The Good Mother. A. L. Bird

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      So Mrs Cavendish had called Alice into her study and talked in very airy-fairy terms about truth and how helping a friend isn’t always by doing what they ask you to do. Sometimes you have to tell people everything you know about a friend in order to be the best friend you can. Mrs Cavendish’s eyes did not stray from Alice’s for one syllable. By the end of the lecture, Alice was sure that Mrs Cavendish could hear her brain, and that there was little point in keeping the secret because Mrs Cavendish must already know it.

      ‘OK,’ said Alice, nodding bravely. ‘I’ll tell.’

      Then in came Mr Belvoir with his questions. What had she seen? What had she heard, smelled, believed? What had Cara told her? Would she swear on that in court? Did she know where the man could be found?

      All these questions, she’d understood. They reminded her of Monsieur Poirot and Mr Holmes, whose stories she’d listened to on Audible.com with her parents in the evening when homework was over. Non-police male detectives asked odd, detailed questions and achieved miraculous results, often changing the world with the results – reappearing the missing, making dead people live. But then there were questions that she didn’t understand at all, even in the Poirot/ Holmes world. Questions that left her a little uneasy. Questions about Cara’s mum. About Cara’s mum’s husband. Personal, private questions, about habits, ways of living, that left her feeling dirty. And perhaps Mrs Cavendish felt dirty too. Because, after a while, she asked Mr Belvoir if he was quite done, as she felt sure Alice must have classes to attend.

      And so Alice left. Now, on the way to History, which was hopefully all about Francis Drake and the Armada, and not about best friends and cars and peculiar gentlemen, Alice thinks she might have made the wrong decision. Perhaps she shouldn’t have told. Although she didn’t quite tell, did she? Because she didn’t have the address. Of where to find the man Mr Belvoir seemed to be so keen to find. She just had the mental picture. From when Cara had taken her there. Because that was Cara. She shared everything. So Mr Belvoir can’t really use the information, because he doesn’t have Alice’s mental map. Although she thinks she described it pretty well.

      This isn’t all Alice is thinking though. She also thinks something else. She thinks that on a second meeting this man, this Mr Belvoir, is very like the secret man that Cara had described to her. The man Cara used to meet. And who she’d gone to meet that day.