There were no sandwiches on Thursday evening.
Vivienne had put out tea, but only three cups. Priya was working late. Beth had decided not to come, and nobody had tried to persuade her.
Celia stood when I entered, then sat again as though she couldn’t remember what greeting was appropriate.
“Thank you.”
“You said you wanted to explain something.”
Vivienne closed the sitting-room door. I wished she’d left it open, though there was no one else in the house except Peter upstairs on a call.
Celia looked at the cups.
“I didn’t collect George’s book that night.”
The sentence was plain. For a moment it seemed almost disappointing after everything around it.
“Then why did you say you were going to?” I asked.
“Because I needed to go out.”
“Where?”
“I’ve spoken to the police.”
That could have been an answer to a different question.
Vivienne leaned forward.
“Celia has been under a great deal of pressure.”
“So have you,” I said. “You haven’t asked me here to explain why you invented an errand.”
Vivienne looked away.
Celia’s hands were clenched on her lap. She opened them deliberately.
“It was private. I didn’t want everyone knowing what I was dealing with.”
Upstairs, Peter laughed at something on his call. The sound made Celia glance towards the ceiling.
“Can he hear us?”
“No,” Vivienne said, then corrected herself. “Not ordinary conversation.”
She went to the doorway and asked him to close his study door. He did, calling down an apology. It was considerate and perfectly normal, but I saw how much effort Celia was putting into controlling who might know what she said.
“We can meet somewhere else,” I offered.
“No. Here is fine.”
She had chosen the house and asked for the meeting. Still, she looked trapped by both. I wondered how often people invited an explanation when what they really wanted was the discomfort to disappear.
Vivienne returned and poured the tea. She asked whether Celia wanted the window shut. Celia nodded. The room became warmer, quieter and no easier to sit in.
“You could have said you had something private to do.”
“Would that have stopped the questions?”
I thought about our street, about all the ways concern could become permission to pry.
“Perhaps not.”
She seized on the concession.
“Exactly. I made it sound ordinary. That’s all.”
“Where you went is still ordinary information for the people investigating Martin’s death.”
“I know that.”
Her voice rose. Peter’s voice paused overhead, then resumed more quietly.
“I’m not asking you to explain it to me if you don’t want to,” I said. “But I can’t tell anyone the bookshop account was true.”
“I haven’t asked you to.”
“Then what do you need from me?”
She stared at me as though the question itself was unreasonable.
“For you to remember I’m your friend.”
We had known each other three weeks. She had fed my daughter, defended Beth’s choice of accommodation and made a strange house feel welcoming. Those things mattered. They did not tell me where she’d been.
“I remember.”
“It doesn’t sound like it.”
Vivienne touched her arm.
“Nobody’s accusing you of anything.”
That wasn’t quite true. I was accusing her of giving us a false reason for leaving. It was smaller than murder and larger than nothing.
I said so, as gently as I could.
Celia began to cry.
The room changed around the tears. Vivienne fetched tissues. I moved the tea closer. For several minutes, practical kindness returned us to familiar positions.
It would have been easy to let the question disappear there.
I waited until Celia could speak again.
“What have you told the police?”
“That I didn’t get the book.”
“And where you went?”
She nodded without looking at me.
I could not verify that. I did not pretend otherwise.
“Then they’ll speak to whoever they need to.”
She wiped her face. Vivienne began talking about the strain the enquiry was placing on everybody. I listened long enough to understand that we were moving away from the reason I’d been invited.
“I should go.”
At the door, Celia asked whether I would tell Beth.
“About the errand?”
“About tonight. About me crying.”
“I won’t discuss your crying. If I’m asked about what you’ve told me, I’ll be accurate.”
She looked dissatisfied with the distinction.
Outside, the air was cold enough to clear my head. I stopped beneath a streetlamp and wrote a brief note of the conversation while I could still separate Celia’s words from Vivienne’s explanations.
At home, I rang the contact number I’d been given and passed on the relevant part: Celia had told me her errand was false. I did not add a theory about where she had been.
When I put down the phone, Tom asked if I wanted dinner kept warm.
“Please.”
For once, it was a question I could answer without deciding what kind of person the answer made me.