‘I want the names and contact details for your girlfriends, including Tempe Brown.’
‘They’re on my phone,’ I say. ‘But I’ll get them for you.’
I need time to talk to them; to discover exactly what happened at the nightclub and afterwards.
As the police car pulls away, I glance over my shoulder at the house. The detective is standing in the middle of the road, his hands pushed into his pockets, his coat flaring over his wrists, like a lone gunfighter, waiting for high noon.
50
Henry is in the back garden clearing away vines that are threatening to engulf the rear fence. His hair has grown fairer over the summer and needs to be trimmed before the wedding.
‘What happened last night?’ he asks, wiping his forehead with his forearm.
‘I told you. Tempe took me home.’
‘Did she give you that love bite?’
He puts his finger on my neck above my clavicle.
I touch the spot, but not his hand, which has moved away. I laugh, thinking it’s a joke, but Henry doesn’t join me. I want him to look at me, but his eyes keep pulling distractedly to the side.
‘Nothing happened,’ I say.
‘How can you be sure? You were drugged.’ He leans down and picks up a water bottle, turning his face up to the sunshine as he drinks. ‘Do they know who killed Goodall?’
‘No.’
‘Are you a suspect?’
‘I think so.’
Henry blows out his cheeks and a lock of his hair rises and falls on the current of air. ‘Did you tell them what Goodall did to you? How he ran you off the road and attacked your car.’
‘That’s what makes me a suspect.’
‘But you have Tempe as an alibi.’
I nod, uncertainly. He takes a seat on the low brick wall and asks me about the fire, taking a professional interest. Henry often talks about the nature of fire and how it reacts in given circumstances. Once, seven minutes deep into a burning building, his breathing apparatus began to whistle as he ran out of air. It hadn’t been filled properly. Henry survived by crawling beneath the worst of the smoke, navigating blindly, taking short breaths. He spent two days in hospital and didn’t tell me all the details until months afterwards because he was worried his lungs might have been permanently damaged.
‘How far did the fire spread?’ he asks.
‘Up the wall, but it didn’t get into the ceiling.’
‘What about the curtains?’
‘Burned.’
‘Were the windows smashed?’
‘Yes, but it could have been the water pressure from the hoses. I was amazed at how much soot was left behind.’
‘Was it sticky or dry?’
‘Why?’
‘There’s a difference between wet smoke and dry smoke. Wet smoke comes from burning plastics and rubber. Dry smoke comes from paper and wood. It burns at higher and faster temperatures. One leaves a pungent, almost sticky soot. The other leaves a dry soot, which is easier to wipe off.’
‘It was sticky.’
‘That was probably the mattress burning,’ he says.
‘It turned everything black – the walls, the floor, the furniture.’
I am picturing the room in my mind – completely devoid of colour except for the duckboards and our coveralls and the cushioned chair near the window.
‘Why would a cushion not get covered in soot?’ I ask.
Henry considers the question. ‘Something must have been resting on it.’
‘The police said they took nothing from the room.’
Henry pauses to think. In the silence, I can hear bees buzzing among the flowers and the distant sound of a hedge-trimmer. I keep picturing the geometric design on the cushion and everything else coated in soot. There is an answer, which almost eludes me because the idea seems too horrible to countenance.
‘Could someone have been sitting in the room while the bed was burning?’ I ask.
‘They would have left footprints,’ Henry says.
‘Which were obliterated by water and the boots of firefighters.’
‘They would have needed to stay below the smoke.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘Dangerous, but yes.’
I shudder at the thought of someone watching Goodall die; hearing his gagged screams as the fire engulfed his body. That level of hatred is almost incomprehensible.
‘Maybe it was your father,’ says Henry.
‘Why would you think that?’
‘You told me that he’d go to war.’
‘Not everything has to do with my family,’ I snap.
‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’
Even as he apologises, I feel a sudden gnawing doubt begin to spin inside my chest. My father knew that Goodall had threatened me. Maybe Finbar told him about the acid attack.
Henry has turned back to the vines. We’re only a few feet apart, but it feels like a huge gulf. I want to hug him. I want to press my face to his chest, and to stand motionless in the garden with his arms wrapped around me, while I shudder little sighs and let the world repair itself.
‘I have to go,’ I say.
‘Where?’
‘I need to talk to Carmen. I want to know what happened last night.’
‘Maybe you should stay home.’
I wait for an explanation, but his only response is a puzzled frown. ‘Every time you go charging off, you seem to make things worse. If you stopped … took a breath …’ He doesn’t finish.
‘I didn’t start this.’
‘You can walk away.’
‘It’s too late for that.’
His eyes have filled with a pained hope, and I realise how distant we’ve been. We used to talk about everything, chatting about friends, gossip and current affairs; swapping internet memes and cat videos. Binge-watching Bob’s Burgers and Fleabag on TV. All that has changed. I have changed.
I’m almost back at the house when he calls my name. ‘Tempe found your phone. It’s in the kitchen.’
‘Where was it?’
‘She didn’t say.’
My phone is plugged into a charger on the island bench. The screen shows a dozen missed messages, from Tempe and Henry and from the other girls. Georgia has sent me a drunken emoji. Why do other people find hangovers so amusing? I was drugged, not drunk, although I can’t be certain. My brain feels like a computer that has crashed. Eight hours are missing. Erased. Corrupted.
Carmen’s bookshop specialises in storybooks for children and has a reading corner with tiny tables and chairs in primary colours. Her young assistant is dressed up like Alice in Wonderland, but I’m not sure if it’s her normal fashion choice or a costume. Carmen is out back, ‘doing the returns’。
She hears my voice and emerges, wiping ink from her fingers. I pull her back into her office, which is barely big enough for both of us.
‘What happened last night?’
‘Why?’
‘I woke up this morning at Tempe’s flat. I can’t remember getting there.’
Carmen seems ready to make a joke, but stops herself. ‘You seemed to be having a great time, dancing and drinking. The life and soul.’
‘Who was I dancing with?’
‘Loads of people.’
‘Who invited Tempe?’