And then I see him. He’s on the rug by his bed, fast asleep, still holding Manky to his face. He must have fallen out of bed without even waking, the thump as he hit the floor the noise that roused me. I fall to my knees next to him, burying my face in his hair, inhaling the sweet scent of him, weeping in sheer thankfulness.
In the morning I wake early, still shaky from the night’s adventures. I’ve already looked up the address, so all I have to do is get us both dressed as quickly as possible and leave the house. I drop Henry at breakfast club at 7.30am; we’re the first ones there. He soon gets over his confusion at my chivvying this morning, delighted to have the place to himself, running straight off to get the train set out.
It’s dark as I walk towards the station, but I can see my breath in the stillness, a reminder that I’m still here, just. Some of the houses are still in darkness but there are squares of yellow light here and there and I glimpse the occasional domestic scene: a man in a suit on his sofa eating his breakfast, the flickering light of the TV casting shadows on his face; a smartly dressed woman checking her face in the mirror over the fireplace in her front room; a young mother at an upstairs window in a tired dressing gown, whey-faced and dead-eyed with exhaustion, holding her baby against her shoulder. I jump as a car revs into life as I pass, and when a tall man opens his front door and steps out into the street in front of me it’s all I can do to stifle my yelp of fear. The man looks at me curiously before striding off ahead of me in the direction of the station. I stand for a minute, my hand on the streetlight, reminding myself to breathe in and out. When did I become this jumpy, terrified person? I give myself a mental shake and walk, more slowly this time, towards the station.
There’s a café opposite the offices of Foster and Lyme so I order a coffee and settle myself in a seat by the window, eyes trained on the entrance. Suited figures are already going in and out. There’s some kind of code that has to be tapped in, which should give me time to run out and catch Pete before he goes in.
I’m on my second cup when I feel a hand on my shoulder, making me jump and slop coffee onto the table.
‘What are you doing here?’ Pete’s eyes stray furtively across the road to where his oblivious colleagues greet each other, takeaway coffees in hand.
‘I need to talk to you,’ I say in a low voice. ‘I’m sorry to ambush you at work but I couldn’t think of any other way. I don’t even know your surname. You know… what’s happened?’
‘Yes, of course I know.’ He sits down in the seat opposite me. ‘It’s so awful. I’m… sorry. I know she was your friend. I spent the whole day yesterday walking around London, thinking about it, too scared to go home in case the police were waiting for me. I’m going to be their number one suspect.’
‘So you haven’t talked to them yet?’ Hope flares in me.
‘No. I know I’m going to have to. I just wanted to… get my head together first. I’ll call them today.’
‘But aren’t the police going to wonder why you haven’t come forward before?’
‘I don’t know, I’ll have to say I didn’t see the news yesterday or something. Have you spoken to them?’
‘Yes. I went into the school yesterday morning.’
‘And did you tell them… about us spending the night together?’
I look down, turning the salt pot around and around.
‘No.’
I had anticipated anger but he looks more confused than anything else. There’s something else, too. Relief?
‘Why not?’
‘I… I’m not sure. I panicked.’ I can’t tell him that I am so used to lying about everything connected with that night in 1989 that the lie had tumbled out of my mouth before I’d had a chance to consider it. That my fear of anyone knowing what I did to Maria is so much a part of me that hiding anything that could possibly associate me with her disappearance is second nature to me. I need to tell him something though, give some idea of why I’m behaving like this. ‘It’s complicated.’ I stare at my hands, my forefinger tracing patterns in the spilled sugar. ‘When we were at school, Sophie and I, we… weren’t very nice to another girl in our class. Maria.’
‘What’s a bit of schoolgirl bullying got to do with this? God knows we’ve all done stuff we’re not proud of when we were younger.’
I so want to believe him, for this to be true, for what we did to have had no consequences. But there are no actions without consequences, are there? Even without the drink spiking, the way we treated Maria would have had an impact on her, possibly for the rest of her life. It would have affected her relationships, her friendships, her confidence. Maybe it did. Maybe it’s still affecting her now. The thought skims across the surface of my mind, unbidden, and I see her in my mind’s eye, not as smooth-skinned as she was and with a few lines on her face, but still recognisably Maria, with her hazel eyes and long brown hair, sitting in front of a computer, sending out her hatred over the ether to Sophie, to me.
‘It’s hard to explain. I just don’t want it to come out more than it needs to. My – association with Sophie. The police already know that Sophie and I met up that night in her flat – the night you were there. If they find out I spent the night with her boyfriend, they’re going to start digging around in the past, asking questions. This doesn’t have anything to do with her being killed, I swear. It’s just… past stuff that I don’t want dragged into the present.’ Any more than it has been already. ‘Oh God, I don’t know, maybe I should tell them. Call that detective, tell her I panicked, come clean?’
‘Yes.’ He doesn’t look sure. ‘You need to do what you think is best.’
‘But you don’t think I should?’ I just want someone to tell me what to do, tell me everything’s going to be OK.
He stares out of the window. It’s starting to rain and people are walking faster, pulling their coats closer as if that will make a difference.
‘I’m frightened of telling them,’ he says, watching as raindrops ooze their way down the window.
‘But why?’
His eyes flicker to me and then back outside again. I get the feeling that he’s weighing something up.
‘Well… just because, you know, I’m going to be their main person of interest, aren’t I? Top of the list. Who do they always look to when someone’s killed? The boyfriend. If they find out that I spent the night with another woman, a friend of Sophie’s who I hardly knew – how does that look?’
‘Not great,’ I admit, although I sense he’s not telling me the whole story. It’s certainly true – who would ever believe that nothing had happened between us? There would be witnesses who could testify to seeing us talking and laughing together at the reunion. It wouldn’t prove anything, but if the finger of suspicion is already hanging over Pete, this is going to make it worse. He must have been hovering around in the car park for an hour or so waiting for me, with no one to vouch for his whereabouts. I push down the vague feeling of unease that this thought gives me and turn back to Pete.