The curtains in here are still drawn; at this time of the year it sometimes seems futile to open the curtains in a room which was dark when you awoke and will be dark once more when you return.

She pulls them apart and is startled by the reminder of the world beyond. There is her street, there is the man with the white dog, there is the bin on the corner that only gets emptied once a fortnight when its contents are spilling on to the street, there is a Sainsbury’s delivery van, an Amazon delivery van, there is the house across the street with the armchair on the driveway and …

She stops. She remembers. Remembers standing right here. It was night-time. There was something …What was it? When?

She shakes her head slightly, trying to locate the source of the half-formed memory.

Was it that night? Was it Valentine’s night? Drawing the curtains, readying herself for the possibility of sex with Roan, a figure, out there? Movement. Muted voices. A sense of being under surveillance? Or was she imagining that?

She had not been sober, after all. There had been champagne, followed by beer, followed by more beer in the Thai restaurant. No, she had not been sober, not at all.

She turns, as if someone has just called her name.

But they haven’t of course; she is alone.

It’s the card in the kitchen drawer calling her. The card telling her that there is something she’s not seeing, that maybe she’s not mad or bad or wrong.

Before she can check herself or think herself down, she strides back into the kitchen, pulls open the drawer, flips through the tea towels and pulls it out.

Her hands shake as she takes the card from the envelope.

The card has a pink bird of some description on the front, a watercolour, rather insipid. Inside, in a very childish script, are the words:

Dear Roan

Thank You for being my therpist.

Please be my Valntine.

Love

Molly

xxx

She shuts the card and collapses against the edge of the kitchen counter.

A card from a child.

Molly.

Little Molly who still writes phonetically.

Little Molly who wants a bald fifty-year-old man to be her Valentine.

Little Molly who knows his home address.

She stuffs the card back into the envelope and tucks it inside the tea towels again, her heart racing lightly.

A couple of hours later Georgia appears, with Tilly.

‘Oh,’ says Cate, looking up from her work. ‘Hello, Tilly. Haven’t seen you for ages.’

It’s the first time Tilly’s been here since the night back in January when she claimed to have been sexually accosted.

‘How are you?’ asks Cate.

‘Good,’ says Tilly, eyeing her own feet awkwardly. ‘I’m good.’

Georgia is plundering the drawers and cupboards for food. She is starving, apparently, having not eaten breakfast and only having had ‘like, a few nuggets’ for lunch. She finds some sweet and salty popcorn and pours herself and Tilly each a large glass of juice, then they disappear.

‘Thanks for changing my bedding!’ Cate hears her daughter call back from down the hallway.

‘You’re welcome!’ she calls back.

Cate sits down again and tries to focus on her work but finds there are now too many other things needing to be put in order in her head: the card from a child (whose handwriting is that on the envelope? Who bought and licked the stamp? Who put it in a letterbox?); the lingering strangeness of Tilly lying about being accosted that night (something must have instigated it, surely?); the disappearance of Saffyre Maddox (somewhere between her own home and here); the figure outside the window on Valentine’s night (or was it a figment of her drunken imagination?); the weird guy across the road (every time she sees him, he gives her an odd look that chills her to the bone); the increasing number of daylight sexual assaults in the vicinity.

But they refuse to be put into any sort of order; they refuse to line up and make sense of themselves.

Tilly leaves a couple of hours later.

Georgia appears in the kitchen.

‘How’s Tilly?’ asks Cate.

‘She’s all right.’

‘Did you ever … Has she ever explained? About that night?’

‘Kind of. Not really.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, I think something did happen. But it wasn’t what she said it was.’

‘So, something like what?’

‘Don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me.’

‘What do you think it might have been?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘But—’

‘Really, really don’t know, OK? You’ll have to ask her yourself.’

‘I—’

‘Look, Tilly’s just weird, all right. She’s weird. Whatever it was, it was probably something really boring.’ She pauses for a second, then looks at Cate curiously. ‘If she says anything, I’ll tell you. OK?’

‘OK,’ says Cate. ‘Thank you.’

21

SAFFYRE

Everyone needs a hobby, don’t they?

Well, for pretty much the whole of last year, my hobby was watching Roan.

I didn’t have anything else to do. I had no real friends. No boyfriend. I did my homework late, when I was in bed. I was never mentally ready to start it before eleven o’clock, never in the right headspace. I’m a night owl. So, after school I’d wander across to the Portman Centre most days, see what Roan was up to. The thing with the young woman fizzled out pretty quickly. I saw her a lot, because she was a smoker so spent a lot of time outdoors. I think she was a secretary. She wore a lanyard but looked too young to be a clinician. But I never saw her and Roan share a cigarette again; I didn’t see them swan off for drinks or whatever. I think maybe she went off him after their little rendezvous that first evening. Maybe she realised she was way too young for him. Or maybe he was inappropriate in some way.

And that’s the weird thing, because all those months and years I spent with Roan as a patient I never got anything sexual off him, not ever. He was, well, not quite avuncular, not fatherly, but sort of matey. Like one of those teachers at school that you feel you can be yourself with, yet you still respect them.

But outside of that room with its halogens and its nubby chairs, I saw another side of him. He didn’t seem to be able to have a conversation with another woman without some kind of physical contact with them: hugs, squeezed arms, doors held open but not leaving enough room for the woman to get through without pressing against him, shared umbrellas, linked arms. His eyes were always on a woman. If he couldn’t find a woman to look at, he looked lost.

The days started getting longer and at some point it was still light when I came after school and I realised I couldn’t hide in the trees in broad daylight, I needed to be more mobile, to keep moving. So I started to wait across the street, pretending to look at my phone, and then I’d follow him wherever he went. And it was surprising how infrequently he went straight home. He often joined people for drinks at the scruffy pub on the corner of College Crescent, or for coffee at the place opposite the Tube station.

I had my hair braided about this time. The braids were pale pink. It wasn’t meant as a disguise, per se, but he hadn’t seen me for a while; I’d grown, I was different. I followed him into the pub one night last summer. We’d had a non-uniform day at school and I wore a crop top, baggy bottoms, a camo jacket, all in dark colours, my hair under a baseball cap. I ordered a lemonade and took it out into the beer garden. The football was showing on a big sports screen. There were loads of guys out there. Only two other women apart from me. I sat under a canvas canopy on a metal chair, with my back mostly turned towards him.

He was with a woman and two men. It was loud in the garden, men cheering at the football, the animal sound of the crowd pumping out through two huge speakers. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

The woman with them was about thirty. She had soft red hair tied into a long plait that sat over her shoulder. She wore no make-up and smiled a lot. At first the conversation was between all four members of the group, but then the other two guys started watching the football more seriously, turning their backs slightly to Roan and the girl, leaving them to talk between themselves.

I played with my phone on my lap, turning every now and then to watch Roan and the woman. They were engrossed. I could have stood square in front of them and blown a raspberry and they wouldn’t have noticed. I took a picture of the two of them. I turned away again.

The football finished and the volume in the beer garden went down. I heard one of the guys with Roan offer to go to the bar for more drinks. There was a pause; then Roan said to the girl, ‘Want another drink? Or we could maybe go on somewhere else?’

‘I don’t mind,’ said the girl. ‘Whatever you want to do?’

‘I dunno,’ said Roan. ‘I mean, we could wander up the road a bit maybe, grab something to eat?’

‘Yeah,’ said the girl. ‘Yeah. Why not?’