Lasting Damage

Chapter 15

Friday 23 July 2010



‘Nothing?’ Mum looks at Dad with a plea in her eyes, as if she expects him to spring into action to correct the injustice. ‘What do you mean, they’re doing nothing?’

Kit and I are prepared. We knew the reaction we’d get. We foresaw the horrified gasp, the quiver of outrage in the voice. We predicted Dad’s reaction too, which we’ve not had yet, but we’re fully covered on that front, because we prophesied the time delay. Mum is the instant responder of the two of them, spewing out her panic in gusts of self-righteous accusation. It will be ten minutes – fifteen at the outside – before Dad contributes anything to the discussion. Until then, he will sit with his head bent forward and his hands laced together, trying to come to terms with yet more unwelcome evidence that life does not always behave in the way Val and Geoff Monk believe it ought to.

Anton will continue to lie across my living room rug, propped up on one arm, talking mainly to Benji about their current favourite subject: a collection of fictional aliens called things like Humungosaur and Echo-Echo. Fran’s a multi-tasker; while making sure Benji doesn’t demolish Melrose Cottage, she will aim regular half-grumpy, half-jokey criticisms at Mum and Dad as a way of shielding them from the larger, more devastating criticism they deserve.

In the company of my family, Kit and I are psychics who never get it wrong. The predictability of the Monks ought to be a welcome relief after everything we’ve been through. Predictably, it isn’t.

‘From what we can gather, there’s a disagreement internally,’ Kit tells Mum. No one would guess from listening to him how miserable and lost he feels. Whenever my parents are around, he plays the role of their brilliant, strong, capable son-in-law; he told me once that he enjoys it – it’s the person he’d like to be. ‘Ian Grint doesn’t want to let it go, but he’s being leaned on. Heavily, or that’s the impression we’re getting from Sam Kombothekra.’

‘But Connie saw that . . . that terrible thing! Another woman saw it too. How can the police just go on as if nothing’s happened? There must be something they can do.’ Anyone listening who wasn’t an expert on the way Mum’s mind works might think she had forgotten that she didn’t believe me at first. That’s what most people would do: say one thing, then, when they were proved wrong, say another and choose to forget that at one time they were on the wrong side. Not Val Monk; no ordinary ego-preserving self-deception for her. She explained to me and Kit on Tuesday night, when we were too exhausted from our day with Grint to argue with her, that she had nothing to rebuke herself for: she was right not to have believed me at first because nobody knew about Jackie Napier at that stage, and, without her corroboration, what I was saying couldn’t possibly have been true. Later, once we were alone, Kit said to me, ‘So, to summarise your mum’s position: she was as right not to believe you then as she is right to believe you now. Even though if it’s true now, it must have been true then as well.’ We laughed about it – actually laughed – and I thought how strange it was that in the middle of all the misery and uncertainty and fear, after a day spent being questioned by detectives who didn’t like or trust either of us, Kit and I were still able to glean some comfort from our old favourite hobby of ripping my mum to pieces.

‘It’s the lack of forensic evidence that’s the problem,’ Kit explains to her now. ‘They’ve gone over every inch of 11 Bentley Grove, taken up the carpets, the floorboards – essentially, they dismantled the house and sent the various parts off for analysis, and they found nothing. Well, no, they found more than nothing,’ Kit corrects himself. ‘They found nothing in a way that means something.’

‘Twenty billion’s more than nothing, isn’t it, Daddy?’ Benji asks Anton, tapping him on the leg with a grey plastic alien toy.

‘Anything’s more than nothing, mate.’ If things were normal between Kit and me, I would look at him now and send a silent message: Could this be the most profound thing Anton’s ever said?

‘Sam told us there are two different kinds of non-result, in forensic terms,’ Kit goes on. ‘The conclusive and the inconclusive.’

Still with us, Anton?

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Mum says impatiently.

‘You can find nothing at the site of a possible crime and still not know if a crime’s been committed there or not. Or, as in this case, you can find no forensic evidence and say beyond doubt that a particular crime wasn’t committed there. Sam says there’s no way there could have been the amount of blood in that house that both Connie and Jackie Napier saw without it leaving forensic . . . detritus behind. Since it didn’t . . .’ Kit shrugs. ‘The police have nothing to work with. Forensically, they have to conclude no one was killed there. They’ve got one estate agent and two former owners of the house swearing blind that the carpet in the lounge now is the same one that’s been there for years, since before the present owner moved in. They’ve spoken to the neighbours, who told them not much, apart from that Bentley Grove’s a lovely quiet street. No known missing persons fit the description Connie and Jackie Napier gave them, and there’s no body. What can they do?’

