The officer who took my supplementary account asked me to distinguish the words I had read from the conversation afterwards.
I had expected that to be easy. Within ten minutes I understood why she was asking.
“She said Celia supplied the time,” I began.
“Those were her words?”
I stopped.
“No. She said Celia said twenty past sounded right.”
The officer waited while I looked at the note I’d made after leaving Vivienne’s. I could hear a printer working in the adjoining room. Every ordinary sound made me aware of the seriousness of having my account recorded.
“I interpreted that as the source of the time,” I said. “But I didn’t witness the conversation between them.”
She recorded the distinction.
We went through what I remembered of the notebook on the twenty-second. The date at the top. Vivienne writing briefly. The book closed. I could not say the page had remained blank after that. I had been listening to Beth, carrying cups, thinking about Poppy’s bedtime.
“And when did you first read the attendance paragraph?”
“Yesterday.”
I gave the date, then checked and signed the account.
Outside, I found three messages on my phone. One was from school about a missing scarf. One was a parcel notification. The third was from Celia.
Vivienne says you have made another statement. Could you have spoken to us first?
I stood beside the station wall until the screen went dark.
Then I wrote that I had described my own observations. I didn’t need a group discussion to do that.
Her reply arrived before I reached the crossing.
No one suggested a group discussion. It would have been courteous.
At the library, Marianne asked whether I needed a quieter task that afternoon. I chose the returns desk. Books had disagreements too, but generally kept them between their covers.
A boy brought back a cookbook with flour in the spine. An older man wanted the same thriller he’d borrowed the month before because he couldn’t remember the murderer. I envied him the choice of learning a difficult fact again from the beginning.
At three, Beth called during my break.
“Vivienne told me.”
I shut the staffroom door.
“About the notebook?”
“She said she wanted to protect me.”
“What did you say?”
“That she could start by not writing a better version of my evening.”
There was a rustle, then the click of a mug on a hard surface.
“I feel dreadful,” Beth added.
“For saying it?”
“For how upset she was. Which is ridiculous, because I’m angry as well.”
“Were you meant to thank her?”
She laughed briefly.
“Apparently. I’ve also got a client who wants a white display changed to silver by tomorrow. At least I can charge her.”
We talked about the display for a few minutes. I knew almost nothing about event lighting, which made it pleasant to be consulted without the fate of a friendship resting on my answer.
After work I stopped at the bakery. Celia was ahead of me in the queue.
She saw me, paid for her loaf and waited outside. I considered staying to buy something complicated. There was nothing on the shelves capable of taking long enough.
“I wasn’t asking you to lie,” she said when I came out.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Then why make it sound as though speaking to us would contaminate you?”
“I wanted to give my account before discussing it again. That isn’t an accusation.”
She shifted the loaf under her arm.
“Everything feels like one lately.”
A cyclist rang his bell at someone stepping into the road. Celia flinched, then looked embarrassed.
“I’m sorry it’s frightening,” I said.
“Are you?”
I did not answer with a promise to make it less frightening. That was the promise she seemed to want.
She turned towards home without saying goodbye.
At school, Poppy’s scarf was in the lost-property box beneath a pair of enormous trousers. I found a damp leaf stuck to the wool.
“You found it,” she said, and ran to show Sophie.
I stood holding her bag until she remembered I was there.