Out of Mind

by Catherine Sampson

“Get out now,” he said quietly.

  I stood my ground, but still he didn’t look up. He just kept on reading through the sheaf of papers on the desk in front of him and making tiny neat notes in the margin. Still I stood there. Already I was regretting my outburst. I had no evidence for my suspicions, just a visceral distrust of bureaucracy. Perhaps Collins was having second thoughts, too.

  “See me at ten tomorrow morning,” he said eventually, still without looking up. I turned and left.

  I checked my e-mail before I left the Corporation. Sal wasn’t around, but he’d sent me a short piece from the wires saying that Mike Darling had spent the morning being questioned about the disappearance of Melanie Jacobs. A police spokeswoman was quoted as saying that the police were grateful to Mr. Darling for “helping with police inquiries,” and that the police were not treating him as a suspect “at this time.” What interested me most about the brief news item was the name of the police spokeswoman, which was Sergeant Veronica Mann.

  I called her number and invited her to a take-out supper at my house that night.

  “Robin, I’m desperately touched that you thought of me out of the blue like that,” she said dryly, “but I think you know it’s bad timing. For one thing, I’m busy. And for another, I can’t be having supper with a journalist right now. I know you have a job to do, but don’t screw me in the process, okay? I know you just want to know about Mike Darling. I know you’re involved. But you’re going to get nothing from me.”

  “All right. But you know I wouldn’t create difficulties for you, so anything you can share, think of me. Besides which, I’d really like to catch up.”

  “Me too. Sometime, when this is all over, I want to hear about the kids. And I want the scoop on my old boss—have you managed to house-train him?”

  “I’m still working on it.”

  I heard a chuckle from her end of the line. Finney and Veronica had been good colleagues, almost friends.

  “You have my sympathy. I heard his ex is back knocking on his door. That can’t be easy for either of you.”

  Later that night, once I was at home and the children were in bed, Finney rang me. I didn’t tell him I’d talked to Veronica Mann, didn’t tell him I knew about Emma. Back in town, knocking on his door. Whatever that meant.

  “Did you hear anything about Mike Darling?” I asked.

  “Nothing. And if I had, I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I wanted to know if I could come round for dinner tomorrow night.”

  “Sure,” I said lightly.

  When I’d said good-bye I sat curled on the sofa and stared at the wall. Dinner in the middle of the week? It sounded to me as though I was about to be dumped. So this was it. It was a good thing I hadn’t let myself feel safe, then. It had been so tempting to let myself fall for him completely, but I’d always known that he would leave. Well, I had successfully maintained my independence. Mission accomplished. Our parting would be painless.

  I stood up. I felt vaguely unwell, as though I was coming down with something. My limbs were heavy and there was a dull ache in my head. I locked up and went to bed.

  Chapter Fourteen

  AT ten o’clock the next morning, I kept my appointment with Ivor Collins. Except that he wasn’t even there. Bonnie showed me into a meeting room adjacent to Collins’s office, and I found three women facing me. Maeve was there along with two women I didn’t recognize but who stood to shake my hand and introduced themselves as Lin Pala and Rona Brown from the personnel department. Lin Pala was tiny and skinny, and Rona was large all round, but both were turned out in dark-colored trouser suits with neat shoulders and tailored waists. Each wore modest earrings and discreet necklaces.

  I sat down at the table and asked Maeve, “What’s going on?”

  “Ivor is eager,” she told me smoothly, “to correct some misunderstandings that you seem to have developed about the disappearance of Melanie Jacobs. But he felt if he told you this himself you might think he was attempting some sort of a cover-up.”

  Lin and Rona chuckled politely at the very thought of such a ridiculous thing.

  “Ivor was also afraid he might strangle you with his bare hands if he had to speak to you again,” Maeve said, and this time Lin and Rona barely cracked a smile. Threats by management to throttle their employees verge on the extremely unfunny in the politically correct world of human resources. “So he’s asked us to run you through a few of the personnel issues that we ourselves looked at when Melanie disappeared.” Maeve turned to Lin.