‘They’re the police,’ says Mum, tight-lipped. ‘There must be something – an angle they haven’t thought of, something else they can pursue.’

‘Kit’s trying to explain to you that there isn’t,’ Fran tells her. I wonder if it bothers her that she’s sticking up for a man she believes to be a liar with a secret life. She hasn’t said anything about the conversation we had on Monday – not to Mum and Dad, not to Anton. They don’t know about the address in Kit’s SatNav, or his car on Street View. I didn’t ask her not to tell anyone; it’s her choice that we should all keep playing Happy Snappy Families. She’s playing her role as willingly as Kit’s playing his.

And you, Connie? Why don’t you say something? Why don’t you tell everyone your husband might be a murderer?

‘Ian Grint’s no fool, Val,’ Kit tries to soothe Mum. ‘He knows Connie and this Jackie person are telling the truth. Sam thinks his bosses know it too, but look at it from their point of view. If a murder has been committed, they’ve got no body, no suspects, no evidence apart from two witness statements and no way to take it forward. Completely hamstrung, aren’t they? It’s not so bad for Grint – he’s only a DC, the buck doesn’t stop with him. His DI’s the one who’s got everything to gain by saying, “This isn’t a crime, it might just be a prank – let’s assume it is, and forget all about it.” ’

‘A prank?’ Mum appeals to Dad again. ‘Did you hear that, Geoff? Killing someone is a joke, now, is it? Leaving them bleeding on a carpet . . .’

‘Mum, for God’s sake.’ Fran makes a face that suggests mental impairment. ‘Kit’s saying that the police think there was no killing – the prank was getting someone to lie down in a load of red paint, or tomato ketchup . . .’

‘I know the difference between blood and paint,’ I say.

‘What sort of prank is that?’ Mum demands. ‘It’s not very funny, is it? What woman in her right mind would ruin a lovely dress by lying in paint?’

‘Sam and Grint both think the prank theory’s as daft as we all think it is,’ says Kit. ‘Someone higher up the Cambridge police ladder suggested it when they found out that whoever hacked into the website and changed the virtual tour changed it back again half an hour later. I don’t really understand why that’s significant, and I’m not sure Sam and Ian Grint do either, but there’s not a lot any of us can do. The decision’s been made.’

‘And you’re just going to sit back and do nothing?’ Mum stares at me in horror. ‘Pretend it never happened? What about your responsibility to that poor woman, whoever she is?’

‘What can Connie do?’ Kit asks.

‘I could apply for a job as Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire police,’ I suggest.

‘Where’s the cake, Daddy?’ Benji asks Anton. ‘When are we going to give Connie her presents?’

I have no idea what he’s talking about. Then I remember that this is supposed to be my birthday party. Today is my birthday. Like all Monk family celebrations, it began at 5.45 p.m. and will finish at 7.15 p.m., so that Benji can be in bed by 8.

‘First thing Monday morning, Kit, you phone the police,’ says Dad. Welcome to the conversation. ‘You tell them you think it’s a disgrace – you want answers and you want them now. You want to know what they’re planning to do, and they’d damn well better be planning to do something.’

‘That’s right.’ Mum nods her support.

‘If they mess you around, you threaten to go to the press. If they still don’t pull their finger out, you put your money where your mouth is. The minute it hits the local papers, the minute Cambridge residents know about this and start to panic, there’ll be nowhere for DC Ian Grint and his chums to hide.’

‘Dad, what are you talking about?’ Fran laughs. ‘Local residents won’t start to panic. You make it sound as if there’s a maniac on a killing spree, roaming the streets of Cambridge. Would you panic, if you heard that someone had been killed in Little Holling, if you had no reason to think you were in danger?’

‘That would never happen,’ Mum says. ‘That’s why we live in Little Holling – because it’s safe and no one’s likely to murder us in our homes.’

‘Cambridge isn’t exactly Rwanda, is it, and someone seems to have been murdered there,’ Fran fires back at her.

‘Cambridge is a city, with . . . people from all over the place living in it. No one knows anyone in a city, there’s no sense of community. Nothing like what Connie saw would happen here, and if it did, the police would investigate it properly.’

