‘Professor,’ she said, ‘I have a request for you.’

‘Do you?’ Fosca gave her a quizzical look. ‘And what’s that, Mariana?’

She met his eyes and held his gaze for a second. ‘Would you object if I spoke to your students – your special students, I mean? The Maidens?’

‘I thought you already had.’

‘I mean as a group.’

‘A group?’

‘Yes. A therapy group.’

‘Isn’t it up to them, not me?’

‘I don’t think they’ll agree unless you ask them to.’

Fosca smiled. ‘So, in fact, you’re asking not for my permission – but my cooperation?’

‘I suppose you could put it like that.’

Fosca continued to gaze at her, a small smile on his lips. ‘Have you decided where and when you would like this session to take place?’

Mariana thought for a second. ‘How about five o’clock today … in the OCR?’

‘You seem to think I have a great deal of influence over them, Mariana. I assure you, that’s not the case.’ He paused. ‘What, may I ask, is the exact purpose of the group? What do you hope to achieve?’

‘I don’t hope to achieve anything. That’s not really how therapy works. I’m simply aiming to provide a space for these young women to process some of the terrible things they’ve been through recently.’

Fosca sipped some coffee as he pondered this. ‘And does the invitation extend to me? As a member of the group?’

‘I’d prefer if you didn’t come. I think your presence might inhibit the girls.’

‘What if I made it a condition of my agreeing to help?’

Mariana shrugged. ‘Then I’d have no choice.’

‘In which case I shall attend.’

He smiled at her. She didn’t smile back.

‘It makes me wonder, Professor,’ she said, with a slight frown, ‘what on earth it is that you’re so desperate to hide?’

Fosca smiled. ‘I’m not trying to hide anything. Let’s just say I wish to be there, to protect my students.’

‘Protect them? From what?’

‘From you, Mariana,’ he said. ‘From you.’

13

At five o’clock that afternoon, Mariana waited for the Maidens in the OCR.

She had booked the room from five until six thirty. The OCR – or the Old Combination Room – was a large room used by members of college as a common room: it had several large sofas, low coffee tables, and a long dining table that took up the length of one wall. Old Masters were hanging on the walls; muted, dark paintings against crimson-and-gold flock wallpaper.

A low fire was burning in the marble fireplace – and its flickering firelight was reflected in the gilded furnishings around the room. There was a comforting and containing atmosphere, and Mariana thought it was perfect for the session.

She arranged nine upright chairs in a circle.

Then she sat on one of the chairs, making sure she had a view of the clock on the mantelpiece. It was a couple of minutes after five.

Mariana wondered if they were going to show up or not. She wouldn’t be remotely surprised if they didn’t.

But then, a moment later, the door opened.

And one by one, the five young women filed in. Judging by their stony expressions, they were there under duress.

‘Good afternoon,’ Mariana said with a smile. ‘Thank you for coming. Won’t you sit down?’

The girls looked at the arrangement of chairs, and then glanced at one another, before apprehensively sitting down. The tall blonde seemed to be the leader; Mariana sensed the others deferring to her. She sat down first, and the others followed suit.

They sat adjacent to each other, leaving empty chairs on either side, and faced Mariana. She felt a little intimidated suddenly, by this wall of unfriendly young faces.

How ridiculous, she thought, to feel intimidated by a handful of twenty-year-olds, no matter how beautiful or intelligent they were. Mariana felt like she was back at school again, an ugly duckling on the fringes of the playground, confronted by a gang of popular girls. The very young part of Mariana felt scared, and she wondered, for a second, what the young parts of these young women were like – if their apparent confidence masked similar feelings of inferiority. Beneath their superior manner, did they feel as small as she did? It was hard to imagine somehow.

Serena was the only one she’d had a conversation with, and she seemed to have difficulty looking Mariana in the eye. Morris must have told her about their confrontation. She kept her head down, eyes on her lap, looking embarrassed.

The others stared at her blankly. They seemed to be waiting for her to speak. She didn’t say anything. They sat in silence.

