‘Mrs Hudson?’ she says, unevenly. ‘Samantha, right?’
‘That’s right.’
All the women are looking at me with mild interest. I’m the equivalent of the mantelpiece you run your finger along for dust. My smile aches.
‘I was just thinking about you the other day,’ I tell her, reaching out to shake her hand. She puts hers in mine with no enthusiasm. It’s like holding the hand of a corpse. ‘I was hoping we could have a talk sometime. About Edie.’
‘Oh?’ She’s reaching for her phone. ‘I’ll check my calendar. It’s a busy time of year. The kids are heading back to school, you know?’
‘I’m free any time. I’ve just got a few questions.’ Firm. Refusing to be fobbed off. My pulse throbs in my neck. I realise I forgot to put make-up on before I left the house. I must look deranged. Nancy is scrolling through her calendar wordlessly, her cheeks bright pink as if they’ve been slapped. I’ve ordered a takeaway coffee and the waitress brings it over to me.
‘Shall I get you a chair?’ she asks me, and Nancy looks up sharply.
‘No,’ she tells her. Then she smiles at me, weakly. ‘How about later in the month? After I come back from Capri?’
‘How about now?’
‘Now?’ She laughs uneasily. I see one of her friends mouth to the other, Oh my God. I ignore her.
‘Now.’
‘I’m – you can see I’m here with my friends. I’m busy.’
‘I’ll wait outside. You’ve got to leave sometime.’
All the women exchange thrilled glances. The brunch bunch. I keep my eyes on Nancy, unblinking. She looks around at them all for help but one by one they drop their gaze. They like a drama. Keep watching, I think, it’s only just getting started.
Nancy and I take a seat in the sunlit courtyard out the front, screened off from the pavement by large potted ferns and slender bamboo screens. She orders a chamomile tea, fixing a large monochrome sun hat to her head. Nancy has skin as creamy as alabaster. She is wearing a fringed kimono and large, oversized sunglasses which she takes off slowly.
‘I burn,’ she tells me, pointing to her sun hat, ‘and the sun is very ageing.’ She gives me a look then, a quick up-down flick of the eyes, a sly smile. Too late for you, bitch, that smile says. Too late.
‘Show me your hand,’ I tell her. She rolls her eyes and extends her left palm. I shake my head. ‘The other one, dummy.’
‘Oh my God, what is this? Theatre?’ She thrusts it out towards me. There’s nothing there. No line, no pink scar tissue. She didn’t cut deep enough to leave a mark. ‘Happy? What’s all this about, Samantha?’
‘What do you think?’
She shrugs. ‘Honestly? Darling, don’t you – don’t you ever think, “You know what, Samantha, it was twenty years ago now. Move on.” Twenty years and yet you’re still trying to get information from me that I don’t have. What do you want me to do? The way you’re behaving, following me around – it’s not healthy.’ She leans back to allow the waitress to put the teapot on the table and then tilts her head towards me. ‘Listen. As a mother, I feel for you. I can’t imagine the pain of your child going missing. It’s my worst nightmare. But I think, deep down, it must have been a relief. Oh, don’t look at me like that, you know as well as I do what Edie was like. She was an animal.’
‘Don’t you talk ab—’
‘Well, it’s true! Jesus, you know what you suffer from? Selective blindness. Don’t you remember how she was? You want to see scars? Don’t look at my hand, sweetheart, look here!’ She jerks the scarf away from her throat to reveal a vertical slash just below her left ear, running from her jaw to her collarbone. It’s twisted like rope. I remember all the times I’ve seen her in her fussy, button-up Victorian blouses and thought she was just melodramatic.
She nods at me slowly.
‘My parents wanted me to have plastic surgery. Said if I left it, it would make me look like Frankenstein.’
‘Edie did this to you?’
‘Yup. Every once in a while she would lash out without warning. It was okay when it was just pulling hair or scratching, the way she sometimes did. You could almost laugh it off. But when she started carrying around a knife the whole dynamic changed. Suddenly she was frightening. Deadly, almost. It stopped being fun to hang around her then. Danger’s only attractive from far away, isn’t it?’
I’m shaken. I want to smoke but instead I sip my coffee. Something warm expands inside me, a heat. Shame, maybe. I stammer out my words. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘Sure you didn’t,’ she says, in a tone that tells me she doesn’t believe a word.
And she’s right, isn’t she? that sinuous little voice in my head says, the one that coils and twists. You knew what she was like. Remember how frightened you were when she jumped out at you? It wasn’t the shock. You thought she had a weapon. You thought she was going to hurt you. You were scared of her. Why can’t you admit it?
‘You carried a knife of your own, didn’t you? Why was that?’ She looks at me down her thin nose and takes a bird-like sip of tea. She has such a narrow neck. You could snap it like kindling. ‘You know Charlie and Moya used to think you’d killed her?
