I don’t want to let down either Lane or myself. That’s why you’re still alive and will hopefully remain so. Thanks to Lane, also, I now have all the theory at my fingertips. I know the rules for living a pain-and anger-free life. I could preach all day long if I wanted to, and if I’m still unable to practise because the pain and anger remain lodged inside me and seemingly won’t be shifted, at least I’m in a better position than I was before. It’s a bit like having the perfect recipe, but being unable to bring oneself to set off to the supermarket to buy the ingredients.

Lane, in my position, wouldn’t want to kill you. I still do. In that sense, my sessions with her have failed, but in another more important way, they’ve succeeded. Because here I am, not killing you. Instead, I’m writing you a good old-fashioned letter explaining that I’ve decided to opt for teaching and preaching instead. Read the book I’ve sent you. That’s the lesson for now. What does that story tell you? What does it make you think? I will send you another story in due course – one of Lane’s next time, I think. The thing I love most about her is that she teaches through stories.

Yours,

A Secret Detractor (I suppose, since I’m certainly no admirer)

Chapter 6

6

7/1/2015

‘I don’t remember hardly anything about it apart from America and slavery,’ Charlie told Simon. They were on their way into work. For the first time since they’d moved in together, he’d handed his car keys to her as they left the house, without a word of explanation. To ward off any questions Charlie might have asked, Simon had got in first with one of his own – about Beloved, the book that had been sent anonymously to Sondra Halliday.

‘It was powerful and unsettling, but not much fun,’ Charlie went on, not sure he was listening. What was bothering him so much that he couldn’t drive? It couldn’t still be the old lady from Poole, could it? Muriel Pearson, who’d mistaken a picture of a woman on the side of an Asda van for a flesh-and-blood person? Did Simon suspect her of being Billy Dead Mates? Or her son, the one who’d rung DC James Wing to explain that his mother had made an embarrassing mistake? It wouldn’t be the stupidest plan Charlie had ever heard: make a complete tit of yourself in front of the police and they’re less likely to see you in the role of killer; you move seamlessly from the suspect category to Official Joke of the Investigation.

Charlie knew better than to ask Simon if he was thinking along the same lines. He always took longer to tell her when she seemed desperate to know.