BEFORE THEY managed to put it out. And they said the temperatures inside, at the point of – I can’t remember what they said …’
‘Origin?’ suggested Evi.
The girl sitting opposite nodded. ‘Yes, that’s it,’ she said. ‘The point of origin. They said it would have been like a furnace. And her bedroom was right above it. They couldn’t get anywhere near the house, let alone upstairs, and then the ceiling collapsed. By the time they managed to get it cooled down enough, they couldn’t find her.’
‘No trace at all?’
Gillian shook her head. ‘No, nothing,’ she said. ‘She was so tiny, you see. Such tiny soft bones.’
Gillian’s breathing was speeding up again. ‘I read somewhere that it’s unusual, but not unheard of,’ she went on, ‘for people to … to disappear completely. The fire just burns them up.’ The girl was beginning to gulp at the air around her.
Evi pushed herself upright in her chair and the pain in her left leg responded immediately. ‘Gillian, it’s OK,’ she said. ‘Get your breath back. Just take it steady.’
Gillian put her hands on her knees and dropped her head as Evi concentrated on getting her own breathing under control, on focusing on something other than the pain in her leg. The wall clock told her they were fifteen minutes into the consultation.
Her new patient, Gillian Royle, was unemployed, divorced and alcoholic. She was just twenty-six. The GP’s referral letter had talked about ‘prolonged and abnormal grief’ following the death, three years earlier, of her twenty-seven-month-old daughter in a house fire. According to the GP, Gillian had severe depression, suicidal thoughts and a history of self-harm. He’d have referred her sooner, he’d explained, but had only just been made aware of her case by a local social worker. This was her first appointment with Evi.
Gillian’s hair trailed almost to the floor. It had been highlighted once, but now, above the old blond streaks, it was an unwashed mouse-brown. Gradually, the rise and fall of the girl’s shoulders began to slow down. After a moment she reached up to push her hair back. Her face reappeared. ‘I’m sorry,’ she began, like a child who’d been caught misbehaving.
Evi shook her head. ‘You mustn’t be,’ she said. ‘What you’re feeling is very normal. Do you often have difficulty breathing?’
Gillian nodded.
‘It’s completely normal,’ Evi repeated. ‘People who are suffering immense grief often experience breathlessness. They suddenly start to feel anxious, even afraid, for no apparent reason and then they struggle to get their breath. Does that sound familiar at all?’
Gillian nodded again. She was still panting, as if she’d just run a race and had narrowly lost.
‘Do you have any mementoes of your daughter?’ asked Evi.
Gillian reached to the small table at her side and pulled another tissue from the box. She hadn’t cried yet but had been continually pressing them against her face and twisting them round in her scrawny fingers. Tiny twists of thin paper littered the carpet.
‘The firemen found a toy,’ she said. ‘A pink rabbit. It should have been in her cot but it had fallen down behind the sofa. I suppose I should be glad it did, but I can’t help thinking that she had to go through all that and she didn’t even have Pink Rabbit wi—’ Gillian’s head fell forward again and her body started to shudder. Both hands, still clasping flimsy peach-coloured paper, were pressed hard against her mouth.
‘Did it make it harder for you?’ asked Evi. ‘That they didn’t find Hayley’s body?’
Gillian raised her head and Evi could see a darker gleam in her eyes, a harder edge around the lines of her face. There was a lot of anger in there as well, struggling with grief to get the upper hand. ‘Pete said it was a good thing,’ she said, ‘that they couldn’t find her.’
‘What do you think?’ asked Evi.
‘I think it would have been better to have found her,’ Gillian shot back. ‘Because then I’d have known for sure. I would have had to accept it.’
‘Accept that it was real?’ asked Evi.
‘Yes,’ agreed Gillian. ‘Because I couldn’t. I just couldn’t take it in, couldn’t believe she was really dead. Do you know what I did?’
Evi allowed her head to shake gently from side to side. ‘No,’ she said, ‘tell me what you did.’
‘I went out looking for her, on the moors,’ replied Gillian. ‘I thought, because they hadn’t found her, that there must be some mistake. That she’d got out somehow. I thought maybe Barry, the babysitter,