‘Define “here”.’ Fran looks to me for support. I look away. I can’t risk getting into any kind of argument with Mum, in case I get carried away and accidentally mention that if ever a murder is committed in Little Holling, it will very likely be of her, by me. ‘Cambridge isn’t that far away. I’m sure it’s got quite a low murder rate, because people who live there are generally quite intelligent and have better things to do than kill each other. Whereas in the Culver Valley . . .’

‘The Culver Valley’s one of the safest places in England,’ Dad says.

‘Are you kidding me? Anton, tell him! Don’t you two read the local papers? In Spilling and Silsford in the last few years, there have been . . .’ Fran stops. Benji is tugging at her arm. ‘Yes, darling? What?’

‘What’s a murder? Is it when someone dies, when they’re a hundred?’

‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Mum wails at Fran. ‘Poor little Benji. It’s nothing for you to worry about, angel. We all go to heaven when we die and it’s lovely in heaven – isn’t it, Grandad?’

‘Angel?’ Fran looks ready to pounce. I don’t think I’ve seen her this angry before. ‘We’re on earth at the moment, Mother, not in heaven, and his name’s Benji.’

‘First thing Monday morning, Kit.’ Dad wags his finger. ‘You let that DC Ian Grint have it right between the eyes.’

I have to get away from them all. I mumble something about tea and cake, and force myself to leave the room at a normal pace, instead of running, which is what I want to do. In the kitchen, I close the door and lean against it. How long can I get away with staying in here? For ever?

The sound of knocking interrupts my fantasy. Kit. It must be – I can hear Mum, Dad and Fran still arguing in the lounge. I don’t want to let him in, but as his co-conspirator I have no choice. He might have something important to say about the maintenance of the lie that we’re presenting to my family this afternoon: our fake happy marriage.

‘You okay?’ he asks me.

‘No. You?’

‘Just about staying afloat. Let’s get on with the tea and cake, and then maybe we can get rid of them early.’

‘They’ll leave at exactly seven fifteen, whatever we do or don’t do,’ I say. Kit ought to know better than to hope something different might happen. ‘Dad and Anton’ll go straight to the pub for their Friday night pint, and Mum’ll be busy for at least half an hour helping Fran put Benji to bed. I’ll drive you to the station at seven twenty-five – that way I can be back by the time they all resurface. If any of them bothers looking, they’ll see both our cars and assume we’re both here.’

Kit nods. I fill the kettle and switch it on, take the shop-bought birthday cake out of the bread bin. I chose the most expensive one in the supermarket, as if that could make up for anything. I load cups, saucers and teaspoons onto a tray, fill the milk jug with milk, scrape the discoloured granules off the surface of the sugar so that Mum won’t recoil when she looks into the bowl. Last but not least, a plastic lidded beaker full of apple juice for Benji, the only five-year-old in the world who still drinks out of a baby cup.

Kit’s pulling clean cake plates out of the dishwasher. ‘Tomorrow I’ll spend the day at Mum and Dad’s,’ I tell him. He holds out a large serrated knife for me to take. ‘If I’m there, none of them will come here. I’ll tell them you’re at home working.’

‘This is insane, Con. Why can’t we tell them the truth? Our current project’s coming to a head in London, I’m needed there full-time, so I’ve decided to stay at the flat for the foreseeable future.’

I take the knife from him. ‘That isn’t the truth, Kit.’

‘You know what I mean,’ he says impatiently, as if I’m splitting hairs. ‘Not the truth truth, but . . . can’t we tell them something closer to it, so that we don’t have to pretend I’m living here when I’m not?’ I watch him make up his mind to say more, and know what’s coming. ‘Or we could make our lie true: you could let me move back in.’

‘Don’t.’ I push him away, not daring to meet his eyes in case it’s obvious from mine how much I miss him. He moved out on Wednesday. For the last two nights I’ve lain awake crying, unable to sleep, using all my willpower to stop myself from ringing him and begging him to come home. I thought of myself as a good person until all this happened, but I understand now that I’m not. I could so easily lose my grip on what’s right, turn to Kit and say, ‘You know what? I don’t care if you’ve been seeing someone behind my back. I don’t care if you’re a liar or even a killer – I’m going to love you and stay with you anyway, because the alternative is too soul-destroying and too much effort.’

‘We’re going to have to do it, aren’t we?’ Kit closes his eyes. ‘The full performance: sing happy birthday, open presents, blow out candles, “For she’s a jolly good fellow”, hugs and kisses all round . . .’ I see the shudder pass through his body.

‘Of course we are. Isn’t that what’s happened every year since you’ve known me? My family don’t know this year’s any different.’

