Afterwards

that.’

‘You breeders. So many complications.’

‘You pervs. So few commitments.’

She goes to the door. ‘Can I ask you a favour?’

He nods.

‘There’s a printer’s called Prescoes, which printed the school calendar for Sidley House some time before Christmas. They had their name printed on the back, but no contact number. Could you get hold of them and find out how many they printed?’

‘No problem. Be careful, won’t you?’

‘Yup.’

‘Call me. If you need to. Any time.’

‘Thanks.’

So Sarah has a best mate I never knew about, who she can speak to in a language she never uses to anyone else – well, certainly not whenever I’d been with her. I’m glad for her.

I’m not sure if you know that her marriage to Roger has an end date. But I don’t think you’ll be surprised that it’s been planned with such thought. It fits with the highly organised, practical woman I’ve known for so many years. And also with the kind, emotionally generous woman I’ve met in the last two days.

I go with her to a room where there are boxes and files of paperwork. She takes a file and tucks it under her jacket, hiding it. Her hands are shaking.

I know Sarah’s done lots of dangerous things – chased armed criminals and tackled violent strangers hugely bigger than her – but I thought it was attention-seeking bravado. ‘Look at me, everyone!’ I didn’t know about this quiet courage.

She goes into a photocopier room and starts to make copies. The door suddenly opens behind her. She starts. An older man comes in. From the pips on his shoulder he’s clearly senior to her.

‘Sarah? What on earth are you doing here?’

I feel dread for her.

‘Haven’t we given you compassionate leave?’ he continues.

‘Yes.’

‘So stop whatever work you’re doing and get off home. Or to the hospital. Work will be waiting for you when you return. You may think that it’s better to bury yourself in it, but frankly it’s probably not a wise thing to do.’

‘No. Thank you.’

‘I’m sorry. About your niece and sister-in-law.’

‘Yes.’

‘And your nephew. We all are.’

He leaves. She hurriedly stuffs the photocopies into her handbag, not folding them first, scrunching them. I don’t know if she’s managed to photocopy all the documents she needs.

She takes the file back to where she got it, holding it under the left-hand side of her jacket, pinned down with her arm. She’s sweating, her hair sticking to her forehead.

With the file returned, she hurries back down the corridor.

We are almost at the exit and I am also selfishly relieved because the pain is overwhelming me now, as if I am made of it.

‘Hey, you!’

A young man is hurrying towards her. I notice his fine features and grey eyes and youth, no more than his mid- twenties. He is astonishingly handsome. For some reason, he makes me think of that reading you wanted to have at our wedding – ‘My lover leaping like a gazelle’ from the ‘Song of Songs’; lithe and beautiful. (At six months pregnant, I’d worried the congregation would burst out laughing.)

‘You forgot something,’ he says to her.

They are alone in the institutional corridor, which smells of the cleaning fluid.

He kisses her, full on the mouth, a powerful sexual kiss that melts her bones and fills the moment because while they kiss she allows herself to be lost from the real world and enter this one. I turn away, remembering the first time I kissed you; your mouth closing onto mine and becoming an open doorway to a different, intensely physical place.

I know that while he kisses her, for these long seconds, she forgets Jenny and me and Adam and your suffering. Forgets the illegal copies stuffed into her handbag and her promise to you. A gift of a kiss.

Then she pulls away.

‘We can’t do this any more,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry.’

As she walks away I see she has kicked him harder than he’s ever been kicked before and how much it hurts him. I see that despite the age difference, and that he is beautiful while she is not, that he is in love with her. I wonder if she knows.

I’ve never really thought through what it must have been like for Sarah when your parents died and you were still a child. I’d assumed that teenage Sarah, like the adult, was naturally responsible. But was she forced to be that way? Because inside her rule-abiding, responsible, sensible persona there’s a risk-taking, life-grabbing person. Maybe it’s taken to her mid-forties to let out her teenage self.

No wonder her marriage with Roger is over.

We leave the police station together and I wish I’d known her like this before. Wish we’d gone for a drink together, become friends. You always wanted me to spend more time with her, on our own, but like a recalcitrant child I resented being made to play with someone I didn’t think I liked.

The truth is, I was jealous of her. I know, I never said, and you don’t understand why not. Well, it’s partly because I didn’t dare acknowledge it, even to myself, especially to myself, only occasionally daring to sneak a look edgeways-on. But now I see it clearly. Don’t worry, it’s not about you. There’s no weird kind of Antigone-brother thing going on (and I know you know about Antigone because I made you go to a three-hour production at the Barbican – sorry).

This jealousy thing is about Sarah’s career. Because what she does matters. I know that fully now.

And I also know that jealousy is a shaky foundation on which to build an opinion of someone. No wonder it’s collapsing.

Jenny is waiting in the goldfish-bowl vestibule.

‘Are you OK?’ she asks.

‘Yes.’

As soon as I was back here again the pain stopped. But at the police station the floor had turned to spikes and in the car the air scorched my no-skin self.

I tell her about the illicit photocopies.

‘Did you meet him?’ Jenny asks.

‘Who?’ I say.

She shrugs and looks uncomfortable and I realise she means Sarah’s gazelle lover.

‘You know about him?’ I ask.

She nods.

The surprising thing is that I don’t feel jealous of Sarah being close to Jenny in that way – but of Jenny. Sarah would never confide in me about him.

We follow Sarah as she takes the corridor towards the cafeteria.

‘Why isn’t she going to Dad?’ Jen asks.

‘Probably wants to read it through for herself first.’

The Palms Cafe is brightly lit, but I still sense the shadow of Maisie and Sarah’s conversation last night about Silas Hyman. ‘Violent…vicious… But he gets people to love him.’

Sarah takes a piece of paper out of her bag and tries to smooth out the crumples. Across the top is a border in the black-and-white chessboard pattern of the police. Underneath in whiteout letters against a black strip is ‘RESTRICTED – FOR POLICE ONLY’.