CHAPTER 18
Pat sat in the dark kitchen, rain pounding the window, and wept, tears rolling down her face and landing on the pine table.
She didn’t really know why she was crying.
Maybe it was pent-up feeling after absorbing Ben’s pain; maybe they were tears for Henry.
Maybe it was because Maria and Father John were right and she could not know that Henry had not wanted to kill himself.
She did know that Ben had been on the verge of doing just that.
The only thing that had stood between him and the rocks below the cliffs had been her intervention, and him answering the call from his mum.
But other things Father John had said also resonated.
No one strode across the Downs and straight over the edge; they sat, they waited, they steeled themselves.
So why did no one see Henry? Why did no one call the chaplaincy?
Why did no one call the police? Because Henry had not behaved like that.
If he had attempted to kill himself on Sunday evening, the day before his three o’clock appointment with Pat, someone would have seen him. And they had not.
Dave climbed up next to Pat and rubbed his head against hers. ‘Thanks, Dave,’ she said.
She opened her laptop where it sat on the kitchen table, the only source of light in the early dusk.
The screen lit up her face with its familiar pale blue glow.
She clicked through the files until she found it, the first session with Henry.
The moment they met. His young face appeared on the screen, his mop of dark hair slightly too long; he seemed both eager and tentative at the same time.
She felt nervous, worried. Had she asked him? Had she properly asked about suicidal thoughts? The question had haunted her recently. She hesitated, heart thudding, then clicked play.
Her own voice filled the speakers. ‘Hello, Henry, can you hear me? Oh gosh, I’ve muted myself. There, now can you hear me?’
Henry laughed softly. ‘Yes, hello, Pat.’
‘Well, here we are. Are you holding your breath?’
He exhaled loudly, blowing through his lips. ‘No.’
She asked if it was his first time in therapy. It was. He didn’t know how it worked. She explained that there were boundaries – turning up, paying – but otherwise, he could use the space however he liked. He could ask questions or just … begin.
He did. Haltingly at first, then with fluency. He told her about his job at a financial firm, working with analysts and clients, calming nervous investors, taking calls late into the night. And then he talked about Derek, his boyfriend, whose jealousy was gnawing at their relationship.
‘Sometimes I can tell he’s been snooping,’ he said. ‘It upsets me. My work is confidential. And it feels like he doesn’t trust me.’ He paused, then added quietly, ‘Maybe he thinks I’m cheating. But I’d never do that. I’m besotted with him.’
Pat watched herself lean forward in the video, listened as she asked gently, ‘How bad do you feel when that happens?’
‘Bloody hell, it’s awful.’
‘Has it ever been so bad that you’ve wanted to harm or kill yourself?’
There it was. She had asked. She paused the recording, letting out a slow breath. Relief loosened her shoulders. She’d remembered right. And Henry had answered with clarity. She pressed play again.
‘Oh God, no,’ he said. ‘I love my mum too much. We’re really close.
I could never do that to her, or to me, come to think of it.
’ He went on, speaking with insight about his feelings, about yearning and discomfort and the way he could sometimes step back and watch his own misery like a separate weather system passing through.
‘I don’t like it,’ he said, ‘but it’s not me. It’s just something I carry.’
Her voice, thoughtful: ‘That’s interesting. That part of you that can observe yourself being miserable, that’s a strength. That’s a sane bit watching you.’
He smiled faintly on screen. ‘Thanks. Yeah, it feels like that.’
Pat pressed pause again. This was another pointer towards it not being suicide.
People who had the capacity to observe their feelings and not be taken over by them, not become them, didn’t tend to kill themselves.
She pressed play and continued. Henry talked about his mother, who he seemed to have a good relationship with.
Then, gently, Pat asked about his father.
‘Which one?’ he replied.
There was his biological father, distant and disinterested. Never involved. Never there. And his stepdad, kind, warm, a friend. The contrast was sharp.
‘I don’t really think about my real dad,’ he said.
Pat stayed quiet, just waited.
After a long pause, he looked down, almost ashamed. ‘I’ve suddenly gone really sad,’ he said. ‘It’s warm in here, but I’ve got goosebumps. Fuck. I feel tears behind my eyes.’
And then it all came out: the yearning for recognition, the letters sent with news of promotions, degrees, buying a house. All met with silence. ‘Why the hell it should matter, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But it does. My mum says he is proud of me but was never good with words.’
Pat told him what his mother was probably trying to do, loving him hard enough for two parents, carrying pride for both. Henry nodded. ‘I’m lucky,’ he said. ‘In her. And in my stepdad. But not so lucky with my dad.’
She asked about his partners. About patterns. Was there a connection between the unreachable father and the emotionally withholding men he chose? His eyes widened. ‘They don’t start out that way,’ he said. ‘How could I tell?’
But he knew. Deep down, he knew.
They spoke about his friends, those who kept love and sex separate, who didn’t get hurt. ‘That’s not me,’ Henry said simply. ‘I fall, I get the feels.’
And when Pat asked what ‘the feels’ were, he laughed and said, ‘Derek. His hair, his laugh, how he smells. When he’s nice to me, I feel so good. Complete.’
‘And when he’s not nice?’ she asked.
‘I’m miserable. But it’s so great when we make up.’
Pat called it what it was: an addiction. He agreed. ‘I’ve tried to break it off. But he always reels me back.’
Near the end, she shifted focus.
‘I want to talk about the therapy. How do you think it’s going today, between you and me?’
His face lit up. ‘Really well. Who knew you could learn so much just by saying things out loud?’
She smiled. ‘Shall we make this a regular thing?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind?’
‘I wouldn’t mind at all.’
The screen froze on his face for a moment before she clicked stop.
