ALISON: You say that, Miss Sneery, but you wouldn’t like it. He lives outside Aylesbury. And do you know what it’s like, when you help the police?
Al’s eyes closed. She thought of reliving—over and over—the last few seconds of a strangled child. She thought of drowning in a car under the waters of the canal, she thought of waking in a shallow grave. She slept for a moment and woke in her duvet, wrapped in it like a sausage in its roll; she pushed up and out, fighting for space and air, and she remembered why she couldn’t breathe—it was because she was dead, because she was buried. She thought, I can’t think about it anymore, I’m at the end of—the end of my—and she released her breath with a great gasp: she heard
Colette was at her side, her voice nervous, oh God, Al, bending over her now. Colette’s breath was against her face, polythene breath, not unpleasant but not either quite natural. “Al, is it your heart?”
She felt Colette’s tiny bony hand sliding under her head, lifting it. As Colette’s wrist and forearm took the weight, she felt a sudden sense of release. She gasped, sighed, as if she were newborn. Her eyes snapped open: “Switch on the tape again.”
Breakfast time. Colette was down early. Listening to Alison while the tape ran—Alison crying like a child, talking in a child’s voice, replying to spirit questions Colette could not hear—she had found her own hand creeping towards the brandy bottle. A shot had stiffened her spine, but the effect didn’t last. She felt cold and pale now, colder and paler than ever, and she nearly threw up when she came into the breakfast room and saw Merlyn and Merlin stirring a ladle around in a vat of baked beans.
“You look as if you’ve been up all night,” Gemma said, picking at the horns of a croissant.
“I’m fine,” Colette snapped. She looked around; she couldn’t very well take a table by herself, and she didn’t want to sit with the boys. She pointed imperiously to the coffeepot on its hotplate, and the waitress hurried across with it. “Black is fine.”
“Are you lactose intolerant?” Gemma asked her. “Soya milk is very good.”
“I prefer black.”
“Where’s Alison?”
“Doing her hair.”
“I’d have thought that would have been your job.”
“I’m her business partner, not her maid.”
Gemma turned the corners of her mouth down. She nudged Cara conspiratorially, but Cara was unfolding the papers to see the funeral pictures. Mandy Coughlan came in. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her lips compressed. “Another one who’s had a bad night,” Gemma said. “Princess?”
“Morris,” Mandy said. She rummaged bad-temperedly at the breakfast buffet and slammed a banana down on the table. “I’ve passed the whole night under psychic attack.”
“Tea or coffee?” the waitress said.
“Got any rat poison?” Mandy said. “I wish I’d had some last night for that little bastard. You know, I pity Alison, I really do, I wouldn’t be in her shoes for any money. But can’t she get him under control? I’d hardly got into bed before he was there trying to pull the duvet off me.”
“He always did fancy you,” Cara said, flapping the newspaper. “Ooh, look at poor little Prince Harry. Look at his liddle face, bless him.”
“Pulling and tugging till nearly three o’clock. I thought he’d gone, I got out of bed to go to the loo, and he just jumped out from behind the curtains and put his filthy paw right up my nightie.”
“Yeah, he does that,” Colette said. “Hides behind the curtains. Alison says she finds it very annoying.”
Alison winced in a moment later, looking green.
“Oh, poor love,” Mandy breathed. “Look at her.”
“I see you didn’t manage to do anything with your hair after all,” Cara said sympathetically.
“At least she doesn’t look like a bloody pixie,” Colette snapped.
“Tea, coffee?” the waitress said.
Al pulled her chair well out from the table and sat down heavily. “I’ll get changed later,” she said, by way of explaining herself. “I was sick in the night.”
“Too much of that red,” Gemma said. “You were sozzled when you went up.”
“Too much of everything,” Al said. Her eyes, dull and downcast, rested on the dish of cornflakes Colette had placed before her. Mechanically, she picked up a spoon.
“That’s nice,” Gemma said. “She gets your cereal for you. Even though she’s not your maid, she says.”
“Could you just shut up?” Colette enquired. “Could you just give her a minute’s peace and let her get something inside her?”
“Mandy—” Alison began.
Mandy waved a hand. “Nugh about it,” she said, her mouth full of muesli. “Id nig. Nobbel self.”
“But I do blame myself,” Al insisted.
Mandy swallowed. She flapped a hand, as if she were drying her nail varnish. “We can talk about it another time. We can stay in separate hotels, if we have to.”
“I hope it won’t come to that.”
“You look done up,” Mandy said. “I feel for you, Al, I really do.”
“We were up talking till late, me and Colette. And other people came through, that I used to know when I was a kid. And you know I said, para-militaries were tormenting me? The thing is, they broke through and smashed up
