‘But on the face of it, she wasn’t exactly Bill Gates.’ Steele sighs. ‘It’s never easy, is it? Renée – what are her friends saying? Her real three-dimensional friends.’
‘What friends?’ Renée yawns, puts a hand up in apology. I hadn’t even noticed she was here – fatigue is making us all muted, invisible. ‘I talked to a few people at the pub where she worked. They said she was very quiet, kept herself to herself. She worked eleven a.m. till three p.m. which are their busiest hours, so she just tended to crack on when she got there, no time for small talk like there would be if you were opening or closing up. They were obviously wondering where she’d disappeared to four weeks ago, but then it isn’t all that unusual in catering. They were a bit annoyed but not particularly bothered, was the impression I got.’
‘They didn’t call Thomas Lapaine?’ I ask. ‘He must have been down as her next of kin?’
‘Nope,’ replies Renée. ‘They tried her mobile a couple of times, couldn’t get through so they thought c’est-la-vie and hired someone else.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ says Steele. ‘It’s dog-eat-dog in the Shires these days.’
‘Neighbours didn’t have a lot to say either,’ Renée continues, stifling another yawn. ‘“Nice enough”, “quiet”. Same about him. The only friend Thomas Lapaine could point me to was a Debra Pulis who works in the deli on the high street. To be honest, she seemed a bit surprised to be classed as a “friend”. Alice popped in there most days and they’d chew the fat about the weather, TV, cooking, what-have-you, but she didn’t really know her.’
‘I think that’s sad,’ says Emily. ‘Imagine having no girlfriends to confide in. Nobody interested in what you’re up to.’
Imagine.
Sounds ideal to me.
While I’m not quite Alice Lapaine on the Billy-No-Mates scale, I tend to steer clear of the soul-sister sorority types. The kind who want to know everything about you, from your menstrual cycle to your relationship with your parents. Don’t get me wrong, I have a life, of sorts. I’ve got a few mates I sporadically get drunk with, there’s a couple I occasionally stay sober with, but all they know about me – all they really need to know – is that I drink anything but Chardonnay and my family aren’t close. They’ve no idea that my menstrual cycle’s patchy and I’ve wished my Dad dead.
Steele stands up abruptly, eager to get going. ‘Right, home-time, the lot of you. We’ve got fresh blood arriving in the next half hour to manage anything that comes through from the Standard so go home and get a proper night’s sleep. Maybe eat a few vegetables,’ she adds, staring at the junk-food detritus littering our desks.
‘Quick pint?’ suggests Flowers
‘Why not?’ says Parnell, heaving himself out of the chair. ‘Just the one though and then home. Man cannot live on two hours sleep in twenty-four. Not this old man, anyway.’
‘Or this young-ish man,’ says Seth, wrapping a stripy scarf around his neck – Oxford or Cambridge, I can never remember. ‘In fact, I think I’m starting to hallucinate. Is it just me, or are Emily and Ben having sex?’
Our heads snap towards the corner where Emily’s bending down sniggering at something non-work related on Ben’s PC, her chin resting on his shoulder, their hands touching as they tussle over the mouse. It’s about as intimate as anyone’s ever been within MIT4 so they may as well be having sex.
Close-knit comrades, we are – touchy-feely we are not.
Which is a shame as, after the day that I’ve had, I could really do with a hug.
*
I settle for a glass of wine. OK, two. A tepid drop of the house white when I’m paying and a nice citrusy Sancerre when it’s Flowers’ round. I think about staying out, numbing myself into a harmonious stupor, but I change my mind as soon as Emily starts talking about Fat Cats, a god-awful bar where people go to get mauled when their self-esteem’s just about hit rock bottom. While I’m not exactly a stranger to that kind of soul-crushing set-up, tonight I don’t fancy being that girl.
I don’t fancy a row with my sister either, but I can sense it’s heading that way as I trudge to Leicester Square tube with my phone glued to my ear.
‘Look, hold on a minute, Cat,’ Jacqui says, ‘I need to .?.?.’ She runs to the front door and shouts something about de-icer before hollering up to Finn to switch his night-light off.
Typical Jacqui, always in the middle of a domestic maelstrom. Always making you feel that your presence is one big interruption, even when it was her that called you.
‘I’m back,’ she says, breathless. ‘So, Christmas Day. Will you be here for breakfast, or just lunch? By the way, I’m not bothering with Christmas pudding this year, it’s only Ash who eats it.’
‘Er, I’m not sure, Jacqs. I wasn’t aware I’d been invited?’
She laughs, hyper and high-pitched. ‘You’re family, of course you’re invited.’
Jacqui does this. Erases all memories that don’t fit with the image of the shattered nuclear family, stoically soldiering on in the absence of the dead matriarch. I could remind her that I wasn’t there last year because two Christmases ago, Dad caught me in a grip that left an angry mottled bruise on my arm when I suggested he was glad Mum was dead. While I’m not exactly proud of my outburst, in my defence he’d just answered a text at the table – Mum’s table – from someone called Chloe and I’d instantly seen red. A chilli-hot, combustible red.
‘Look, I’ll try to come but I can’t promise. A big case has just broken.’
‘I know, Leamington Square. Noel text me.’
I try to keep the edge out of my voice. ‘Yeah, you kept that one quiet. Is he lying low, is that it? Who’s after him this time?’
‘He’s visiting his family, Cat. It’s normal this time of year.’
‘It’s normal for him to be after something.’
She ignores this, parasitic brothers don’t fit the ‘happy families’ image either. ‘Anyway, I didn’t keep anything quiet. If I’d seen you I’d have told you. You can’t be all elusive and still expect to be kept up to date on everything.’
‘Elusive? Come on, that’s not fair. You know my job’s a bit mental .?.?.’
‘Yeah yeah. You know Sadie, who I work with?’
‘Vaguely?’ I reply, confused where we’re heading.
‘Well, she’s got three kids and her sister’s a single mother of two, who also happens to be a firefighter, but they still manage to meet for martinis once a week, every week without fail.’
Yes, but they probably get on. ‘No point us doing that, you don’t even like gin.’
Jacqui sighs down the phone. ‘We haven’t seen or heard from you since fireworks night. That’s what, six weeks ago?’
A nice evening, I have to admit. I turned up with a hundred-shot firework called an ‘Atomic Warlord’ and Finn told everyone I was the ‘bestest’.
And Dad was in Marbella for ‘Uncle’ Frank’s sixtieth. It was the only reason I went.
‘How’s Finn?’ I ask.
There’s a pause, the kind of pause that makes my heart twist inside out. ‘He’s OK. He had a bit of a seizure last night. It scared me more than him though, he didn’t even wake up. We’re seeing the paediatric neurologist again after Christmas.’
‘I read up about them. Lots of kids grow out them as they get older.’
‘Exactly, he’ll be fine.’
Jacqui’s refusal to look worst-case scenarios in the eye usually makes me want to strangle her, but when it comes to Finn, I’m happy to play along. If I’m honest, Finn’s the only reason I still see Jacqui on a semi-occasional basis (I call it ‘semi-occasional’, she calls me ‘elusive’.) It’s not that I don’t love my sister, we’re just markedly different people, and I find it hard to stomach her blind – the bitch in me would say, ‘mercenary’ – allegiance to Dad.
‘Listen, I’d better go, Jacqs, I’m nearly at the tube.’
‘Hey wait, tell me about Leamington Square,’ she says, excitedly. ‘God, that takes me back.’