I managed to avoid Lisa’s well-intentioned probing for the next few days, but I knew it couldn’t go on forever. Sooner or later she would manage to corner me. In the absence of any juicy new leads, the case had drifted out of the limelight, pushed onto the inside pages by celebrity divorces and political sleaze. To me, it had become ‘the case’; the article had become definite. I was linked to it now, bound together, yet kept apart. Not knowing was torturing me. I had to do something. Maybe I could try hypnosis. But I might find out something I didn’t want to know. Foolishly, I went back to work. Somehow, I persuaded myself that work might take my mind off things. Of course it didn’t. I sat at my desk trying to make myself believe that I gave a toss about quarterly statistical reports, but as my mind drifted, the thoughts of that night kept snagging it like a scab that demanded to be picked. This was driving me mad. The most innocuous comment seemed to contain some veiled reference to the source of my discomfort. I was being paranoid, interpreting everything as suspicion, construing every word as a sly, knowing allusion to my guilty secret. But how could they know? How could they possibly know anything? “Killing time, Richard?” “What do you mean?” I lost track of the number of times I had to hold myself back from shouting at Ann. I was struggling to hold it together.
Give me but one firm spot on which to stand, and I will move the earth