He snatches the ticket the machine spits out, and stares at it.
Time seems to slow down as I wait for him to turn around or say something, but he doesn’t. I don’t know what this means.
“Well?” I ask eventually.
“It’s yesterday’s date; the machine is broken.”
“Is that your idea of an apology?”
He turns to face me.
“No. Unlike you, I don’t have anything to apologize for. You shouldn’t be here. I realized a long time ago that your career means more to you than people do. More than your mother, more than me, more than—”
“Fuck you.”
The tears come fast, bursting over the banks of my eyelids. I feel ridiculous for thinking it, given how much I hate him right now, but I want him to hold me. I just wish that someone would hold me and tell me that everything is going to be okay. It doesn’t have to be true. I’d just like to remember what that feels like.
“You’re too close to this. I’m not sure it’s right for you to be reporting on this murder.”
“I’m not sure it’s right for you to be trying to solve it,” I reply, wiping my tears away with the back of my hand.
“Why don’t you just do us both a favor, and go back to London? Sit in that studio, like you always dreamed of?”
“I lost my job presenting the program.”
I don’t know why I tell him; I didn’t plan to. Perhaps I just needed to tell one person the truth about what has happened, but I regret it immediately. The brave face I have been wearing slips, and I hate the way he is looking at me now. I prefer wonder to pity. People who get to know the real me are the ones I need to learn to hide from the most.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I know how much the job meant to you,” he says, and his words sound genuine.
“How’s Zoe?” I ask, unable to hide my resentment.
His face resets itself. The woman my ex-husband now lives with was also an old school friend of mine, just like Rachel Hopkins. I’ve seen pictures of Zoe and Jack playing happy families on social media, although I wish I hadn’t. She posts them, not him. The little girl posing between them a constant reminder of who we used to be, and who we could have been if life had unfolded differently.
“I hope you’re all very happy together.”
My words sound insincere, even though I meant them.
“Why do you always do that? You talk about Zoe as though she’s some woman I left you for. She’s my sister, Anna.”
“She’s a selfish, lazy, manipulative bitch, who caused nothing but problems before, during, and after our marriage.”
I’m as surprised by my outburst as he looks.
“You haven’t changed at all, despite everything, have you?” he says. “You can’t keep blaming everyone else for what happened to us. Maybe if you’d ever worried about us, as much as you worry about what other people think, your work and all this, things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did—”
I lift my hands, as though to cover my ears before he can say our daughter’s name, but he grabs my wrist and stares at it.
“What is that?”
I look at the twisted plait of red and white. I’ve been so busy I forgot I was wearing the friendship bracelet I found earlier. I try to shrug him off but he tightens his grip.
“Where did you get this from?” he asks, his voice no longer hushed.
“What is it to you?”
He lets go and takes a small step back before asking his next question.
“When did you last see Rachel?”
“Why? Am I a suspect again?”
He doesn’t answer and I dislike the way he is looking at me now even more than before.
“I haven’t seen Rachel Hopkins since I left school,” I tell him.
But it’s a lie. I saw her much more recently than that. I watched her get off a train less than twenty-four hours ago.
Him
Tuesday 14:30
I know that Anna is lying.
The drive back to the station is a blur, trying to piece together the parts of the puzzle that don’t fit. I still haven’t eaten anything today. The fingernails inside the Tic Tac box, along with the visit to the mortuary, have successfully put me off food for the foreseeable future. I’m already halfway through my packet of cigarettes, and while they help calm my nerves, they do nothing to ease my guilt.
I can’t stop thinking about the friendship bracelet on Anna’s wrist, the look on her face when I asked her about it, or the way she refused to explain where it had come from. It was exactly the same as the one tied around Rachel’s tongue.