‘Keep me company then?’
The only free table in the café Carolynn led her to was round, three chairs, placed at elliptical angles to each other. Not ideal. Jessie would have preferred to sit directly opposite her, so that she could try to force the eye contact she’d failed to achieve in their sessions or on the beach. They sat down and Jessie ordered a pancake and a tea and Carolynn a black coffee.
‘You live in Bracklesham Bay, you said?’ Jessie began.
Carolynn hesitated; Jessie shrugged off her question, playing the psychology.
‘Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’
‘No, of course I do, there’s no reason I wouldn’t.’ Emphatically the game-show host again. ‘Yes, we’re … we’re renting a house in Bracklesham Bay. Not very glamorous, I’m afraid. There’s a derelict house on one side and the gates to a huge static caravan park on the other side.’
‘By the sea though, at least?’
‘By the sea,’ Carolynn acknowledged, relaxing slightly, when she realized that Jessie wasn’t going to press her, wasn’t interested in exactly where she lived. Small talk. Jessie was just making small talk. It had been so long since she’d sat opposite someone in a café and just chatted, that she felt rusty, a conversational Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz. She mustn’t be so uptight; she wanted, needed, to make this work. She really enjoyed Jessie’s company, would love a relationship beyond the professional, a genuine friendship.
Roger’s warning voice rose in her mind: You’re paying her, Caro. Actually, let me correct that: I’m paying her. That’s why she’s listening to you.
No, he was wrong. She would prove him wrong.
The food and drinks arrived. Carolynn watched Jessie struggle to hold the fork, an expression of intense concentration on her face, as if she had to focus on sending the electrical signals to ‘grip’ from her brain to her left hand. It was badly scarred, an angry gash across her palm that had been stitched. She’d noticed it before during her counselling sessions, had wanted to ask about it, but she had been stopped by professional distance. Reaching across the table, she laid her hand on Jessie’s.
The unexpected contact of Carolynn’s chill fingers made Jessie flinch. She recovered quickly, smiling to gloss over her discomfort.
‘What happened?’ Carolynn asked.
‘Huh?’
‘To your hand?’
‘Oh, uh, just an accident.’ Why am I lying? I don’t need to lie about this. I’m as bad as she is. ‘Actually, not quite an accident. I used to be an army psychologist and I was attacked by someone. He had a hunting knife.’ She held up her ruined hand. ‘This was the result. Not pretty and not functional, but it’s getting better.’
‘You had to leave the army because of it?’
‘I was invalided out five months ago.’
‘Do you miss it?’
‘Very much. Though I am in a relationship with a military policeman, so I got something good from it at least.’ Callan would be furious if he knew that she was sharing information about their relationship to build bridges, force a deeper connection, with Carolynn.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Callan. Ben Callan.’
‘Is he hot?’
‘Beautiful.’ Jessie smiled; genuinely, she realized, for the first time since she’d met Carolynn. ‘Truly. I’m very lucky.’
Carolynn nodded wistfully.
‘What’s your husband called?’
‘Roger.’
‘How did you meet him?’
‘Through friends, years ago now. We’ve been together for twenty years, married for seventeen.’
‘Wow, you get less for—’ Jessie broke off. You get less for murder. She couldn’t believe what she’d been about to say. The café was a crowded surf café with a chilled, fun vibe. She was relaxing too much herself, she realized, lulled into a false sense of security by the atmosphere. She needed to get a grip, get to the point and then excuse herself.
Carolynn raised an eyebrow. ‘Less for what?’
‘No, nothing. Laura, there’s, uh, there’s something I need to talk to you about.’ Reaching across the table, Jessie unfolded Carolynn’s Mail and opened it to page five. ‘I saw your photo on the television this morning. You’re called Carolynn, not Laura, and Zoe didn’t die in a car accident, did she?’
Carolynn picked at the corner of the sky-blue paper napkin that had come with her coffee. The colour, what little there’d been, had drained from her face.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you.’
Jessie shrugged. She worked with patients who lied all the time. It was an occupational hazard. Usually, though, she could see through them, recognize the lies. Why hadn’t she with Carolynn? What had made her so convincing? It was the fact that she had swallowed Carolynn’s story whole that disturbed her the most.
‘You had a horrible time, Carolynn. Can I call you Carolynn?’
‘Please do.’
‘And irrespective of how Zoe died, the emotional fallout is similar.’ Not strictly true. ‘You still lost a child.’
‘You’re not angry with me?’
‘Of course not. I have no reason to be.’ Again, not true.
She thought back to what Callan had said this morning. She could be a child killer. She could have murdered her own child. Her flippancy – laughing it off.
‘But I lied to you.’
‘Everyone lies sometimes.’
‘White lies.’
‘White lies, black lies and every shade in between. You’ve had an incredibly tough time and it was not unreasonable that you wanted to disappear, become anonymous.’
Carolynn’s lips drew back from her teeth in the type of smile a toddler pulls for a photograph. It was as if she had forgotten how to smile naturally.
‘Thank you.’
Her cold hand found Jessie’s. ‘I won’t lie to you again.’
Jessie nodded, forcing herself not to recoil from the chilly touch.
‘There’s something I need to ask you to do,’ Jessie said. There was no easy way to broach the subject, no easy words. ‘Detective Inspector Bobby Simmons is someone I’ve worked with before. I think you should call him and tell him where you are. I’m sure that he just wants to get in touch so that he can let you know
