Louise shook her head, but said nothing. She covered her face with her hands.
I got to my feet and spoke to Helen. “You should go on up to bed,” I said, keeping my voice low. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“But—”
“I just need to chat to Louise for a bit. It’s all right. You go on upstairs.”
“All right,” she said warily, glancing down at the woman sobbing quietly at our kitchen table. “If you’re sure . . .”
“I am.”
Helen slipped quietly out of the kitchen, closing the door behind her as she left. Louise wiped her eyes. She was looking at me oddly, wondering, I suppose, where Helen had been. I could have explained: she doesn’t sleep well; my father’s an insomniac, too; sometimes they sit up together, do crosswords, listen to the radio. I could have explained, but the prospect felt tiring all of a sudden, so instead I said, “I don’t think Katie stole anything, Louise. Of course I don’t. But she might have . . . I don’t know, picked them up absentmindedly. She might have been curious. You say they were in a coat pocket? Perhaps she picked them up and then forgot about them.”
“My daughter didn’t take things from other people’s homes,” Louise replied sourly, and I nodded. No point arguing this one.
“I’ll look into it, first thing tomorrow. I’ll have these sent to the labs, and we’ll look at Katie’s blood tests again. If I missed something, Louise . . .”
She shook her head. “I know it doesn’t change anything. I know it won’t bring her back,” she said quietly. “It would just help me. To understand.”
“I see that. Of course I do. Would you like me to drive you home?” I asked her. “I can bring your car over in the morning.”
She shook her head again and gave me a shaky smile. “I’m OK,” she said. “Thank you.”
• • •
THE ECHO OF HER THANKS—unwarranted, undeserved—rang out in the silence after she’d gone. I felt wretched, and was grateful for the sound of Helen’s footsteps on the stairs, grateful that I wouldn’t have to be alone.
“What’s going on?” she asked me as she entered the kitchen. She looked pale and very tired, with circles like bruises under her eyes. She sat down at the table and reached for my hand. “What was Louise doing here?”
“She found something,” I said. “Something that she thinks might have some bearing on what happened to Katie.”
“Oh, God, Sean. What?”
I puffed out my cheeks. “I shouldn’t . . . probably shouldn’t discuss it in detail just yet.” She nodded and squeezed my hand. “Tell me, when was the last time you confiscated drugs at school?”
She frowned. “Well, that little toe rag, Watson—Iain—had some marijuana taken off him at the end of term, but before that . . . oh, not for a while. Not for a long while. Back in March, I think, that business with Liam Markham.”
“That was pills, wasn?
?t it?”
“Yes, Ecstasy—or something purporting to be Ecstasy, in any case, and Rohypnol. He was excluded.”
I vaguely remembered the incident, though it’s not the sort of thing I involve myself in. “There’s been nothing since? You haven’t come across any diet pills, have you?”
She raised an eyebrow. “No. Nothing illegal, in any case. Some of the girls take those blue ones—what do they call them? Alli, I think. It’s available over the counter, although I don’t think it’s supposed to be sold to minors.” She wrinkled her nose. “It makes them horribly flatulent, but apparently that’s an acceptable price to pay for a thigh gap.”
“To pay for a what?”
Helen rolled her eyes at me. “A thigh gap! They all want legs so skinny they don’t meet at the top. Honestly, Sean, sometimes I think you live on a different planet.” She squeezed my hand again. “Sometimes I wish I lived there with you.”
We went up to bed together for the first time in a long time, but I couldn’t touch her. Not after what I’d done.
Wednesday, 19 August
ERIN
It took Hairy the science guy about five minutes to find the email receipt for the diet pills in Nel Abbott’s spam folder. As far as he could tell, she bought the pills on only one occasion, unless of course she had another email account that was no longer in use.