‘Please take a seat although I’m not sure why you’re here.’
‘It’s just a follow-up, Mrs Mills,’ Kim said, unsure herself why she had made the visit. All she knew was that a seemingly healthy nineteen-year-old lad had been found hanging from a tree, and his name had been rubbed from the board before anyone had bothered to find out why.
There was a surreal feeling at not having Bryant beside her, but it was unfair to involve him in something she wasn’t supposed to be doing as it was. On her own, she was just asking questions. With Bryant by her side, she was investigating. In his absence she had to try and mind her own manners and think of what he might say to grieving parents.
‘Mrs Mills, may I just say how sorry I am for your loss.’
‘Thank you, Inspector,’ she said, putting her hands in her lap.
There were no tears, only a look of confusion. ‘I’m still not sure of the reason for your visit. The constable told us there was no one else involved and that Jamie took his own life.’
‘You don’t seem surprised?’
The woman took a deep breath. ‘Neither myself nor my husband were surprised by the news.’
‘Your husband?’
‘Yes, he’s returned to work today.’
A bit soon, Kim thought. Jamie’s body had been discovered forty-eight hours ago, meaning his father had taken only one day off to mourn the death of his son.
‘The devil makes work for idle hands, Inspector,’ Mrs Mills said by way of explanation.
‘Did Jamie suffer from mental-health problems?’ Kim asked, feeling as though she could, given that his parents were not surprised by his actions.
She shook her head vehemently. ‘Nothing so dramatic. He got a bit down sometimes, went into himself, but he wasn’t suffering from any kind of mental illness.’
Kim detected mild offence in her tone. ‘He wasn’t taking any medication?’
‘For what? There was nothing wrong with him. He had quiet times now and again.’
‘You didn’t consult a doctor?’
She shook her head. ‘Never even gave it a thought. Far too much airtime being given to this disorder and that disorder. Every naughty child now suffers from ADHD, lazy kids are labelled as dyslexic and the quiet ones are offered drugs and potions from medical professionals.’
Kim was trying hard not to form a negative opinion of the woman sitting before her. Understanding mental health in children and young adults had progressed significantly in the last twenty years.
‘They’re not busy enough any more,’ Mrs Mills continued, as though Kim had opened a can of her favourite subject to be incensed about. ‘We used to go to school, come back, do our chores, do homework, watch a bit of telly and then off to bed. There was no time to indulge ourselves in depression, anxiety, or any other nonsense.’
Kim realised she was in the company of a person who ensured that stigma was still attached to mental health, especially for young people. She would have liked to debate the subject but that wasn’t why she was here, although Jamie’s reasons for not discussing any potential mental-health issues with his mother were becoming clearer.
‘May I ask how old he was when the quiet moods began?’
‘Not sure how it helps anything now but probably when he was early teens. He withdrew into himself, stayed in his room, stopped meeting friends. We assumed he was going through a phase. We tried to get him more involved with the church. We thought it would pass. We did everything we could. We sent him off to summer camp a couple of times and prayed for him every day, but he just seemed to move further away from us.’
Kim couldn’t help feeling as though Mrs Mills was talking about a distant relative, not her own son.
‘A couple of years ago he got into cycling. He became passionate about it. He did it alone, but he’d ride for miles, off into Wales, all over the place.’
Kim understood that, only with her it was on the Ninja. She’d been known to take off for hours on her own, but it was normally to escape something, in a way to escape her own head, as though she was riding through the fog towards clarity, that the answers would be at the end of the bike ride. Had Jamie been seeking answers? And if so why hadn’t he sought any of those answers from his parents?
‘Would it be possible to see his room?’ Kim asked.
‘Well you can but there’s nothing left in there. It’s my sewing room. I make cushions and curtains for the church raffle. Jamie moved out of the house when he was seventeen.’
‘May I ask why?’ Kim asked, feeling as though she was moving further and further away from learning anything about the young man.
‘He went and stayed with friends as he didn’t care much for the rules of the house.’