All in the Mind Read online

  ‘It takes two. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my work and had more time for him, it might never have happened.’

  ‘Nobody forced him into bed with the tantalising Tanya.’

  ‘Perhaps not but I didn’t give him much thought when I insisted on hightailing it up to Manchester for that month’s management course. I should have realised I was pushing him too far.’

  ‘He knew you weren’t going to be the house-proud, coffee-morning little wife when he married you, so stop making excuses for the creep.’

  ‘You never did like him, did you?’ Despite her mood, Sarah found herself smiling.

  ‘My mother taught me to be suspicious of all excessively handsome men.’ Elizabeth scowled as she stirred her coffee vigorously.

  ‘If you don’t put that spoon down, you’ll wear the pattern off the inside of that mug.’ It was difficult to hold back the laughter that was threatening to erupt.

  Elizabeth had the grace to see the funny side. ‘I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I didn’t take your side, would I?’

  She was one of the few who had, but then that was only to be expected. Though none of the others had openly blamed Sarah, there had been a distinct cooling off from the majority of their joint acquaintances after the break-up with Nathan two years previously. One or two still made an effort to keep in touch, determined to be impartial, but inevitably, the invitations came less frequently.

  ‘You need to get to bed.’ Elizabeth roused Sarah from her reverie.

  She couldn’t argue. It was easier to let herself be gently bullied. Elizabeth insisted on leaving a message on Sarah’s office answerphone to explain to her secretary that she would not be in next day.

  Sarah spent a fitful night. It was not just the strange bed. Every time she closed her eyes, pictures of pale, grimacing faces came at her from out of the darkness. However much she tried to think pleasant, restful thoughts, the terror soon crept up on her. It was not helped by the discomfort of her grazed left cheek, the side on which she normally went to sleep. Thankfully, the pain in her jaw had subsided to a dull ache. She dropped off eventually in the small hours only to wake up late feeling distinctly groggy and un-refreshed.

  Elizabeth insisted on staying home from work until Sarah had managed to get hold of a locksmith who promised to come out within the hour. It took some persuading to stop Elizabeth staying with her once she had run her over to the flat in one of the villages perched on the edge of The Downs just outside Swindon.

  Once the locksmith had gone, Sarah made herself a coffee and collapsed into a chair. There was still a lot to be sorted, but she did not have the energy. She curled up and closed her eyes. The telephone roused her from a doze.

  ‘I haven’t got you out of bed, have I?’ She must have sounded as groggy as she felt. ‘How are you?’

  ‘No Lucy. I’m up and feeling fine. You got the message then?’

  It took all Sarah’s powers of persuasion to convince her secretary that she had not been badly beaten up and that the trip to the hospital had been a matter of routine.

  ‘Did they manage to catch the culprit?’

  ‘He was long gone by the time the police arrived. I couldn’t give them a description either so I doubt they’ll ever make an arrest. Anyway, I should be back tomorrow. I’d be there now,’ she lied, ‘but my keys were taken and I’ve only just got back into the flat. The police want a detailed statement as soon as possible and there are a few more things I need to do.’

  Full of sympathy, Lucy promised to rearrange Sarah’s appointments for the day and let her know if anything urgent cropped up.

  It still took Sarah the rest of the morning to summon up the energy to tackle the trip to the Station. She had grown up with an irrational dislike of getting involved with the police. At fourteen, she and a friend had been stopped when they were out on their bikes one afternoon and taken for questioning. There had been an unpleasant incident nearby involving an old man injured by teenagers throwing bricks through his window.

  It had taken a long time to get their parents down to the station before the girls could be interviewed. Even Sarah’s parents had quailed under the bellicose sergeant’s accusations. Had it not been for her friend’s father insisting on bringing in his solicitor, Sarah was convinced they would have been charged and locked in the cells. The unpleasant exchange of the previous evening hadn’t altered her reticence to face yet more police officers, but she knew it was something that she would have to tackle sooner or later.

  It was only when she went to get her keys that she remembered about the car. It was enough to make her want to curl up and go back to bed. Firmly telling herself not to be such a wimp, she reached for the phone and called for a taxi to run her to the garage. She would not make the same mistake again.

  Chapter 3

  Sarah mounted the steps to the Police Station, pushed open the door and walked briskly over to front desk wearing her best schoolmarm expression.

  ‘My name is Sarah Harcourt. I was asked to come to give a statement about the theft of my handbag,’ she said crisply.

  To her surprise, the sergeant smiled warmly and, before she could give any further explanation, he summoned one of the constables from the small office area behind. ‘If you would like to go with this officer, madam, she will show you where you can wait. Inspector Grant will be with you directly.’

  Sarah was shown into a pleasant room just large enough for the four easy chairs arranged around a circular coffee table. It was a far cry from the austere, clinical interview room she remembered from her teenage encounter.

  ‘May I get you a cup of tea or coffee, madam?’

  She hardly had time to sit down and take her bearings before a thickset man in his early forties hurried in, an A4 manila folder clutched under his arm.

  He introduced himself, offered his hand then curled himself into the chair opposite.

