Too Close For Comfort by Eleanor Moran Read Free Book Online Page A

it. I think she thought she could get away with anything .’
    ‘Anything?’ It could mean so many things. Helena looked down at the muddy ground, the set of her jaw telling me she wouldn’t be elaborating: the push–pull of our
conversation was becoming as jarring as a fairground ride. ‘So your hamster wheel . . .’ I paused, searching for the right words. ‘Is it like – a cosmic
hamster wheel – how can this happen? Or is it about what Sarah might’ve been hiding? What else she thought she could get away with?’
    Her head turned sharply towards me.
    ‘Is that what Lysette says? That she was hiding stuff? From her?’
    ‘No. I think . . .’ I looked at Helena, mindful of Lysette’s paranoia about what we might share. ‘She’s struggling to believe she would’ve
killed herself.’
    Helena’s eyes looked bright and wet. She stared down at the ground, quiet, and I silently chided myself. I shouldn’t have been there. When I was ensconced in my treatment room
diligently following the rules of patient confidentiality, there was no danger of me causing this kind of trouble. This – this was starting to feel more like the sixth form common room.
    ‘Why would she say that? What would make her . . . does she know something? Fuck.’
    ‘No, not at all,’ I said. ‘No one seems to have any answers. Lysette says even Joshua’s completely at a loss as to what was going through her head.’
    ‘No change there then,’ said Helena, with a slight eye roll.
    ‘Do you think their marriage was in trouble?’ I asked, the question leaving my mouth almost against my will. I couldn’t help myself: I could feel a dangerous compulsion to grab
hold of Sarah, understand who she was.
    Helena looked into the middle distance, the weak sun dappling the path, broken up by the lattice of branches overhead. Her voice sounded faraway when it came.
    ‘It’s funny, isn’t it, how things can look so different from the outside and the inside. Sort of makes you wonder whether black’s white.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
    ‘I dunno,’ she said, more clipped. ‘Maybe Sarah looked more complicated than she was, and Joshua . . . Maybe he’s the other way round.’
    She suddenly shouldered her way through a wall of brambles that were criss-crossing the path in front of us. The wood felt as if it was closing in on us, the sunlight too faint to warm me. Or
was the chill more sinister than that – was it coming from the creeping realisation that she hadn’t dismissed Lysette’s grief-stricken accusations out of hand? The thought of
Lysette brought me up short – I was doing exactly what I’d promised her I wouldn’t do. Excavating a story that wasn’t mine.
    ‘Is there anything else I can tell you about the process?’ I asked stiffly. ‘I can email you with some suggestions for how to find someone if you do decide you want
professional support.’
    ‘Can you talk to me about this?’ She stuck her hand out again, the tremor still present, and I retreated into my professional comfort zone, loading her down with tips about
mindfulness and meditation and the perils of losing sleep. As my words guided us somewhere safer, the track seemed to do the same, opening out into a space that was less shadowed and enclosed.
    ‘Thanks, Mia, that’s a massive help,’ she said, just as we emerged from the wood entirely, her gleaming car back in sight. ‘I need to get going. There’s a PTA
meeting at six. I don’t need to go getting myself a detention for shoddy timekeeping.’
    ‘Is the . . .’ I thought about the anxiety she’d just described, and blundered on. ‘I know it’s not my place, but do you any of you feel ready for it
to be business as usual with school stuff?’
    ‘Kimberley’s the chairwoman. And trust me, what Kimberley says goes.’ She smiled at me, her eyes lingering on my face.
    ‘Right.’ She had a look of sly amusement, a look that was designed to trap me into colluding