She opens it, knowing Paul’s car won’t be able to reach her up here at the barn, knowing she can’t see back into the valley where the farmhouse lies, but feeling the urge to step outside, to wait here for someone to drive her down.
She sinks to the ground to sit in the doorway. The dense stone walls gather around and above her like an apse. She lifts her injured leg and balances her heel on a boot scraper, to elevate it. The metal digs into the back of her foot, but she doesn’t care.
It will be Paul in that car. It will be him. It will.
She tunes out the shouts that are coming from around the house, from up the hill. Tunes out the rising urgency in them, the note of panic.
She stares down the hill, willing it to be Paul, willing him to be on his way to her.
“You can leave me,” Imogen says. “It’s fine. Like I said. I’m home on my own all the time. Thanks so much. For everything.”
I’m fed up. I’ve made it clear to her that I wish to stay with her and she needs to respect me. “I don’t think so, sweetheart.”
I put my hand on the door and push it firmly, so that there’s room both for me and her cello to enter the house. It’s not difficult to overpower her.
She steps backward and doesn’t take her eyes off me.
“You don’t need to stay here!” she says. “I’m seventeen!”
“Enough!” I say. “End of discussion. I’m staying and that’s that.”
She flinches and I realize that I raised my voice but she deserved it. I’m her father and she’s going to have to learn to listen to me.
I step inside and close the door. She walks toward the open plan space at the back of the house where she drops her bag on the floor and I follow, making sure to step around the area where Edie fell after I struck the side of her head with my fist. I prop Imogen’s cello against the wall in its usual spot in the living room. “Shall I make us a cup of tea?” I ask.
“Sure,” she says in a small voice.
The living room connects to the kitchen and dining area, which have a view of the garden out back. Imogen and I could live here, I suppose, it’s pretty nice but I think I prefer we have a clean start.
I make tea. Tucked beside the tea caddy I spot a brochure for the meditation center where Edie is supposed to have gone this weekend. Yesterday morning, I made sure to send them a message from her phone, canceling her booking. Acting as her, I explained that something had come up, said I wouldn’t be seeking a refund.
I glance at Imogen. She’s distracted and I fold the brochure in half and slip it into my pocket. I don’t want her to think of calling them. It would complicate things needlessly.
Imogen sits on Edie’s favorite chair, upholstered in yellow velvet. Sunny, like Edie was. She holds a cushion on her lap.
“I really can stay here alone. I do it all the time. Mum and Dad let me stay on my own since I was, like, thirteen. And it won’t even be dark by the time Mum gets home,” Imogen says and while it annoys me beyond measure that she’s still going on about this when I’ve made my position clear, I can’t help admiring her tenacity.
Before I can reply, something catches her eye. She frowns and gets up, unfolding those colt legs slowly, the way you might if you had been feeling unwell, or if something unaccountably strange was happening and she sinks onto her knees to peer beneath the sofa.
“What is it?” I ask. My heart skips a beat. Just inches from where Imogen is kneeling, I laid her mother’s head down after I’d choked the life out of her.
It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I didn’t leave her lying unsupported on the hard stone floor but took a cushion from the sofa and put it beneath her head. There was no blood. Once I’d adjusted her scarf to cover the red marks on her neck, she looked really quite peaceful.
I can visualize her there now.
Imogen reaches beneath the sofa.
I can’t see what she’s trying to get but I’m very afraid that I might have slipped up. Did I clear up properly? What did I forget?
It was hard, after she died, because I was sobbing. I cradled Edie on that floor for a long time, pressed my skin against hers until the warmth left her, ran my fingers across the contours of her body the way I always longed to. I didn’t think it was possible to feel so sad.
Imogen is staring into her hand.
“What’s that?” I ask.
She unfurls her fingers and stretches out her hand to show me.
There, in the middle of her palm, is Edie’s engagement ring, the one Rob gave her. There’s total incomprehension on Imogen’s face.
