Claire Seeber - The Girl with the Fragile Mind

As I watered the window-boxes out on the balcony, the scarlet geraniums bright against the overcast sky, the telephone rang again. A swan flew across the canal, brilliant against the murky waters, and landed with elegance.

I thought it would be my boss but it wasn’t.

‘Claudie. It’s nearly time.’ There was a long pause and a sigh. ‘We’re waiting for you now.’

I felt a fierce twist of fear. Transfixed, I gazed at the light blinking belligerently on the machine. I heard the click as the phone was cut off.

Savagely, I pulled the phone out of the wall, dislodging a small cloud of plaster in the process. Someone was angry with me, and I didn’t know why. I had the strangest sensation that my life was shrinking down to this moment – and I had two choices. Run, or face it.

In the bathroom, I scrabbled around for my last few pills. Then I lay on my bed, in the dark, fiddling with the locket on the necklace Tessa had given me; thinking, thinking.

Friday morning was all such a haze still. I had got on the bus outside Rafe’s; I had started towards work. I had this strange idea that was forming, that Tessa had needed me; that I had been summoned …

Thinking, thinking – I fell into a doze.

Dreaming. Tessa and Ned, dancing in a poppy field …

My bedroom door was opening and I was screaming, screaming and—

My sister stood in the doorway, clutching an orange Le Creuset casserole dish, blinking rapidly like a worried rabbit.

‘Oh my God.’ I sat bolt upright on the bed, my heart thudding. ‘I nearly had a heart attack. How the hell did you get in?’

‘I borrowed the spare key from Mum’s,’ she said brightly. ‘I was so worried, Claudia, you haven’t been answering your phone.’

‘Haven’t I?’

‘Don’t be silly. You know you haven’t.’

I didn’t remember her ringing.

‘And I bet you haven’t been eating either. I know you, Claudie Scott.’ She put the dish down on the chest of drawers and opened the blind. ‘Come on, hoppity-skip. Out of bed with you. I’ll put the kettle on.’

She breezed out of the room, retrieving her casserole dish and proudly bearing it before her like a precious icon. At least she was a better cook than our mother.

‘Hoppity-skip?’ I muttered to myself. ‘Dear God.’ But I got out of bed and followed her into the living room, like a child.

‘Your hair needs a brush,’ she said reprovingly, from her station at the kettle. ‘And a trim. I’m surprised you can see out of that fringe. And your roots are showing.’

‘Nat,’ I slumped down at the table. ‘When did you turn into Mum?’

‘Probably when I became one. Now, Earl Grey or builders? Or green. Now that’s very good for you, I’ve read. Cleans your digestive tract. I’ll make some green, and we can have a nice chat.’

‘Do we have to?’ I groaned. ‘I think my digestion’s all right, honestly.’

‘I just wanted,’ her bluster subsided for a moment, ‘I wanted to check you’ve been looking after yourself actually.’

Suddenly she was less sure of herself.

‘Did you?’ I gazed at her. We never talked about my mental state. Natalie found it too shaming.

‘Yes.’ She was too bright. ‘Now, your lovely psychiatrist has been on the phone. Helen, isn’t it? Ever so worried she can’t get hold of you. Has it—’ The brightness was fading; she was struggling now. ‘Has it happened again?’

‘What?’

‘Come on, Claudie.’ She flapped around with the teabags, banging cupboard doors. ‘You know what.’

‘You mean, have I disassociated from reality again?’ I thought of my lost hours. ‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully.

‘Right.’ She looked supremely uncomfortable.

‘Actually,’ I changed tack midstream. I couldn’t do this with Natalie. ‘I don’t think it has.’

She couldn’t handle it, that much was obvious. Not many people could. Not even my husband, Will – so why put them through it? My own mother had been distraught at losing her three-year-old grandson, but more distraught, I feared, at my own descent into hell. ‘Thank God Phillip’s not here,’ I heard her tell my auntie Jean once, ‘it would have destroyed him to see her like this.’ They’d expected me to be strong, and I failed them too.

‘No. I’m fine,’ I said. I put some cream on my sore hands for something to do.

‘Good,’ she looked infinitely relieved. ‘Also, Mum’s been calling. Can you just ring her back, Claudia? I mean, Portugal is not the other side of the world, is it, love, and she’s not coming back for a while apparently, not unless you need her, she says. Just give her a bit of reassurance, and she’ll leave you alone.’

My little sister and I stared at each other, and then slowly I smiled. Perhaps Natalie did understand a little.

‘Sure. I will. Perhaps I’ll go out and see her.’ The idea of the sun on my weary bones suddenly seemed enticing, although my mother’s incessant chatter and home cooking did not.

Natalie reached across me for the sugar bowl.

‘Gosh, what’s that smell?’ she wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s really horrid.’

‘Probably me,’ I joked, but she didn’t smile.

‘My sense of smell’s gone crazy. Must be the hormones.’ She sniffed the air like the small alert dog she sometimes reminded me of. ‘It’s really weird. Like something burnt.’

‘Oh,’ I fingered the locket round my neck. ‘Might be this. It’s a native African herb. Tessa bought me some for my birthday, says it protects you. Old lady’s fingers, they call it.’

‘I’m not surprised.’ She pulled back from me. ‘It’s disgusting. Get rid of it, you hippy.’

‘I can’t,’ I said miserably. ‘Tessa’s dead, Nat.’

Natalie looked down and stirred her tea carefully.

‘Yes,’ she said quietly, ‘I know; I saw. I’m so sorry, Claudie.’ She put her hand over mine. ‘It’s the last thing you needed.’

And for a while we sat there, side by side at that old table, tied together not by choice, but by familiarity; by something more even. From necessity. And all the while the phone was unplugged, looking like an evil plastic toad, squatting malevolently on the coffee table. At least it couldn’t ring.

His ex-wife was at the hairdresser’s in Frogley when Silver called. He could hear the chorus of hairdryers in the background, imagined the girls moving in perfect choreographed precision in front of the long mirrors, whilst the immaculate Allana scrutinised her manicure critically. Her shell-pink nails that were never chipped and certainly never naked, her hair all caramel and tawny, streaked within an inch of its life. They had been a well-matched couple in this respect at least; both beautifully turned-out at all times, until Lana had her breakdown, and even then she’d managed perfect hair. It was only beneath the surface things had been so different than they seemed.

‘Lana,’ he twiddled with a biro on his desk. ‘The girl in the photo. The girl you saw on TV.’

‘Jaime,’ she said, calmly. ‘It was Jaime. I knew it.’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s not Jaime,’ he took a deep breath. ‘Jaime’s dead, Lana, we both know that. But it is – it’s Sadie Malvern. Her big sister Sadie.’

‘I know who Sadie is,’ she said. She didn’t miss a beat; she was still calm. He didn’t know what he had been expecting; for her to lose it, start crying and screaming. Of course she didn’t. ‘Sadie was in the car that day too, Joe.’

‘So,’ what else was there to say? Sadie was still alive. Jaime was long dead, but then, Lana had only killed one sister. Sadie had survived; traumatised but alive, and now she was missing. That at least was nothing to do with the Silvers. ‘I just wanted to set your mind at rest.’