garden with Paul?’
Angela laughed, in a strained sort of way. ‘Of course. I’ll show you out there.’
‘That’s very nice of you,’ said Kate, in an equally strained way. She was alarmed to find herself shaking, and wished that Paul wasn’t just disappearing out into the back garden with Jack. She felt like she needed someone to hold on to. This was all too weird. Although her memory of the fire was extremely patchy, the two clearest recollections she had were, firstly, of Sarah and herself, collapsing on the grass outside; and secondly, seeing Stephen being carried out. How could they both have died in the fire? It wasn’t possible. Sarah was the one who’d helped her, Kate, get out. Sarah had been coughing and spluttering as much as she had – but she’d been OK. She’d got out of the building. Kate remembered it clearly, a patch in the fog that obscured so much of her memory.
After a couple of minutes, Angela came back with a tray of tea things, and a plate of chocolate biscuits.
‘I’m really sorry to turn up unannounced like this,’ Kate said, declining the offer of a biscuit.
‘Not at all. It’s actually rather nice to have some company. And to have a child in the house again.’ She spoke so wistfully.
‘Was Sarah your only child?’ Kate asked. ‘Tell me to mind my own business if you want.’
‘No, it’s perfectly all right. Yes, Sarah was our one and only. Now she’s gone, I won’t be having any grandchildren running around the place either.’
‘And your husband?’ Kate ventured, feeling awful.
Angela stared at Sarah’s portrait, and bit her lip. ‘We divorced three years after Sarah died. It just all got to be . . . too much, in the end.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Angela nodded. ‘So I live here on my own now. I’m all right, I suppose. I have some good friends, and some good memories. But nothing’s turned out how I planned it. Things never do, do they?’
‘I guess not,’ said Kate slowly, thinking about her and Vernon. And her and Stephen. And now – her and Paul? How would that turn out?
‘What do you remember about Sarah?’ Angela asked.
Kate looked her squarely in the eye. ‘I don’t remember very much at all, about the fire – but I’m pretty sure that Sarah helped save my life. I was ill – we were both ill – we’d been given flu, or something. We both had temperatures, although I’m not sure which of us was worse. I was too unwell myself to really be aware of people around me. But she made me get out of bed when the fire alarm went off, and she helped me down the corridors. I couldn’t have walked on my own, I was too weak. I remember her red hair, and her voice, urging me to hurry up. Most of all, I remember seeing her outside, on the grass, with me.’
‘You can’t have done,’ Angela said, utterly bewildered.
‘I did. I know I did.’
‘Could she have gone back inside again, to try and save someone else?’
‘She must have done, I suppose, although I don’t know who she’d have gone back in for. How incredibly brave of her. I was in no fit state to do anything else except lie on the grass. I think someone gave me a shot of something. Did they – um – I mean, where was she eventually found?’
Angela’s voice trembled. ‘In her bedroom at the CRU. Apparently she had become locked in somehow, and couldn’t escape.’
‘That’s impossible. Why would she have gone back into the bedroom, and got locked in? The fire was raging by then. Nobody could have gone back down that corridor! There was so much urgency to get us out of there; the fire was right behind us. When I think of it, it was like it was chasing us down the corridor. The smoke was everywhere . . .’
They both reached for their cups of tea, and drank in silence for a moment. Kate wished hers was a large gin and tonic. A rattling sound made her look up again, and to her horror, she saw that Angela’s hand was trembling so violently that her cup shook in her saucer, and tea was slopping onto the cream carpet. Kate jumped up and gently took the cup and saucer from Angela, who was now doubled over with sobs, as if she had bad stomach ache.
‘I just can’t bear to think of my daughter suffering like that!’
Angela’s voice was a wail, more agonised than anything Kate had ever heard. Oh God, she thought, what have we done? We shouldn’t have come. Angela had seemed fine just a moment ago.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Kate repeated, trying to scrub at the tea stain on the floor with a napkin. She felt close to tears herself. Outside, Paul and Jack were kicking the football around, oblivious.
Angela took a deep, long breath and attempted to compose herself. ‘No, it’s me who ought to apologise,’ she said, still crying. ‘You’d think it would get easier, but it doesn’t. I’m the same with anyone who knew Sarah. When that man, Dr Bainbridge, came round, a few weeks after it happened, I got so distraught that I had to get a shot of tranquillisers – Sarah’s dad had to call my GP. I think he really regretted setting foot in here. I had quite a go at him, you see. I just felt I had to blame somebody. I know it wasn’t fair of me.’
Kate put the stained napkin back on the tea tray. ‘Leonard Bainbridge came to see you? What did he say?’
‘He just kept saying how sorry he was. He said that the Cold Research Unit had been set up to help people and now people were dying. He said something about it all getting out of hand. To be honest, he didn’t make much sense, and I was so angry and busy yelling at him that I wasn’t really listening. And then he said something that made me so mad that I threw him out. He said that I should be proud that my daughter had died doing something to help others – as if it was worth my daughter dying to stop a few people getting a sore throat and a runny nose! He said that one day he hoped I’d see that it was worth the sacrifice.’
Kate didn’t know what to say. Her head was spinning too fast. Sacrifice? What on earth had Leonard been talking about? She followed Angela’s gaze towards a picture of Sarah when she was a little girl, framed and fading on the mantelpiece. Like Sarah, Leonard was dead now. What secrets had he taken to the grave with him? Watching a tear roll down Angela’s cheek, Kate was more determined than ever to find out.
Sampson stood outside the hotel beside his car, smoking a cigarette. It helped him think. The trail was warm, but where did it lead? He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath through his nose. He could smell her, sense her echo, feel the way her presence had left a mark on the air of the city. Kate.
He remembered the first time he saw her. He’d been working at the CRU then as a security guard. Not that he was known as a guard – as far as the inmates or patients, or whatever the fuck you called them, were concerned, he was the odd-job man, the mug who carried their suitcases and mended their TVs when they broke down. He painted fences and pulled up weeds. At first he’d found the work humiliating, far beneath his abilities, but after a while he relaxed and realised that it could be advantageous working undercover, pretending to be a harmless sap. He had access to the guests’ bedrooms – including all those girls’ rooms. He could slip in and out of shadows without being noticed, because to most of them he was invisible; just a handyman. A big nothing. Occasionally there would be more
