Dead Scared

AN HOUR LATER, Evi’s study resembled a police incident room. On one daffodil-yellow wall Laura had stuck endless pieces of paper, names of students written in thick felt pen, typewritten notes showing names of colleges, courses, ages, psychiatric history, photographs drawn from newspapers, student records and even Facebook. Any newspaper coverage they’d found of the suicides had been included. For the first time, it brought home to Evi the full scale of the problem.

Staring down at her were twenty-nine Cambridge students who’d attempted to take their own lives in the last five years. Most had succeeded. Only ten of them, starting with Danielle Brown five years earlier down to Bryony Carter just a few weeks ago, were still alive. Five of the women on the list had suspected they were being raped, several had reported bad dreams of a sexual nature.

‘Too many women,’ muttered Evi. ‘It’s flying in the face of all the statistics.’

On Laura’s laptop computer was a spreadsheet with exactly the same information and the two women had tried endless calculations in an attempt to discover a link between the victims.

‘There’s no link,’ said Laura. ‘The colleges they belonged to, the courses they did, they’re all random. They come from all over the country, a couple of them from overseas. They’re not all members of the sailing club, or the young Tories. There’s nothing that connects them.’

‘Seventy per cent had a history of psychiatric problems,’ said Evi. ‘But you’d expect that anyway with a group of self-harmers.’

‘HOLMES might have more success,’ said Laura. ‘That’s the police computer system I was telling you about. If they all had their ears pierced at the age of nine, it’ll spot it.’

‘Well, that’s not impossible,’ said Evi. ‘A lot of good-looking girls up there. Such a dreadful shame.’

Laura had stepped back to give herself a better look at the entire wall.

‘Not that it’s any less sad when a plain girl kills herself,’ Evi added quickly.

‘Hello,’ muttered Laura.

‘What?’

Laura had stepped closer to the wall again, was walking from one photograph to the next.

‘I think you’ve found a link,’ she said. ‘Look.’ She pulled a photograph off the wall and held it out to Evi. ‘Olivia Cutler,’ she said. ‘Second-year chemistry student. Churchill College.’

Evi looked down at a photograph of an overweight girl with lank hair. Laura had taken two more photographs down. ‘Anita Hunt,’ she said. ‘First-year Russian student. Bit horsey, wouldn’t you say? And Helen Stott, linguistics. Needed a serious skin-care regime.’

‘Laura, what …?’

‘Rebecca Graham, the classics student, was no oil painting either,’ Laura continued. ‘That’s the four uglies out of the way. Now, look at the rest. Hang on, let me just get rid of the boys. Look at the rest of the girls.’

There were nineteen photographs left. Judith Creasey, a striking blonde engineering student from Churchill College who’d self-asphyxiated; Kate George, from Peterhouse, with black shiny hair and sparkling eyes who’d lain down in a bath and dropped a hairdryer into it; Sarah Treen, of Magdalene, a beautiful black girl with glossy skin and braided hair who’d thrown herself on to a train track. Every photograph still on the wall was of a slim, attractive young woman.

‘I think he likes them pretty,’ said Laura.