Fragile Minds Page 0,92

dramatics, if you ask me. And they never made it up. Rosalind left the country soon after. He never saw her again.’

‘She left and went where?’ Silver and Kenton exchanged glances. ‘Can you remember?’

‘It’s hard to say.’ The old lady shook her head. ‘She was always travelling. I used to call her a free spirit. I know she went to Africa for a while. Lived with the Ashanti tribe in Ghana for a while. Studied with their witch-doctors apparently. Learnt all about healing herbs. She sent me a bone once. Her mother was quite hysterical with worry.’ She patted Silver’s hand; her skin was paper-dry. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Silver. My memory is not what it was, I’m afraid.’

She began to cough. Pritti cleared her throat pointedly, and checked her watch.

‘I think,’ she said gently, ‘we should finish. I’m going off shift now, and Edna is tired.’

‘You’ve been very helpful, Miss Lamont.’ Silver stood now. ‘We won’t take up any more of your time. But if you remember anything else, perhaps you could ask the nurse to phone us.’

‘There was something else.’ She coughed again, her delicate body shaking gently. ‘When Edward died, we had to try to reach Rosalind to return for the funeral. She refused of course. She was so far away, she had just been in a car accident herself in – what do they call it? That big place. Open space, with the dreaming men.’

Edna shut her eyes for a moment. Kenton looked at Pritti. Had Edna fallen asleep?

They waited.

‘The outback.’ Edna Lamont’s eyes snapped open again. ‘Australia.’

SATURDAY 22ND JULY CLAUDIE

When I woke, I found I couldn’t breathe – and so I fought to. The panic reminded me of my last day with Ned. I had struggled to breathe then, or maybe I didn’t want to breathe – and I didn’t know where I was, or what time of day it was – or even what day or month or year it actually was.

Two days after Ned died, they found me in the garden. I had taken a great spade apparently, and dug up half the back lawn for some reason. When they discovered me, I had my hands shoved into the earth.

It took such a long time to clean that dirt off.

I think I believed that perhaps I could bring him back, if I dug down deep enough; that I would find him somewhere. But I couldn’t. I didn’t. He was gone. My guffawing son with mischievous eyes the colour of chocolate. Eyes forever shut. I had watched them close the final time and I had wanted nothing more than to die myself.

I had howled to the heavens, and then the heavens howled back. Rain fell, thick and fast. My life was over. Everything I cared about had been stolen from me.

Absolutely beached by my sorrow, I had lain on my bed in the old house for a fortnight without moving, except to the bathroom. My mother and Will and sometimes Zoe and Natalie had forced me to eat; sat with me and talked to me, and through the bleakest hardest time, they had not given up hope. But I had.

A long time after, I realised he was only mine to borrow, my baby. My tiny little boy. Only mine to borrow for such a very short while.

Now I lay in the gloom, fighting for breath, my head throbbing like something was alive inside it, and I thought of my son, the fighter, and I tried to sit up. I couldn’t. I hit my head on something hard. Then I realised my hands were tied.

I laid my head down again. I felt sick, waves of nausea rolling over me, and I needed to think.

There was a noise underneath me; I couldn’t think what it was for a time; and then I realised. It was the whisper of tyres on a road. I was in the boot of a vehicle, and we were moving.

SUNDAY 23RD JULY SILVER

‘Doesn’t get us very far, does it?’ Kenton opened the passenger door in the nursing-home car park. ‘I mean, nice old lady, and all that, but—’ She looked downcast. ‘You know.’

‘No,’ Silver agreed. ‘But it’s better than nothing.’

As they left, Edna Lamont had promised to ask her neighbour to bring photos from home. ‘They will give you a better idea of Rosalind’s appearance, I suppose, though they are all really rather dated now.’

Kenton checked her watch as Silver pulled out onto Abbey Road. ‘It’s nearly two. Lesley Steele should be arriving