‘I need to understand how she could leave me!’ Mina blurted, pieces of marshmallow flying from her lips. She choked, leaning forward, spluttering hot chocolate across her jeans, giving up and dropping the cup into the footwell.
‘Mina,’ Christian said gently.
‘I’m sorry, I’ll clean it up,’ she sobbed, both arms clutched across her stomach, hair hanging down over her face.
‘Don’t apologise. Just come here,’ he said, sliding his left arm over her shoulders, the other hand pulling her right arm out from her body and towards him. He wrapped her in his arms, stroking her hair. ‘It’s okay to cry,’ he whispered. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
Mina surrendered to the comfort, leaning her head against his chest, letting herself crumple. Christian rocked her gently as she cried, holding her safe, pressing his face into the top of her head, fighting the rushing tide of his own emotion. She was so fragile, and trying to absorb such an unbearably heavy blow. Minutes went by. Mina’s sobbing abated, replaced with the involuntary hitching of her lungs. The more she tried to hold it in, the more wracked her body became.
‘I can’t do this,’ she whispered, her breath raw in her throat. ‘I’m never going to be able to let her go. It’s like Mum has died, too. She aged right in front of me. It was like gravity distorted her face into some sort of grey mask. I can’t even describe it.’ Christian let her talk. He knew better than to tell her it was going to get better. He’d lost someone he loved and there was no comfort to give when it was all so new. Mina moved back to look him full in the face, pulling her knees up to her chest. ‘I keep thinking, if she’d been ill would that have been better or worse. I could have said goodbye, held her hand. But I don’t even know if … if she was scared. I mean, God, what if she wanted to die up there? Do you think it’s possible that’s why she went up there? How do people cope with this? It’s like we’ve turned into a story about ourselves.’ She sobbed again, her face a tortured version of the carefree girl Christian usually saw. ‘They’re fucking cutting her open. That’s where she’ll be now. Lily’s lying on some metal tray somewhere, in pieces. I can’t do anything to help her. I can’t tell her I love her, I can’t tell her not to be so stupid and selfish. I think I hate her. I hate her for leaving me. How can I hate her when she’s dead? It’s like everything inside me is rotting.’
Mina threw open the door and bolted, reaching a ditch before stopping to vomit. Christian ran behind, catching her in time to stop her falling forward with the spasms of her stomach. She retched twice more before her body relaxed and allowed her to stand upright.
‘I should get you home,’ he said. ‘This isn’t helping. You’ve got to take it a day – an hour – at a time. It’ll help when the police have some answers. Come on,’ he said, one arm around her shoulders as he guided her back to the car. ‘I’ll be here, night or day, whenever you need to talk.’
‘Thank you,’ Mina rasped. ‘I’m so grateful to have you. Promise you won’t leave me. I can’t make it through this without you.’
Callanach threw his keys down and went into the kitchen, reaching instinctively for a coffee pot and fighting his desire to open the bottle of single malt he’d had in the cupboard for months. He wasn’t usually much of a spirits drinker but if ever there was cause to change that, he was entitled now.
His mother, Véronique, was sitting on the couch, coat buttoned to the chin, handbag on her lap with both hands gripping the handle as if it might fly away. Callanach stared at her silhouette against the picture window of his apartment in Albany Street, just a couple of minutes’ walk from the busy restaurants and bars of York Place, not that he went out much. He’d spent fifteen months making the apartment his own since beginning work with Police Scotland in Edinburgh. In all, it had been two years since his suspension from Interpol when a colleague had made the rape allegation that had stopped his career in its tracks. A few friends had stood by him, fewer colleagues, but what had hurt most was being abandoned by his mother. Even so, he still loved her. That was why he couldn’t let her back into his life. It was hard enough getting over the pain she’d caused him the first time. He couldn’t risk going through it all again.
He stirred the coffee, wondering if his mother still took milk in hers. She was painfully thin, that was the first thing he’d noticed. The last time he’d seen her had been in Lyon. He’d been on bail with severe restrictions on where he could go and who he could see. She’d turned up at his door with an overnight bag and a speech about how it would all turn out all right, how the allegations would vanish into thin air. Her prediction had been wrong. Even now, his world was still askew. His mother had stayed with him for two weeks, each day more tense than the one before as they’d waited for the French prosecutor to see sense, to realise it was all a vicious lie, borne of a woman’s obsession with him.
His mother had withdrawn from him, in person at first, growing quieter each day, the hope draining from her almost visibly, then she’d left and he’d heard nothing more from her. Even when Astrid Borde had decided against attending court to give evidence and a not guilty verdict had been entered, his mother still had not contacted him. It was as if he was dead to her. Callanach had grieved for the loss of her from his life. Now here she was, a ghostly, diminished version of the woman he remembered, barely able to meet his eyes, even her voice a whisper of the confident, laughing person in his memories.
‘Milk? Sugar?’ Callanach asked her in French, translating back to English in his head as if he’d never lived in France at all.
‘Neither, thank you,’ his mother responded politely.
He carried two mugs into the lounge and put them on the coffee table between them, choosing the chair opposite her, keeping a barrier between them. He took his phone from his pocket and left it on the arm of the chair. He’d left Ava to brief the squad but had agreed to meet her at the city mortuary at 10pm. That gave him just one hour, not that he was concerned. Whatever his mother had to tell him after all this time could be said in the space of sixty minutes. It wasn’t as if anything would change now.
‘I like your apartment,’ she said, sipping her coffee, holding the mug as if it were an anchor. Callanach didn’t respond. Back at the police station he’d walked down the stairs from his office to reception in a daze, convinced there had been a case of mistaken identity or that it was some stupid prank by his team who had no idea what minefield they were treading in. But there she had been. Dressed in black, her dark hair still long but streaked with grey. She had been a beauty in her youth, but now dense shadows hung under her eyes, and her mouth was turned down as if pegged to her chin. She had stared at her shoes as she’d greeted him.
‘Luc,’ she’d said. ‘Can we talk?’
‘All right, Véronique,’ he’d replied, holding the door to the street open for her, knowing he had to get her out of the station. She had no place in his new life. He didn’t want the memory of her in his office, and he couldn’t bring himself to address her as mother. She was not that any more, that had been made quite clear to him through her desertion. He had walked her to his car and they’d driven through the dwindling rush hour without sharing a word. Now here she was and he had no idea what to say to her, and no sense of what she could possibly want from him.
‘Are you staying in Edinburgh?’ he asked, glancing out of the window.
‘At the Radisson,’ she said. ‘I’ve booked in for a week.’
‘Are