‘Connie, we’ve got a choice.’ He moves towards me. I ought to stop him. ‘We can put all this behind us, go back to how we were. Imagine neither of us had a past, imagine today was the first day of our lives.’

‘We wouldn’t be married. We’d be strangers.’ If I don’t turn myself against him quickly, I might never be able to. ‘I agree, that might be preferable,’ I say. ‘At the moment we’re strangers who are married.’

‘What are you two up to?’ Mum throws open the kitchen door without bothering to knock. ‘What are you talking about? Not the police still, I hope. This is supposed to be a celebration. Geoff’s right, Kit – you’ll ring this Ian Grint fellow on Monday, and it’ll all be sorted out one way or the other.’

‘I’m sure it will,’ Kit says expressionlessly.

One way or the other. Which two ways does she have in mind? I wonder. Scientists could kidnap my mother and replace her with a robot that looked exactly like her, and no one would notice as long as they made sure to programme enough clichés into the machine’s vocabulary: one way or the other, now look what you’ve done, what’s that supposed to mean?

I do the only thing that might make the rest of this so-called party bearable: I go back to the lounge and start a conversation with Anton about fitness. I tell him I’m fed up of being skinny, ask what I can do to build up muscle tone without ending up looking like an action woman with hard bulgy arms. I don’t listen to his answer, but thankfully it’s long and detailed, and saves me having to talk to anyone else. Dad and Fran argue on the other side of the room about whether anybody who moves to a city is signalling his or her willingness to be viciously assaulted on a regular basis, and Benji throws plastic aliens up in the air, trying to hit the ceiling and often succeeding.

Between them, Mum and Kit arrange my presents in a heap on the rug – another Monk family ritual performed on all gift-worthy occasions. Everyone takes their turn to pick a present out of the pile and hand it to its recipient. The picking must be done in order of age: Benji, Fran, me, Anton, Kit, Mum, Dad, then back to Benji again if there are still more parcels to be distributed. The system is not without its flaws: when it’s my birthday and my turn to pick, obviously I know that I’ll end up giving whichever present I select to myself. For years, Dad has been lobbying for change: if the occasion is a birthday rather than Christmas, the person whose birthday it is should be excluded from the picking. Mum is violently opposed to a reform along these lines, and has so far succeeded in blocking it.

The whole pantomime makes me want to shoot myself in the head.

This year, Benji has bought me a lavender bag in the shape of a heart. I give him a thank you cuddle and he tries to wriggle free. ‘When people die, when they’re a hundred, their hearts stop beating,’ he says. ‘Don’t they, Daddy?’

Mum and Dad give me what they always give me – and Fran, Kit and Anton – and have done ever since we’ve had homes of our own, for our birthdays, Christmas and Easter: a Monk & Sons voucher for £100. I plaster a smile to my face, kiss them both, feign gratitude.

Kit’s parents used to be good at presents. I assume they still are, even if they no longer buy them for us. I always loved the things they gave me: spa day vouchers, tickets to the opera, membership of wine and chocolate clubs. Kit was never impressed. ‘Anyone can buy stuff like that,’ he said. ‘They’re corporate client gifts, from people with plenty of money who don’t care.’ Even before he cut his parents off, he didn’t seem to like them much. I couldn’t understand it. ‘I’d give anything to have parents who were normal, interesting people,’ I told him, impressed by the way that Nigel and Barbara Bowskill, who lived in Bracknell, often drove into London to go to the theatre or to an art exhibition.

When Simon Waterhouse asked me why Kit had disowned his mum and dad, I told him what Kit had told me: that in 2003, when I was having my mini nervous breakdown at the prospect of leaving Little Holling, when my hair was falling out and my face was paralysed and I was vomiting all the time, Kit’s parents had told him that he was on his own with his problems and could expect no help or support from them – they were too busy setting up their new business.

I couldn’t imagine either Nigel or Barbara being so uncaring, but when I said that to Kit, he snapped at me that I hadn’t been there and he had, and I’d have to take his word for it: his parents didn’t give a toss about me, or about him, so why bother having anything further to do with them?

I thought I’d given Simon an answer to his question, but he looked dissatisfied. He asked me if there was anything else I could tell him, anything at all, on the subject of Kit and his parents. I said there wasn’t. It was true, strictly speaking. What would have been the point of saying that I’d always wondered if Kit deliberately misinterpreted or magnified something more innocuous that Nigel and Barbara had said, wanting an excuse to cut them out of his life? I decided it was probably unfair of me to suspect him of framing them in this way, so I said nothing about it to Simon.

