Fragile Minds Page 0,15

Too late to make a difference: one human had hated another enough to do this – possibly … A gas leak was still being mooted, but Silver knew the drill, knew this was to prevent panic spreading through the city, another 7/7, another 9/11, the stoic Londoner weary of it all already. The Asians fed up of ever-wary eyes, the Counter Terrorist Branch overworked and frankly baffled. How do you keep tabs on invisible evil that could snake amongst us unseen? Silver was hanged if he knew.

He yawned and stretched as fully as his desk allowed. That bastard Beer was calling him, whispering lovingly in his ear over and again. He needed a long cold pint, smooth as liquid gold down his thirsty aching throat. He swore softly and checked the change in his pocket. Out in the corridor, he bought himself his fifth diet Coke of the night and unwrapped another packet of Orbit. Distractions. He wished he felt fresher, more alert, but he felt tired and rather useless. However much he preferred work to home, he wished himself there now, asleep, oblivious to the world’s inequities. Leaning against the wall wearily, he drank half the can in one go.

Craven popped his balding head out of the office. ‘Your wife’s on the phone.’

‘Ex-wife,’ Silver said mechanically.

In an exercise of male camaraderie, Craven grimaced. ‘Sorry. Ex-wife.’

Silver checked his expensive Breitling watch. Following Craven, he leant over the desk for the receiver. It was early even for her.

‘Lana?’

There was a long silence. He rolled his eyes; he thought he heard a sniff. Lana never cried.

‘What is it, kiddo?’ he tried kindness. He had ignored so many things recently, he was stamping all over his ‘emotional intelligence’ apparently; the intelligence they’d been lectured on recently at conference.

‘Don’t call me that, Joe,’ Lana snapped. ‘It drives me bloody mad.’

Some things never changed. And he didn’t have time for emotional intelligence anyway. He relied on gut instinct.

‘Sorry.’ He almost grinned. ‘What is it, Allana?’

‘I saw her on the News.’

The hairs on his arms stood up. Not this again.

‘I couldn’t sleep so I got up. It was GMTV,’ she was breathless and angry. ‘She was just there, smiling. A photo. I saw her, Joe.’

He’d thought they were through this. ‘Don’t be daft, Lana.’ Through, and out the other side. He dropped his voice to little more than a whisper. ‘We’ve been over this a million times.’ Persuasive, comforting. ‘It’s not her. It can’t be.’

‘On the News. I was watching about the bomb.’

‘Explosion,’ again, he corrected automatically.

‘Explosion. Whatever.’ Her distress was palpable. ‘They had a separate item about missing kids. She’s a dancer. I saw her face.’

‘Whose face?’ He knew who; but he needed her to say it, needed to hear the name.

A gulp, as if she were swallowing air. ‘Jaime. Jaime Malvern.’

‘Lana. Are you drunk?’

‘Nooo,’ the vowel was a long hiss, drawn-out. ‘I am stone cold sober, Joseph. But it’s her. As sure as eggs is eggs.’

They used to laugh at that expression. They used to lie in bed, legs intertwined, and do all the egg expressions: ‘Eggs in one basket, don’t count your chicken eggs.’ They were young, they were in love. They thought they were hilarious. ‘Teach your grandmother to suck eggs.’

Neither of them was laughing now.

‘Lana. It can’t be Jaime, you know that. She’s dead, kid— sweetheart. She’s been dead a long time now.’

‘I know,’ she howled, and the pain in her voice pierced him in the old way. ‘I know she’s bloody dead, Joe.’

Of course she did. Of course Lana knew this better than anyone.

‘But I saw her, Joe. I’m not mad, and I’m not drunk. Not yet anyway. I saw her.’

He stood now. ‘Lana. Don’t. You’ve done so well.’

But she’d gone. He was talking to the air.

Silver didn’t believe his ex-wife’s claims that she’d seen Jaime; he’d heard it a million times before. Allana had been haunted by Jaime’s face every day for six years, obsessed since the accident – since the afternoon that changed their lives forever. The afternoon that ruined Lana irrevocably and finished Jaime’s forever.

Silver had tried his damnedest to bring his wife back to the present, tried and failed; he’d grown used to Allana’s distress and his own guilt. He’d attempted every tactic: therapy, rehab and finally anger, until eventually he knew she was beyond reach. He mourned his lost love – for too long; until finally the mourning turned to indifference as he accepted he could no longer connect. No one could really pierce that