“Someone has found out,” Laura said, her voice small. “You have.”
Irene rolled her eyes; she felt quite cross. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous, I’m not about to call the police, am I? And none of that explains all this,” Irene said, waving her hand in Laura’s direction. “None of it explains the state you’re in now.”
“Oh, well.” Laura sat back down, crossing her legs. “There’s this woman, you see, who lives in one of the boats on the canal, and I know her a bit because she comes in the launderette sometimes. Her name’s Miriam, and she’s a bit weird, she looks weird, you know, like she’s always wearing a few too many clothes, do you know what I mean? In any case, she’s the one who found Daniel, found his body I mean, she was the one who called the police, and then the other day, she showed up outside the launderette, and I was in a bit of a state, nothing terrible, just . . . you know.” Irene didn’t know; she had no idea what Laura was talking about. “Anyway, so I went round to her place, to her boat, you see, because I owed her an apology—it’s a long story, you don’t really have to know about all this, but the point is, the point is, when I got to the boat, I found out that she had the key to my flat.”
“She had your key?”
“Exactly! Remember I said I lost it, well she had it.”
“And she gave it back to you?” Irene wasn’t really understanding the point of this story.
“No, no, she didn’t give it to me. She hid it from me. I found it in her boat, I was looking through her things, you see—”
“You were looking for something to steal!” Irene said.
“Yes, all right, I was, but that’s not the point, is it? The point is she had my key. And so when I found it, we had a bit of a . . . well . . .”
“An altercation?”
“Exactly.”
“And she hit you? This woman hit you? Gave you that bruise?”
Laura shook her head. “There was a bit of pushing and shoving. I was basically trying to get out of there, and I tripped. I fell.”
“Do you think we ought to be calling the police, Laura? I mean, if this woman has your key, then . . .”
“Oh, no—I have the key now.” She delved into her jeans pocket and pulled it out, along with one gold earring, which she peered at, before stuffing it back into her pocket. “I have the key, and I have this as well.” From the pile where she’d emptied out her backpack, she took a sheaf of papers, a bound manuscript, which she held out to Irene. “She gave me this—before we had our . . . whatchacallit, altercation, she gave me this. Her memoir,” Laura said, air-quoting with her fingers. “Suggested I read it. Which I’m never going to do. You might like it, though. It has a crime in it! She claims she was kidnapped by a madman when she was young. Or something like that, anyway.”
“Good grief,” Irene said, accepting the manuscript with both hands. “How extraordinary.” There was a sudden flash of light accompanied by a particularly vicious crack of thunder, which had them both ducking their heads.
“Fucking hell,” Laura said.
“Indeed,” Irene replied. “Do you know,” she said, “I think you ought to go upstairs and get out of those wet things, hang them in the airing closet, and run yourself a nice hot bath. I think you should stay here with me this afternoon, don’t you?”
Laura smiled, squeezing tears from her eyes. “I’d like that.”
* * *
Above the sound of the second downpour, Irene could hear Laura singing, her voice truer and sweeter than Irene would have imagined. She took her time; it was almost an hour before she came back downstairs, wrapped in a pink terry cloth robe that had been folded up in the airing cupboard, unused for the best part of a decade. Something about the sight of this tiny young woman in her old robe was extraordinarily touching to Irene. She felt a wave of emotion come over her, a feeling she imagined might almost be maternal.
She said none of this to Laura, who she suspected might be embarrassed by such a declaration. Instead, she said: “Do you know, it’s very odd, this book”—she brandished the manuscript Laura had brought with her—“this memoir. I was reading through it and—”
“You can’t have read it already,” Laura said, flinging herself lengthways onto the sofa and rearranging the cushions beneath her head.
“Well, I was just skimming through it—it’s actually not badly written, a little overwrought, perhaps—but the odd thing is that some parts of it feel terribly familiar, though of course the idea of someone escaping from a serial killer isn’t exactly original, only . . .” She tailed off, frowning, peering up at her bookshelves over the rim of her glasses. “There’s something that’s bothering me and I just can’t put my finger on what it is, I . . .”