I considered switching the heat back on under the pan for a long minute, the knife clutched in my hand once more.
Instead, I picked up the phone.
‘Hello,’ I said.
‘Hullo, Margot,’ Martin Forrester sounded a little breathless, as though he’d just come in. ‘I was about to call you.’
‘The police were here.’
‘Were they now? Who came?’
‘Oh, I can’t remember their names, I was stunned that they showed up at all. I wasn’t expecting that.’
‘Well, this is a bit of an emergency,’ said Forrester. He sounded brusque, distracted, as though he were talking to me but paying attention to something else. ‘Are you free this weekend?’
I blinked. For a ridiculous moment I thought he was trying to proposition me. I pulled up one of the pine chairs and lowered myself into it.
‘What?’
‘Listen to this, it’s what Mo Khan sent back: “It is my opinion that Bethan Avery’s journals and the letters submitted to me by Margot Lewis were written by one and the same person.”’
‘One and the same? Are you sure? There’s no mistake?’
‘Oh, there might be a mistake… at the end of the day it’s just his opinion. None of this stuff is cut and dried. But it’s an opinion that carries more weight than mine does.’
‘Jesus,’ I said. I was lighter than air. ‘Where are we going?’
‘If you can get away there’s a DS who worked on the Avery case when it happened. He lives in London. He was running the review of the cold case.’
‘The what?’
‘The cold case – well, not so cold any more – I told you this. He can tell you about the other girls. He might be able to offer us some help in tracking down our mystery correspondent.’
At these words a cold thrill shot through me, numbing my hand as it curled loosely around the telephone receiver.
‘Can you make it this weekend?’ he repeated.
‘I… I don’t know. I think so. I’m involved in rehearsals for a school play but I’m pretty sure I can wrangle something.’ I trapped the phone under my chin. ‘Listen. I’m thinking of putting an appeal to whoever is writing the letters in the Examiner tomorrow.’
‘An appeal? What sort of an appeal?’ he asked sharply. I could almost see his dark brows drawing together.
‘Nothing very exciting. Just a line inviting Bethan to get in touch.’
‘A line?’ he asked. ‘Just that?’
‘Yeah, along the bottom of the column. In caps, usually. I do it when I think someone is in danger – the last time, someone wrote to me in the midst of planning their suicide and we got him to speak to the Samaritans. Runaways get in touch sometimes, wanting to pass on messages to their family…’ I tailed off, uneasy with this line of questioning. ‘When we can’t contact someone directly we use it. We never get specific about their issues, though, to preserve their confidentiality. Nine times out of ten, the reaction of the people around them to their problem is ten times more worrying to them than the problem itself.’
‘You couldn’t make this appeal bigger?’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, puzzled. ‘Bigger how?’
‘I… look, I think this is a great idea, but I need to check in with a few people. Let me call you back.’
‘OK, take care.’
‘I will. You too.’
He hung up.
The next day at school, when I came out into the corridor, buried beneath a massive stack of grammar textbooks I was trying to hold steady with my chin, someone was waiting for me.
Sorcha Malone was standing in the corridor, her freckled face pale and her wiry red hair twisted up untidily at the back. Her nails were in her mouth, her white teeth worrying at their tips. Nail polish is forbidden at St Hilda’s but the girls get around this by having meticulously buffed and shaped nails.
If Sorcha was chewing hers there must have been a serious problem.
She straightened up quickly when she saw me and dropped her hand, as though she’d read my thoughts.
‘Sorcha – what can I do for you?’ I peered at her around my bulky burden.
She darted a quick glance at me, before turning her face to the floor. ‘Can I talk to you, Miss?’
‘Yeah, sure, of course.’ I had a sinking feeling. This must be about her own role in the debacle with Amber and her Facebook meltdown. To be truthful, I had been expecting Sorcha to turn up at some point. ‘Let’s go to my office. Take some of these.’
I handed her half of my enormous pile of books, in case any of her friends, or others, should see her. This way she would appear to have been drafted in to help me, rather than seeking my advice. She received them gratefully. Appearances are of vital importance when you’re that age – my personal conviction is that this is something we are all supposed to grow out of, and yet so few of us do.
We joined the general melee in the corridor, all in genial chaos now that it was lunchtime. I led, aware of her shuffling behind me, taking her up the stairs and towards the Classics office, a tiny room little better than a converted broom cupboard, with a single small circular window, like a porthole. The office makes me claustrophobic so I try to spend as little time as possible here, but it’s the one place I can be guaranteed a degree of privacy when I chat to the students.
‘Just set them here on the desk,’ I said, and her pile of books joined my own. Silently, I closed the door behind her.
Sorcha actually has an assigned pastoral care teacher, but for some reason they all come to me. I would love to tell you that there is some deep-seated reason for this, that it’s to do with the fact that I am so cool and approachable and down with the kids and all, but to be honest, while I have no idea why it is, I am pretty sure it is none of the above.
‘Sit,’ I said.
She did so, almost hesitantly. She was in two minds about being here, I could tell.
‘Is this about Amber and the others?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah.’
I waited, letting her collect her thoughts.
‘I’m not speaking to Amber right now,’ she said.
‘I see.’
‘You knew?’
‘Well,’ I said, shrugging – Amber’s carpeting in Ben’s office was not really any of Sorcha’s business – ‘it was pretty obvious that there was trouble in paradise in my English lesson last week.’
Her face was heating up, becoming redder, and she wiped at her wet pink eyes with her sleeve. I offered her a tissue from the box I keep on the desk for this purpose.
‘We fell out over Katie Browne,’ she said, and as she said it, she let out a little sob.
‘Yes. Amber got into a little trouble over that,’ I concede.
‘I mean, she’s really nice sometimes – I mean Amber – and to be honest, I didn’t have that much to do with Katie, she was kind of on her own a lot, you know? I mean, other than the swimming, she didn’t really hang out with the rest of us.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
‘But me and Amber,’ she said, and her loneliness was so poignant I wanted to hug her, ‘we… we’re best friends, and we have a great laugh, and everything would be fine if it weren’t for Laura egging her on all the time.’
I sighed and crossed my legs. Laura had not been in evidence during Amber’s Facebook fiasco – she’d managed that all on her own. Girls like Amber play the Lauras and Sorchas of this world off against each other, to bring out their worst selves.
What I really wanted to say was this: ‘Sorcha, you may not believe this now, but as much as Amber feels like your best friend and you can’t imagine life without her, I promise you faithfully that the minute you leave for university you will not exchange more than a hundred words with her for the rest of your life. And what’s more, this will be a source of enormous relief to you.’
But of course I can’t say that. One of the more glorious aspects of the column is that I can be a little more forthright.