She is a partner in the wills and probate department at her firm, one of the big ones in Norwich. It seems she is a proper high-flier, speaks at conferences, writes papers, the kind that probably gets invited back to school to give inspirational talks. I thought when I won that interior design award recently, and was featured in the Sharne Bay Journal, that they might invite me back to speak, but I never heard anything.
Now I know where Esther works I could call or email her, but I cannot shake the memory of our eyes meeting all those years ago, and how she turned her face away. A mad idea occurs to me and I pick up the phone. Two minutes later Serena Cooke has an appointment with Ms Harcourt to make a will. They’d taken my details and tried to fob me off with someone else but I insisted. Normally I would have had to wait, but she has had a last-minute cancellation for tomorrow morning. She’ll probably recognise me straight away but at least she won’t have had any time to prepare, and can’t refuse to see me.
The next morning we’re up early. Henry always goes to the school’s breakfast club on a Tuesday anyway so I can work, but today I’m taking him a bit earlier than usual. He sits at the kitchen table in his pyjamas, spooning cereal into his mouth, bleary-eyed and red-cheeked, still carrying the warmth of his bed with him. I lean down to kiss him as I pass, mentally listing the things I need to remember like a mantra: book bag, lunch box, water bottle, reading book, school-trip letter, fabric samples, email Rosemary.
‘Mummy?’ Henry says, between spoonfuls.
‘Yes,’ I say, distracted and still swooping around gathering everything we both need for the day.
‘At school yesterday, Jasper and Dylan wouldn’t play with me.’
I sit down next to him, mental lists abandoned.
‘What do you mean?’ I say with a sinking heart.
‘I wanted to play trains in choosing time, but they wouldn’t play. I kept telling them, but they wanted to play outside.’
‘You can’t make your friends do what you want them to do, Henry. It sounds more like they wanted to play a different game, not that they wouldn’t play with you as such.’
‘No, Mummy. They didn’t want to play with me. I asked and asked. Dylan said all I want to do is play with the trains. He said I’m boring.’ He puts down his spoon and jumps onto my lap, wrapping his arms and legs around me, his hot face buried in my neck. My heart aches with love for him, and I try not to examine my feelings about Jasper and Dylan too closely. They are only four, after all.
‘Can’t I stay with you today?’ The words are muffled but there’s no mistaking the hope in them.
Guilt clamps around me like a vice. I’m not going to get much work done today. The fabric swatches and paint colours I was meant to be putting together for a client were going to have to wait anyway. I’m already late with them, what’s one more day? I could easily cancel the appointment with Esther, call Henry in sick, spend the day snuggled on the sofa watching Disney films. I’m not going to, because my need to find out what’s going on with the Facebook request is overriding everything else.
I unpeel Henry and manage to persuade him to get dressed by promising that I will play trains with him for a long time when we get home this afternoon.
‘A really long time?’ he asks beadily.
‘Ages and ages,’ I promise.
I drop him at breakfast club and drive east under a leaden sky. Once I leave the motorway behind, the A11 unwinds reluctantly before me. The landscape is dully familiar, despite the many years since I’ve been this way: vast skies, rippled with threatening cloud; flattened expanses of field after rolling field; the war memorial standing stark and alone as the traffic roars past, just before the mysterious-sounding Elveden Forest, conjuring images of Tolkien-esque creatures engaged in thrilling adventures but delivering only bike hire, rock climbing and other wholesome family activities. The wind is buffeting my car and a few miles past Elveden I pull over in a layby and sit for a moment, gripping the wheel, trying to calm my breathing. I check my phone, as I do every time I have a spare moment, but there is only an email from Rosemary asking for something I am meant to have done but haven’t.
When I arrive, I am buzzed in and asked to wait in an elegant room complete with polished wooden floors and immaculately upholstered antique furniture. It’s like an American movie’s idea of an English law firm. I perch on the edge of an embroidered chaise longue, shifting this way and that, crossing and un-crossing my legs.
I was hoping for a few moments to get my bearings, feel my way, but as soon as I am shown in by the elegantly groomed secretary, it’s obvious that the game is up. Esther raises her head with a welcoming smile in place but within a second it has faded and behind the tortoiseshell frames her eyes register shock. She waits until the secretary has gone before speaking, and when she does her tone is blunt and unfriendly.
‘You’re not Serena Cooke.’
‘No, obviously… I… I wasn’t sure if you’d see me.’
‘I assume you’re not here to make a will then?’
‘No.’
‘So why are you here?’
I’m still hovering by the door, having not been invited to sit. I tuck my hair excessively and needlessly behind my ears, a habit I’ve had since childhood. Something in the gesture must trigger a memory in Esther of our days running wild and mud-spattered in the woods near her house, because her face softens a tiny bit and she gestures to the padded leather chair in front of her desk. I sink gratefully into it.
‘I didn’t know where else to come.’
Esther raises an enquiring eyebrow.
‘Something’s happened.’
A second eyebrow joins the first. I steel myself.
‘I got a Facebook friend request. It was from Maria Weston.’
The sympathy that in spite of herself is Esther’s natural response to my obvious discomfort is replaced instantly by bewilderment, and something else I can’t identify. Is it fear?
‘From Maria? But that’s not possible.’ She’s not used to having her composure rattled, I can tell.
‘No, I know it’s not. But, well, it happened. I wondered… if you knew anything about it, or if you could throw any light?’
‘Why on earth should I know anything about it?’ she says, flushing. ‘I’m not in the habit of setting up Facebook pages for long-dead school friends. I’m not even on Facebook myself.’
‘No, of course not, I didn’t think you set it up. I’m just… well, I’m frightened. I think someone might have been in my flat, and I’m sure someone was following me the other day.’
‘What?’ Her forehead creases in concern. ‘Have you told the police?’
‘What can they do? I’ve got no proof. The other thing is… I got another message yesterday. From the same person. Can I show you?’
She shrugs as if to say I’m leaving her no choice, so I hand my phone over. She presses her lips together as she reads it, as if to keep the words she wants to say from flying out. She taps the screen and her expression softens. She breathes out, a long, slow breath and I know she’s looking at Maria’s photo.
‘What do you think it means, about asking you?’