‘You need to sit down. We need to work out what’s going on.’
‘Like some pound shop Agatha Christie? Tell you what, it was Miss Scarlett over there in the doorway with a tin of petrol. This is a complete waste of time.’ He points straight at Anna whose cheeks flush as red as the colour he’s named her.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Edgar,’ Rachel says. ‘Sit down and be reasonable.’
He doesn’t sit down, leans against the kitchen counter. Lucy can almost feel a pulse coming from him, matching hers.
‘You said there was an incident that meant you got out of prison later than was planned, Anna,’ Rachel says. ‘What did you mean?’
Anna looks around from one to the other of them, as if weighing up how much she can trust them. Lucy can’t work out how old she is; she could be anything from twenty-five to forty, lines in her face that tell of sleepless nights and hard living. She’d said she was in prison – how long for, Lucy wonders. And for what? Despite all her left-leaning credentials, her usual caution about rushing to judgement on anyone, Lucy doesn’t trust Anna. It’s all too weird, the coincidences that are building up.
Anna evidently feels similarly cautious. It takes her a long time to speak, and even then, the words come out slowly.
‘There was trouble on another wing. They needed to move someone into my cell, so I was put on the First Nights Unit for my last night. A woman was brought into the cell I was in halfway through the night, and by the morning, she’d killed herself. She cut her own throat. I was checking her and as I was standing there, the guards came into the cell. They thought I must have killed her, so the police interviewed me. Eventually they realised they were wrong, so they let me out.’ She pauses, as if choosing what to say, then continues. ‘Tom represented me, ended up giving me a bed for the night. That’s it.’
Silence. The tension is back in the room, so solid Lucy could lean her head against it. She’d love to. She’d love to shut her eyes, go to sleep, and for all this weirdness to be over. But she knows she can’t.
There’s something else, too. Anna has left something out, she’s sure of it. She was going to say something afterthey let me out, but she didn’t. Lucy wants to know what it was.
‘Do you know who she was?’ Rachel says. ‘The woman who died?’
‘They said her name was Kelly Green,’ Anna says. ‘The woman who I was asking about earlier.’
Lucy doesn’t recognise the name. Edgar and Rachel are looking at each other now, interest in Anna gone.
‘This is going to sound crazy,’ Rachel says. ‘But Victor appearing, and now Tom being killed? It’s all too much of a coincidence. Edgar, it has to be her. Marie.’
Her voice is so scared the hairs rise on the back of Lucy’s neck.
44
Who the fuck is Marie? Who are these people, staring so intently at one another? Who is that young woman sitting on the other side of Rachel, her face fraught with anxiety? Edgar had said she was one of his students – what is she doing in his house on a Sunday afternoon? None of this is making any sense. Anna is more confused than ever – and considering the last three days she’s had, that’s hard to believe.
Edgar and Rachel both seem to be waiting for the other to speak, but neither is willing to start. In the end, it’s the girl who leans forward and breaks the silence.
‘Is Marie the . . .?’ she says, not finishing the question before Edgar nods once, abruptly. The girl continues. ‘Marie was the woman who killed Edgar’s first wife Gabriela, ten years ago. She was represented by Tom in the trial, she knew Victor.’
Anna’s walked into the middle of a shitshow. ‘I should go.’
Edgar nods at the same time as Rachel shakes her head. Rachel glares at him. ‘No. Please don’t,’ she says to Anna. ‘You’re not in the way.’
‘It’s nothing to do with Marie,’ Edgar says.
‘How can you be so sure?’ Rachel says. ‘She might have been released. Have you been keeping tabs on her?’
‘I just know,’ he says. ‘It has nothing to do with Marie.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because it’s not possible.’
‘She killed your wife, Edgar,’ Rachel says, though there’s nothing triumphant in her words. Only a deep sadness.
Edgar looks down at his hands on the table in front of him as he twists his wedding ring round and round his finger. ‘I’m going to do some work.’
He leaves the room.
‘Hiding behind his work. What he always does,’ Rachel says, her voice emotionless. Flat. ‘The only thing that matters to him.’