She sat in silence, the laptop’s glow still lighting her reflection, her square fringe, the faint glint of her glasses. She stared at herself, then down at her hands.
The session had gone well. She had done her job. But there was something about it that stayed with her: Henry’s openness, his grief for a parent who never showed up, his longing to be chosen by someone emotionally present.
She was still thinking about it when her phone rang and Prichard’s photo glowed on the screen, a small square of light spilling across the kitchen counter in the half-dark.
‘Prichard Knowles! It’s a swingers’ bar!’ he declared at the other end. His voice was bursting with delight.
‘Hello, Prichard, what is?’ Pat was confused.
‘Hotel du Cocktail, on Boat Lane in Brighton.’
‘Is it?’
‘Hell, it is! Well, it’s not actual hell,’ he corrected.
Pat could hear that he was driving. ‘But let me tell you, between you, me and that lamp post, it’s very, very racy.
I was terrified to sit down just in case I was propositioned by some burly chap with a handlebar moustache, or a large lady in a tiny skirt.
It was busy and it was only the afternoon.
Imagine what happens in the evening! I had a mocktail and some very nice green olives and then I made my excuses and left.
Do you think that’s the sort of place Malcolm and Fiona like to go? ’
‘I presume so,’ said Pat. ‘Otherwise how else would they know Derek and their other hot-tub-loving friends? What road did you say it was on?’
‘Boat Lane. Quite a nice part of the city. Smart and expensive. But goodness! Anyway, I’m coming over, is that OK?’
‘That would be lovely,’ replied Pat. ‘I’ve had a hell of a day.’
‘You and me both.’
A little over half an hour later, Prichard burst through Pat’s kitchen door and plonked a bottle of red wine on the kitchen table, explaining that he hadn’t had time to go home so a Blossom Hill from the garage would have to do.
As he marched around picking up wine glasses and a corkscrew, which he didn’t need because it was a screw top, he went on to relay in great detail the scene at the Hotel du Cocktail.
It was a pretty building at the end of a cobbled street, and apparently the most unlikely of swingers’ establishments.
Not that, as he was the first to admit, he had any experience of such places.
And the names of the cocktails on the long menu were hilarious.
He chortled as he listed them: Between the Sheets, Slow Comfortable Screw and Sex on the Beach.
‘Imagine ordering that!’ His dark eyes were so spherical, Pat didn’t have the heart to tell him that those cocktails had been around since the 1970s.
‘Imagine,’ she agreed.
‘As far as I could tell, everyone there seemed up for it. There was quite a lot of leather and fishnets on display, and one young chap was wearing a black dog collar with a chain attached to it. I was lucky to make it out of there alive.’ He wiped his brow theatrically.
‘Perhaps we should go there together,’ suggested Pat, if only to hear his blustering excuses.
‘Hahaha. I mean, do you think I have what it takes to be a swinger?’ He took a gulp of wine. ‘What sort of person becomes one?’
‘Someone who wants to be desired,’ replied Pat.
‘Well, that’s certainly Fiona, isn’t it? She wants the whole village to fancy her and gets quite put out when you don’t give her enough attention.’
‘True, also anyone who wants an ego boost, and adventurous people who really love sex.’
‘Do you think that’s Malcolm? I mean, Fi is always slightly putting him down and flirting with other people in front of him.’
‘He may enjoy being controlled and humiliated. Or maybe he’s a watcher. It takes all sorts.’
‘What? Someone who just sits and watches other people?’ Prichard’s eyes went spherical again.
‘Oh Prichard, there’s a whole pantheon of deviancy out there,’ Pat smiled.
‘That I thankfully know very little about!’ He laughed again. ‘Do you think Henry was a swinger? That he was part of Mal and Fi’s hot-tub gang.’
‘No,’ Pat said gently but firmly. ‘I’ve just been rewatching my first session with him.
’ She nodded toward the open laptop on the table.
‘And what’s striking, even then, is how much he wanted to be loved.
To be seen, cared for, cherished. He described his mother in warm terms; I’d guess they had a very good relationship.
It was with men that things became complicated.
Patterns of disappointment, inconsistency.
I just don’t see him as the Hotel du Cocktail type. That wasn’t what he was looking for.’
‘Why does Derek go there?’
‘Perhaps to find victims for his shenanigans, or maybe he’s a sex addict. I don’t know.’
‘Let’s get back to murder-solving,’ said Prichard. ‘How are you feeling about Dorna now? The evidence is piling up: the bats, the thirty-seven-million-pound development, the damaged hand.’
‘True,’ said Pat. ‘She did also say that she would happily have killed all the protesters from Save the Seashore, of which Henry was a member. But there’s a psychological reason why she couldn’t have done it.’
‘She’s not a swinger?’
‘I don’t know anything about Ms Braddon’s sex life, although I suspect she’s married.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘She wears a wedding ring. She’s got so many rings on her fingers, on every finger, that actually you don’t notice.
But women generally don’t wear a ring on their wedding ring finger unless they’re attached.
DS Stevens notwithstanding. The other reason is that I don’t think she’s the sort of person who would want to get their hands dirty.
She strikes me as a delegator of anything difficult. ’
‘Like murder?’
‘Like murder. I get the feeling she’s the type who wants the glory but with none of the hard work, and guessing wildly, of course, I can’t see her taking responsibility if anything bad should happen. I bet she didn’t even kill her own bats. So I could be wrong, but she’s not my number one suspect.’
‘But you said not to jump to conclusions, and I sense a jump here.’
‘You do?’
‘Dorna’s a delegator and she doesn’t like to get her hands dirty, so maybe she delegated and someone else got dirty?’
‘Who?’
‘Well, Fi, of course!’ Prichard picked up Fi’s Post-it and slapped it right on top of Henry’s, then triumphantly drained his glass.