Burn Patterns Read Online Free Page A

explosion, but not know her connection. She decided to leave that until later. ‘Retrieving the car. Not working late.’ She added ‘possibly’. She went upstairs to find cash, comfortable shoes, a reasonably stocked handbag. She checked herself in the mirror, deciding she could repair most of her face in the taxi. A headscarf would hide the blood in her hair until she could take a bath. A long bath.
    *
    There was a parking ticket under the windscreen wiper of her car. Iris left it there. She headed into the practice, thinking she might write up Hannah’s case file.
    Downstairs were a couple of smaller consulting rooms, various amenities including a largish conference room, crampedkitchen, clerical office, reception alcove. A lone patient still sat in the waiting room, not one of Iris’s.
    Anna, a severe Dutch matron, looked up from reception as Iris tried to creep up the stairs. ‘Iris, you’re here.’
    Pamela, who did accounts, watched over her narrow glasses.
    â€˜Good evening ladies,’ said Iris breezily, tramping up the noisy wooden stairs.
    â€˜I’ll let Patricia know,’ Anna called after her.
    I wish you wouldn’t, thought Iris.
    Mary stood up in her island at the end of the waiting room.
    â€˜Iris!’
    â€˜Mary.’
    â€˜Oh, I’ve just sent the last patient home. Another one is with Gillian. I didn’t know … You were at the school weren’t you?’
    â€˜They wouldn’t let me call. Then I lost my handbag with my phone in it.’
    â€˜Was it awful? Was it just awful?’
    â€˜But here I am, back. Could you unlock my door? My keys were in my bag too.’
    â€˜OMG.’ Mary, in her mid-twenties, sometimes spoke like a tweet. She came around with her spare keys.
    â€˜I know I’ve missed the clients and I’m sure you’ve rearranged things beautifully. I have “thickening letters” to do and I thought I should write up Hannah.’
    Mary opened the door. ‘You’ve got a cut, Iris.’
    Iris tugged her scarf forward. ‘Only a nick. Not even stitches.’
    â€˜There’s blood on your shirt.’
    â€˜I should have changed. All good, Mary. I don’t need anything. You’re good to go. Night.’ Iris stepped into her room, closing the door, before she flicked on the light. It was not her room. It belonged to Dr Irene Chew, a champion of narrative therapy who was currently on sabbatical interstate, collating newly discovered papers from Michael White’s estate. Dr Chew’s honours degree, doctorate and other qualifications hung on one wall next to an enormous painting of a tranquil sea.
    The desk faced the door. Two soft-backed chairs sat before it, one still facing the green couch where Iris had left it in the morning. Behind the couch hung a painting of orange andyellow hibiscus. Irene clearly favoured colourful pictures of neutral representational detail.
    In a large, colourful box were children’s toys. During counselling, a child could demonstrate certain things using dolls, and secrets might be told to a teddy bear. There was magic in the box too. Wands, fairies, toy cats could witness private victories or help defend against scary things. A toy dog could be named, borrowed to defend against ‘the problem’, whether it be night terrors or bedwetting or problems with fighting at school.
    Iris looked back towards the couch, trying to conjure Donna and Hannah, to return to the morning before 8.55 when the police came for her. She marvelled at the hibiscus painting, how similar the colours were to the moment the gymnasium exploded. Iris imagined the gymnasium superimposed, saw the station officer too, fixed in the frozen time of the painted canvas on the office wall.
    That’s how Patricia found her, still standing in the middle of the consulting room, when she entered in a flurry of impatient concern and jasmine scent.
    â€˜Sit,’ commanded