  “Okay . . .” Lin got out a file and put it in front of her on the table, took thick glasses from a box and settled them on her nose, then smiled uncertainly across at me. “I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to let you see the file, nor can you make notes or record, or pass on to anyone else what is said in this room today. Can you guarantee that you’ll treat what I tell you in confidence?”

  She looked at me expectantly, and I nodded. I could see Maeve, from the corner of my eye, looking suspicious. She got as far as opening her mouth, but Lin thought my nod was good enough and started speaking.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you what you need to know. Which is . . .” She took a deep breath and opened the file.

  “Melanie disappeared on January tenth. When she had not been found by January fifteenth, the Corporation conducted an internal review of Melanie’s records, partly to see if there was any way in which we could help the police, partly for our own peace of mind.”

  “This was Collins’ idea?” I interrupted.

  Lin glanced inquiringly at Rona, who managed to shrug and nod at the same time.

  “Mm-hmm,” Lin agreed, but she didn’t want to dwell on that. “First, we looked back at Melanie’s history. She’s worked for the Corporation for ten years, based in London but working all over the world, as you know. Remarkably, given the nature of her job, this passed without incident. On three occasions she sustained minor injuries, and on one occasion she and the correspondent were expelled from the country—which was Zimbabwe. Five years ago, she was sent on her first hazardous environment training course, which also passed without incident. This coincided with the time that we started to require all journalists to get this kind of training.”

  Maeve raised her palm to stop Lin. “I just wanted to add,” she said, “that we’ve lost journalists and we’re very serious about not losing more. That’s why Melanie was on a refresher course, it’s why Ivor was upset by your accusations yesterday, and why he wants to give you all the information he can to reassure you on this point.”

  She nodded at Lin to continue.

  “A year before her disappearance, Melanie had some health problems and got very run-down. At that point, her line manager suggested that she take some time off. He also suggested stress counseling.”

  “Do you know why he did that?”

  Lin inspected her notes, then looked up at me. “We don’t have that kind of detail here.”

  “Who was her line manager?”

  “That would be John Welsh, and I’m sure in normal circumstances he would be happy to speak to you about Melanie. But as you may know, he’s actually in hospital at the moment. He’s just had surgery. I don’t know when he’ll be able to see you.”

  “I see. I’m very sorry, I know him slightly.”

  “Well,” Lin continued, “Melanie refused counseling and traveled to Chechnya. On her return, her line manager, Mr. Welsh, suggested once more that she talk to someone, and again she refused. Mr. Welsh was sufficiently concerned that he told her he would not be sending her on further assignments until she had agreed to have counseling. At which point Melanie agreed.”

  “So she saw someone?” I could not contain my surprise. This was not what I had been led to believe by Fred Sevi. “When was that?”

  “That would have been six months before her disappearance. However, she reported no symptoms of stress, and the counselor later confirmed that Melanie had been careful not to let
slip any reason to keep her grounded. Indeed, she said that on the basis of what Melanie told her, she coped well with the stress of her work. Melanie suggested to her that she had been run-down because of relationship problems.”

  “Why would Melanie lie?” I interrupted.

  “Did she lie?” Lin had a small smile on her face.

  “I think so,” I said. “According to her boyfriend, she may have had post-traumatic stress syndrome. And obviously John Welsh was worried about her.”

  “She loved her job,” Rona said. “I suppose she just didn’t want to be slowed down.”

  “Well, can I speak to the counselor? Who did she see?”

  “I’m sorry, there would be a confidentiality issue with that.” Lin looked apologetic. “Actually, we’ve been very open with you. I’m not sure that you would learn any more.”

  Lin consulted her file again. “After that, Melanie returned to work in a normal way.”

  She closed her file and placed her palms on the tabletop. Rona fiddled with her pen. Maeve put her head to one side, as if counting down the seconds to the result of an experiment.