‘Go on, Connie – everyone’s waiting.’ Mum’s voice drags me back to the party I’d rather not be part of. There’s a parcel in my lap, wrapped in ‘Happy Birthday’ paper: my present from Kit. Only he, Fran and I know that I’ve seen it before, that it contains a Chongololo carrier bag. All three of us are thinking about me nearly spoiling Kit’s thoughtful birthday surprise – or at least I am. Me in the doorway, Kit hovering over the scissors and the Sellotape, trying to look as if he isn’t hurt by my lack of trust. I see it like a still from a film that means nothing to me; I feel no remorse, no regret. Guilt gets boring after a while; you end up deciding it must be someone else’s fault, not yours.

I don’t want this present, whatever it is, but I must pretend I do. Mum claps her hands together and says, ‘Ooh, I can’t wait to see it! Kit’s got such good taste!’ I make fake enthusiastic noises as I tear off the paper, thinking that at some point I will have to tell Mum and Dad that Kit has moved out, that I could save myself weeks or months of lying by telling them now. Why don’t I? Am I naïve enough to hope, in spite of everything, that the trouble between us will blow over?

What did Kit say? We could make our lie true.

I drop the wrapping paper on the floor, open the Chongololo bag and pull out a blue dress.

‘Hold it up,’ says Mum. ‘We all want to see it, don’t we, Geoff?’

‘Dad wouldn’t know a Chongololo dress from a watering can, Mum,’ says Fran.

And he never answers you when you ask him a direct question. Haven’t you noticed, in all the years you’ve been married to him? He speaks to you only when it suits him, not in response to any need of yours.

I stand up, shake out the dress so that Mum can see it. It isn’t only blue, there’s pink in it too. A pattern. Wavy lines.

Wavy lines, short fluted sleeves . . .

No. No, no, no.

Darkness creeps in from the edges of my vision, towards the centre. ‘Are you okay, Con?’ I hear Fran say.

‘What’s wrong, Connie?’ Mum’s voice distorts on its way to me. By the time they reach me the words are stretched out and twisting, like the lines on the dress.

I have to do something to push away the dizziness. So far, I haven’t had an attack in front of Mum, and I can’t allow it to happen now. In 2003, in a moment of weakness, I confessed to her about my hair loss and vomiting, the facial paralysis. I never told anyone, not even Kit, but I found it frightening the way she latched on to my new invalid status. It gave her a story to tell herself, one she liked: I made myself ill by pretending I wanted to move to Cambridge when, deep down, I didn’t – I was only saying I did to please Kit. Now I was suffering for my stupidity, and she was going to nurse me back to health. The moral of the story? No member of the Monk family must ever think about leaving Little Holling.

‘Connie?’ Through the haze, I hear Kit say my name, but there’s no connection between my brain and my voice, so I can’t answer.

Don’t give in to the greyness. Keep thinking. Grasp a thought and focus all your energy on it, before it dissolves and leaves you floating in darkness. You didn’t tell Kit because you didn’t want to admit it to yourself, did you? It’s one thing to bitch about your mother being a paranoid control freak, quite another to say . . . Go on, say it. It’s the truth, isn’t it? You know it is. She was glad you were ill; she thought you deserved it.

She’d rather you were sick than free.

The clouds in my head start to clear. When my vision returns to normal, I see that Fran and Kit are both poised to spring out of their chairs and catch me, but they needn’t worry. The dizziness has gone, and it won’t be back. Nor will my lies, any of them – not the ones I tell myself, and not the ones I tell other people. I’m sick of poisoning myself with dishonesty.

I throw the dress at Kit. ‘This is the dress the dead woman was wearing,’ I say.

Mum, Dad and Fran all start to protest loudly. I hear ‘. . . blue and pink . . . ridiculous . . . strain of all this police . . . can’t be . . .’

‘It’s the dress she was wearing,’ I repeat, keeping my eyes on Kit. ‘You know it is. That’s why you bought it for me – part of your plan to destroy me.’ Mum makes the sort of noise a horse under attack might make. I ignore her. ‘I’m supposed to go properly mad now, am I?’ I spit the words at Kit. ‘Fall apart? Because you can’t possibly have bought me the same dress for my birthday that a murdered woman was wearing in a picture I saw on Roundthehouses, so I must be insane, I must be losing it – is that about right?’

