The coffee shop, down a side street near Charing Cross station, was dark and crowded and Corinne regretted picking it when she saw how Steffie’s mother, Patricia Garitson, clutched the collar of her elegant, powder-blue wool coat tightly around her neck.
‘Thank you for turning up. I was half expecting you not to,’ said Corinne, setting her tray down on the table and pushing Patricia’s green tea towards her. ‘I got you something to eat.’
They both gazed at the slab of chocolate cake as if it were an art installation.
‘I want to help if I can. I feel responsible.’
‘Don’t be silly. Your daughter’s a grown woman, as are mine. We’re not responsible for the choices they make.’
‘Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking I could have done more to protect Steffie – and, though I hate to say it, to protect other people from her.’
Fear snaked through Corinne’s veins as she remembered Jacob Garitson saying, ‘She hurts people.’ Just what was Steffie capable of?
‘The thing is, weird things have been going on at the clinic where Hannah … where my daughter is staying.’
‘Where she’s being treated, you mean. When you say “staying”, it makes it sound like she’s having a few nights in a nice hotel.’ Patricia threw back her head and laughed. That flash of gold in the back of her mouth.
Corinne was thrown.
‘Right. Anyway, Hannah says things have been planted in her room specifically to remind her of what happened.’
‘You mean the imaginary baby?’
Patricia Garitson was only stating fact, but still it felt like a sharp, painful jab, and Corinne decided not to mention the colouring book, or the tiny knitted hat left on her own doorstep. All evidence, she increasingly suspected, of a systematic campaign of harassment.
‘I just want to know what we might be dealing with here. I know your husband was, understandably, not keen to discuss your daughter’s past with a stranger.’
Patricia made a pah sound and gave a tiny flick of her wrist, as if shaking off a speck of dust.
‘No use talking to him about Steffie. He thinks the sun shines out of her behind.’
Corinne swallowed. She sounded so bitter.
‘I just need to know if Hannah is in any kind of danger.’
It sounded so melodramatic but, to Corinne’s dismay, Patricia didn’t try to brush it off. Instead, she picked up a mini-fork and began absently jabbing at the chocolate cake that sat on the table between them, its icing sweating under the café lights.
‘Can I speak frankly?’
Corinne nodded.
‘As a mother yourself, you must know that sometimes our children can be … disappointing.’
‘But not dangerous?’
Jab, jab, jab.
‘You know I am a caterer?’
Corinne blinked, caught out by this sudden conversational switch.
‘Well, this one time, Stephanie was angry with me over something. Probably because I’d given her a curfew. She’d have been around fourteen, I suppose. Anyway, I was catering a small birthday dinner for a neighbour: six individual apple pies. The fancy kind, with leaf shapes on the top, each traced with a delicate pattern of veins. Only, one of them had a special ingredient.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘The needle I’d been using to decorate the leaves.’
Corinne put her hand to her mouth. ‘You can’t mean she did it on purpose?’
Patricia licked her finger and dabbed it on the table, where a crumb of cake had fallen.
‘She denied it, obviously. But she wanted to get back at me. Any way she could.’
‘So you’re saying we should be worried?’
Patricia Garitson held her finger to her mouth and flicked out her tongue to lick the crumb off. ‘Put it this way, when they were children, Jacob used to drag his chest of drawers against his bedroom door before he went to sleep.’
Corinne thought of the girl in the photo, her eyes an angry slash of red, and closed her own as a shiver of fear passed through her.
How can I keep Hannah safe?
When she opened them again, Patricia Garitson was leaning forward watching her face intently, as if anxious not to miss a thing.
Corinne was still feeling jittery about her meeting with Patricia Garitson hours later when she returned home from work. At least, that’s what she told herself was behind her heightened anxiety. Certainly it had nothing to do with the fact that she’d spent the last hour of the day in conversation with her mature student, Paddy, about his dissertation.
Normally, she wouldn’t have expected to see him again for a week or two, and she had been cross with herself for the treacherous flare of pleasure when she’d read his email requesting a quick chat. He was nine years younger than her. She’d looked up his details on the social sciences departmental system. Corinne had known more than one male colleague who’d fallen for a young undergraduate while in the grip of midlife madness. And even though Paddy was no callow nineteen-year-old school leaver, she refused to turn into the same tired cliché.
Still, she hadn’t been able to completely stifle the way her stomach jumped when he’d walked into her office. Or the spark that flew between them as they talked, so that it was less a conversation than a game, with ideas the ball they batted between them. She’d thought she had successfully shelved her worries during their chat, had even congratulated herself on her professionalism, but when Paddy had finally got up to leave, nearly half an hour after she’d normally have left to come home, he’d hesitated in the doorway.
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking this, Corinne. I mean, I hardly know you, so it might sound presumptuous, but are you OK? You just seem – I don’t know how to put this – but you seem like you’re carrying quite a weight around with you.’
At first, she’d been affronted. ‘I’m perfectly fine, thank you,’ she’d said.
She’d regretted her snippiness as soon as the words were out, but it was too late.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep the mark. Please excuse me.’
After he’d gone she felt bereft but, then again, she argued with herself, what could she have told him? That her daughter, Hannah, was in a psychiatric clinic and it seemed possible that her son-in-law’s ex-lover could be stalking them both with mocking gifts of cuddly toys and baby hats? It sounded preposterous. Yet just for a moment, she indulged herself in the fantasy of unburdening herself to Paddy. Feeling those big arms around her, not having to be the strong one for once.
She allowed herself a moment of self-pity while she poured herself a glass of red wine, trying to remember when she’d opened the bottle and wincing at the first vinegary swallow until her palate got used to it. It had probably been sitting there slightly too long, but it was a decent bottle and she didn’t have another.
Corinne couldn’t remember when she’d last felt this tired. Tired to the very marrow of her bones. The files from Westbridge House she’d borrowed from Geraldine Buckley a week ago were still strewn over the table in front of her, and her eyes passed over the pictures of the three girls Dr Roberts had treated – and failed.
She wondered if he ever lost sleep over them, these young women who’d been entitled to be listened to without being judged, to be supported rather than disbelieved. She knew Roberts had been heavily influenced by Dunmore, and had not been found guilty of any wrongdoing, but surely he must feel some measure of remorse?
The last photograph was that of Catherine Pryor and Corinne felt another brief flicker of recognition. She studied the face, those grey eyes gazing out from cushions of puppy fat, the wide, strong nose. But nothing seemed familiar.
Taking another gulp of wine, she sat back, surveying the photograph from a distance.
Suddenly, her hand flew to her mouth.
‘Oh my God,’ she said out loud. And then, softly, leaning in again to take a closer look. ‘Oh my God.’