By the time the police asked what we had been reading, Martin Lawson was dead and Vivienne had already answered three questions for the rest of us.
“Nothing particularly memorable,” she said.
The officer looked at the five books on the coffee table.
Five different books.
Across from me, Beth held a glass of water between her palms. She had not drunk any of it. Priya sat on the edge of her chair. Celia had stopped offering tea.
“And everyone was here throughout the evening?”
“We were all here,” Vivienne said.
It sounded close enough to the truth. Perhaps that was why nobody corrected her.
I looked at the officer’s notebook.
“Not throughout,” I said.
Vivienne turned towards me.
The officer waited.
“There were times when I couldn’t see everyone.”
Until that moment, I had thought being a good friend meant knowing when to keep quiet.
Two weeks earlier, on Thursday, 8 October, I found the invitation beneath a school permission slip and a leaflet about gutter cleaning.
MRS NORA ELLIS, it said.
Not Tom. Not The Occupier. Me.
The envelope was thick enough to suggest either a wedding or an expensive complaint. I opened it with a supermarket loyalty card.
This evening. Half past seven. Number Twelve.
Bring a book you would recommend.
Below that, in smaller handwriting:
Come as you are.
People who wrote that usually owned matching serving dishes.
“Neighbourhood thing?” Tom asked.
He was standing in the kitchen doorway, checking his phone before leaving for work.
“A book club.”
“Oh, good. I told the woman up the street you’d be interested.”
“You did?”
“You said you wanted to meet people.”
I had said I wanted more hours at the library. I had also said I missed conversations that did not begin with a request for clean socks. These were apparently the same ambition.
“Which woman?”
“Vivienne. Number Twelve.”
“And you told her I’d come?”
“I said you’d love it.”
He smiled, pleased to have removed a task from my life.
Our daughter appeared behind him wearing one shoe.
“Mummy, where’s the other one?”
“Under the dining table.”
“How do you know?”
It was an excellent question.
Elm Crescent curved around a strip of grass on which children were forbidden to play football. The sign stood at approximately child-eye level. The houses had pale doors and generous windows. Their bins disappeared before you could work out when collection day was.
We had moved in eleven days earlier.
Already, somebody had corrected our recycling.
At the library that afternoon, I repaired a picture book, explained the printer twice and found a novel for a man who remembered only that its cover was blue.
“You’re good at this,” my supervisor, Marianne, said.
“Identifying blue books?”
“Making people feel they haven’t asked a stupid question.”
She handed me next month’s rota.
“There may be another morning available. Would you want it?”
“Yes.”
The speed of my answer surprised us both.
“It would mean opening up,” she said. “Nine o’clock. Could you manage that?”
“I think so.”
“Let me know on Monday.”
For the rest of the shift, I carried the possibility around like something I had been given permission to keep.
At home, I put a shepherd’s pie in the oven and chose a book.
Then I changed the book.
The first was too earnest. The second suggested I wanted people to admire me. The third was one I actually liked, which ought to have simplified matters.
Poppy watched from the stairs.
“Is it homework?”
“No.”
“Then why are you worried?”
“I’m not worried.”
She looked at the three rejected books beside me and politely declined to argue.
Tom arrived at twenty past seven.
“You’re going out?”
“The book club.”
“Right. Tonight.”
I was wearing my good navy jumper.
“The pie needs ten more minutes. Poppy’s reading book is on the table.”
“I’ve got a call at eight.”
“Can it wait until she’s in bed?”
He glanced at his laptop bag.
“It’s work, Nora.”
“So was my afternoon.”
He looked at me properly then.
I nearly apologised. The words had already lined themselves up.
Instead, I picked up my book.
“I’ll be back around ten.”
Outside, the air smelled of rain and somebody else’s wood burner. Number Twelve was only six houses away, but I took the longer side of the crescent.
I wanted five minutes in which nobody needed me to know where anything was.
A woman in a green coat stood beside a parked car, holding a cardboard box.
“Number Twelve?” she asked.
“Is it that obvious?”
“You’ve brought a book.”
She had an open, bright face. Then her phone lit up and her expression changed.
“I’m Beth.”
“Nora.”
“Would you mind carrying this while I find my keys?”
The box was lighter than I expected. Through a loose flap I saw the edge of a picture frame.
Across the crescent, a man stepped out of a house.
“Beth?”
She took the box back before she had found the keys.
“Just going to Vivienne’s,” she called.
He watched us for another moment, then went inside.
Beth stood very still.
“Your husband?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Was he looking for something?”
“Probably.”
She shifted the box against her chest.
“If he asks you what I was carrying,” she said, “could you let me answer?”