‘Hello?’ She sounds blurry, groggy, and I glance at the clock, realizing it’s barely eight o’clock.
‘Amanda? I’m so sorry to wake you, it’s Emily.’
‘Emily? It’s early… sorry, I was awake half the night; this baby is going to be a gymnast, I think.’ She pauses for a moment and sounds as though she is stifling a yawn. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I think so.’ I dump water into a mug with coffee granules and give it a half-hearted stir before I move to the kitchen table. My legs feel wobbly, and I am dizzy and nauseous, but I am not sure if it’s from lack of sleep or fear of having my thoughts confirmed. ‘Listen, I wanted to ask you about the night Caro disappeared.’
‘What about it?’ A cautious note creeps into her tone and I hear a slight rustling, as though Amanda is propping herself up in bed.
‘Sadie said Caro was excited about the party, but then she and Rupert had an argument and Caro stormed out.’
‘Yes, that’s what happened. What exactly is it that you want to know, Emily? Do you really need to bring all this up again?’
‘She was wearing a red, ruffled designer gown, heels and a pair of diamond earrings, is that right?’
‘Yes,’ Amanda sighs, ‘but I don’t really see why you need to know all of this. And if Sadie has already told you this, why aren’t you asking her to confirm it all? I have to get ready for work in a little while.’
‘I know, I’m sorry, I promise I’ll be quick,’ I say, crossing my fingers, ‘I would have called Sadie only we had a little bit of a… set-to yesterday.’
‘Oh?’ Amanda sounds interested now.
‘I’ll tell you when I see you,’ I say hastily, not wanting to be distracted from the difficult questions that I need to ask. ‘Listen, it’s about Caro’s earrings. Was she wearing the ones that Rupert gave her as a wedding gift?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Diamond studs. Big ones,’ Amanda sighs enviously, ‘from Tiffany. I remember Sadie wanted to borrow them that night, but Caro wouldn’t let her.’
‘Did she have any other pairs? Of diamond earrings, I mean.’ My heart stutters in my chest as I ask the question.
‘No,’ Amanda says after a pause, ‘no, I don’t think she did. She had plenty of earrings, don’t get me wrong, tons of jewellery, but that was her only pair of diamond earrings. That’s why she was a bit precious about them.’
The wedding photo pops into my mind, Caro’s face smiling out at me, the earrings catching the light as they sit in her ear lobes, her hair twisted up. ‘And after she and Rupert argued, Caro just stormed out of the house, leaving all her guests there?’ I have to get all of this straight in my head before I can let myself form the thought that is buzzing at the base of my brain.
‘Yes,’ Amanda says, and it sounds as though she is going to cry. ‘I wish now more than anything that I had gone after her. We all just stood around, not really knowing what to do. It wasn’t an uncommon thing, Caro storming out, so we sort of just finished our drinks, and then Rupert made an excuse and basically told everyone to leave.’
‘Did Caro come back to the house?’
‘No. She never came back to the house, and Rupert called us in the morning to say that she hadn’t come home and to ask if we had seen her, which of course we hadn’t. We offered to help look for her, but she’d done it before. None of us realized quite how serious it was this time. The police found her car three days later…’ Amanda breaks off and I hear her blow her nose. ‘If there’s one thing I do feel guilty about, it’s that I never even noticed that she had taken her car from the garage, none of us did. If I’d realized she was driving after drinking so much, I would have gone after her, all of us would.’
‘I’m sorry I’ve made you go through it all again, Amanda,’ I say, and I mean it. I like Amanda, even if she did take a while to get used to me. Maybe in another life we would have been friends, close friends, like her and Caro.
‘Why are you even asking me this though, Emily?’ Amanda says, and there is a sharp edge to her voice now.
‘I just wanted to get things straight,’ I say. ‘I’ve only ever heard bits and pieces from different people about that night and I wanted to know what happened. How it could happen, that one day she was there and the next she wasn’t.’
‘Sadie told me that you thought she might still be alive.’
Of course she did, I think, and I am glad that I no longer have to deal with Sadie.
‘I did,’ I might as well admit it, ‘but I was wrong. You understand why I couldn’t talk to Rupert about it?’
‘Yes, but…’
I butt in before Amanda can finish her sentence, ‘Gosh, I’m so sorry – you’ll be late, won’t you? Thank you for talking to me, Amanda, we’ll catch up soon!’ and I hang up before she can respond.
Biro and Post-it notes in front of me, I write out a note for every piece of information that I have about the night Caro died. It doesn’t matter how many times I move the pieces around, I still keep coming to the same question. If Caro was wearing the earrings the night of the party – the night she disappeared – then why is one of them sitting
