Claire's Head by Catherine Bush Page B

divided by age and rank (an old, sour male slumped in a cage by himself at the far end). Most sat quietly munching leafy twigs. Allison pointed to a young female in a pen with two others, lolling on her back in a patch of straw. There was no sign that her upbringing had been in any way unusual, that she had, in fact, been raised by a team of keepers, including Allison, who now, at least in front of Claire, paid no special attention to her. A young male pressed himself to the bars and spat at Allison as she passed.
    â€œA normal bit of attention-getting,” Allison said, wiping off her forearm.
    When she switched off the lights, the room softened to blue. (Once Claire had asked Allison if she thought the orangutans, or any of the great apes, got migraines. Allison said she didn’t know. It would be hard to tell. One of the mountain gorillas over in the Africa pavilion suffered epileptic fits. Sometimes one of the female orangutans rubbed her head as if she had a headache. Since migraines were recorded across time and in most human populations, it was not impossible that apes suffered them, too.)
    They passed back through the keepers’ kitchen. Through the animal kitchen, where a young woman was snapping plastic lids over the buckets of monkey chow, and out, again, into the pavilion. Claire followed Allison around to the back entrance of the orangutan exhibit, which Allison unlocked. The woman who had been cleaning the floors had left.
    Inside, the door locked again behind them, Allison seated herself on a rectangular riser of cement, on top of a tidied pallet of straw. “You don’t mind?” A tire hung above them from a ropeattached to a roof beam. A film of sweat was spreading over Claire’s skin.
    â€œIt’s fine.” The Plexiglas enclosure, vaulting to the heights of the glass roof above, was echoey but private: only in daytime would people peer in. “She talked to a doctor, but not the one I thought she’d spoken to. One strange thing is she wanted him to give her a brain scan – he was doing some kind of study but told her he couldn’t use her.”
    â€œThat’s weird if she was there as a journalist.”
    â€œI guess.”
    â€œDid she think something was wrong?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    Allison wiped her hands on her khakis. “I wish I could remember what her last message said. Now of course I wish I’d saved it but why would I? I know I listened to it in the morning, which would have been March 16, right? But I don’t know when she sent it. I was pissed off. She’d said she was coming and then she wasn’t, and however sorry she sounded, I was the one who was going to have to tell Star. I keep thinking maybe she said something about trying to visit a couple of weeks later, not that it matters now, but I could be making that up.”
    â€œI’ve talked to her phone company and bank but they say they can’t give me any information because of privacy regulations.”
    â€œWon’t Detective Bird get that sort of thing?” Allison was grazing a piece of straw back and forth against her left wrist. “What I keep wondering is if all this has something to do with Star. Everything seemed fine at Christmas. Didn’t it? I know she left early, but I don’t remember anything upsetting happening.
    Star wants to know if Rachel’s coming for her birthday. But what if she feels it’s too difficult, even like this, that somehow it’s better if she’s not around, if she’s not around at all.” Allison looked at Claire. “Did she say anything to you about this?”
    â€œNo, she didn’t.”
    This was what Claire knew: nearly four and a half years ago, one Saturday afternoon in January, Rachel had arrived without warning on Allison’s doorstep, along with eighteen-month-old Star strapped in her stroller.
    According to Rachel, as soon as Allison opened the door, she had