The woman on the other side of the desk took a pen and a notepad out of her leather satchel. She’d already introduced herself as Lydia Pearson, from the British Embassy in Bern. She’d travelled with her colleague Matthew Dobbs. She apologised again about the delay. Her face was smooth in the way that only someone who’s never abused their skin with alcohol, smoking or sun can boast. Her blue eyes were sharp but kind. She was looking at Cat with sympathy and, so far, she hadn’t pressed for Cat to say anything about what had happened.
If she thought it strange that Cat and Paul had refused to go into detail about their situation prior to now, she didn’t show it. Cat smiled, and the woman smiled back.
‘Take your time, Catherine. I’m sure this is very difficult, but please be assured that I am here to help you. OK?’
Cat nodded. ‘Call me Cat. Please. Only my parents called me Catherine.’ She glanced away. ‘I don’t want to think about them right now.’ Another sob escaped. ‘They’d be devastated about Ginny.’
‘Your sister, is that right?’
Cat nodded again. She’d blurted out most of the story earlier, but it had been garbled and mostly incoherent, and now it was time for her to take things calmly. She needed to get this right. Her future would depend on what she said next.
‘We often went on weekends away with Ginny and Tristan. They were good company. Obviously things were difficult for a while, you know, when we were all locked down and couldn’t really travel and what have you. This was actually our first trip abroad for about two years.’ She stifled another sob.
Lydia pulled another tissue out of the packet and handed it to her. ‘And things were going OK? No issues to be concerned about before you started the hike yesterday morning?’
Cat shook her head, the lies flowing effortlessly. ‘Nothing. Ginny and Tristan were happy. It was nice to see, as I know they’d had a bit of a rocky patch with Tristan being stuck working from home and Ginny feeling a bit like she was messing up his usual daily routine.’ She looked down at the table. Sighed. Then lifted her head again. ‘As for me and Paul . . . well.’
‘Problems?’
Cat forced out a small laugh. ‘You could say that . . .’
‘Is it something you want to bring up here?’ Lydia’s voice was sympathetic. ‘I mean . . . is it relevant to what happened?’
Cat sniffed, rubbing her nose with the tissue. Nodded. Then she pulled herself up straight and laid her hands on the table in front of her, the balled tissue squashed underneath. ‘I thought I knew Paul. I thought I knew every nuance of his being. But recent events made me realise that I didn’t know him at all.’ She paused. Sucked in a breath. ‘Such a cliché.’
Lydia was leaning back in her seat now, one leg crossed over the other. Her expression quizzical. ‘I think it’s fair to say that no one really knows anyone else, do they? No one can read anyone else’s thoughts. No one knows how people will react when they’re faced with something difficult or frightening. Stress and pressure can do a lot to people, you know. You shouldn’t think you’ve failed because you didn’t spot the signs.’ She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. ‘Sometimes there just aren’t any signs to spot.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve met a lot of people in my line of work and, I’ll tell you, no matter what I think I know about human psychology, people will always do things that surprise me.’
Cat shifted in her seat. This was going exactly how she wanted. She glanced up at the camera in the corner of the room. ‘I know you said the cameras are off, but . . . well, maybe we should have one of the police in here with us now anyway. I’ll only have to say it all again otherwise.’
Lydia picked up her pen and flipped her notebook open. ‘So you want to make a statement? I thought you wanted to talk to me first, to explain everything? About the accident?’
‘I did.’ Cat sighed. ‘I do. But . . . well. Maybe we should get it all over with. Formally, I mean. We’ve already delayed things a lot. But as I said to the captain before, I was scared of doing this alone. I don’t want anything to get . . . misunderstood.’
Lydia reached across to the wall and pressed a green button on the phone that hung there. It made a buzzing sound that could be heard both in the room they were in and the room that it was connected to. The walls were paper-thin. The captain and his lieutenant had probably been listening to every word anyway. She had a sudden flash of Captain Pigalle leaping back from the connecting wall, holding a glass and wearing a guilty expression.