My Sister's Bones(14)

‘You’ve known him a long time?’

‘Around fifteen years.’

‘Fifteen years,’ says Shaw, raising her eyebrows. ‘The same length of time you’ve been taking sleeping pills.’

I smile ruefully.

‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘I hadn’t thought about that before.’

‘What did Harry say to you in the office after your outburst?’ asks Shaw.

I wince as I recall Harry’s face as he brewed a strong coffee and handed it to me. His hands were trembling and he looked, for just a moment, scared of me.

‘He . . . he just asked if I was okay.’

I don’t tell her that he threatened to suspend me and that I begged him not to on account of my upcoming assignment to Syria. I was lucky. His hands were tied. He knew I was the only person who could get into Aleppo. He had no choice.

‘Rachel Hadley could have called the police.’

I look at Shaw and it is then I notice how similar she and Hadley are; the same blonde bobbed hair, the same sibilant voice. They could be sisters.

‘Yes, she could,’ I reply. ‘But she didn’t.’

‘Harry says he told you to take the rest of the week off.’

‘Yes, he did,’ I say. ‘And he was great about it. I’m sorry, truly sorry for what happened to Rachel. I don’t like the girl but I shouldn’t have hit her. I do know that.’

‘And can you tell me what happened when you left the office?’

I look at the papers in her hand and my mouth goes dry. She can’t know. It’s not possible.

‘Kate?’

‘I’m sorry . . . My head is spinning. I just need a second . . .’

I jump up from my seat and walk to the tiny window, placing the palm of my hand on the glass. Behind me Dr Shaw shuffles in her seat and as I watch the light fading over the car park I try to blink away the memory of that night.

‘Kate, are you okay?’

Her voice merges with the others in my head and as I stand looking out at the grey expanse of concrete and the bleak sea below I think of my mother and how she implored me to get out of this town and make a better life for myself. And I did it. I got away, as far away as possible. But now I’m trapped in its clutches again. And I know that this time there is no escape.





8


Tuesday 14 April 2015

The graveyard is deserted when we arrive and I hang back while Paul walks on ahead of me through the ornate wrought-iron gates.

‘It’s this way,’ he calls as I stand on the path, clutching a posy of irises to my chest.

‘Yes, I know,’ I reply, and as I step inside the gates my stomach grows heavy with dread.

‘I hate this place,’ I say, catching up with Paul. ‘Always have.’

He smiles and pats my shoulder.

‘We don’t have to stay long,’ he says, his voice upbeat. ‘Whenever you want we can get out of here.’

‘I just want to see her,’ I reply as we weave in and out of the gravestones. ‘I want to see my mum.’

There are so many graves. It is hard to imagine the town producing enough people to fill the vast space, but here they are spreading out in front of us, the great and the good of Herne Bay from the nineteenth century to the present day.

I shudder as we pass the church, squat and unremarkable in its neat grassy plot, remembering how, as a child, the smell inside that place would make me feel sick. Every part of it, from the clammy troughs of holy water at the entrance, contaminated by strangers’ hands, to the claret carpet that snaked its way from the aisle up to the altar, felt like it was closing in on me. When the priest finally uttered the words, ‘Go, the mass is ended,’ I would clamber across the parishioners, clutching my chest as I ran for the door. Sitting in that church was the closest thing to being buried alive that I could imagine. Yet, for my mother, it was comfort and salvation; the place where her grief could be soothed with incantations threaded along the beads of her stark white rosary. I never understood that.

Paul catches me looking up at the ugly building.

‘I used to bring your mum here,’ he says. ‘Before she went into the home.’

‘She couldn’t get enough of the place,’ I reply with a half-laugh. ‘Used to bring us here every week when we were kids. Never on Sundays for morning mass like most people, but Saturday night, because that was when the priest heard confessions.’

‘Yes, it was always Saturday night,’ says Paul. ‘I’d wait for her in the car and she would be hours in there. I used to wonder what terrible sin she’d committed to make her confess every single week. I mean, your mum was one of the gentlest, kindest women I’ve known. What could she have felt so guilty about?’

I shrug my shoulders.

‘Who knows, but she’d had a lot of grief to deal with. Maybe talking to the priest helped.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ says Paul.

We walk on as row upon row of headstones open out before us. I recognize the older ones, the ones crumbling and caked in lichen that date back to the 1800s.

‘I don’t know about you,’ says Paul, frowning as we step through them, ‘but when I go I want to be cremated. A nice neat dispatch.’

‘Me too,’ I say. ‘I’ve already stipulated it in my will.’