  ‘Thank you for coming in so promptly, Mrs Harcourt. I do hope you’ve recovered from your unpleasant experience.’ He laid the folder on the table and opened it out. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t found your handbag. Sometimes these young tearaways take out the money and credit cards as soon as they get round the corner and lob the bag over the nearest hedge. Unfortunately, if we don’t find it in the first couple of hours it isn’t likely to turn up at all.’

  ‘There wasn’t anything of real value in it.’ She had not expected to see it again so was quite resigned to its loss.

  He shuffled through the sheets of paper in front of him. The pleasantries completed, he evidently wanted to get on with the job in hand.

  ‘Before I forget,’ Sarah interrupted, ‘I wonder if you could help me.’ He smiled encouragingly. ‘There was a young couple who helped me yesterday. Ben was the one who contacted the police. It’s been on my conscience that, in the confusion, I didn’t thank them for all they did. I seem to remember they gave statements and I wondered if you had their addresses.’ His face took on a guarded expression. ‘I quite understand,’ she went on hastily, ‘that you can’t give out such information, but if I wrote the letters would it be possible for you to forward them? I appreciate I’m asking a lot.’

  ‘No problem. I’ll see Mr Coltishall gets it.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘We have met,’ he said tersely.

  ‘He doesn’t have a record does he? He seemed so …’

  ‘Oh no.’ He gave her a rueful smile, ‘but I’ve had the benefit of his strongly-held views on police intimidation and lack of consideration. Highhanded officiousness, I believe was one expression he used.’ She looked at him in surprise. ‘He came in first thing this morning to make a complaint about the way the officer at the scene dealt with the incident. He claimed you were very badly treated. More like the perpetrator than the victim according to our Mr Coltishall.’

  ‘I don’t think it was quite that bad.’

  ‘I have spoken to both officers involved and, although it may not warrant further disciplinary action, I do think
that an apology is called for.’

  She could not resist a gentle jibe. ‘Is that why I’m getting the special treatment?’ She waved a hand to encompass the room. ‘I did wonder why a senior officer was dealing with such a minor incident.’

  A knock at the door interrupted their conversation. At the inspector’s bark, the WPC brought in a tray with two cups, a milk jug and a non-matching sugar bowl.

  ‘Including proper china cups with saucers!’ he said with mock gravity. ‘Though it probably doesn’t taste any better than the stuff we get in the polystyrene variety.’

  She could not help smiling and warmed to the self-effacing man and his easy manner. If she was to be given the red-carpet treatment in order to persuade her not to make an official complaint, she was not going to let on that she’d never had any intention of doing so in the first place.

  Thanks to the urbane good humour of Inspector Grant, Sarah came out of the Station into the mid-afternoon sunshine feeling much more like her old self. As she walked back to her car, she made a sudden decision to go to the college. Not that she intended to do any work, but the loss of her diary had left her feeling bereft at not being able to check on her appointments. It would take some time to put together all the addresses and snippets of essential information that made that little book such a lifeline but, with the help of Lucy’s desk diary, at least she would be able to sort out the priorities for the next few days.

  Millie, who was showing the ropes to the new girl in Reception, looked up the moment she walked through the main door.

  ‘Mrs Harcourt, how are you? We thought you were still in hospital,’ she called across the wide expanse with a total lack of her usual decorum. Gone was the usual deference. Suddenly Sarah was no longer the remote figurehead but a fellow human being in need of succour.

  ‘Oh your poor face.’

  ‘Have the police caught him yet?’

  ‘Have they got your stuff back?’

  Questions came tumbling one after another, giving her little time to answer. They seemed genuinely concerned for her welfare although she suspected that they were both enjoying the vicarious thrill of being close to someone who had been through an experience that would be a talking point amongst their friends for some time to come.

  Though they had enough savoir-faire not to ask outright if she’d been raped, from the veiled comments, it was clear that the stories circulating around the building had grown out of all proportion. She needed to stop, and scotch the worst of the excesses.

  The telephonist, who had seen her through the glass screen behind the reception area, also abandoned her post to join them. Within minutes the caretakers were out of their little office and, before long, Sarah was surrounded by a small crowd.

  Despite her protestations of being perfectly fit and well, all the attention made her weak at the knees and she felt an overwhelming need to sit down. Pleading that she needed to speak to a colleague before he left for a meeting, and with promises to talk to them all later, Sarah hurried away down the corridor.

  The Principal’s office was on the fourth floor and Sarah invariably used the stairs. She disliked being hemmed in and tried to avoid even the garishly-lit lift when she knew it would be crowded. Today was an exception. She pressed the green ‘Up’ arrow button and watched the numbers light up in descending order.

  As she was whisked up to the heights, she leant back against the cool, steel wall feeling mentally as well physically exhausted.

  She peered suspiciously round the softly hissing doors as they opened but the place was deserted. For once, there was no one at the photocopier which sat in front of the full-length windows looking down onto the central grassed square. Passing into the Administration Wing, she walked, if not exactly stealthily, trying not to attract attention from those working in the offices beyond the patterned glass windows that lined the corridor.