Mariana glanced at the clock; it was now ten minutes past five. Professor Fosca wasn’t here – and, with any luck, he had decided not to come.

‘I think we should begin,’ she said eventually.

‘What about the professor?’ asked the blond girl.

‘He must have been held up. We should start without him. Why don’t we begin with our names? I’m Mariana.’

There was a slight pause. The blond girl shrugged. ‘Carla.’

The others followed suit.

‘Natasha.’

‘Diya.’

‘Lillian.’

Serena was last to speak. She glanced at Mariana and shrugged. ‘You know my name.’

‘Yes, Serena, I do.’

Mariana composed her thoughts. Then she addressed them as a group.

‘I’m wondering how this feels, sitting here together.’

This was met with silence. No reaction at all, not even a shrug. Mariana could feel their stone-cold hostility towards her. She went on, undiscouraged.

‘I’ll tell you how it feels for me. It’s strange. My eyes keep being drawn to the empty chairs.’ She nodded at the three empty chairs in the circle. ‘The people who should be here but aren’t.’

‘Like the professor,’ said Carla.

‘I didn’t just mean the professor. Who else do you think I mean?’

Carla glanced at the empty chairs and rolled her eyes with derision. ‘Is that who the other chairs are for? Tara and Veronica? That’s so stupid.’

‘Why is that stupid?’

‘Because they’re not coming. Obviously.’

Mariana shrugged. ‘That doesn’t mean they’re not still part of the group. We often talk about that in group therapy, you know – even when people are no longer with us, they can remain a powerful presence.’

As she said this, she glanced at one of the empty chairs – and saw Sebastian sitting there, looking at her with amusement.

She banished him, and went on.

‘It makes me wonder,’ she said, ‘what it feels like to be a part of a group like this … What it means to you?’

None of the girls responded. They looked at her blankly.

‘In group therapy, we often make the group into our family. We assign siblings and parental figures, uncles and aunts. I suppose this is a bit like a family? In a way, you have lost two of your sisters.’

No response. She went on, cautiously.

‘I suppose Professor Fosca is your “father”?’ A pause. She tried again. ‘Is he a good father?’

Natasha let out a heavy, irritated sigh. ‘This is such bullshit,’ she said with a strong Russian accent. ‘It’s obvious what you are doing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You’re trying to make us say something bad about the professor. To trick us. To trap him.’

‘Why do you think I’m trying to trap him?’

Natasha gave a contemptuous sigh and didn’t bother to respond.

Carla spoke for her. ‘Look, Mariana. We know what you think. But the professor had nothing to do with the murders.’

‘Yes.’ Natasha nodded forcefully. ‘We were with him the whole time.’

There was a sudden passion in her voice, a burning resentment.

‘You’re very angry, Natasha,’ she said. ‘I can feel it.’

Natasha laughed. ‘Good – because it’s directed at you.’

Mariana nodded. ‘It’s easy to be angry at me. I’m not threatening. It must be harder to be angry with your “father” – for letting two of his children perish?’

‘For Christ’s sake – it’s not his fault they’re dead,’ said Lillian, speaking for the first time.

‘Then whose fault is it?’ said Mariana.

Lillian shrugged. ‘Theirs.’

Mariana stared at her. ‘What? How is it their fault?’

‘They should have been more careful. Tara and Veronica were stupid, both of them.’

‘That’s right,’ said Diya.

Carla and Natasha nodded in agreement.

Mariana stared at them, momentarily speechless. She knew anger was easier to feel than sadness – but she, who was so sensitively attuned to picking up on emotions, could sense no sadness here. No grief, no remorse or loss. Just disdain. Just contempt.

It was strange – normally when faced with an attack from the outside, a group like this would close its ranks, come together, unite – but it struck Mariana that the only person at St Christopher’s who had expressed any real emotion over Tara’s death, or Veronica’s, was Zoe.

Mariana was sharply reminded of Henry’s therapy group in London. There was something reminiscent of it here – the way Henry’s presence was splitting the group from within, attacking it so it couldn’t function normally.

Was that happening in this group too? If so, it meant the group wasn’t responding to an outside threat.