Josh shrugs. ‘It was OK. Can I eat something?’
She pulls the pasta from the fridge and puts it in the microwave.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asks. ‘That you were going to the cinema? How come you just disappeared?’
He shrugs. ‘Just a bit last minute.’
‘But I was in here.’ She points at the kitchen floor. ‘Like literally, standing right here. You could have just popped your head around the door and said goodbye.’
He shrugs again. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think.’
She’s been using her phone as she talks, to google the film her son says he’s just been to see. She finds something calledFighting With My Family. She turns the screen of her phone towards him and shows him the picture. ‘This?’ she says. ‘You went to see this?’
He nods.
‘Have you been out on a date?’ she says, a smile forming on her lips, a warm glow going through her at the thought of her funny, lonely boy, sitting in the back row of the movies, watching a quirky comedy about female wrestlers with his arm around a girl.
‘No,’ he says.
She thinks he’s lying.
If it were Georgia standing in front of her blatantly lying, she would not waste a second before calling her out on it. She would say, ‘Bullshit, tell me what really happened,’ and Georgia would smile that smile she smiles when she knows she’s been backed into a corner and then tell her the truth.
But she can’t bear to put her boy on the spot, to make him squirm, to make him suffer. He wouldn’t smile a smile. He would just look pained. So she just says, ‘OK,’ and takes his pasta out of the microwave.
39
‘You’ve got a visitor.’
Owen sits up with a start. It’s been three hours since his last interview with the detectives and he’s been sitting in his cell with no idea what’s happening next. He was given lunch in his cell: some kind of meat in breadcrumbs with potatoes and green beans. And then a beige pudding with a jam sauce. He’s almost embarrassed by how much he enjoyed it; it’s the sort of meal his mother used to cook for him, bland and salty and safe. He scraped his tray absolutely clean.
‘Who is it?’ he asks now.
‘I have no idea,’ says the police officer drily.
‘Am I going to them, or are they …?’
‘I’m taking you to an interview room. Can you stand back from the door, please?’
He stands back from the cell door and the officer opens it and leads him through three sets of locked gates to a small blue room. Tessie is sitting there, wearing a green velvet wrap around her shoulders and huge silver earrings with matching green stones at their centres. Her mouth is already pursed with disapproval.
She starts talking before he’s even sat down. ‘I’m not staying long, Owen. But I brought you some things. Your phone. Though you’re probably not allowed it. And some underwear and a change of clothing, etc. I bought it new. I didn’t want to go rifling through your things. Especially not after what the police found in your drawers. Good God, Owen. And that girl, Owen! What on earth has happened to that lovely girl?’
Tessie covers her face with her fingers, mismatched rings overlapping into a kind of armour. She stares down at the table for a long moment and then looks up and her eyes are full of tears.
‘Owen. Please. You can tell me. Where is she? What have you done with her?’
Owen smiles. He can’t help it. It’s just too ridiculous.
‘Tessie,’ he says, his hands clutching the edge of the table. ‘Really? You really think I had something to do with it?’
‘Well, what on earth else do you expect me to think? Her blood! Outside your wall! Her phone cover outside your bedroom window. Date-rape drugs in your sock drawer. And all those things, those terrible things you wrote on the internet. My goodness, Owen. You don’t have to be Miss Marple to work it out. Butfor the sake of that poor girl’s family, you have to tell the police what happened.’
‘Oh my God!’ Owen tugs at his hair and then bangs the table. ‘I did not do anything to that girl! I’m not even sure I saw that girl! I just sawagirl! And it might not even havebeena girl. It might have been a boy. And the only reason, literally theonlyreason I said anything was because I was trying to be helpful. I mean, Tessie, seriously, if I had killed that girl or done something dreadful to her, why would I have told the police that I’d seen her? Why? Think about it, for God’s sake. Just think about it. It doesn’t make any sense!’
Tessie pushes down her lower lip and shrugs. ‘No,’ she says. ‘It does not make sense. But then, Owen, nothing about you makes any sense. Nothing. I mean, what are you, thirty-four …?’
Owen sighs. ‘I’m thirty-three, Tessie. Thirty-three.’
