the station canteen nursing sweet tea and it was a little like the scene around her was a film, all the colours bright and sort of technicolour.
The person Kenton really wanted to speak to was her mother, but that was impossible. So she rang her father, but he was at the Hospice shop in town, doing his weekly shift, and he couldn’t work his mobile phone properly anyway, so he kept cutting her off, until she gave up and said she’d call later. She didn’t even get as far as telling him about her trauma. She drank the tea and stared at the three tea leaves floating at the bottom, and then on a whim, she rang Alison.
Alison didn’t answer, so she left her a rather faltering, stumbling message.
‘Hello. It’s me.’ Long pause. Not wanting to sound presumptuous she qualified: ‘Me being Lorraine.’ Oh God, now she sounded like an idiot. ‘I’ve been in a – in the – I was there when Berkeley Square, when it exploded.’
She panicked and hung up.
On the other side of the canteen she saw Silver stroll in, as calm and unruffled as ever, his expensive navy suit immaculate, not a hair out of place. She could understand why women’s eyes followed him; not particularly tall, not particularly gorgeous, perhaps, but just – assured. Commanding, somehow.
‘Lorraine.’ He bought himself a diet Coke from the machine behind her. ‘How you feeling? Time to go home, kiddo?’
‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was trembly. She cleared her throat. ‘I keep thinking about the hand.’
‘The hand?’ Silver snapped the ring-pull on the can and sat opposite her.
‘There was a hand,’ she whispered. ‘In the road. Just lying there. There were – there were other – bits.’
‘Right.’ He looked at her, his hooded hazel eyes kind. ‘Nasty. Now, look. Go home, get one of the lads to drive you if you want – and call me later. We’ll have a chat. Take the weekend off. And you should think about seeing Merryweather.’
‘I’m not mad,’ Kenton was defensive.
‘No, you’re in shock. Naturally. And you did a great job, Lorraine.’ His phone bleeped. ‘A really great job.’ He checked the message. ‘Explosives officers are at the scene now. Got to go. Call me, OK?’
‘OK.’ She sat at the table for another few minutes. Sighing heavily she began to gather her things. Her phone rang. Her heart skipped a beat. It was Alison.
‘Lorraine.’ She sounded appalled. ‘Oh my God. Are you OK? What happened?’
Kenton felt some kind of warmth suffuse her body. Alison had rung back. She walked towards the door, shoulders back.
‘Well, you see, I was on my way to a TV briefing,’ she began.
MONDAY 17TH JULY CLAUDIE
I woke sweating, like a starfish in a pool of my own salt. A bluebottle smashed itself mercilessly between blind and window, its drone an incessant whirr into my brain. It had been a long night of terrors, the kind of night that stretches interminably as you hover between sleep and consciousness, unsure which is dream and which reality.
‘Where are you? Where are you? Why are you not answering? I’m scared, Claudie, I can’t do it, Claudie …’
My heart was pounding as I tried to think where the hell I was. I tried to hold on to the last dream but it was ebbing away already, and fear was setting in. Momentarily I couldn’t remember anything. Why I was here. I was meant to be somewhere else surely – I just couldn’t think where.
I had spent the weekend at Natalie’s, against my better judgement but practically under familial lock and key. Natalie was truly our mother’s daughter, and I’d found the whole forty-eight hours almost entirely painful. She had fussed over me relentlessly, but it was also as if she could not really see me; as if she was just doing her job because she must. In between cups of tea and faux-sympathy, I’d had to speak to my mother several times, to firstly set her mind at rest and then to listen to her pontificate at length on what had really happened in Berkeley Square, and whether it was those ‘damned Arabs’ again. And all the time she’d talked, without pausing, from the shiny-floored apartment in the Algarve where she spent most of her time now, and wondering whether she should come over, ‘Only the planes mightn’t be safe, dear, at the moment, do you think?’ I’d kept thinking of Tessa and wondering why she didn’t answer her phone now.
Worse, it had poured all