Page 4 of Can You See Her?

She looks up, the merest twitch of the lips. ‘Carry on.’

I tell her how the sun was coming up when I went downstairs that morning. How ghostly my reflection looked in the buttery windows. How the teaspoon clinked loudly against the side of the mug when I stirred in the sugar.

Armed robbery leaves two dead in Stockton Heath.

I skim-read. Both gunshot wounds, another seriously injured in Liverpool General.

House fire in Warrington. Suspected arson.

Suspected arson… but no casualties. Kids, I thought. Arson about. It’s an old joke, one of my dad’s, when he was compos mentis enough to make jokes.

I printed off the armed robbery, slid it into a plastic sleeve and clipped it into the file. The nationals had a stabbing. Croydon. Young lad, as per. Intensive care. The usual links:Reform school exclusions to tackle knife crime;One in four teenage girls involved in violent crime;Hold schools accountable for expelled students, MPs urge;Third man arrested over double murder at Warrington house party.

The Warrington house party had been the week before. I wondered if the Croydon lad would make it through the night. The first twenty-four hours are crucial. I printed that off too and put it with the others.

‘The clip file.’ Blue Eyes’ fore- and middle fingers make an L around her mouth, her thumb a chinrest. ‘This is the same file you showed to your neighbour, Ingrid Taylor?’

‘Ingrid? Why, did she say she’d seen it? I never showed anyone.’

The police must have spoken to Ingrid. I wonder what everyone’s been saying about me. Who else the police have spoken to. Ingrid must have looked in the file when I went to the loo or something. I wouldn’t have thought she’d be interested in anything to do with me, to be honest. She was so stressed about her own life. I felt sorry for her. I thought it was her with the problems. Turns out it was me.

Blue Eyes must think I’m getting agitated, because she asks if I want to take a break. I don’t. I’m just getting started.

‘Let’s leave the file for now,’ she says. ‘Tell me about the morning after—’

‘Invisiblegate?’ One glance tells me she thinks I’m being flippant, which I’m not. ‘Right you are,’ I add. And I press on.

Once I’d done my clippings, then said a few words and observed a minute’s silence for the victims, I cleaned up the kitchen after Katie’s do. It was mostly bottles and cans to recycle, crushed crisps to hoover up, then a good mop. Someone had put their fag out in the plant pot and there was a smashed glass on the patio, but that was about it for damage. It only took an hour or two so, and by eight o’clock I was showered and dressed. But on precious little shut-eye, I was still jittery. Katie’s mate kept staring right through me in my mind’s eye. A pain had lodged itself in my chest. The panicky feeling wasn’t as bad as it had been the night before, but I did catch myself staring at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, literally foaming at the mouth. I spat into the sink, splashed off the excess toothpaste and faced myself head on. Leaning in close, I bloodshot-eyeballed myself, wondered how I’d got to be this woman no one saw.

‘Who the hell are you?’ I said. ‘Who are you, Rachel Clarissa Edwards?’

I used to be Rachel Ryder, fittest girl in fifth year. It was my name scrawled on the lads’ toilet walls, me that got to go out with Nick… Nick… oh, what was his second name? No, it’s gone… Anyway, he was the best-looking lad in our school. God, he was boring. I used to panic whenever he started talking to me. Turned out to be gay in the end, but we were none the wiser back then, although the eyeliner should have been a clue. Suffice to say, when I was young, I’d walk into a room and heads would turn. I expected it. I dressed for it. I wanted it. Quite when I’d stopped expecting it or dressing for it or wanting it, I don’t know. Now I could walk into a room and no one would even see me.

Bedford. Nick Bedford, that’s it.

Anyway, somehow the years had worn it all away. Worn me away. I’d been so busy raising a family, working, looking after my mum at the end, getting my dad settled into the home up in Halton. I’d been looking one way and now I’d looked back and there I was: someone who used to be Rachel Ryder, a woman whose husband once told her she was out of his league, the same woman who now washed his pants and made his dinner, and he didn’t even know she was there, let alone say thank you. Hadn’t done recently, anyway.

I thought a long walk might help. I stuck Archie on the lead and headed down Boston Avenue to the town hall gardens.

‘The town hall?’ Blue Eyes glances at the statement, as well she might.

‘Where they found two of the victims, yes. But it’s also where Mark and me got married, back in the Jurassic age, when we were young and I was pretty and confident and he was funny and kind.’

When our friends said he was punching above his weight. No one would say that now, obviously. He still has a good head of hair, albeit silver, whereas I’ve let myself go – I hold my hands up to that. But I want you to know that I was trying so hard to get myself back, the old me, honestly I was, before all this happened.

‘Why did you go to the town hall specifically?’

She’s not daft. Hardly going to let that drift by, is she?

‘I’d been going there a lot this last year,’ I say, ‘to the bench by the pond, even before the… attacks. I suppose it’ll be taped off now, won’t it, until they’ve gathered the forensics, if that’s what they’re called, or is that only America? I’m guessing they’ve taken the body to the morgue by now.’

Her mouth flattens. The slightest inclination of her head. ‘So you walked there.’

‘That was my first long walk. You might say it was the start of… everything. It was definitely when I started looking for someone who could see me, even though I don’t think I knew that was what I was doing at first.’

Angela who might be Andrea or Alison is scribbling away. I look down before she looks up.

I walked and walked that morning. There were only about half a dozen people out and about. None of them looked in my direction. If they did, their eyes didn’t register me, their mouths didn’t curl into any kind of smile. And yes, I did wonder at that point if any of them could see me or whether all they saw was the dog walking on a floating lead like a cheap special effect from some low-budget film.

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