Claire Seeber - The Girl with the Fragile Mind

‘Have you seen Tessa?’ she demanded, fiddling with a small silver dove on a chain round her neck. She was a little surly, as ever, and her rather lazy left eye gave her an unfortunate lopsided look.

‘No, ’fraid not.’ I unlocked my door. ‘She’s probably in class, no?’

Anita was clutching something, a pamphlet of some description. I caught the words ‘Redemption’ and ‘Light’ before she shoved it in her pocket.

‘She’s not,’ Anita scowled. She smelt odd; it seemed familiar but I couldn’t place the scent. ‘I thought she might be having lunch with you.’

‘Sorry. Can’t help.’ I let myself into my room, relieved to get away from the scowl and the odd smell. But Anita was too fast.

‘What’s she said to you?’ She stuck her foot in the door so I couldn’t shut it behind me.

‘About what?’ I frowned.

‘About—’ She stopped and stared at me. Thought better of it, perhaps. ‘Never mind. But if you see Tessa, tell her I’m looking for her.’

‘Yes, Madam,’ I muttered at her departing back. What an unpleasant girl, I thought, and closed my door behind her.

At five, as I was signing out, I had a quick look for Tessa, but she wasn’t in class or in the staffroom. I needed some fresh air now, my back was aching from standing for so long, and I was dying for a cigarette. I searched my bag for a nicotine patch, applying it with a sense of slightly defeated relief.

‘Seen Tessa?’ I asked Leila, who hadn’t, and Mason, who immediately raised her non-existent eyebrows in an entirely suggestive way.

‘What?’

‘She was ever so stressed. I heard her on the phone. I was trying not to listen but—’ Mason’s letterbox mouth snapped shut dramatically. ‘Well.’

‘Your speciality, not listening.’ Leila winked at me. ‘Walls have ears, eh, Mason?’

‘Let’s just say Tessa was more than a little fraught. She was meant to be covering Eduardo’s 4 p.m. but she made some sort of excuse and just left. Jenny had to do it.’

Leila and I exchanged glances. Mason was unperturbed.

‘She’s not best pleased, shall we say. Jenny. Still, “The busy man is troubled with but one devil, the idle man by a thousand.”’

‘Oh dear.’ I gathered my things, feeling guilty I hadn’t found Tessa earlier. ‘I hope she’s OK.’

‘Oh, Claudie,’ Mason barked as I opened the door to leave. ‘I completely forgot. She left you a note.’ As she bent to retrieve it from the pile on her desk, Mason knocked over her coffee, soaking everything with dark brown liquid. ‘Oh, damn and blast.’

After a bit of wrangling, Mason passed me the soggy bit of paper, but it was almost pulp already. I could just make out the words ‘Take’ and ‘the necklace’. The last word in the paragraph looked like it was possibly ‘Sorry’ with a big curly y.

I held it to the light but it was no good, it was illegible. I balled the note, tossing it in the bin. From the set of Mason’s expectant head, I could tell she had read it, she was dying to be asked; but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. If it was important, Tessa would call me, I guessed. ‘See you guys tomorrow.’

‘Ta ta for now,’ Mason sniffed. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t with that gorgeous Rafe. I know what MPs are like.’

‘Leaves me wide open then,’ I grinned at her, shouldering my bag, and left.

The summer afternoon was warm and the air outside seemed to almost shimmer. I suddenly felt more cheerful about life, almost euphoric even. Things were going to get better. They simply had to.

I had no idea of the level of my delusion.

But on the bus to meet Rafe, stuck at red lights, I felt less than euphoric and increasingly racked by a headache. I stared out at an Evening Standard billboard on the street which read ‘Dancer, 20, Missing or Dead?’; but the words moved up and down with alarming speed as I tried to focus.

Disoriented, I was jolted into a memory that terrified me. I felt like I had last year; my self fracturing into pieces – but it couldn’t be happening again – could it? I was over the worst, surely? I leant against the window, my head pounding so badly now I thought I might actually throw up, and I thought vaguely that maybe I should get off the bus before it was too late – only the idea of walking right now seemed a little like scaling Mount Everest. I looked down onto the pavement, onto the worker ants of London, and my phone was ringing in my bag. I tried to pull it out, the flickering lights in front of my burning eyes bewildering me until I felt like I was losing consciousness.

I woke in the dark, almost dribbling, absolutely freezing, my hands curled round my bag strap so tightly I had to fight to unfurl them. I could hear voices, and then Rafe was there, peering down at me, saying, ‘Oh my God, Claudie, what’s happened?’ And I found I could hardly speak, I was so disoriented, but I managed to croak something about my head, and he was saying, ‘Oh Christ, you’re frozen, how long have you been here?’ and practically carrying me up the few stairs to his flat. He gave me a warm drink of something tasteless, and laid me down on his sofa with a cashmere blanket – it was so warm and homely that I drifted off again.

I came to in the early hours caught in the desperate state between sleep and consciousness; hearing frantic voices whispering in the dark, a woman’s voice too now, and I thought perhaps it was Tessa, and then I realised I was dreaming.

When I woke properly about six, Rafe had already gone. He was a gym addict, and there was a note, telling me to help myself to anything I wanted, and that he’d see me later, and he hoped I was feeling better.

The headache had gone, but I didn’t feel better. I just felt frightened. I’d lost a few hours from last night; I remembered leaving work, being on the bus and then – what? Waking in Rafe’s porch; being carried into the flat. An overwhelming sense of anxiety pulsed through me. Images from yesterday flickered through my mind, like a camera shutter opening and closing too fast. I sat on the sofa, my head in my hands, and tried to breathe.

Was it happening again?

I washed my face and hands beneath the expensive lighting in Rafe’s stark bathroom and, trying to calm my tousled hair, I opened the medicine cabinet above the basin, looking for what Rafe called ‘product’. A packet of Well Woman tablets fell out. I picked them up, frowning. Next to them, a pink electric toothbrush, and a jar of Clinique night cream.

I shut the cabinet door, and walked into his bedroom. It all looked the same as ever, until I opened the drawers by the side of the bed. There was a pale blue hairband and some expensive hand cream.

It underlined something I had been avoiding … that Rafe and I were really only a stopgap. Meeting by chance at the Sadler’s Wells charity do in January, it had always felt a little like I was one of his pet projects; that we were keeping each other warm on cold winter nights.

But now it was summer.

Grabbing my stuff, I ran down the stairs and buzzed myself out, the fortress door slamming behind me. I stood at the top of the shiny steps to the street. A milk float trundled slowly down the deserted road, and a ginger cat cleaned its ears discreetly as it sat beneath the frothy mimosa tree; it looked at me with disdain and then carried on licking. And I remembered Tessa’s soaked and illegible note in my hand yesterday afternoon and I had this sudden overriding feeling that I should be somewhere, and I felt a rising panic, because I just didn’t know where.

How the hell she had ended up having to do this alone, she would never know. Cursing quietly, DS Lorraine Kenton backed the car into the small space, knocked the adjacent Audi’s mirror and then looked around guiltily to see if anyone had noticed. It had taken over half an hour to find a parking space because the bloody NCP was shut for some reason, and she was seriously over-tired and crochety. She’d slept badly because all night she’d kept dreaming that she’d forgotten what she was meant to say in the TV studio and no one would tell her the lines so she just sat frozen in fear on the famous cream sofa of Crime Live!, opposite the immaculate ice-maiden presenter who stared at her blankly.