CHAPTER FIVE

I normally saved this trick for teenagers – the reluctant ones, forced to see me by an irate parent. I’d take them to Hampstead Heath or the Natural History Museum, walk and talk – see if they plumped for a linear path or a chaotic zigzag across the grass, a brontosaurus or a can of Coke – little clues that oiled the hinges and opened the door.

When I’d suggested a walk to Helena she’d readily agreed, and now she had texted from outside, the hazard lights on her ostentatiously large black BMW flashing an invitation. I tried to persuade Lysette to come to the door with me, but she shook her head mulishly, reminding me acutely of Saffron, minus the bee-faced wellies. She’d been sitting at the kitchen table for the past hour, hands tightly wrapped around a mug of tea, barely communicating with me. Some pans were piled up in the sink, and the plastic carton of milk was growing warm on the kitchen counter. At least she was dressed.

I put the milk back in the fridge, wiping up a trail of it with a grey-looking sponge. Her mood had got gradually darker over the last twenty-four hours. When Helena followed up with a staccato toot of her horn I was almost grateful.

‘I’ll see you in a bit,’ I said, leaning over her to kiss Lysette’s hot cheek. She looked up at me, her eyes almost pleading.

‘I know you’re going to listen to her, but don’t . . . don’t listen to everything.’

‘What do you mean?’ I said. I kept going back over the conversation we had that first night, chastising myself for how quickly I’d shut down what it was she was trying to say. With clients, I simply tried to listen without judgement and then work outwards from where they were starting from. Could she honestly believe that Sarah hadn’t killed herself? The funeral was the next day – horrible though it was, it might at least make what had happened start feeling real. I’d wait until she’d got through it before I risked trying to reason with her again.

‘Things about me.’

‘Lys, I’m not going to talk about you behind your back!’ I said. ‘How old are we?’

‘Too old,’ she said, and we both finally smiled.

‘She loves you! They all do.’ Her eyes flashed: not like Sarah, they said. ‘You sure you don’t want to just ask her in for tea?’ Lysette shook her head, took a gulp of her own tea like we might threaten her supply. ‘I thought you wanted me to talk to her?’ I said, trying not to let a note of exasperation creep into my voice.

‘Yeah, no. It’s really kind of you.’

‘I think you should try and see them before the funeral,’ I said, then cursed my own bossiness. She didn’t reply. ‘Whatever you think. I’ll be back by six.’

‘See you then,’ she said, voice small, her sadness making me sad.

*

The weather was less filthy today but it still didn’t feel like real summer. It was warm in a muggy kind of a way, grey clouds scudding about like playground bullies. Helena was leaning against the door of her 4×4, pulling deeply on a cigarette. She threw it down as soon as she saw me, even though it was only half gone, grinding it into oblivion with the heel of a high-heeled chestnut leather boot.

‘Don’t worry, I brought trainers,’ she said. She smiled at me, but it was brisk and efficient, lacking the overblown warmth of our last encounter. Ridiculously, I felt underdressed. My jeans were on day two, my options running short now I’d stayed on, my long-sleeved blue T-shirt a cast-off of Lysette’s with tiny holes puncturing the armpits.

‘Are we heading for rocky terrain?’

Everything I said to these women sounded as though I’d been practising it in my head beforehand, like it deserved a little drum roll.

‘No,’ she said, climbing into the driver’s seat. I hopped in too. The inside smelt of Chanel No 5, and I wondered if she sprayed it around to disguise the underlying whiff of cigarette smoke. The radio came on as she flicked the key, a loud blast of Katy Perry. She didn’t turn it off. ‘Thanks for doing this,’ she said, over the top.

‘Of course. You’re Lysette’s friend.’

‘I keep thinking of Rex,’ she said, ‘my little one’. Katy was reaching a crescendo by now, and I wondered if it would be rude to turn her down. ‘I can’t imagine it, just being gone.’

It was hard to say anything meaningful when all I was communicating with was her profile. Just like last time she was fully made up, her eyelashes so lush that they didn’t convince. Her skin was taut, almost pinched, and I unconsciously traced the subtle lines that arced from my nose down to my mouth. When I waste time peering at them in the mirror, I find it hard not to experience the double punch: hating them, then hating myself for the shallowness of hating them. The mirror is not always my friend.

