Irene hauled herself out of her chair and tottered into the kitchen, where she forced herself to drink a glass of water while consuming two and a half rather stale chocolate digestives. Then she made herself a cup of tea, to which she added two heaped teaspoons of sugar, and drank that too. She waited a few minutes for the rush of sugar and carbohydrate to take effect, and thus fortified, she picked up her handbag and the keys to number three, opened her front door, walked a few paces round to the left, and knocked, as firmly as her small and arthritic hands would allow, on Angela’s front door.
As she’d expected, there was no answer, so she slipped the key into the lock and opened the door.
“Carla?” she called out as she stepped into the hall. “Carla, it’s Irene, I need to speak to you—”
“I’m here.” Carla’s voice was loud and alarmingly close; it seemed to come out of the air, out of nowhere. Irene started back in fright, almost tripping over the threshold. “Up here,” Carla said, and Irene inched forward, raising her eyes toward the source of the voice. Carla sat at the top of the stairs like a child escaped from bed, picking fibers from the carpet. “When you’ve said whatever it is you want to say, you can just drop that key off in the kitchen,” she said, without looking at Irene. “You’ve no right to let yourself into this house whenever you feel like it.”
Irene cleared her throat. “No,” she agreed, “I suppose I don’t.” She approached the staircase and, placing one hand on the banister, bent down to drop the keys onto the third step. “There you are,” she said.
“Thank you.” Carla stopped plucking carpet fibers for a moment and raised her gaze to meet Irene’s. She looked awful, blighted, her skin gray and her eyes bloodshot. “There are journalists outside my house,” she said in a small, peevish voice, “and Theo’s place is being ripped apart by the police. That’s why I’m here. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
Irene opened her handbag, peered into it, fumbling about with its contents. “Do you have something else for me, Irene?” Carla asked. She sounded ragged, raw-throated. “Because if you don’t, I’d really rather—”
Irene pulled from her bag the two little jewelry boxes, the one with the Saint Christopher’s medal and the one with the ring. “I thought you’d want these back,” she said quietly, placing them on the third stair next to the key.
“Oh—” Carla’s mouth fell open. “His Saint Christopher!” She scrambled to her feet, almost tumbling down the stairs to fall upon the little box, picking it up and clutching it to her. “You found it,” she said, smiling at Irene through tears. “I can’t believe you found it.” She reached for Irene’s hand, but Irene stepped smartly away.
“I didn’t find it,” Irene said in a measured tone. “It was given to me. By Laura. Laura Kilbride? Does that name mean anything to you?” But Carla was barely listening; she was sitting again, on the third step now, with the jewelry box open on her lap. She took the little gold token and turned it over in her fingers, pressed it to her lips. Irene watched her, grimly fascinated by the peculiar pantomime of devotion. She wondered if Carla had quite lost her mind.
“Laura?” Irene said again. “The girl who was arrested? The medal and the ring, they were in the bag that Laura stole from you. Carla? Does any of this mean anything to you?” Still, nothing. “You left the bag here, right here, in this hallway. The door was open. Laura saw it, and she snatched the bag. She felt bad about it, so she returned the things to me, only . . . oh, for God’s sake. Carla!” she snapped, and Carla looked up at her, surprised.
“What?”
“Are you really going to do this? Are you going to sit here and feign oblivion? Are you really going to let him take the blame?”
Carla shook her head, her eyes returning to the gold medal. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.
“Theo didn’t kill that boy,” Irene said. “You did. You killed Daniel.” Carla blinked slowly. When she looked back up at Irene her eyes were glassy and still, her face impassive. “You killed Daniel, and you were going to let Laura take the fall, weren’t you? You were going to let an innocent girl pay for what you did. Did you know”—Irene’s voice rose, trembled—“did you know that she was hurt while she was on remand? Did you know that she’s been so badly injured they had to take her to hospital?”