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doing something, however futile, she might still be in time to save Shelley from ...
    She identified the doctor immediately and interrupted, cutting in on Terry’s conversation.
    ‘Excuse me, Shelley Walters? I’m her mother, I’m told she’s in here.’
    ‘Er, yes, of course. Just a minute, Inspector.’ The doctor’s face changed, in a way that Kathryn would remember all her life but which she didn’t want to believe, not now. Not while the words had not been said. Directing a reproachful glance at the nurse, he took Kathryn by the arm, leading her towards a room across the corridor. ‘If you’d just step in here for a moment.’
    Kathryn pulled back. This was not the way it was supposed to go. It must not be allowed to go like this. ‘I want to see her!’
    ‘If you’d just step this way I can explain everything.’ And she knew by his face and the tone in his voice, she knew almost certainly that all was lost. Numbly, she let herself to be led those few strides towards the waiting room. But then as he opened the door she saw the room was not empty, there was someone else inside. A uniformed police constable, sitting opposite a young man with short bristly hair, large muscular arms and hands that were clenched tightly together between his knees. The man she wanted to see least in all the world. The young man saw her too and stood up, the eyes in his flushed, oddly childlike hateful face bruised and red-rimmed with something that other people might take for grief.
    The doctor looked surprised, as though had forgotten the man was there, but recovered swiftly. ‘You’ll know her boyfriend, I suppose. Mr, er, Kidd, isn’t it?’
    Kathryn noticed that David’s white teeshirt was stained with blood. Shelley’s blood, it had to be hers. She started to tremble, she couldn’t help herself.
    ‘David, what’s happened? God, look at you - what the hell have you done, you little shit?’
    ‘What d’you mean, me?’ David protested. ‘I haven’t done anything - it’s not me, I just found her!’
    ‘You’ll have had something to do with it, you must have done!’
    ‘Look, I didn’t do it, of course I didn’t.’ He spread his hands wide, looking away from her to the doctor and police officers behind. ‘If anyone made her kill herself, it was you, not me. You pressed her too hard!’
    ‘Kill herself?’ The words burst in Kathryn’s mind, excluding everything else. ‘Christ, what are you saying, you monster?’ She turned to the doctor desperately, appealing to him to deny something she already knew by his face, by his look of acute embarrassment and pity, that he would not. ‘She’s not dead?’
    Before the doctor could answer David stepped forward, confronting Kathryn directly. ‘Oh yes she is,’ he said bitterly. ‘And what’s more you drove her to it, didn’t you? She’s killed herself because of you, that’s what she’s done!’
    His mocking face filled her vision. She had never been so close to him, she felt unable to stand the bitter intensity of his gaze. She looked away, down at the blood on his clothes. In a faint but crystal clear voice, she said: ‘That’s Shelley’s blood, isn’t it? You killed her.’
    ‘Did I fuck!’ The accusation seemed to enrage him further. His big hands seized her shoulders, shaking her roughly. Tears flooded her eyes.
    ‘I’ve told you, she did it herself. I just found her, I tried to save her. And why do you think she did it? Because of you and all your bloody nagging, trying to get her away from me, when she’d made her own choice for once! Well, you’ve done it now, haven’t you? She’s killed herself! I tried to save her but I was too late. And now you come. Well, go home. You’re not wanted!’
    ‘No ... that’s not ... she’s not dead!’
    Kathryn tried to push him away but she was helpless in his grip; then he threw her contemptuously aside so that she stumbled, tripped and collapsed onto the floor.  For a moment all of them - Terry,