‘Do you know how they’re coping?’ I asked. ‘Has Joshua got people staying with them?’ We’d left the village now, nothing but green fields either side of us.

‘Lisa and Kyle will be helping, I’m sure.’

‘Who are they?’

‘His ex and her husband. They’ve got one of those civilised divorces,’ she said, voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘His older two live with them. Jack’s in the top juniors at St Augustine’s still.’

‘Didn’t he leave her for Sarah?’

‘Yup. Tell you what, if Chris dumped me for someone half my age, there’d be no conscious uncoupling, not unless it was me pulling his dick off.’

I laughed, the relief making me aware that laughter had been in short supply since that first night. Patrick always made me laugh, but when I’d called him the evening before, neither of us had been in that space. He was stuck at work, his distraction palpable, whilst I was perched on my inflatable bed in Saffron’s room, wanting and not wanting to tell him that my period had crept up and ambushed me.

‘That’s very grown-up of her,’ I said.

‘Lisa said in the long run she was grateful. Apparently she says she knows now the marriage was dead anyway – the affair was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Sarah was pretty bolshie about it – she said they all ended up better off.’

‘Wow.’ I wanted to ask more, but I checked myself. I didn’t like the way I was starting to analyse Sarah, the sly mental notes I was taking.

‘I guess she had to say something like that though, didn’t she?’ said Helena. ‘Lisa, I mean.’

‘Maybe. Particularly if you’re all still living in the same place.’ The thought of it made me shudder: it was another thing that recommended a sprawling, impersonal metropolis. I looked out at the endless-seeming fields. ‘Where is it we’re going?’ I asked.

‘There’s a forest. That’s a bit of an overstatement – it’s a little wood. It’s round to the left.’

She swung the huge car off the main road, the turn sharp and sudden. We were on a narrow lane now, trees looming on either side. She mashed the horn with the palm of her hand as the lane curved to the left, the long hoot making a couple of pheasants soar upwards in a squawking flurry. A denser patch of trees was up ahead, and she pulled the car onto a grass verge. I unbuckled my seat belt, feeling slightly sick. I opened the door and clambered out, grateful for the fresh air.

‘So how old is Rex?’ I asked her, following her round to the back.

She was pulling off her boots now, pristine white trainers ready to go on. She reminded me of my childhood Sindy Doll, with the perfect, interchangeable outfits – ski jackets, riding boots – that I used to hoard all my pocket money to buy. There was a reason for Sindy’s outfits never wearing out; Helena’s trainers also looked as if they’d never been within a hundred feet of a patch of grass.

‘He’s eight now. Got far too much to say for himself.’ She beamed automatically as she said it, love softening her edges.

‘So he’s a couple of years above Max at the school?’

‘Yeah. And that’s like – a century – at their age.’ She finished lacing her trainers, looked up at me. ‘Have you got any kids?’

‘No. No, I haven’t,’ I said, the words sounding metallic in my mouth.

I Googled statistics obsessively, cheered or terrified, depending on who it was presenting the data. Thirty-eight was either a complete fertility disaster or no biggie. We’d only been – not exactly trying, but not trying not to – for six months, and Patrick was completely relaxed about the lack of success. Lack of success and relaxed have never existed in the same sentence for me. Helena slammed the boot shut, started off towards the trees.

‘So what made you want to meet up?’ I asked her.

‘I just feel so . . . anxious.’ She stopped, thrusting her hand towards me. Her fingers were wide and stubby, a contrast to the perfect wine-red manicure her nails had been treated to. I could see the tremor running through them. ‘I don’t know how to stop feeling like this.’

Helena set off into the dense greenery, thick branches soon forming a canopy over our heads. I hurried my pace in an attempt to keep up with her.

‘It’s completely natural that you’re feeling this way. But if you’re asking me if talking to someone can help, then yes, I think it can, particularly once the dust settles a bit. Though obviously I’m biased.’

Helena shook her head, frustrated.

‘It’s not natural,’ she snapped.

‘I know . . . sorry, if that sounded crass, but . . .’

‘None of this is natural.’ She looked at me again, her eyes dark. ‘None of this is normal.’

