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  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

  Her hand tightened around mine.

  ‘It’s my fault,’ she whispered, her breath stale from lack of food.

  I made a conscious effort not to flinch away from her – tried to forget the cruel things she’d said to me the last time we’d met.

  ‘No love,’ I said. ‘Don’t think that way, it doesn’t help.’

  ‘But it is my fault.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I cast around for anything that might be comforting, even though I knew I was casting around in vain. In the end, I gave up.

  ‘The recording on the answerphone?’ I asked gently. ‘Did you play it to the police?’

  ‘No.... it’s gone.’

  For a second, I thought she hadn’t understood.

  Maybe she was too drugged or too much in shock to make sense of anything.

  ‘What’s gone sweetheart?’

  ‘The recording.’ Her eyes were wavering in and out of focus and her speech was slurring, but there was no doubt that she knew what she was saying. I stared at her as she turned her face away into the pillow, sobbing slow, shallow, exhausted tears.

  Kay had been hovering behind me in the doorway and she’d caught part of the conversation.

  ‘What recording?’ she asked quietly, stepping over to smooth Suzanne’s hair and make all the right noises.

  ‘God knows,’ I said, completely confused now. ‘I’ll just go and have a listen.’

  I figured I’d been relieved of duties for a while. Kay was so much better at all that comforting stuff than I was anyway. I let her take over and went downstairs into the dimly lit hallway. The ‘gone’ bit didn’t make sense to me. I ran the tape back, watching the red and green lights; hearing the bips as the machine went through its paces; then pressing ‘Play’ and straining my ears to listen.... Nothing! I checked the volume control and then went through the whole procedure again. Still nothing. The tape was blank.

  Then, a hand was on my shoulder and I jumped round to find myself staring up into Turner’s eyes.

  My heart leapt into my mouth.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ she asked, quietly.

  I flinched away from her grasp.

  ‘Just listening to the messages,’ I stammered. ‘How long have you been here?’

  Something – a look I couldn’t define, snapped across her eyes.

  ‘Just now?’ she asked. ‘About five minutes... I was through in the front room. I’d left my briefcase there. I wanted to call back to make sure Suzanne was okay before I went home.’

  ‘Call back?’ My skin was crawling now. ‘You were here earlier?’

  ‘Yes. I took Suzanne to identify... the body... this afternoon. Then I brought her home. I’ve been trying to phone you since six.’

  ‘I had night school.’

  I stared at the floor bewildered, chewing away at the side of my thumb nail. I didn’t understand how I could feel the way I did about Turner and still believe that she could have been responsible for this. But then, love and trust had never really gone together for me. I tried to make sense of it all and failed miserably.

  ‘Suzanne told me there was a conversation recorded on the answerphone,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. She said that to me too, but there isn’t.... is there?’

  Not now.

  ‘I’d understand,’ I said. ‘I mean... I know it was Mary who phoned Adam.’

  Turner shook her head wearily. ‘It’s not my style,’ she said.

  She leant back against the wall and sighed. She looked exhausted. There were dark smudges under her eyes. I wanted to touch her but daren’t.

  ‘Where have you been?’ I asked.

  She seemed to hesitate.

  A big wall clock kept up a steady tick to my right.

  ‘I went across to my mother’s,’ she said. ‘Apparently Adam went round to see her last night while I was driving you home. He came back staggering drunk in the early hours and told me she was so disgusted she didn’t want to speak to me - couldn’t bear to look at me. It’s always like that between the two of them. He goes running to her and tells her what a terrible wife I am, and she plies him with drink and says “There there!” Maybe she should have married the bastard herself if she loves him so much. And now I need to talk to her and she’s not home. The neighbours think she’s gone to visit some friends on the south coast. They saw her loading the car this morning.’

  I shook my head, remembering Corinne’s parents. Their explosive reaction to her sexuality - and the fall-out.

  ‘She’ll probably calm down when she’s had time to think about it.’ I said, barely believing it myself.

  ‘Oh... you really think so, do you Gill...?’ She pulled herself up, realising that she was almost shouting at me. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just that I really could have done with talking to her... in person... you know.’

  I could hear something that felt almost like panic vying with the exhaustion in her voice. She sighed again. ‘Anyway, how’s Su?’

  ‘She’s okay – doped up – drowsy... As well as can be expected, I suppose. Kay’s with her.’

  I felt desperate, faced with Turner. I’d just lost one of my best friends and I hadn’t even begun to take it in. I wanted to just cling to her and cry. I wanted everything to be alright. But it wasn’t.

  She glanced at her watch.

  ‘Well, I’ll just go show my face and then I think I’ll go home.’

  ‘Back to Adam?’

  ‘Until he finds somewhere else – yes, unfortunately.’

  ‘He’s leaving you?’

  God, what had we started? Everything was tumbling out of control. Surely we needed to talk about this? But how could we now, with Mary’s death overshadowing everything?

  She’d started up the stairs anyway. She had her head down. And I had so many questions.

  I put my hand over hers on the banister.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But if you didn’t phone Mary last night, then who did? And why isn’t the message there anymore?’

