one

Not the kind of woman to cut and run, right now I wanted to get the hell out, flee, hide under a dirty great rock and stay there. Then Jim Copplestone shambled down the corridor banging on about psychopaths.

“According to the most recent American study, brain scans indicate that certain regions of the brain, areas that govern empathy and morality, for example, are entirely closed off. Rather proves the point that it’s all down to genetics,” he added with a provocative expression designed to get me going.

I muttered something, sucked in a deep gulp of air, and tore into my consulting room. Undeterred, Jim followed and parked his bony rear on the edge of the desk, folded his arms, and drew his big louche eyebrows together. A psychiatrist and clinical director of Ellerslie Lodge, a fifteen-bedded residential home for anorexic young women, Jim was my boss. We shared history. A staunch ally, he had once cut me slack when others would have shown me the door. Not to put too fine a point on it, I’d found him to be fair-minded when the need arose. We got on well as professionals and colleagues, more so as friends, even if sometimes he annoyed the heck out of me. When the direct line phone blared, he stayed put. Maybe he was checking to see if I was up to the job.

Shrugging off my coat, I picked up the call and spoke in my best professional telephone voice, no hint of a Devon burr, no wobble in the tone. “Kim Slade.”

“Kim, it’s Georgia.”

I brightened. We’d been mates and regular lunch chums for years.

“Hi,” I said. “Great to hear from you.”

“Cut and rewind.”

“Oh?”

“Look, I’m sorry to drop this on you,” Georgia said, grim finality in her voice.

“Drop what exactly?” Obviously this was no prelude to a social invitation. My first instinct was correct. Returning to work this soon and on a Sunday, no less, had been a rubbish idea.

“Hasn’t Jim got you up to speed yet?”

The thought of getting up to speed crushed me. I’d had what most people commonly refer to as a nervous breakdown, a phrase never used in medical circles and too crude a description for a condition that embraced anything from depression to high anxiety state to schizophrenia. I regarded it as my crash-and-burn episode, a textbook response to traumatic events. Not good news for a shrink. I was better now, or so I’d been told. Clamping my hand over the receiver, I mouthed Dr. Thorne to Jim, who pulled a face and slapped his forehead. “Hell, I forgot.”

That’s what happens when you get carried away with chat about psychopaths. Important stuff careers out of the door and onto the road where it gets hit by a truck. I flashed him a checkmate smile, to which Jim responded by sticking out his tongue.

“Sorry, Georgia,” I said, “He hasn’t had the chance. What’s the problem?”

“Mimi Vellender.”

I have an almost photographic memory. At once I recalled a shy, darkly pretty, quietly spoken, intelligent teenager. She had the most amazing chocolate brown eyes. I’d treated her four years earlier and as far as I knew she’d made a good recovery from anorexia nervosa. Shout lines in her background were as follows: family dynamics dysfunctional with a mother clinging to a colour supplement lifestyle; father a fully paid up workaholic; older brother gone AWOL.

“She’s been admitted to the high dependency unit at the hospital,” Georgia said.

Shocked, I glanced up at an earwigging Jim. “We decided to section her while you were away,” he murmured.

I frowned big-time. “How bad is it?” I said to Georgia.

“Late stage, I’m afraid. She barely weighs fifty pounds.” The normal weight of a seven-year-old, I registered.

I briefly closed my eyes. Thankfully, this kind of scenario was rare. It didn’t lessen the impact. I gathered myself. “Where do I fit?”

“She’s drifting in and out of consciousness. In her more lucid moments, she begged to see you.”

“Begged?”

“It’s important to her, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered you.”

“Will it make a difference?”

“It might, but probably not.”

Georgia was nothing if not honest. I looked up questioningly at Jim. “We haven’t booked any clients for today,” he said. “Thought we’d give you a chance to settle, get the feel of things, ease yourself back to normal.”

Normal? For a consultant psychiatrist, it seemed a singularly inept description.

“I’ll come straightaway,” I told Georgia.

“Give it an hour. The critical care team are all over the shop at the moment.”

“Okay, but what about the parents?” There was bound to be a bedside vigil.

“Leave that to me. They mustn’t know.”

“What? But …”

“Mimi insisted on it.” One thing I’d learnt about anorexics during my career as a clinical psychologist, even when tapping at death’s door they were stubborn and determined. To take the slow and agonising road to starvation demanded tenacity of epic proportions. If Mimi insisted, she meant it. No compromise. No negotiation.

I glanced at my watch and swallowed. Mending minds should be classed as a dark art. “About eleven then—would that be all right?”

“Perfect. And Kim …”

“Yeah?”

“Welcome back.”