Silent Voices

with the other girls and I’m not interested in the same stuff. They could be dead cruel. It got that I dreaded coming into work, started having these panic attacks. My GP couldn’t help, so I tried Michael.’
    ‘And he could help?’
    Lisa nodded. ‘I don’t know how it works, but it made me feel really calm. Like I really stopped caring about what the rest of them thought about me. I looked forward to coming into work again.’
    ‘Did you ever see him away from here?’ Vera asked.
    ‘No.’ Lisa was playing with one of the soft rubber floats, twisting it in her hands. ‘Look, none of the other staff know I consulted him. There’s always been a lot of gossip, first when the little boy was killed and then when he took up with Freya. It’s as if he’s some sort of freak. If they knew I’d seen Michael, they’d love that. It’d just give them more ammunition to have a go at me. But he was kind to me, gentle, and I’m grateful to him.’
    ‘Did you ever catch him in the places where the public has no access?’
    Lisa frowned. ‘No. Only in the office he used as a consulting room.’
    ‘But he would have had one of those magic fobs that would let him back here?’
    ‘I suppose so.’ Lisa looked at her watch. ‘Look, I’ll have to go. My shift started ten minutes ago.’
    ‘Did any of the other staff consult him?’ Lisa was already halfway through the door, but turned back to answer the question.
    ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said, ‘would I? They wouldn’t admit to it any more than me.’
    Vera drove along the narrow back roads from the Willows to Barnard Bridge, timing the journey, for no reason other than it seemed a sensible thing to do and she wasn’t ready yet to go back to the police station in Kimmerston. She had no specific village resident in mind for the murder. Connie Masters wouldn’t have left her child alone in the cottage to drive ten miles to kill her previous colleague, and though Vera still loved the idea of Veronica Eliot in the dock, she could see no reason for it. It was more likely, given her new knowledge of the layout of the health club, that they were looking for a staff member. She thought she should pin down the student cleaner whose employment had coincided with the thefts at the Willows. Maybe she’d call into his house that afternoon, catch him by surprise. Once she’d had some lunch.
    The fog of the previous day had cleared and it was sunny, unusually warm for so early in the spring. Turning a corner, she saw a couple in the middle of the road. Hannah Lister and Simon Eliot walking hand in hand. Hannah wore jeans and a white muslin top; Simon seemed large and clumsy in comparison. Beauty and the Beast, Vera thought. Even from the back and from this distance she could sense the connection between them, like some sort of electric charge, and felt the old stab of envy. Was she a miserable cow, that lovers always made her feel that way? Did she want everyone in the world to be as lonely as she was?
    The young people stepped onto the verge to allow her to pass, but she slowed down. ‘Do you want a lift?’ Immediately she saw she should have continued driving without acknowledging them. This had been a brief moment of happiness for Hannah, a time of escape. Opening the car window, Vera was aware of the birdsong from the woods by the side of the road, found herself unpicking the tangle of sound for individual species. Her father had tested her on her knowledge whenever they were out together: ‘Come on, Vee, don’t be such a duffer, you must recognize that!’
    She’d expected an immediate rebuttal from the young people and was surprised when after some hesitation they got in, Simon in the back seat, although he was so tall that his knees almost touched his chin, and Hannah in the front.
    ‘Where would you like to go?’ Vera asked. ‘Are you on your way home?’
    ‘Where shall we go, Simon?’ The girl turned in the seat to speak to him. Her voice was brittle, almost manic. ‘Rome? Zanzibar? The moon?’
    He reached out and took her hand in his. ‘We’ll do Rome in the summer,’ he said easily. ‘Or Zanzibar, if you prefer. But now, Inspector, yes, we’d better go home. To my place please. It was such a lovely day that we got up very early and we’ve been walking all morning, but now I think Hannah is very tired. Just as well you appeared to save us. Mother has offered to make us lunch.’
    ‘You must be feeling better if you’re up to facing the