‘Why’s Auntie Connie upset, Daddy?’ Benji asks.

‘Connie, think about what you’re saying.’ Kit’s face is pale. With his eyes, he gestures towards Mum as if to say, Do you really want to do this in front of her?

I couldn’t care less any more. I’ll say what I have to say, whoever happens to be listening, whether it’s Mum, Dad, the Pope or the Queen of England.

‘You said the dress you saw was green and mauve.’ Kit’s eyes are on me, but his words aren’t for my benefit; he wants our audience to hear that he has proof of my inconsistency, and therefore my madness. ‘This dress is blue and pink.’

‘You did say green and lilac, Con,’ Fran weighs in on his side.

I pick up my bag. As I leave the room, Mum calls after me, ‘I don’t know what you think you’ll achieve by running away!’

I’ve already achieved it. I’m gone.





‘The design was exactly the same,’ I tell Alice. ‘There must have been a green and lilac version and a blue and pink version.’ It’s my second emergency appointment in less than a week. Last time, I was worried in case she minded my imposing on her. Today, when I turned up as she was about to leave work for the day, I didn’t apologise or give her a choice. I told her she had to see me.

‘The woman who was murdered at 11 Bentley Grove was wearing a dress from a small, independent boutique that makes all its own clothes and has only one branch – in Silsford.’ I pause to allow the significance of this to impress itself on Alice.

‘Let’s zoom out a little.’ She makes the shape of a camera with her hands, pulls them back towards her body. ‘Leaving the dress aside for a moment . . .’

‘Even Fran believes Kit, and she thinks he’s a liar,’ I blurt out. ‘She told me the other day that any doctor who said there was nothing wrong with me can’t have been looking very hard.’

‘Forget Fran,’ says Alice. ‘I want us to talk about you and Kit. Nobody else is important. You say Kit’s trying to make you doubt your own sanity. Why would he do that?’

I open my mouth, then find I have nothing to say, no answer. I play it all back in my head: finding the address in the SatNav, Kit denying all knowledge of it; the virtual tour of 11 Bentley Grove, the woman’s body, the police, Jackie Napier seeing the body too; Fran looking on Street View and spotting Kit’s car; me unwrapping my birthday present from Kit and finding that dress.

I recognise nearly all the characters in the story: guarded, intelligent Simon Waterhouse; kind and modest Sam Kombothekra; practical, insensitive Fran; Selina Gane, angry and frightened. I can even find adjectives for Jackie Napier, whom I saw for only five minutes: sanctimonious, superior, charmless. And the dead woman on the carpet: she was dead, drained of blood, still. Those were her defining characteristics. There’s only one person I can’t bring into focus, however hard I try.

‘Connie?’ Alice prompts me.

‘I have no idea who or what Kit is,’ I say eventually. ‘It’s as if he isn’t a person at all, just a . . . an image, or a hologram. A collection of behaviours.’

‘You mean you don’t trust him.’

‘No.’ It’s hard to describe something that’s missing. An absence only has a clear shape when it was once a presence, when you know what’s gone. ‘I don’t trust him, but that’s not what I’m saying. When I’m with him, I don’t sense a . . . a person there, under the skin.’ I shrug. ‘I can’t explain it any better than that, but . . . this isn’t new. It didn’t start with me finding 11 Bentley Grove in his SatNav. I’ve known it for years, I just haven’t allowed myself to admit it.’

Alice is waiting for me to say more.

‘When Kit was a student in Cambridge, he fell in love with someone. He sort of let it slip, but when I asked him about it he clammed up and denied it. He’s always resented his parents, but would never tell me why. He pretended he didn’t, but I could see that he did – I heard it in his voice whenever he spoke to them. Then he disowned them altogether, and I’m pretty sure he lied about the real reason.’

‘And then came the SatNav, his car on Street View, the woman’s body, the dress,’ says Alice. She twists her swivel chair round to face the window. ‘Connie, I wouldn’t normally say something like this to a patient, but I’m going to say it to you: I think you’re right not to trust Kit. I have no idea what he’s done, but I think you need to stay away from him.’

‘I can’t. Selina Gane won’t speak to me, and the police have said they aren’t taking it any further. The only way I’ll find out what’s going on is if I can persuade Kit to tell me the truth. What?’

Is that pity in her eyes?

‘You don’t think I’ll ever find out, do you? You think I should give up.’

‘I know you’re not going to.’ She smiles at me. ‘I wouldn’t either, if I were you.’

