Claustrophobia by Tracy Ryan Page A

last. ‘But I like her stories.’
    Kathleen nodded. ‘Mmm. Have you read any Simenon?You’d probably like him too, if that’s your bent. And you could read him in the French. I use him in teaching, his prose is so clean and precise.’ She paused. ‘Why don’t you come out and sit with me on the terrace? It’s so dark in here, and such a lovely day – you don’t want to stay in the cold.’
    Pen’s heart was thumping. ‘I have to … go in a minute,’ she said. She almost said ‘go back to work’, but she really didn’t want Kathleen to know she was working there. It would spoil … what? What sort of plan did she have in her head, anyway? Pen was confused. She had expected to watch this woman from a distance, to keep the silent upper hand – not this sudden collapse into real contact.
    The terrace – sunlight, the moat full of koi swimming back and forth in their shrunken world, flashes of gold and red in the murk – and the great lawns, from which anyone might see Kathleen and Pen sitting together. It was too much, too soon. Not this way. Yet to let the chance pass …
    â€˜Maybe we can … catch up some other time,’ Pen said boldly. For a minute she thought she’d been too bold: Kathleen gazed coolly at her. But then came another warm smile.
    â€˜Yes,’ Kathleen said. ‘Why not?’ Then digging about in her purse, she handed Pen a card. ‘You could always give me a call.’
    The hardest thing was not having someone as witness to it all. Not even to write it down … Somebody’s nose to rub in it, someone to whom Pen could say, See? I’m not stupid, I can take charge, deal with things. I am not a victim. To sit all day in the Circulation section idly discharging trolley-loads of books, and not even lean on the relief of gossip: You wouldn’t believe what happened this morning … Imagine Derrick’s faceif he knew – and immediately Pen realised she must hide the card, she couldn’t take it home with all Kathleen’s details on, or the game would be up.
    In fact, keeping the card anywhere at all might be a problem. You would have to be one step ahead with everything.
    So she memorised the mobile number and threw the card away.
    â€˜Sorry, what was that?’ Maureen leaned over.
    â€˜I didn’t say anything,’ Pen said, flustered.
    Maureen gazed at her. ‘Are you sure? You all right? You look like you might have a temperature.’
    Pen stood up and stretched. ‘I might just go and get some water,’ she said.
    In the ladies’ room upstairs she splashed her face and ran the cold taps over both hands. It was true she looked unwell, she thought, peering into the mirror – could sick feelings show on the outside, were they that legible?
    â€˜Too much reading,’ she thought, ‘too much time alone.’
    Pen stared at her own pale features and thought of Kathleen’s, of that radiant face stilled to oblivion, extinguished, the way she had imagined it when they had talked that first time at the tavern. Her pulse raced in panic.
    â€˜This is ridiculous, I am not a murderer,’ she told herself. ‘I have never hurt anyone or anything. Just because something crosses your mind doesn’t mean you would ever do it.’ You couldn’t help what you dreamt, for instance, and plenty of harmless people had extreme fantasies – that was clear from the sort of thing that they endlessly churned out on telly and at the movies.
    She slapped her cheeks to bring back some colour, and rubbed herself dry, pulling a huge wodge of paper towels from the dispenser.
    â€˜I don’t have to ring her, anyway,’ she decided. ‘I can just let it stop there.’
    That evening as she walked in, the house was overly warm and filled with the smell of cooking.
    â€˜Surprise,’ Derrick said, and hugged her. ‘I thought I