  She stared at me. Then she snatched her hand away.

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ she snapped. ‘It’s probably just something that Su’s made up to cause trouble between us.’

  She took the stairs at a pelt, then, on the landing, I saw her hesitate for a moment to compose herself before going into Suzanne’s room.

  I wished she’d look back at me, but she didn’t. I felt wretched, left there alone with just the lights of the answerphone shining in the gloom. If only the message had left a ghost of itself somewhere, just so that I could know one way or another. That’s all I needed... proof, one way or the other... The one thing that had always been so elusive in my life.

  When I got home, I tried to phone my mum, but there was no reply... Just the phone ringing down the line, endlessly, echoing away into oblivion.

  A Journey

  The same applied all day Friday, when the weather finally broke and it rained as if the heavens themselves were weeping. We’d worked out a kind of informal rota to make sure Suzanne wasn’t left in the house alone or inundated with people all turning up at once, but it went awry around tea-time when Kay, Ros, Turner and myself all found ourselves sitting in the lounge with Suzanne and her mother, drinking coffee and trying unsuccessfully to find something to say to each other.

  Squeezed there on the sofa with Ros and Kay, I couldn’t seem to stop my mind going back to the awful ‘Salmonberries’ evening, beating myself up about my lateness then and how it had triggered the row between Suzanne and Mary. I wished desperately that I’d phoned Mary to let her know I was delayed and I wished too that I’d phoned the day after to make sure she was alright. Both things seemed to have just dropped off my ‘to-do’ list in the excitement of the developing relationship with Turner. I’d been a lousy friend. I could see that now - much too wrapped up in my own selfish concerns to see Mary’s distress as anything other than a minor and slightly over-the-top incon
venience.

  Suzanne’s mother, meanwhile, was not responding well to being surrounded by so many women of questionable sexuality. And she clearly hadn’t forgiven her daughter for dumping a perfectly adequate fiancé in favour of Mary all those years ago.

  ‘This would never have happened if you’d married Kevin,’ she said, tight-lipped.

  ‘Hell no,’ muttered Ros. ‘No man ever got himself killed on the M25.’

  Kay dug her in the ribs as Suzanne gave a miserable little sob.

  Turner was watching me from her seat by the fireplace – silent – brooding – running her middle finger around the rim of her cup. I’d taken a covert look at her earlier and I knew she didn’t look well. She had a grim kind of pallor under her Mediterranean tan, and there were still those dark, purplish smudges under her eyes, suggesting that she hadn’t caught up on any sleep since I saw her last.

  I stared into my coffee, and felt the steady pressure of her eyes on me until I squirmed.

  We all jumped when she stood up.

  ‘Well. Just wanted to see if you were okay,’ she said to Suzanne. ‘I’d better be going now.’

  ‘Me too!’ Almost as a reflex, I was on my feet in Turner’s wake, hugging my friends and shaking hands with Suzanne’s mother in response to her ‘don’t even think about hugging me’ look. I tried not to notice Kay’s disgust at my act of desertion, keeping myself focused on my goal of getting out of that awful death-filled room as quickly as I possibly could.

  Out in the hallway Turner was leaning beside the coat hooks, her arms folded, waiting for me.

  ‘You’re coming with me then?’ she asked.

  ‘If you want me.’

  ‘You know I do.’

  I didn’t. But I knew that I wanted her. Heaven knows, it was hard to want somebody that much.

  I pulled on my jacket and followed her out into the rain.

  The Rover was sitting in a puddle, seven car-lengths away from the house. I slid into the passenger seat and fastened my seat belt. I didn’t ask where we were going, but it didn’t take me long to realise that it wasn’t home. It felt important for me not to be scared of her. I stared out of the window instead. The weather was awful and Turner was driving very carefully, holding us well back from the lorries churning up tidal waves in front of us. The view was bleak. Fields skirted the motorway, marking the outer hem of London. Rain lashed down all around us, and spray bounced up around the cars like the frilly petticoats of a troupe of chaotic Can-Can dancers.

  Turner was wearing trousers; khaki cotton, with a cream vest and a bottle-green silk shirt over the top for warmth. She must have had time to change after work... If she’d ever been into work in the first place, that is.

  I watched the road. Then suddenly I knew where I was. I felt as if cold fingers were creeping over the back of my neck. I also felt very sick.

  ‘Is this where they found Mary?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes – we just passed it.’

  It had been just as I’d dreamt – the thin, white bridge, the trees huddled at the edge of the road as if they had clustered around to stare. I shuddered as reality went into a tailspin, and I had to reassure myself that truly, I had been at home and in my own bed asleep on the night that Mary died.

  I rubbed at the steam on the window and tried not to panic.

  ‘How did you recognise it?’ asked Turner.

  ‘I... I don’t know. I must have worked it out from something Kay said, I suppose.’

  The nausea was rising in my throat. Kay hadn’t said anything specific enough for me to identify the place. I knew that. But I didn’t want to explain it. I tried to keep a grip on myself.

  ‘Were you really close to Mary?’ asked Turner, her eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead.