‘Before all this happened, I was like Kit,’ I tell her. ‘I wasn’t real either. Now I have a characteristic: I’m the woman who won’t give up.’

‘You weren’t real?’

I’m not sure it’s something I can explain, but I have to try, however crazy it sounds. ‘In 2003, when Kit and I were looking at houses in Cambridge, I felt . . . non-existent.’

Alice waits for me to elaborate.

‘Most people have a type of house they prefer: townhouse in the centre of a city, stone cottage in the middle of nowhere. Some people always buy new-builds, some would only ever consider a house that’s more than a hundred years old. The house you choose says something about the sort of person you are. When Kit took me to see a cottage in a village called Lode, just outside Cambridge, I thought, “Yes, I could be a rural cottage sort of person.” Then he took me to a penthouse flat on a main road in the city centre, and I thought, “This could be me – maybe I’m a townie at heart.” I didn’t know myself at all, or what I wanted. After three or four viewings, I started to panic that I didn’t have an identity. I was transparent – I saw through myself and there was nothing there. I thought, “I could live in any of these places. I can’t say about any of them that they’re ‘me’ or ‘not me’. Maybe I don’t have a personality.” ’

Alice leans back in her chair. It creaks. ‘You were open-minded. Kit took you to see lots of beautiful houses, and you liked them all in different ways. Perfectly understandable, and nothing to worry about. Perhaps each house spoke to a different aspect of your character.’

‘No.’ I wave away her reassuring words. ‘Yes, it was silly of me to panic about not knowing what sort of house I wanted, of course it was, but I did panic – that’s what’s worrying. Each time I saw a house and wasn’t instantly sure if it was “me”, I felt more and more unreal. As if any self that I might once have had was draining away, drop by drop.’ I chew on my thumbnail, afraid that I’m admitting too much and will somehow be made to suffer for it. ‘And then we found this amazing house, 17 Pardoner Lane – the best of the bunch by far, I can see that now – and I was in such a state, I had no idea whether I loved it or hated it. Kit adored it. I pretended to – don’t know how convincing I was. I felt like I was falling apart. All I wanted was to be able to say, “Yes, this house is absolutely me” and . . . know what that meant.’

Alice bends down, reaches into the open brown suitcase under her desk. It’s where she keeps her remedies; the inside of the case is divided into tiny square compartments, each one containing a small brown glass bottle. ‘You were anxious and depressed, overwhelmed by your family’s unreasonable expectations,’ she says, picking up one bottle, then another, reading the labels. ‘That sense of your self diminishing came from trying to stifle your own needs for your parents’ sake, because they found them inconvenient. It had nothing to do with being flexible about what sort of house you wanted to buy, I promise you.’ She has found the remedy she was looking for. For extra, extra mad people.

I want to say more about the house I should have fallen in love with, but was too neurotic to see clearly. I need to confess to all of it: how I set out to ruin things, chipped away at Kit’s conviction with my paranoia. ‘17 Pardoner Lane was next to a school building – the Beth Dutton Centre,’ I tell Alice. ‘I lost sleep – whole nights – over the bell. How ridiculous is that?’

‘The bell?’

‘The school bell. What if it rang between lessons and was too loud? The noise might drive us mad, and we’d never be able to sell up and move on because we’d have to be honest with prospective buyers – we couldn’t lie about a thing like that. Kit said, “If the bell’s too loud, we’ll ask them to turn the volume down.” He laughed at me for worrying about something so stupid. He laughed again when I got cold feet a few days later for an equally ridiculous reason: the house had no name.’

‘I’m giving you a different remedy this time,’ says Alice. ‘Anhalonium. Because of what you said about feeling as if you were transparent and having no personality.’

‘I’d never lived anywhere that didn’t have a name,’ I say, not listening to her. ‘Still haven’t. First I lived at Thorrold House with Mum and Dad, then I moved in with Kit. His flat in Rawndesley was number 10, but the building had a name: Martland Tower. Anyway, that was different. Neither of us thought of the flat as home – it was temporary, a stop-gap. Now I live in Melrose Cottage, Fran and Anton’s house is Thatchers . . . In Little Holling, all the houses have names. It’s what I’m used to. When Kit was so keen on 17 Pardoner Lane, and I tried to imagine myself living in a house that was just a number, it seemed . . . wrong, somehow. Too impersonal. It scared me.’