  “Thank you,” I said. I’m a born skeptic, but I found myself convinced by their account. At least that her manager had been concerned and that he had tried to get her help. The Corporation had not left her out in the cold, nor had they closed their ears to her cries for help; indeed she had uttered none. She had said, time and again, that she was fine. But there was something about that last, sweeping “After that, Melanie returned to work in a normal way,” that had me bothered.

  “Ivor has implied,” I said, “that there is something that would be damaging to Melanie if it was made public.”

  “Oh. I don’t know what that would be,” Rona said, frowning. Lin sat tight, her lips pressed together. Maeve gave a small shake of the head.

  “No? Nobody?”

  All three of them pulled faces, shook heads.

  “Then thank you. That must have been a figment of my imagination.” I stood, shook hands with each of them in turn, and left the room.

  If I’d had to put money on it, I’d have said they were keeping no great secrets from me. But perhaps Ivor Collins was keeping secrets from them.

  In the afternoon, Sal threw an Evening Standard on my desk, folded to display an article headlined POLICE QUESTION SOLDIER’S STATEMENT.

  Sources say the police are looking closely at the account of Mike Darling, a former special forces soldier who was the last person to see Corporation camerawoman Melanie Jacobs before she disappeared from a training course on January 10 this year. In earlier questioning, Sergeant Darling had failed to tell police that he and Jacobs met previously.

  Questioned again yesterday, Darling told police that Melanie Jacobs was travelling independently in Afghanistan when they met.

  Police sources say there is no evidence linking Darling to Jacobs’s disappearance. But Darling has failed fully to explain why, at the time of Melanie Jacobs’s disappearance, he did not volunteer information about his previous meeting with Melanie. “We’ll be talking to Mr. Darling again tomorrow, and hoping that we make further progress in terms of cooperation,” the police source said.

  I called Veronica Mann. “You’re talking to the Standard and not to me?” I asked her.

  “It wasn’t me,” she told me shortly, not wanting to discuss it.

  “It sounds as though you’re treating Darling as a suspect,” I insisted.

  “I have no comment,” she said, and hung up.

  When I got home, the children demanded that I get out the hose to water the garden. What they meant was that they wanted me to water them. I was reluctant. My malaise had deepened during the day, and every time I remembered that Finney was coming to dinner, I felt a hollow pit open in my stomach. But the children wanted it so much they’d already ripped off their clothes, and it was very hot. For ten minutes we had a wild time, the two of them drenched, leaping around and shrieking. Then Hannah slipped onto her back and started to roll, giggling hysterically in the mud, and William copied her. For a while I left them to it. Then I spotted a neighbor to our rear looking out of an upstairs window at us. She had a habit of complaining about everything. She’d ratted on us the year before in the middle of a hose pipe ban. And she’d complained once when I’d let William, then age two, play naked in my own backyard. What she would make of this display of mud wrestling I had no idea. I waved and decided we’d had quite enough fun for one day. I hosed the mud off them. The garden, far from looking refreshed, looked as if a hippo had been wallowing in it.

  I carried them back in, first William and then Hannah, because they had become too silly to walk. They are too big to carry around for any length of time. Hannah’s feet hung to my thighs. She still liked to play at being baby with me, letting me cradle her. I puffed out my cheeks, and she clapped her hands against them so that my breath exploded in her face, and she roared with laughter. Inside, I grabbed towels and draped them over the children. Carol emerged from the sitting room, looking pale.

  “You’d left a video in the machine,” she told me. “It was disgusting.”

  I winced. I thought I’d cleared away Melanie’s tapes, but I must have forgotten the one in the machine. I didn’t like to see Carol like this, her natural good cheer wiped out by what she had seen.

  “Journalists are sick,” she said tentatively. I could feel our weekly debate on the morality of journalism coming on.

  “We’re not the ones who pull the triggers.”

