Gradually, they left me alone. An older, kind-looking woman behind the counter offered me a drink. After a few minutes I felt better.
I caught Tox just as she was about to leave.
‘Sorry about last night,’ I said. ‘Did I scare you?’
She shook her head, but didn’t quite meet my eyes. I’d scared her. ‘It must have been talking about what happened to Bryony,’ I said. ‘It must have been playing on my mind. I don’t normally dream at all.’
She glanced at her watch. It was ten minutes to nine. She’d have to rush to make nine o’clock lectures. ‘Bryony could never remember anything in the morning,’ she said.
‘I didn’t at first,’ I said. ‘I just felt rough, like I’d drunk too much and slept too little. It started coming back to me just now.’
‘What?’ she said.
‘I was awake,’ I said. ‘In my dream, I mean. But I couldn’t move. I knew exactly where I was, I just couldn’t move a muscle or open my eyes. And someone was standing over me, watching me. Was I noisy?’
‘Not as bad as Bryony could be,’ Tox replied.
But bad enough, judging by the look on her face.
‘I remembered something about Bryony’s dreams,’ Tox said. ‘There was this one time when she was sobbing that someone had cut her face to ribbons, that blood was pouring out of her. It wasn’t, of course, she was perfectly fine. Just freaking out.’
At that moment my phone buzzed. A text from Evi wondering if I could see her at noon, in her rooms. There was something she needed to talk to me about.
‘I’ll see a doctor this morning,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it’s just being in a new place, talking about what happened to Bryony and that business with the boys on Tuesday night. But if it happens again, I’ll move out.’
At that, Tox looked a little ashamed of herself. Which was exactly what I’d planned. ‘You don’t need to do that,’ she said.
‘You should go,’ I said. ‘Thanks for being so sweet. I’ll catch you later.’
‘NICE ROOM,’ SAID Laura Farrow, standing just a pace or two inside it, looking round at the walls of pale, uncovered stone and arched stone-framed windows.
‘My official room in college,’ said Evi. ‘Where I see my students, as opposed to my patients.’
‘Who’s the stiff?’ asked the detective, her eyes rising to the oil painting above the hearth.
‘Some twit in a black gown and curled wig,’ replied Evi, as a spark jumped out of the fire and landed on the worn rug. Before Evi could even move, Laura had stepped forward and crushed it under foot. Then she almost lost her balance, stumbled and recovered.
‘There’s a hook behind the door,’ said Evi. ‘Have a seat. You might need a notebook.’
Laura took off her jacket, gloves and scarf, sat on the winged chair opposite Evi’s own and took a student pad and pencil from her bag. When she looked up, her pupils were too large.
‘Are you OK?’ Evi asked.
‘Of course,’ said Laura, a little too quickly. ‘Don’t I look it?’
Evi took her time. Natural poise aside, Laura really didn’t look well. Her make-up seemed to sit on her pale face, rather than blending in naturally.
‘I didn’t sleep well,’ Laura added. ‘The student blocks can be quite noisy at night.’ Then she seemed to force a smile. ‘And the truth is I’m not nearly as young as I’m pretending to be.’
Evi decided to let it go. She picked up a file from a small table by her side and opened it. ‘I found something that worried me,’ she began, flicking through the first few pages. ‘Shortly after we met on Tuesday. I didn’t mention it straight away because I wanted to think about it and I certainly didn’t want to put it in an email.’
Looking up, she saw a tiny flake of mascara high on Laura’s left cheek. Oddly, it suited her, like an old- fashioned, painted beauty spot.
‘You have to understand this is very difficult for me,’ Evi went on. ‘Patient confidentiality is sacrosanct in the medical profession. At least it should be. Talking to you at all without clearing it with – well, with the world and his wife, frankly – is putting my career at risk.’
‘I understand,’ said Laura.
‘You picked up on Bryony’s fear that she’d been raped,’ Evi said after a moment. ‘Bryony is a very troubled young woman with all sorts of problems. I just wondered why that, of everything in her case notes, struck you.’
Laura dropped her eyes. ‘It’s an interest of mine,’ she said. ‘I joined the police to work on violent crime against women. So it’s natural it would strike a chord.’
Evi half considered asking if violent crime was something of which the detective had personal experience. Bad idea. She was letting her interest in Laura Farrow herself get in the way of the job both of them were trying to do. She nodded at Laura to go on.
‘But it was more than that,’ Laura said. ‘Everything else going on in Bryony’s life, the problems sleeping, the stress over workload, her feelings of worthlessness, they were all of her own making, if you know what I mean. I’m not trying to minimize her problems, far from it, I’m just trying to say that they were … oh, help me out here, you’re the psychiatrist.’
‘Of an internal origin?’ suggested Evi.
‘Exactly. Rape, though, is quite the opposite. Rape is inflicted upon you by an external aggressor.’
‘If the rape was real,’ Evi reminded her, and saw a flash of annoyance in the girl’s hazel-blue eyes. ‘As opposed to something Bryony either imagined or invented. Are you sure you’re OK, Laura? Your hands are shaking.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Laura, a bit faster than was strictly polite. ‘Thank you. I know the counsellor on your team wasn’t convinced by Bryony’s story, but my instinct when a woman says she’s been raped is to give her the benefit of the doubt.’
This young woman had been abused, possibly even raped, herself. Evi was now sure of it. She wondered if her superiors in the police service were aware of her history.
‘Good for you,’ she said. ‘So if I told you that four other students claimed to have been raped, in a manner very similar to that which Bryony reported, in the months leading up to their taking their own lives, you’d consider that significant?’
Evi watched Laura nod her head slowly, saw the spark leap into her eyes.
‘We’re talking a period of five years,’ Evi went on. ‘No proof in any case. Nothing to corroborate the women’s stories.’
‘Tell me about them.’
‘I can’t,’ said Evi. ‘That’s the problem.’
‘They’re dead,’ Laura argued.
Evi shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Then how on earth do you expect me—’
Evi held up a hand. ‘Three years ago,’ she said, ‘a patient of the clinic, we’ll call her Patient A—’
‘Just give me first names,’ said Laura.
‘If I give you first names, you’ll be able to identify them from newspaper reports.’
‘OK, tell me what happened to Patient A,’ said Laura, who was almost certainly thinking she could probably do that anyway.
‘Patient A reported bad dreams, problems sleeping, and a fear of someone entering her room at night,’ Evi said. ‘One night, convinced she’d been raped, she went to the police. There was no physical evidence at all. She killed herself six weeks later.’
Laura wrote in her notebook.
