Fragile Minds Page 0,43

when I was desperate, a port in a storm when Will had decided to go – but we weren’t right for each other, I knew that much. He had known sorrow too, orphaned at an early age, and he had empathised. He had been a pair of warm arms in the night, and he hadn’t minded when I sobbed myself to sleep occasionally. He wanted to heal me, I could feel that, because that’s what he did; fixed things. Suddenly I saw him for what he was. Some kind of charming charlatan. I looked at him, and then I opened my front door and walked away – and Rafe let me go.

Slowly I climbed the stairs with the milk and bread I’d bought earlier. The doorbell rang one disconsolate time. We both knew I wouldn’t answer it. It was over.

In the dying light I looked out of the window and I contemplated the truth for a moment. I’d become so good at suppression; I was only half myself these days. Somewhere, in the far reaches of my brain, I knew that by hiding it all, I’d never recover properly from anything. And Helen – what would Helen say? Oh she’d have a field day about this when she found out. She’d warned me I’d be better on my own for now …

If she found out. I could choose what to tell her. Just like Tessa had chosen to lie …

I scrabbled in the kitchen cupboard and retrieved Tessa’s things. I picked up the business card from the club and tried to decipher the name scribbled on the back. Paul Piper, I thought it read, which meant precisely nothing to me.

Which Tessa was real? Had she draped herself in the persona I’d known, wrapped it round her like a disguise – or was that the real woman despite the stolen identity? It was time to do something about this mess.

I shut the door behind me, and headed into town.

THURSDAY 20TH JULY SILVER

Silver let himself into Philippa’s as quietly as he could, in the almost vain hope that the whole household would be asleep. He slipped off his boots by the front door, planning to make tea in the large, cosy kitchen and contemplate what to do about Lana, unassailed for once by argument, the blip-blip of a Nintendo DS or some unedifying Dub-step. But the gentle throb of Bob Marley coming from the end of the hall announced that Philippa at least was still up. Abandoning the tea idea, he began to creep up the stairs. After the shrill dressing-down from Julie, followed by the tears and recriminations when he said gently he thought it was best they stopped seeing one another, he’d had his fill of women tonight.

‘Leticia?’ he heard the creak of the kitchen door opening. ‘That you?’

He swore silently. ‘No, P, it’s me. Joe.’

‘I told her to be in by ten.’ It was half-past. ‘Flipping kids.’

Leticia, Philippa’s middle daughter, was going through what could only be described as a hormonal stage. She’d hit thirteen hard, retreating to her messy pink bedroom when she was in the house, where cast-off clothes were scattered across the floor like small islands. Or she sat at the large kitchen table scowling, iPod earphones stuck firmly in whilst she surfed the net endlessly, usually on Facebook. Speaking to her was generally pointless; occasionally she’d manage a monosyllable or a forced smile that never reached her heavily mascara-ed eyes. The fact that Philippa was on Leticia’s back the whole time only served to ratchet up the general tension.

And yet despite all the sulks and slammed doors, Silver knew what a lovely girl Leticia really was; he could see she was merely lost in a wilderness of uncertainty about life. He thanked God Molly was still a few years from the angst-ridden adolescence that was so overwhelming Leticia. It probably wouldn’t be long though … Silver felt the knot of anxiety in his gut tighten as he thought of his own family.

The track and trace on Lana’s car had rendered nothing so far. Silver was still praying that she’d simply parked up somewhere, got horribly smashed and was sleeping it off. If she didn’t surface by the morning, though, he’d have to act.

‘Do you want me to go and have a look for Leticia?’ he asked her mother now.

Beneath her neatly coiled corn-rows, Philippa’s wide, jovial face was unusually serious, her dark eyes troubled, but she shook her head.

‘Thanks, Joe, I appreciate it, but she’s