  “No, but you make use of all the awfulness.” She warmed to her argument, leaning over to pull William’s pajama trousers over his kicking legs.

  “We don’t make use of it, people want to know.”

  “Why? I mean, do they want to, to be entertained, or do they really need to?” Carol stopped, hands on ample hips, to argue this head-on, then bent again to pull on William’s top before he escaped. “I mean, once I do know I don’t know what to do about it. Should I care? In which case, what can I do? Or shouldn’t I care? In which case, what kind of person am I? Am I responsible in some way?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So who is responsible?”

  “Well . . . whoever’s responsible. It depends on the situation.”

  “Never me, then?”

  “Well . . . that depends . . . on what you—”

  “Like if I murder someone, I’d be responsible?”

  “Well, obviously.”

  “But if I vote for someone who kills someone?”

  “Well, obviously I . . .” I shrugged and wimped out, tickling Hannah instead of tackling Carol’s question. Hannah giggled appreciatively, but Carol plowed on.

  “I mean, the journalists all act as though everyone else should care because it’s everyone’s duty to care, but they don’t care, because they’ve all been told to be objective, and being objective means being like a robot. But I don’t like being messed around. I don’t like being shown pictures chosen to make me cry, children with their ribs sticking out, and crying because there’s nothing to eat, and then having a sitcom shoved in my face a minute later. I mean, am I supposed to care for ten minutes, then stop caring and have a good laugh? I feel manipulated.” She articulated this last word slowly and clearly for maximum effect.

  “Okay . . .” If I hadn’t been carrying Hannah, I would have raised my hands in defeat. “I can’t tell you what you’re supposed to do. We’re just the messengers. You decide what you’re supposed to do with the information.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “That’s a total cop-out,” I heard Carol say as I went to the door.

  “It’s you who’s copping out,” I threw back over my shoulder at her.

  It was Finney, early for dinner. For a moment I think I must have just stared at him there. The argument had succeeded where all else had failed. I’d forgotten he was coming to dinner.

  “Am I waiting for an appointment?”

  “Sorry.” I stood back and let him in. I watc
hed him take off his jacket. He had come straight from the office and was still in his work clothes. I must have been very silent, because he glanced at me curiously.

  “Are you a hologram?” he asked.

  “Sorry.” I smiled at him and he smiled back. And I thought, as if from a great distance, how very much I liked this man and how very sad I would be if I did not see him again. His gaze lingered on my face for a moment, then moved away, to Hannah.

  Hannah looked straight back at him for a moment, then turned away from him and clapped her hands on my cheeks so hard that they stung. It was, I thought, an admonishment for having invited this man into her house.

  “There’s nothing in the fridge,” I told him over her head. “I haven’t had a chance to shop, and I haven’t got around to ordering in.”

  Finney grimaced. Then he spotted Carol at the top of the stairs.

  “You’re not going out, Carol, are you?” He used the good smile on her, the one that could seduce in an instant. It always annoyed me to be reminded that the smile was his, to use as he pleased, and that it did not belong exclusively to me.

  Carol and I exchanged a glance. I knew she was waiting for a call from a friend and that they might go out. I knew this was beyond the call of duty. But if Finney was going to tell me that Emma had moved back in, I wanted it done on neutral ground, not in my own living room. My home is my haven. I refuse to soil it with disappointment. Besides, Adam’s ghost is here, and I’m not going to let him see me weep.

  “I’ll put the twins to bed first,” I volunteered.

  “Okay,” Carol agreed, and smiled at Finney, glad to please him. She has her doubts about journalists, but she’s fond of a little crime and punishment.

  We were too hungry to pick our venue well. The Common Touch used to be a real pub with a real name. Now it’s part wine bar, part aspiring fusion restaurant, part club. Which means you can’t get to the bar, the menu is bad and expensive, and the music’s too loud. Or perhaps we just weren’t in the mood. We picked at our food, pushed aside plates piled high with leftovers. I braced myself and launched into it.