Alice is nodding. ‘Change is incredibly scary,’ she says. She always sticks up for me. I’m not sure it’s what I need, not any more. It might do me more good to hear her say, ‘Yes, Connie. That’s really mad. You need to stop thinking in this crazy way.’

‘One night I woke Kit up at four in the morning,’ I tell her. ‘He was asleep, and I kept shaking him. I think I must have been hysterical. I hadn’t slept all night, and I’d worked myself into a state. Kit stared at me as if I was a maniac – I can still remember how shocked he looked. I told him we couldn’t buy 17 Pardoner Lane unless we gave it a name – I couldn’t live in a house with no name. I wanted us to look on the web, find out if it was possible to give a house a name if it didn’t have one already. You know, officially.’

Alice smiles, as if there is something understandable or endearing about my insanity.

‘Kit saw I wasn’t going to calm down or let him get any sleep until he’d come up with a solution to the problem I’d invented, so he said, “Come on, then – let’s go and investigate.” He soon found enough on the internet to convince me there was no need to worry: we could give number 17 a name if we wanted to. It’s easy – all you have to do is write to the Post Office. He said, “How about The Nuthouse?” ’

‘You must have been hurt,’ says Alice.

‘Not at all. I started laughing – thought it was the best joke I’d ever heard. I was so relieved that everything was going to be okay – Kit would get the house he loved, and I’d be able to make it feel like home by naming it. Course, on one level I must have known I’d now have to come up with some other obstacle . . .’ I shake my head in disgust. ‘I wonder what it would have been: that I didn’t like the doorknob, or the letterbox. My hysteria would have attached itself to some other random thing, given half a chance, but I didn’t see that then. Kit was relieved too. We were almost . . . I don’t know, it was like we were celebrating. We didn’t go straight back to bed – we stayed up looking at house name websites on the internet, laughing at the ridiculous suggestions: Costa Fortuna, Wits End. Apparently names like that are really popular – that’s what the website said. I found it hard to believe, but Kit said he could imagine some of his colleagues calling their houses things like that. “It’s a common affliction, thinking you’re funny when you’re not,” he said. “Wits End. Might as well call your house, ‘I’m a Dullard’.” I asked him what he wanted to call ours.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Oh, loads of stupid things – things he knew were stupid, to wind me up. I don’t think he tried too hard – he knew it wasn’t up to him. The name needed to be perfect, and it had to come from me – something that would say “this is home” and make all my anxiety go away. Kit started talking rubbish. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Let’s call it the Death Button Centre. Do you think the people at the Beth Dutton Centre’d be pissed off? Or the postman?” I told him not to be ridiculous. Should’ve known that’d only make him worse.’ The memory, absent from my mind for so many years, is suddenly more vivid than reality. I can see myself clearly, sitting at the desk in the Martland Tower flat, Kit kneeling down beside me, both of us in our pyjamas. We only had one computer chair in those days. I was howling with laughter, so loud I could hardly hear Kit’s voice, tears pouring down my face. ‘He pretended he was deadly serious, said, “It’s growing on me the more I think about it: the Death Button Centre. We could get a plaque made for the front door. No, I know, even better – let’s call it 17 Pardoner Lane . . .” ’ The words evaporate in my mouth as new fear surges through my body. What? What is it?

The Death Button Centre. The Death Button Centre . . .

I stand up, stumble, steady myself against the wall.

‘Connie? What’s wrong?’

I know what I saw – the missing detail that I haven’t been able to bring to mind until now. Yes. It was there. It was definitely there, in the picture with the dead woman and the blood. But not in the photograph of the lounge, the one without the woman, the one I would see if I looked at the tour of 11 Bentley Grove now. In that picture, it’s missing. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I tell Alice. I grab my bag and run, ignoring her pleas for me to stay, leaving behind the bottle of remedy she has prepared for me that’s standing on the corner of her desk.



*

POLICE EXHIBIT REF: CB13345/432/25IG

VOLCANO

by Tilly Gilpatrick, 20 April 2010



Very hot lava

Over all the land

Like a big hot wet blanket

Covering the world in

Ash

Nobody can fly home from their holiday

Orange hot lava!



Super work, Tilly! Some lovely images!



No, it's an appalling poem, even for a five-year-old.This is a good poem:



When first my way to fair I took

Few pence in purse had I,

And long I used to stand and look

At things I could not buy.



Now times are altered: if I care

To buy a thing, I can;

The pence are here and here's the fair,

But where's the lost young man?



– To think that two and two are four

And neither five nor three,

The heart of man has long been sore

And long 'tis like to be.