  When she reached her office, she was relieved to find that Lucy wasn’t at her desk; presumably she was taking the day’s correspondence down to the post room. Sarah would be able to slip into her inner sanctum, have a quiet sit down, and get herself together before Lucy returned and the questions began again.

  The door to her inner office was ajar. She pushed it open and stopped in mid stride. Sitting in her chair, busily tapping away at her computer, completely oblivious of her presence, sat George Fitzgibbon, her Vice-Principal.

  ‘Good afternoon, George,’ she said icily. ‘Perhaps I ought to tell you that I am not yet ready to relinquish my position in this college even if you do appear to be all set to jump into my chair.’

  The look of horrified stupefaction on his face as he stared up at her might have made her laugh if she hadn’t been so angry.

  ‘Sarah,’ he spluttered. ‘It’s not how it looks.’

  ‘Really? So what are you doing in my room, going through my private files? And, even more to the point, where the hell did you get my password?’

  They probably heard her down in reception.

  Chapter 4

  ‘We weren’t sure when you’d be fit enough to come back to work.’ He got to his feet, recovering rapidly.

  ‘Evidently.’

  ‘I was checking your appointments so we could deal with anything that was urgent.’

  ‘Lucy has my diary. You could have spoken with her.’

  ‘That’s what I was going to do but she wasn’t in the office when I arrived.’

  ‘So you thought it would be a good opportunity to come in here and rifle through my files.’ As Sarah marched round her desk, he backed away trying to squeeze through the narrow gap between the table and the wall.

  ‘No,’ he protested, losing some of the righteous air he had tried to adopt. ‘As you’re addressing the Chamber of Commerce next week, I thought I’d see if you’d had time to finish the presentation slides while I was waiting for Lucy.’

  ‘Really?’ It was amazing how much scepticism she was able to inject into the single word. ‘And just what is that to you?’

  ‘Be reasonable, Sarah. We need sponsorship for the new Business Centre and we can’t miss out on this opportunity. If I was going to have to give the presentation, I needed to see all the information.’ His Adam’s apple quivered in the skinny, stretched neck and the thin strand of hair pasted across his balding pate flopped forward.

  She sat down leaving him standing like some naughty schoolboy in front of the head teacher.

  ‘As you can now appreciate, your services will not be required. And, if by any remote chance, I do decide to pass on the responsibility for any of my presentations to someone else, let me assure you, I will fully acquaint that person with all the material that he might need.’

  Sarah glanced down at the computer screen and she could see that George hadn’t managed to get past her log-on.

  Looking up, she saw Lucy framed in the open doorway behind him. The noise had brought several others who stood peering over her shoulder trying to see what all the fuss was about. A snort of ill-suppressed laughter from the outer office caused George to spin round. His face went from red to a dramatic puce.

  He turned back to face Sarah and, summoning up as much dignity as he could muster, went on. ‘As you will appreciate, I was unable to get into any of your files as I didn’t have the password. I think that highlights a very real problem. Should any member of staff suddenly be taken seriously ill or, Heaven forbid, be involved in a major accident, the rest of us could find ourselves unable to get at essential information. I appreciate the need to maintain confidentiality but shouldn’t passwords be available to senior members of staff in such circumstances?’

  Sarah sat quietly for a moment. ‘You may well have a point, George. I will put your suggestion forward at the next Board Meeting. In the meantime perhaps you might like to write yours on a piece of paper and put it a sealed envelope and hand it over into my safe keeping.’

  George’s eyes widened with indignation.

  A snigger from the outer office broke the silence.

>   His whole body stiffened, then he turned and swept through the doorway, forcing the small crowd apart to let him through.

  As the door slammed, Sarah slumped back and closed her eyes. What had got into her? Why had she exploded? And then to tear him to pieces like that; it just wasn’t like her. She must be a great deal more overwrought than she had realised.

  What did it matter if he did get into her files? There was nothing there that he shouldn’t see. All the confidential references were on a zip disk which she kept in her bag. Shit! That was lost now as well. And it was over a week since she’d backed it up. She had meant to do it yesterday but hadn’t made the time. That little problem could be sorted out later. Now she had enough to worry about in making her peace with George.

  It had taken months to establish a good working relationship between the two of them and now she would have to start all over again. Everyone had expected George to get the Principal’s post when Eric Cathcart retired. He had had a lot of support, both on the Board of Governors and amongst senior staff in the college. It must have been a great blow to him when Sarah, a relative newcomer, over fifteen years his junior and a woman to boot, had been appointed over him. Had it not been for Alan Sheringham, the then chairman, she doubted she would have got the job. Establishing herself in the first eighteen months in the teeth of the opposition hadn’t been easy and, though George had never openly opposed her plans and decisions, disappointment had made him waspish and more insular. He had always been dependable rather than dynamic and now what little spark he had left, had gone.

  Although he could have gone about it more diplomatically, the poor chap had been perfectly justified in trying to ensure that things ran smoothly in her absence. The Business Centre was a costly venture and the college desperately needed to persuade local companies of the value of using its training facilities. There were times when pedantic, humourless George drove everyone to distraction but she had no right to humiliate him in front of everyone.