God!’ She doubled over again. Another gut punch. ‘What if they don’t find him?’
‘There’ll be stuff on her phone. Her computer. They’ll find something,’ Brendan piped up. ‘But don’t jump to conclusions. Let the police do their job.’
‘I can’t breathe thinking about it,’ Julie said, tears falling thick and fast.
I felt useless. I couldn’t ease her pain. I couldn’t make sense of any of this. I just hugged her while she cried.
The sound of sobbing was nipping at me. It was too loud. My head was too full. My heart was too sore and yet at the same time I felt as if I were reading lines from a script. No one had these types of conversations in real life. No one. I dropped my head to my hands, covering my eyes, blocking out the glare of the sun through the window.
The doorbell ringing pulled me back to the present. I sat up, moved closer to Julie so that I could hug her as she cried. It seemed such an inadequate gesture.
I heard a man cough as if to announce his presence, and turned round to see Brendan standing with a man in a suit and a uniformed police officer.
‘This is DI Bradley,’ Brendan said. ‘And his colleague Constable King. They wanted to talk to you, Julie. And probably you, too, Rachel, come to think of it.’ He turned to inform them that I was one of Clare’s oldest friends, too.
‘Rachel Walker?’ the policeman asked and I nodded.
‘Yes, it’s good to have you here too, then.’
I nodded again.
Julie and I shifted apart. She pulled the cuff of her cardigan across her face again to dry her tears – her skin now red and angry.
‘I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs Cosgrove, Mrs Walker,’ Bradley said, looking at both of us in turn.
‘So, it’s definitely her?’ I asked, knowing even as I spoke that it was a stupid question. He’d hardly be here if it was someone else.
‘A positive identification was carried out a short time ago,’ he said.
I felt my body sag and Julie grabbed my hand. Brendan invited the two officers to sit down on the armchairs on either side of the room. DI Bradley took the seat closest to us and pulled out his notebook.
‘We’re trying to speak to as many people as we can, as quickly as we can, to try to gauge Ms Taylor’s last movements. Her brother, Ronan, gave one of my officers your details. He said you were very close to the deceased.’
I shuddered at the use of the word ‘deceased’. It seemed wrong. I felt angry. He shouldn’t be reducing who she was to how her life ended.
‘We are … were … very good friends with Clare. Yes,’ I said.
Julie just nodded.
‘And can I ask, both of you, about the last time you either saw Ms Taylor or spoke with her? When was the last time you received any communication from her at all, be it a text message or social media chat?’
Julie spoke first.
‘I saw her yesterday. At work. We work in the same building – the pensions office. Or we did.’
‘And how was she? Did she talk of her plans for after work?’
Julie shook her head. ‘It was a busy day. We just had a brief chat at lunch. Mostly nonsense stuff. About the book she was reading and holiday plans. I said I’d call her later and maybe we should go for a drink at the weekend.’
‘And you?’ he asked, turning to me. ‘When was the last time you spoke to her?’
‘I think we had a chat on Facebook a few days back. It was something and nothing. I think I asked her how things were going with her new boyfriend. Hang on, I should have it here on my phone.’
I noticed the glance pass between Bradley and his colleague at the mention of a boyfriend, and I rifled in my bag to pull out my phone, scrolling through my messages to find the last chat I’d had with Clare.
God, if only I’d known it would be the last chat I’d have with her, I’d have said more. It would have been more heartfelt than a simple exchange of gossip. I handed my phone over.
‘Do either of you know the identity of this new boyfriend?’ DI Bradley asked.
I shook my head before looking to Julie. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she did know, given how close they were, but she was looking downwards.
‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry. Clare was so scared of jinxing it, she wanted to keep it to herself for now. It was all fairly new, you see. Do you think it’s him? You do, don’t you?’
‘We’re at the very early stages of the investigation. At this stage we’ve no clear suspects, but nor have we ruled anyone out. How new is fairly new?’ DI Bradley asked.
‘Maybe a month, six weeks at most. Something like that.’
We were interrupted by a knock on the door. Brendan popped his head around and spoke.
‘Sorry, love. I’m just going to go and pick up the kids from school. I’ll take them to your mother’s house, keep them out of the way for a bit.’
Julie nodded, her eyes darting to the packet of cigarettes on the coffee table. She clearly wanted to smoke another one.
I glanced at the clock on the mantlepiece and realised with a start that it was almost three o’clock and I usually picked Molly up from daycare at three thirty on a Wednesday. I needed to go, too, or I’d be late.
‘Actually, DI Bradley, I need to go, too. I have to pick my little girl up from crèche, and I need to collect my car from work first. I’m sorry, my husband’s working in Belfast and there’s no one else who can collect her.’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But could you call into the station at some stage in the next twenty-four hours if at all possible? We’d like to take a full statement and get a copy of these messages, Mrs Walker.’
‘Of course,’ I said, taking his business card from him. ‘I’m sorry to have to rush off.’
I was lifting my coat from the arm of the sofa, when Julie spoke.
‘How did she die?’ she asked, her voice small. ‘What happened?’
Constable King shifted a little uncomfortably in her seat. ‘At the moment we can’t say too much while we await a postmortem examination, but it looks as if the cause of death was severe blood loss brought about by knife wounds.’
I felt my stomach tighten again. My legs weaken. I thought of Molly standing at the door of the crèche, some brightly coloured painting in her hand ready to be shoved in my direction with a smile. I thought of how we usually sang nursery rhymes all the way home in the car. How my evenings, which I’d considered so completely dull and ordinary, could never be so again.
I desperately needed to speak to Paul, but more than that, I ached to speak to Michael. Michael who could distract