Her voice dropped as she said it, and I felt a shiver of unease that I couldn’t pin down. Lysette reared up in my mind – was this the ‘everything’ she was referring to?

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, too quickly. ‘I certainly wasn’t saying that it’s normal for a young woman to kill herself . . .’

‘I don’t know when the questions will stop going round my head. Rex has got his hamster – he stinks, but he loves him – Mr Whiskers. He just goes round and round on his stupid wheel, claws going, can’t stop.’

She’d nudged slightly ahead, more sure of the winding path than I was, but now she turned to me and pulled an ugly hamster face, her features screwed up tight, her hands clenched like tiny paws. I laughed, immediately warming to her.

‘What’s the one that tortures you the most?’ She didn’t reply. ‘How she could have wanted to do something like that?’

Helena gave a little snort of a laugh that came through her nose.

‘I wish.’ It was an odd response. Her eyes darted towards me, then darted to the ground. The silence prickled and spat. ‘She was lovely, Sarah,’ she added.

‘I only met her once, but Lysette can’t stop saying how kind she was. How funny.’

‘Yeah. no. She had a sharp tongue on her.’ She saw my expression. ‘She was quick,’ she added, even though we both knew they were totally different things.

I drew level with her, twigs snapping underfoot. We were going deeper into the green now, the light shaded out of the sky.

‘Do you think she was depressed?’

‘Stupid word, isn’t it?’ There was a cheeky sort of challenge in the way she said it, like a convent girl swearing in church. ‘We’re all depressed, aren’t we, every day? If Rex says I’m the meanest mummy in the world in the morning I feel like shit, but then he hugs me goodbye at the gates and I feel amazing.’

I wondered where her husband figured in her happiness ratio: there didn’t seem to be much mention of him. Was Rex her first, her last, her everything? I didn’t even know if she had a job.

‘So she didn’t seem particularly down to you?’

‘She was all of it, Mia,’ she said, tone devoid of warmth. ‘Four seasons in one day, you know?’

‘Sort of,’ I said, deliberately leaving a gap in my understanding for her to fill.

Helena paused, thinking. We took a few paces, going still deeper into the closely packed trees, the path more unruly, less distinct.

‘She worked in this café in Cambridge, just part-time, she was a supervisor. It’s really pretentious, you know. All olde worlde, full of tourists. There was a don from Trinity who used to come in and behave like a total cock. Ordering the staff around like they were his slaves, and wanting his scones all neatly arranged with the jam on the side and his cream all whippy. Used to leave shrapnel for a tip.’ Helena plunged down a path that took us still further into the density of green. ‘He came in with his wife and kids on his birthday, and laid into one of the other girls about his tea being cold. Sarah iced you’re a . . . you know, a C word – on his cake, and put it down in front of him with candles, and everything. She was singing happy birthday at the top of her voice, making all the staff join in so the whole restaurant was looking over. She got the sack on the spot.’

‘Wow,’ I said, trying to imagine it. ‘Good for her, I suppose.’

‘Thing was, she was gutted. I mean – of course she’d get fired. But she was furious about how unfair it was.’

‘Why, because she’d been standing up for someone else?’

‘No,’ said Helena, looking at me, eyes troubled. ‘I think she thought she could get away with it. I think she thought she could get away with anything.’

‘Anything?’ It could mean so many things. Helena looked down at the muddy ground, the set of her jaw telling me she wouldn’t be elaborating: the push–pull of our conversation was becoming as jarring as a fairground ride. ‘So your hamster wheel . . .’ I paused, searching for the right words. ‘Is it like – a cosmic hamster wheel – how can this happen? Or is it about what Sarah might’ve been hiding? What else she thought she could get away with?’

Her head turned sharply towards me.

‘Is that what Lysette says? That she was hiding stuff? From her?’

‘No. I think . . .’ I looked at Helena, mindful of Lysette’s paranoia about what we might share. ‘She’s struggling to believe she would’ve killed herself.’

Helena’s eyes looked bright and wet. She stared down at the ground, quiet, and I silently chided myself. I shouldn’t have been there. When I was ensconced in my treatment room diligently following the rules of patient confidentiality, there was no danger of me causing this kind of trouble. This – this was starting to feel more like the sixth form common room.

‘Why would she say that? What would make her . . . does she know something? Fuck.’

