Claire Seeber - Fragile Minds

‘No one.’ There was a long pause. ‘It’s not what it looks like. I mean, she’s just an old friend.’

‘Yeah right.’ I felt so tired I could hardly speak.

‘She stays sometimes when she’s in town. That’s all.’ He was both contrite and angry in turns, as if he hadn’t quite decided the best form of defence.

‘It’s fine. Look, I’ve got to go, Rafe. It’s up to you what you do.’

‘Claudie—’

I hung up. I tried Tessa again. Nothing.

I was frightened. I was fighting panic. Why couldn’t I remember this morning clearly? I debated ringing my psychiatrist Helen, but I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. I couldn’t go running to her every time something went wrong. And she might think I was deluded again, and I wasn’t sure I could bear that.

I switched the News on again, the explosion still headlines, the first pictures I had seen. A bus lay on its side in hideously mangled glory, like a huge inert beast brought down by hunters. The newsreader emitted polite dismay as I stared at the pictures in horror.

‘Speculation is absolutely rife in the absence of any confirmation of what exactly rocked the foundations of Berkeley Square this morning at 7.34 a.m. Immediate assumptions that it was another bomb in the vein of the 7/7 explosions five years ago are looking less likely. Local builders were working on a site to the left of the square, the adjacent corner to the Royal Ballet Academy, on a new Concorde Hotel. The site is situated above an old gas main that has previously been the subject of some concern. The Hoffman Bank has been partially destroyed; at least one security guard is thought to have been inside. So far, Scotland Yard have not yet released a statement.’

At least, thank God, the Academy seemed untouched by the explosion. I tried Tessa one more time, and then Eduardo; both their phones went to voicemail now. I turned the News off and went upstairs, craving respite. I heard Natalie and Ella come in, Ella chattering nineteen to the dozen. I felt limp with exhaustion. I’d tried so hard to stay in control recently, and yet something had gone very wrong.

In the bathroom I rifled through Natalie’s medicine cabinet: finding various bottles of things, I took what I hoped was a sleeping pill. I went to the magnolia-coloured spare bedroom with the matching duvet set, shut the polka-dot curtains against the rain that had just started, and invited oblivion in.

Silver had insisted DS Kenton was checked out by the paramedics, but she knew that she wasn’t injured, only shocked. He wanted her to go home, but Kenton wasn’t sure being alone was the right thing. She kept seeing that hand in the middle of the road, bloody and raw, and the body sliced completely in two, and every time she saw it, she had to close her eyes. She felt numb and rather disconnected from reality; she sat in the station canteen nursing sweet tea and it was a little like the scene around her was a film, all the colours bright and sort of technicolour.

The person Kenton really wanted to speak to was her mother, but that was impossible. So she rang her father, but he was at the Hospice shop in town, doing his weekly shift, and he couldn’t work his mobile phone properly anyway, so he kept cutting her off, until she gave up and said she’d call later. She didn’t even get as far as telling him about her trauma. She drank the tea and stared at the three tea leaves floating at the bottom, and then on a whim, she rang Alison.

Alison didn’t answer, so she left her a rather faltering, stumbling message.

‘Hello. It’s me.’ Long pause. Not wanting to sound presumptuous she qualified: ‘Me being Lorraine.’ Oh God, now she sounded like an idiot. ‘I’ve been in a – in the – I was there when Berkeley Square, when it exploded.’

She panicked and hung up.

On the other side of the canteen she saw Silver stroll in, as calm and unruffled as ever, his expensive navy suit immaculate, not a hair out of place. She could understand why women’s eyes followed him; not particularly tall, not particularly gorgeous, perhaps, but just – assured. Commanding, somehow.

‘Lorraine.’ He bought himself a diet Coke from the machine behind her. ‘How you feeling? Time to go home, kiddo?’

‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was trembly. She cleared her throat. ‘I keep thinking about the hand.’

‘The hand?’ Silver snapped the ring-pull on the can and sat opposite her.

