500 Miles from You (Scottish Bookshop #3)(34)

Comparing the two pictures side by side and reading again Cormac’s heartfelt joy and relief at the sickly girl back from the very foot of the grave, watching Pitch Perfect, eating ginger crunch biscuits, sitting up in her living room, being cheeky, Lissa understood. She stared at the picture for a long time and felt a little spark inside her.

She meant to put the file away. Then she found herself, on impulse, emailing back,

To: [email protected]



* * *



What’s wrong with a lovely boa constrictor?

To her total surprise, after a few moments she got back not an email but a photograph of a drawing, and she smiled.



Is that you?

Did you mean, oh look at you, you poor thing, being strangled by a boa constrictor?

That’s a terrible picture!

I’ll have you know that’s exactly what I look like.

You’re definitely more scary than the snake.

Thanks very much.

And shaking her head at the odd message, and hoping he hadn’t scared James’s pride and joy too much, she went to bed.





Chapter 32


The week continued. Even as they both started to get into the swing of things, Cormac peeled a layer of clothes off every day to stop being so hot, and Lissa added a layer every day to stop being so freezing.

Lissa absolutely didn’t realize people were gossiping furiously about her and thought she was standoffish, because she generally considered not making eye contact the most polite way of dealing with strangers. But she managed to cover the vast majority of her calls—diabetes management, as everywhere; some quite complex psychiatric treatment she’d called the hospital to talk her through step by step—and Joan seemed, if not exactly over the moon with her, particularly when it turned out she had absolutely no opinion on horse racing, not entirely displeased.

At 6:30 P.M. four days later, though, Lissa was back staring at the laptop.

“Before we start, I meant to tell you, turn off your social,” said Anita, who was speaking fast and eating with chopsticks. Lissa watched her hands, fascinated.

“What?” said Lissa. “What’s that got to do with PTSD?”

“What have anxiety-creating engines designed to distract, enervate, and worry you got to do with your mental health?”

Lissa frowned. There was a cough on the other side of the computer screen.

“I know,” said Anita, but not to Lissa. The forlorn cough came again. “Sorry,” said Anita quickly. “I had to keep her home from school.”

“I’m sorry about that,” said Lissa.

“Iz fine,” came a small voice, followed by another racking cough.

“She’s not fine. She just wants to watch Frozen again.”

“Maybe you’ll start telling your clients to build a snowman,” said Lissa, and the two women smiled briefly at each other.

“Have you got the trial date yet?” asked Anita.

“No. It’ll be ages away.”

“It probably won’t,” said Anita. “They fast-track these things, particularly with young lads.”

Lissa sighed.

“So you’re going to have to be ready,” said Anita unnecessarily. “If you can’t stand up and tell your story, there might be a mistrial. The perpetrator might be freed. There might be no justice.”

Lissa’s heart sank again. “Why does that mean I have to give up my social media?”

“Are you on it a lot?”

Lissa glanced at her phone. Kim-Ange appeared to be wearing a bowl of fruit on her head. “That depends how you define a lot.”

“It’s going to really impact your recovery,” said Anita, slurping. The coughing began again.

“How?”

“It’s making you ill. It’s making everyone ill with jealousy and self-doubt, and you are particularly vulnerable and in danger from it.”

Lissa looked at Anita. She had a large splotch of curry sauce on her cheek, but her expression was serious.

“But I’m out here all alone, and then I’ll be even more alone.”

“Good,” said Anita. “Use your inner resources. Stop trying to distract yourself with tiny pictures and other people’s lives. You’re distracting yourself from things you ought to be owning up to.”

Lissa was biting her lip.

“Feel,” said Anita. “You have to feel what you need to feel. Not distract yourself every five seconds. Not be constantly waiting for pings and swipes and likes and enervating yourself. Trust me, Lissa. You are already enervated. You need to get ready to tell this story and you have only four more sessions. Embrace the way you . . . oh.”

“What?” said Lissa, but there was no need. Loud and painful sounds of vomiting were coming off-screen.

“Not . . . not on the files!” Anita screamed as she jumped up.

Lissa waited for quite a while, but Anita did not return. Lissa knew she had six sessions of therapy and six only. That was two down already, and they didn’t quite seem to have gotten started yet. And the news that the trial would be soon, when she had assumed it would be months and months away, was very worrying. She checked Google, and sure enough the mayor’s office was trying to clamp down on youth crime in London by fast-tracking everything through the courts.