evading her more obvious question. ‘Educating people about mental health issues is part of what they do there.’

‘But do you know them socially?’

‘No, not socially,’ I said, keen to get this show on the road and myself out of this dingy office and away from her scrutiny. ‘Anyway, my understanding of the plan is that I am to publish something in my section of the paper that might make this woman reveal more about herself, or possibly come forward. I think the officer in charge of the case spoke to my boss at the paper about this yesterday and squared everything away with him.’ I crossed my legs, which felt chilled in the unfamiliar short skirt. ‘So I suppose all that remains to do is find out what I put in the paper and how you want me to handle any response.’

She watched me for another uncomfortable ten seconds and finally let out a little sigh. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ She opened a drawer, getting out a pen and paper. I was annoyed to see that the paper was blank. Martin had seemed very sure that the appeal I was to publish had already been written. I also realized that I had been expecting the supervising officer in charge of the case – O’Neill – to be here as well.

Beside me, Martin’s brow furrowed more deeply but he said nothing.

As for myself, I began to get a sinking feeling.

‘I just wanted, before we do this,’ said Greta, ‘to ask a few questions. We don’t want this to appear at all staged, and it would be far more convincing if we composed it together.’ She smiled again, as if sensing that I was becoming more and more uncomfortable with her.

‘By all means.’

‘So you live in Cambridge?’

‘Yes.’ I tugged down the hem of my skirt. ‘Well, Girton really. It’s a village just outside the centre.’

‘Are you local to Cambridge?’

‘After a fashion,’ I said. ‘Once I left the university I got work in London and then came back to live in the town itself. I went into teaching.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘A teaching job in Cambridge? You were very lucky.’

I had achieved a double first in Classics from Cambridge University, and I am fluent in Latin and most flavours of Ancient Greek. Recalling the fraught hours of revision, the late-night reading and stammering my way through my viva voce , I was tempted to remark that there was a little more than luck or even talent involved. It had all been bloody hard work.

For God’s sake, Margot, calm down. She’s just being polite.

‘Which of the colleges were you at?’ she asked now.

‘St Margaret’s.’

A sharp little light came on in her eyes, as though she’d caught me in a lie. ‘Isn’t St Margaret’s a graduate college?’

‘Graduates and mature undergraduates. I was twenty-two when I came up. I studied my A levels at night school.’

One of her dark red eyebrows lifted. ‘And from there to Oxbridge.’ She let out a little laugh. ‘Such an achievement! Though I imagine you felt a little out of place with the usual hothouse flowers at Cambridge. It must have been very alienating at times.’

‘I did all right,’ I said, trying to keep my voice even. ‘I got by.’

I was treated to another maddening pause while she considered this, as though I had blurted out something incriminating. But this was all a Rubicon I needed to cross, so instead of giving my impatience its head, I did a little trick I’d been taught by Mother Cecilia years ago in another life, whenever things weren’t going my way: I concentrated on my breathing, letting it silently slow down, pausing just before the inhale. I should not always be the Fury.

It would have done me good to have remembered it when talking to that trollop Ara, but hey-ho.

‘So you would have been in Cambridge, what, from around 2007?’

‘Yes.’

‘And in all that time you’ve had no contact with anyone from the case? Anyone at all?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

She offered me a prim little smile. ‘And have you been contacted by missing persons before?’

I blinked. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’

‘Through your work on the paper?’

I thought about this. ‘Well, yes. Sometimes I get letters from people who have run away from home. Certainly never from a potential kidnapping victim before.’

‘I did wonder,’ she said, clasping her little hands in front of her, ‘why you got into that line of work on the paper. Do you feel you empathize with people with problems?’

I frowned at her. ‘Yes. Don’t most people?’

‘And you like to help them out? This satisfies you?’

My frown deepened. ‘Is there any reason it shouldn’t?’

Again that tiny smile.

Oh, fuck this. Seriously, my inner Fury whispers to me. Take the fight to her.

‘Is this about the addiction? Or my breakdown?’ I asked, just a touch more loudly than I’d been speaking up until this point.

‘I…’ She was startled and glanced at Martin, tried to resume the smile, resume control of events.

‘Because it really, really , feels like it is,’ I continued. ‘And that’s fine, you know. I’m happy to tell you about it…’

‘I didn’t mean to imply-’

‘So basically I started a brand-new job writing copy at some wretched PR start-up in London where I was working up to eighteen hours a day, and before long I became a lot less fun to be around,’ I said, as though her answer had been, Please do. ‘Anyway, the business went under after the director decamped to the Caribbean owing me two months’ salary and bonuses, which I’d already spent. None of this was particularly good news, but it was all doable, or so I thought, until in the middle of it all Mother Cecilia, who got me off drugs when I was a teenager and was, to all intents and purposes, my only family, was stabbed to death three days before Christmas in the women’s refuge she managed.’