‘There was a hand,’ she whispered. ‘In the road. Just lying there. There were – there were other – bits.’

‘Right.’ He looked at her, his hooded hazel eyes kind. ‘Nasty. Now, look. Go home, get one of the lads to drive you if you want – and call me later. We’ll have a chat. Take the weekend off. And you should think about seeing Merryweather.’

‘I’m not mad,’ Kenton was defensive.

‘No, you’re in shock. Naturally. And you did a great job, Lorraine.’ His phone bleeped. ‘A really great job.’ He checked the message. ‘Explosives officers are at the scene now. Got to go. Call me, OK?’

‘OK.’ She sat at the table for another few minutes. Sighing heavily she began to gather her things. Her phone rang. Her heart skipped a beat. It was Alison.

‘Lorraine.’ She sounded appalled. ‘Oh my God. Are you OK? What happened?’

Kenton felt some kind of warmth suffuse her body. Alison had rung back. She walked towards the door, shoulders back.

‘Well, you see, I was on my way to a TV briefing,’ she began.

I woke sweating, like a starfish in a pool of my own salt. A bluebottle smashed itself mercilessly between blind and window, its drone an incessant whirr into my brain. It had been a long night of terrors, the kind of night that stretches interminably as you hover between sleep and consciousness, unsure which is dream and which reality.

‘Where are you? Where are you? Why are you not answering? I’m scared, Claudie, I can’t do it, Claudie …’

My heart was pounding as I tried to think where the hell I was. I tried to hold on to the last dream but it was ebbing away already, and fear was setting in. Momentarily I couldn’t remember anything. Why I was here. I was meant to be somewhere else surely – I just couldn’t think where.

I had spent the weekend at Natalie’s, against my better judgement but practically under familial lock and key. Natalie was truly our mother’s daughter, and I’d found the whole forty-eight hours almost entirely painful. She had fussed over me relentlessly, but it was also as if she could not really see me; as if she was just doing her job because she must. In between cups of tea and faux-sympathy, I’d had to speak to my mother several times, to firstly set her mind at rest and then to listen to her pontificate at length on what had really happened in Berkeley Square, and whether it was those ‘damned Arabs’ again. And all the time she’d talked, without pausing, from the shiny-floored apartment in the Algarve where she spent most of her time now, and wondering whether she should come over, ‘Only the planes mightn’t be safe, dear, at the moment, do you think?’ I’d kept thinking of Tessa and wondering why she didn’t answer her phone now.

Worse, it had poured all weekend, trapping us in the house. The highlight was Ella and the infinite games of Connect 4 we played, which obviously I lost every time. ‘You’re not very good, are you, Auntie C?’ Ella said kindly, sucking her thumb whilst my sister scowled at her ‘babyish habit’. ‘Let her be, Nat,’ I murmured, and then Ella let me win a single round.

The low point was – well, there was a choice, actually. There had been the moment when pompous Brendan drank too much Merlot over Saturday supper and had then started to lecture me on ‘time to rebuild’ and ‘look at life afresh’ whilst Natalie had bustled around busily putting away table-mats with Georgian ladies on them into the dresser. I had glared at my sister in the hope that she might actually tell her husband to SHUT UP but she didn’t; she just rolled table napkins up, sliding mine into a shiny silver ring that actually read Guest. So I sat trying to smile at my brother-in-law’s sanctimonious face, thinking desperately of my little flat and the peace that at least reigned there. Lonely peace, perhaps, but peace nonetheless. After a while, I found that if I stared at Brendan’s wine-stained mouth talking, at the tangle of teeth behind the thin top lip, beneath the nose like a fox’s, I could just about block his words out. For half an hour he thought I was absorbing his sensitive advice, instead of secretly wishing that the large African figurehead they’d bought on honeymoon in the Gambia (having stepped outside the tourist compound precisely once, ‘Getting back to the land, Claudie, and oh those Gambians, such a noble people, really, Claudie; having so little and yet so much. They thrive on it’) would crash from the wall right now and render him unconscious.