‘No, not at all,’ I said. ‘No one seems to have any answers. Lysette says even Joshua’s completely at a loss as to what was going through her head.’

‘No change there then,’ said Helena, with a slight eye roll.

‘Do you think their marriage was in trouble?’ I asked, the question leaving my mouth almost against my will. I couldn’t help myself: I could feel a dangerous compulsion to grab hold of Sarah, understand who she was.

Helena looked into the middle distance, the weak sun dappling the path, broken up by the lattice of branches overhead. Her voice sounded faraway when it came.

‘It’s funny, isn’t it, how things can look so different from the outside and the inside. Sort of makes you wonder whether black’s white.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘I dunno,’ she said, more clipped. ‘Maybe Sarah looked more complicated than she was, and Joshua . . . Maybe he’s the other way round.’

She suddenly shouldered her way through a wall of brambles that were criss-crossing the path in front of us. The wood felt as if it was closing in on us, the sunlight too faint to warm me. Or was the chill more sinister than that – was it coming from the creeping realisation that she hadn’t dismissed Lysette’s grief-stricken accusations out of hand? The thought of Lysette brought me up short – I was doing exactly what I’d promised her I wouldn’t do. Excavating a story that wasn’t mine.

‘Is there anything else I can tell you about the process?’ I asked stiffly. ‘I can email you with some suggestions for how to find someone if you do decide you want professional support.’

‘Can you talk to me about this?’ She stuck her hand out again, the tremor still present, and I retreated into my professional comfort zone, loading her down with tips about mindfulness and meditation and the perils of losing sleep. As my words guided us somewhere safer, the track seemed to do the same, opening out into a space that was less shadowed and enclosed.

‘Thanks, Mia, that’s a massive help,’ she said, just as we emerged from the wood entirely, her gleaming car back in sight. ‘I need to get going. There’s a PTA meeting at six. I don’t need to go getting myself a detention for shoddy timekeeping.’

‘Is the . . .’ I thought about the anxiety she’d just described, and blundered on. ‘I know it’s not my place, but do you any of you feel ready for it to be business as usual with school stuff?’

‘Kimberley’s the chairwoman. And trust me, what Kimberley says goes.’ She smiled at me, her eyes lingering on my face.

‘Right.’ She had a look of sly amusement, a look that was designed to trap me into colluding with her. Or was I just being paranoid? ‘OK then, let’s hit the road.’

But as we headed towards the car, she suddenly stopped. She turned to me, her face pinched.

‘You’re . . .’ She stopped, checked herself. ‘You’re a really good listener.’ The way she said it didn’t make it sound like a compliment. ‘I shouldn’t – I went on a bit, didn’t I?’

‘Not at all,’ I said, stiff again. ‘You asked to talk, and that’s what we did.’

‘Yeah I know, about like, candles and incense and deep breathing. All that other stuff I said – I was rambling on. We’re all just freaked out right now, the funeral tomorrow.’ She flicked her hands outwards, anger in the gesture. ‘Just forget it.’

‘OK,’ I said uncertainly, not sure exactly which part I was erasing from the tapes – of course now I was spooling back through them, trying to work out what she was regretting so much. ‘It’s completely understandable that you’re trying to make sense of it.’

A darkness crossed her face, a bright grin swiftly plastered over the top. I shivered, not sure if it was the rapidly descending sun or the change in temperature between the two of us. ‘You’re like a wise old owl, aren’t you?’ she said.

That didn’t sound like a compliment either. Besides, I really wasn’t. If I had been, I’d have flown out of town right there and then.

*

I could see into the kitchen when I climbed out of the car. Lysette’s face was caught in half-profile, her lips moving, a sense of bustling purpose immediately apparent. I felt a tidal wave of relief, scrabbling in my bag for the spare key she’d given me. I pushed away my unease about the odd encounter I’d just had, calling out a hello as I wiped my muddy feet on the equally muddy doormat.

‘How was it?’ she said, turning to smile at me. Saffron was sitting on a kitchen chair, little legs swinging above the ground, the mound of rainbow-coloured vegetables in front of her telling me that supper was in progress. She had a butter knife, a half of a red pepper she was happily mauling.

