But a vision of a snarling Medea floated before her eyes. Arms raised, kitchen shears poised to deliver the murderous blow. When she touched her pendant for courage, the spectre vanished. With no plan for what she would say, or how she might react when the door opened, she was flying blind. When dealing with a human Rubik’s cube, impossible to solve, the best strategy was not to play. Erin would get the information she’d come for, by trickery if necessary, then make a swift exit. After that, she would disappear into the mists, just as she had all those years ago.
Her legs felt stiff as she mounted the steps. Her brain sounded an increasingly urgent alarm. Run. Run for your life. But she sucked in her breath and pressed the bell.
42
A woman in a turquoise cotton shift and towering heels opened the door. In her left hand, she held a burning cigarette. Menthol, judging by the smell. The pale, candyfloss hair was swept back from her forehead and fixed with a net of hairspray. At some point, in a misguided attempt to turn back the clock, the woman’s skin had been stretched tightly across her cheekbones.
If it weren’t for the telltale webbing under the eyes and the spray of liver spots on the deeply veined hands, she might have passed for fifty. At least in the dim lighting of a seedy tavern. But next month, Erin knew, the woman before her would turn seventy-one.
As she scanned Erin from head to toe, the ripple of astonishment was followed by a haughty lift of the chin. ‘Interesting what you’ve done with your hair,’ Vivien said. ‘Though it’s too dark for your skin tone, and it always looked better short.’ Her smile was chilly.
‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ The words caught in Erin’s throat. She pulled her shoulders back, in an attempt to appear taller.
‘I have company. Whatever you’ve come to say, you can say it right here.’
A plump woman in a voluminous pink-flowered dress, her face flushed with heat, poked her head into the front hall. ‘Vivien? Is everything okay? It’s not those Jehovah’s people again, is it?’
‘Everything’s fine. Just someone I used to know.’
Sweat broke out on Erin’s forehead, but she stood her ground as Vivien took a drag of her cigarette. In the oppressive heat, with the hot sun on her back, she was afraid she might faint.
‘All right.’ Erin looked directly into the faded eyes, once a dazzling blue, and refused to look away. ‘Let’s talk about Tim Stern.’
Vivien blanched, but quickly recovered. ‘That boy who killed his family?’
‘Not the son. It’s the father I’m interested in,’ Erin said. ‘The two of you were having an affair.’ She paused. ‘On the night of the murders, you provided him with an alibi.’
Vivien’s friend reappeared, clutching a straw handbag against her bosom. ‘I really should be going,’ she murmured, casting an alarmed look at Vivien as she squeezed past them and hurried to her car.
‘Lunch next week?’ Vivien called gaily, but the woman merely flapped her hand and drove away. ‘Still a troublemaker, aren’t you?’ She exhaled a stream of smoke. ‘What are you, a cop?’
Like mother, like son. Perhaps it was a sign of a guilty conscience. ‘I’m just looking for answers.’
Vivien narrowed her eyes. ‘You’d better come in then. I won’t have you making a scene in front of the neighbours.’
The neighbours were too far away to hear anything, but that wasn’t the point. It was all for show, and the face Vivien put on for the world, engaging and warm, was certainly not the one she wore at home.
As Erin stepped over the threshold, the cloying scent of Vivien’s perfume brought back a flood of complicated memories. Home. What should have been a refuge had only ever been a prison.
Vivien hesitated, as if trying to decide where they should sit. When Erin lived here, the living room, with its spindle-legged furniture and satin upholstery, was strictly reserved for guests. The dining room was poky and dark, and the narrow kitchen claustrophobic.
As they stood in opposite corners of the front hall, like pieces on a chessboard, Erin felt her edges dissolve as the air shifted and the familiar tunnel appeared, offering escape. But she focused on her breathing and held on.
She can’t hurt me.
Besides, Erin had the advantage. She was no longer a child, cowering in terror, but a trained psychiatrist, well-acquainted with the many varieties of human suffering. How easy it was to see that behind Vivien’s spite and bile lurked a woman terrified of the darkness in her own soul. As a child, grasping for order in the chaos, Erin had been unable to spot the cracks in Vivien’s shell. But she could see them now, clear as day.
Vivien pointed a lacquered nail at the living room. ‘We can sit in there.’ She pulled the drapes closed against the light and settled into the wingback chair by the fireplace. As she crossed her legs and lit another cigarette, she studied Erin through a curl of smoke.
Who was she supposed to be this time? A forties screen siren? A woman done wrong by a no-good man but choosing to wear her pride like a crown? This was the woman who’d stalked Erin’s nightmares for years. When Vivien plotted to send her to Danfield, who was she playing then? Conniving mistress, grieving widow, ruthless harpy? The thought that she was ever concerned for her own daughter’s welfare had never crossed Erin’s mind.
She perched on a chair near the door. No need to get comfortable. She would say her piece and go. ‘Tim Stern.’
Vivien flicked cigarette ash into a crystal bowl. ‘What about him?’
Was that a flutter of anxiety in her eyes? For the first time, Erin felt she held all the cards.
‘On the night Doris Stern and her daughters were murdered, you told the police you’d spent the night with her husband in a hotel in Portland. The entire night.’ She waited for this to sink
