Vivienne called on Friday with a voice that had lost its usual layers of preparation.
“Could you come over? I need somebody to look at something.”
“What?”
“The book order.”
I was free for an hour before collecting Poppy from school. I told her that, and she said it would be enough.
Her laptop stood on the dining table. Beside it lay a printed order confirmation from Bell’s Books.
“I placed the order,” she explained. “Celia said she’d handle getting it here. The confirmation came to me, but I hadn’t looked at the delivery bit.”
She turned the screen towards me.
The email described a local delivery made on Tuesday, 20 October. Two days before the death. It was addressed to Celia’s house.
“Have you checked it’s the same book?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Not another order?”
She pointed to the order number. It matched the earlier confirmation.
I read the dates again. There was no special skill involved. The difficulty was in accepting what such a small fact did to an evening we thought we understood.
“The police asked me about it,” Vivienne said. “I told them I thought she’d collected it. Then I searched my emails.”
“Have you given them this?”
“Yes. This morning.”
She folded the printed page along an existing crease.
“I wanted to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding.”
“It says it was delivered on Tuesday.”
“I can read, Nora.”
“I know.”
She pulled up the earlier order. It showed the same title, the same quantity and the small message we’d agreed for George. Vivienne had paid for it herself and collected the contributions separately, so there was no question of this being one of the fund’s disputed purchases.
“I’ve checked the payment too,” she said. “I didn’t want you thinking—”
She stopped.
“I wasn’t thinking that.”
“Everyone is thinking something.”
I sat beside her rather than opposite.
“This is one order,” I said. “We can keep it to that.”
She nodded. For a few minutes we checked only what was there: a book, a payment, an address and two dates that would not move, however often we looked at them.
We sat in silence. From the garden came the scrape of a branch against the window.
“She told me it was a private matter,” Vivienne said.
“She told me too.”
“People are allowed private matters.”
“Yes.”
“Then perhaps that’s all.”
I looked at the order again. It proved a false errand. It did not prove anything about the hall or Martin or the space between Celia leaving and returning.
“Perhaps,” I said. “But we don’t get to decide that by wanting it.”
Vivienne rubbed her eyes.
“She’s done so much.”
I knew she was remembering lifts, hospital visits, meals. I remembered them too, although I had seen only a fraction.
“Those things still happened.”
“Then why does this feel as though somebody’s taken them away?”
I had no answer that didn’t sound rehearsed.
Her phone rang. It was Priya. Vivienne asked whether I minded staying while she spoke and put the call on speaker after telling Priya I was there.
They discussed the two receipts. Helen had agreed to provide the copies directly. Priya wanted to see the accompanying explanation, not just the documents being challenged.
“I don’t want to review half a disagreement,” she said.
“I’ll forward the correspondence.”
It was the most useful thing I’d heard Vivienne promise, because it named something she could actually do.
After the call, she opened her email and sent it while I was still there.
“There.”
Not triumph. Exhaustion.
I helped her clear the cups. On the kitchen windowsill, a little plant had dried at the edges. Vivienne touched a leaf, then turned the pot so the damage faced outside.
I almost said something about watering it. I was learning to recognise moments when advice was just another way of avoiding a difficult silence.
At the front door, she asked whether we ought to ask Celia together where she had gone.
“She’s been asked by the police,” I said. “We aren’t another interview team.”
“I want to know as her friend.”
“Then ask as her friend. Don’t ask us to supply the answer between us.”
Vivienne nodded slowly.
On the walk to school, I received a message from Celia.
I know you’ve seen the delivery email. Can we speak tomorrow? Just you.
I stopped before replying.
Thursday’s lie had been exposed by Tuesday’s ordinary delivery. There was no clever mechanism, no secret code, just an email nobody had thought to read closely.
I wrote back that I could meet in the morning.
Then I asked the question I should have made explicit sooner.
Is there something about Martin you need to tell me?
For several minutes, no answer came.