  ‘I’ve.... I’d... known her a long time.’ I wanted to be honest about this, at least. I struggled to find the right words. ‘I was very grateful to her. She was such a kind person.... always there when people were ill or upset. She was wonderful when Corinne died... But I never really had much in common with her, other than the obvious, and I never found her all that easy to talk to. She wasn’t a gossip like Ros and Su, and she was always so focused on other people it was hard to know who she really was. Until this last couple of weeks I don’t think I’d ever heard her express any strong feeling about anything on her own behalf. And when it came down to it, when I should have returned all her kindness and been there for her, I just wasn’t.’ Tears were seeping from my eyes. I rubbed them away and snuffled into a crumpled paper tissue I found in my pocket. ‘So, no, if I’m being honest, I’m not sure I was all that close to Mary. None of us were really. I think we all took her for granted and now we’re all feeling like shit because she was hurting and not one of us lifted a finger to help her.’

  This was a very long speech for me. I didn’t look at Turner, just stared down at my own hands twisting at the tissue on my lap in the gloom.

  When she replied, it made me jump.

  ‘It’s a shame,’ she said, flatly. ‘I’ve always found that people value you so much more when you’re a bitch.’

  The awful thing is, I suspected that she was right.

  ‘Did you go in with Suzanne when she went to identify Mary?’ I asked.

  Turner swallowed. I felt her tense beside me. Her knuckles whitened at the wheel.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, biting down on her bottom lip.

  ‘What sort of state was she in?’

  She hesitated, peering forward through the rain. Then she spared me the details.

  ‘Just... torn,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t know how much Su’s told anyone, but she wasn’t in her car. She’d parked in a pub car park nearby. According to the man who hit her, she just seemed to stagger out in front of him on the carriageway. It must have been awful for him.’ She glanced at me quickly, still half-monitoring the road. ‘Everybody blames me for this, don’t they?’

  ‘No... I’m sure they don’t.’ I rushed to deny it. But I could hear the lack of conviction in my voice.

  ‘Of course they do. They think that I’ve been having an affair with Suzanne and that’s what drove Mary to kill herself.’

  ‘No!’ I started to shake my head. Nobody had spoken of this as anything other than a tragic accident before, though I guess Turner had just voiced what we’d all been thinking.

  Turner put her hand on mine as if to stop me. I half expected her to say ‘Shush!’ but I’d shut up anyway so she didn’t need to.

  ‘And I know, in retrospect, that I never should have got involved in any of this,’ she added. ‘But the truth is that Mary’s been depressed for ages and this obsession about Suzanne and me was just another part of it. Su’s been at her wit’s end with it all. You know how she is... all buttoned up all the time. I don’t think she’d have confided in me, but I found her crying at work one day and it all came out.’

  I wanted to believe her, I really did. And what she was saying sounded as if it might even be true. But my father and Corinne had left me with a deeply engrained need to always look for the rest of the story... the untold part where the guilt is lurking in the shadows. It was a self-preservation thing really. Because experience had taught me that there, in the murkiness of the not telling, that was where the betrayal always happened.

  I pretended I believed her. It felt easier for now.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ I asked.

  ‘Because Su asked me not to.’

  ‘Oh... right...’ Whatever Turner had or hadn’t missed out, it felt unbearable to think that Mary had been depressed so deeply and for so long and none of her friends had even bothered to notice. A lump was forming itself in my throat. I tried hard to refocus my eyes, which were aching anyway from the strain of trying to hold back tears. I could feel pain radiating down my windpipe and into my chest, strangling me. A pathetic little sound escaped from me – half sob, half hiccup. I clamped my hands over my mouth to smother it.

  I felt Turner glancing across at me. �
�It’s better to let it out,’ she said, sounding like someone who knew the theory, even if they weren’t actually all that great on the practice.

  We were turning off onto the A12. I still had no idea at all of where we might be going.

  I sobbed miserably.

  She pulled some clean tissues out of her pocket.

  ‘Here,’ she said, handing them to me.

  I snuffled into them gratefully. They smelt of her. I was glad of that.

  ‘How have you been?’ I asked after I’d blown my nose and hopefully mopped most of the tears and snot away. I felt a desperate need suddenly, to shift the subject away from Mary.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘How are things with Adam?’

  She laughed, bitterly.

  ‘Oh, Adam’s having a wonderful time,’ she said. ‘He’s enjoying the opportunity to indulge some of his contempt for me – He even suggested making love last night.... though, of course, that’s not quite how he put it – He wants rather more of my money than he’s entitled to, and he imagines he’s going to have lots of fun getting his hands on it... Arrogance and greed have always been his biggest weaknesses. He consistently overestimates how clever he is and he always wants more than he deserves.’

  The light was watery and grey. Turner’s face was shadowed, her long eyelashes flickering over eyes clouded with the look I never could decipher.

  I touched her hand at the wheel, clumsily.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It must be hard.’

  ‘I actually feel surprisingly indifferent to it all,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I’d prefer not to talk about that bastard... How about you? Ros tells me your mum’s getting re-married soon.’

  I remembered guiltily that I still hadn’t spoken to Mum and vowed to myself that I’d make the call the very first time we stopped.