‘Yeah, no, fine,’ I said, guilt needling me again. Had I elicited too much from Helena, overstepped the mark? ‘I like her. Well – I think I like her.’

Lysette laughed. She put a wok on the hob, poured in oil. ‘They can seem a bit up themselves when you first meet them – Helena and Kimberley, I mean, not Alex – but she’s actually a real laugh. Not right now, obviously.’ Lysette paused, leaned on the scuffed pine table. ‘Thanks for doing that. Sorry if I was a bit . . .’

I shrugged, smiled at her. Was it me who should be apologising to her? ‘I get it, don’t worry. What’s the deal with Alex? She doesn’t seem like the other two at all.’

‘She got friendly with Kimberley via the PTA. She’s an academic at Cambridge, super clever.’ Lysette crossed to the fridge. ‘Do you want a cheeky glass of what I’m having?’

I sank into the chair next to Saffron, embraced by the comforting ordinariness. ‘Go on then. It sounds like the PTA’s a really big deal?’

‘You betcha,’ said Lysette, pulling out a bottle of white. There was less than a third in there, our glasses only half full once she’d tipped it all in. ‘Alex comes up with all these schemes to bring in piles of cash so Kimberley loves her. She’s a single mum. She didn’t meet anyone so she decided to go it alone.’ She glanced down at Saffron, who was cutting the pepper into ever tinier pieces with the blind focus of a serial killer. ‘Cra-zy decision,’ mouthed Lysette, taking a deep pull from her glass.

‘Or brave,’ I said, the words sounding more tart than I’d intended.

‘Bravery’s overrated,’ replied Lysette, the momentary lightness already draining away. She was staring off into the middle distance, ignoring the sound of oil fizzing and hissing in the wok.

‘How are you feeling?’ I asked gently.

‘Oh, you know,’ she said, crossing to the stove, her face suffused with a bleakness that felt absolute. How could I have been so naive? Of course this wasn’t ordinary: it was the very thing that Helena was lamenting, the outer veneer and the inner reality totally at odds. ‘Dreading tomorrow.’ I leapt up instinctively, enveloped her in a hug. ‘Thanks, Mia,’ she half whispered, her body almost surrendering but not quite. Saffron looked on, eyes round and watchful. ‘Did Helena say much?’

How to answer that question? ‘No, not really. She’s in shock, like you all are.’

‘Right.’

‘Do you really think . . .’ The uncomfortable meeting with Helena somehow chimed with the tenor of Lysette’s grief – what kind of private hell was she in right now? ‘Lys, do you really not think it was suicide? Do you think something happened?’

Her body juddered in my arms. She pulled away.

‘I can’t go there,’ she said, face full of struggle.

‘No, of course,’ I said, regretting my blundering attempt at empathy. ‘Is there anything – anything at all – I can do?’

‘There might be actually,’ she said, crossing back to the fridge. She spoke from inside there, the light illuminating her bent head. ‘I need to pop out once I’ve cooked this. I’ll be less than an hour. Could you hold the fort with madam? She’s already eaten.’

‘Course,’ I said, grinning at Saffron who had a stray finger approaching her left nostril. I gave her a look and she put it down, giggling. ‘What have you got to do?’

‘It’s nothing,’ she said, still hidden in the fridge. As she stood up, I couldn’t help noticing she hadn’t taken anything out. ‘Just something I need to sort out.’ Her voice was too light, too breezy to convince.

I tried again. ‘You’re not going to that PTA meeting, are you?’

‘Fuck no!’ she said, vehement.

‘What, to do with the . . .’ My voice dropped. ‘With tomorrow?’

‘Yeah, kind of,’ she said, her tone a full stop.

I felt a twinge of resentment. What was it she wasn’t trusting me with whilst she was busy trusting me with her only daughter?

‘Right,’ I said, equally clipped.

She ducked down towards Saffron’s blonde head, held it between her hands and kissed the crown. ‘You’ll be good for Auntie Mia, won’t you?’ she said, face still dipped low. ‘You’ll take good care of her?’

The phrase didn’t sound throwaway in her mouth – it rang in my ears, odd and disconcerting. In a few minutes she was gone, her car zooming off into the early evening. I stood at the window, watching it disappear, hurt and anxiety mixed up together. Where had she gone?

The question was so much bigger than I knew.