‘I believe they think they’ve identified her,’ he said, his soft blue eyes sad. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t give you any further information until she’s been formally identified by a family member. You know how it is.’
I nodded. I did, indeed, know how it is, and how it was. I’d stood with family members myself as they’d identified bodies of their loved ones. A matter of procedure. A formality that sometimes felt unspeakably cruel.
‘And you’ve never seen this woman before?’
I shook my head, rubbed my arm to try to ease the aching muscles. ‘I don’t often get out and about, apart from walking Izzy there. My health isn’t what it used to be. And I don’t tend to bump into too many people when I’m around these roads and fields.’
The handsome DI Bradley nodded again, closed his notebook and sat back in his chair.
‘Mrs O’Loughlin, I appreciate this has been exceptionally traumatic for you, but we really appreciate your time and the information you’ve been able to give us. Have you any family members who can call over and sit with you? You’ve had quite a shock.’
‘My son-in-law will be visiting later. He always comes on a Wednesday with my grandchildren. Makes sure I’ve everything I need.’
That reminded me that that bread was still proving in the airing cupboard and the bananas were still overripe in the bowl. I didn’t have the energy left in me to make banana bread any more. The children would have to make do with fresh bread and jam. It had been good enough for their mother when she was little.
He handed me a card with his details. Told me to call him if I could think of anything else. Any detail at all.
‘If there’s any way we can be a support to you then please get in touch. We’ll have someone from victim support get in touch to talk to you about your experience, help you through the trauma.’
‘Detective Bradley, victim support have no need to be wasting their limited resources on me. I’m tougher than I look, you know!’
He smiled. ‘Well, I imagine you are, especially with all the help you’ve given to people in the past, but we all need a little help from time to time,’ he said.
I didn’t argue. There was little point. But I knew I wouldn’t talk to anyone from victim support. I’d just file the horror of this morning’s find with all the other horrors in my mind. They were my cross to carry.
I moved through the early afternoon in a haze. I considered crying off to the head but what good would that have done? I’d just have ended up sitting and thinking about the unthinkable. Not that staying in my classroom stopped that. As much as I tried to focus on my work, I couldn’t. It was stupid of me to ever think that I could have.
My friend was dead. Someone I’d known for thirty years, from the first day we’d sat together on the newly polished floor of the assembly hall in St Catherine’s College, our too-big green pinafores and coats swamping us as we nervously waited to be divided into our form groups.
We’d clicked over a mutual dislike of geography and Kylie Minogue, and we’d stayed friends since. We didn’t live in each other’s pockets, but we were there for each other through everything life threw at us. When Julie had postnatal depression, when Clare’s marriage had crumbled just days before her third wedding anniversary and when I’d fallen to pieces after the death of my mother. The girls had held me up, literally at one stage, as grief took the legs out from under me and I’d fainted. They’d welcomed the steady stream of mourners to our home, directed them to where my mother’s body lay so that they could pay their respects and then offered a cup of tea afterwards. They’d made sure everything ran smoothly, while I’d sat, ashen-faced and bowed with grief, by the side of the coffin, unwilling to move – struggling to let go of my beloved mother.
How could it be that Clare was gone now? That her body had been found by the side of a road? The police weren’t saying murder yet and I hoped, perhaps naively, that it wasn’t murder. That it was an accident. Although I couldn’t think of any possible excuse for her being on that road, alone in the early hours of the morning.
I didn’t know how she’d died. Didn’t know when she’d died. All manner of horrors kept dancing through my head until I couldn’t hold in my pain and my fear any more. I simply lifted my bag, left my Year 12s open-mouthed and walked out of the classroom midway through a discussion on the book Of Mice and Men.
I walked to the head’s office, my legs shaking – the grief hitting me from the ground upwards, weakening me, diminishing me.
‘You’ll have to send someone to deal with my Year 12s,’ I muttered. ‘I’ve got to go home. I’ve had bad news.’
Sheila, my deputy head, looked me up and down. ‘Are you okay, Rachel?’
I didn’t trust myself to speak. I didn’t want to say the words. It was so completely, utterly, surreal. You never expect to have to say those words to anyone. Those are words for TV shows and movies, not for school offices on sunny June days as the school secretary eats an ice cream and talks about her forthcoming holiday.
I just shook my head as a surge of something powerful, painful and overwhelming rose up inside me. She was dead. My friend. I’d be sitting by her coffin next. And if Mr McCallion was right, it was a ‘gruesome murder’.
The shock rose up inside me until I had to run from the room to the staff toilets and throw up until I could barely breathe.
I was aware of someone, Sheila most probably, behind me. I was embarrassed she’d hear me retching, sobbing and trying not to scream. She sat down beside me, put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me into a hug. It should have been awkward. It certainly wasn’t professional. But it was just what I needed in that moment. It gave me time to find my breath again, to slow the shaking.
‘That body,’ I told her. ‘The one found this morning? It’s a friend of mine. One of my oldest friends.’ I stumbled over my words. My tongue felt too big in my mouth. The sentences too alien. ‘People are saying it’s a murder, Sheila.’
She hugged me a little closer, told me that of course I could go, but she wasn’t happy about letting me drive given that I’d had such a shock.
‘Do you want to call Paul?’ she asked.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to call my husband. I wanted, no, needed to go and see Julie. She was the only other person who could possibly understand.
‘I need to see my friend. Our friend. Julie. She works with Clare. Worked. I suppose. We all went to school together.’
I knew I was rambling and talking too much, but I couldn’t seem to stop. Nor could I stop shaking. Once it had started, it became severe. Teeth chattering, legs jiggling. As if I had no control.
‘Maybe we should get you a cup of hot, sweet tea or pilfer a bottle of whisky from the summer fair tombola – for the shock,’ Sheila said.
I
