‘I don’t think so.’
‘Sorry. You’re not Peggy, then?’
The woman shook her head. With each moment that she stood on his doorstep, she was starting to look more and more familiar. Each movement rang a bell in the back of Cooper’s mind. Yet he was sure he had never met her before.
‘No, I’m not Peggy,’ she said, ‘Whoever she is.’
‘I don’t really know who she is,’ said Cooper. ‘Just that she’s supposed to be moving into the flat upstairs. Are you sure you’re nothing to do with her?’
‘Sure.’
‘So you must be selling something?’
‘No, not that either. My name’s Angela. They call me Angle.’
‘I’m sorry, but I really don’t know you.’
She laughed. ‘Angie Fry. Does that help?’
Gradually, Cooper began to recognize the resemblance around the eyes, the slim shoulders, and the way she stood, all the things that had rung so many bells. But he was still completely unprepared for the shock when she finally explained.
‘I’m Diane’s sister,’ she said.
197
19
Howard Renshaw turned off the TV set when the news had finished. He and Sarah sat in silence for a few moments.
‘That chief inspector seemed a very sincere sort of man/ said Sarah. ‘He gives you the impression that he’ll get things done.’
‘Yes/ said Howard.
He played with the remote control for a while, switching the power on and off, so that the red light on the set blinked and the static hissed.
‘Perhaps we should have talked to Neil Granger/ he said.
‘He’s dead. It’s too late.’
‘He might have mentioned Emma to someone/
Sarah lifted her head and looked at her husband with interest. ‘There’s Lucas Oxley. That’s his uncle.’
‘I was thinking of the brother.’
‘Oh. Philip/
‘That’s him. I’m not sure where he lives now, but I could find out.’
‘Why not?’ Sarah hesitated. ‘In fact, I’m surprised we haven’t thought of it before.’
‘It was just this business of him getting killed that put it into my mind/
Sarah stood up and moved towards the bookshelves, as if drawn by some force to caress the spines of the books, as she had so often.
‘I seem to remember you saying that the Grangers and the Oxleys weren’t people that Emma would have bothered with. You said she would never have kept in touch with Neil Granger.’
‘Did I say that?’
199
Sarah frowned at one of the books, straightened a bookmark, then picked it up and held it to her face to smell it.
‘I’m sure you did.’
‘I might speak to this Philip anyway.’
With a sigh, Sarah leaned to rest her forehead against the wood of the bookshelf, closing her eyes as if in meditation or to see an internal vision more clearly.
‘I wonder what Emma is doing now,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’
Howard turned away when she couldn’t see him. He switched on the TV again, but turned the volume right down as he saw the adverts were still on.
‘I can’t picture it,’ he said.
‘I can. I picture it all the time, trying to see what she’s doing at each hour of the day.’
‘Sarah/ said Howard, ‘have you ever thought it might be better if we knew that Emma wasn’t alive any longer?’
His wife froze. Her eyes remained shut, but she was watching her internal vision shatter.
‘How can you say that?’
It was just that, listening to the chief inspector on the news talking about Neil Granger, it occurred to me that at least Granger’s family would know what had happened to him and could say, “That was where it ended, this is where we start the rest of our lives.”’
‘I don’t want to hear you talking like that again,’ said Sarah, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘You know as well as I do that Emma is alive.’
‘Of course,’ said Howard. ‘I’m sorry.’
