I told Beth about Celia’s visit because she asked whether I had heard from her, and because I was tired of important facts travelling disguised as protection.
We were walking beside the river on Thursday morning. Beth had an hour before a meeting. The path was wet, and a dog ahead of us was doing everything possible to avoid being returned to its lead.
“She said she touched him after he was hurt,” I said. “I don’t know more than that.”
Beth stopped walking.
“She was there?”
“That’s what she told me.”
She watched the dog’s owner crouch with a biscuit held out.
“Did she call anyone?”
“She didn’t say she did.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know. It’s the answer I have.”
Beth started walking again, faster now. I kept beside her without reaching for her arm.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel about that,” she said. “I didn’t want to go back to him. I wanted him to stop calling. But if he was lying there—”
She stopped the sentence herself.
Across the river, a man was painting a café door a cheerful green. He had reached a point where opening it would ruin his work. A customer waited uncertainly behind the glass.
“You don’t have to decide all your feelings today,” I said.
“Everyone says that. Then they watch to see which one happens.”
I apologised. She shook her head and kept going.
Before we parted, she said she would put her questions to the officer who was keeping her informed. She didn’t ask me to extract an answer from Celia.
I had no intention of trying. Then Celia rang that afternoon.
“Beth won’t answer me.”
“She’s working.”
“I know you spoke to her.”
“Yes.”
“What did you tell her?”
I repeated the substance of our conversation. Celia listened in silence.
“Now she’ll think I left him to die.”
“She wanted to know whether help was called.”
A long pause followed. I could hear traffic at Celia’s end, then a door closing.
“I panicked,” she said.
I sat on the bottom stair.
“Is that what you’ve told the police?”
“Yes. I was frightened. He’d been threatening me. I couldn’t think properly.”
“Threatening you about what?”
“Everything was going to be my fault. That’s what he made it feel like.”
The answer described a feeling without identifying the threat. I knew that feeling could be real. I also knew I still didn’t have the fact I’d asked for.
“Celia, I can’t sort this out for you.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“You rang because Beth isn’t answering. I won’t persuade her to speak to you.”
She made a small sound, more tired than angry.
“Would you have known what to do?”
I thought of emergency numbers, of all the obvious answers available to a woman sitting safely on her stairs. Then I thought of the things people did in fear that made no sense afterwards.
“I hope I’d have called for help. I can’t tell you exactly how I’d have reacted.”
“Then don’t judge me for not being brave.”
I looked at the muddy print Poppy’s shoe had left against the wall.
“Not calling doesn’t tell me who hurt him,” I said. “But it still matters that he needed help.”
She ended the call soon afterwards. I recorded what she’d said, taking care not to turn the unspecified threats into a story of my own.
That evening there was no book meeting. Vivienne sent a short message confirming it, although nobody had expected one. I put my unread novel beside the sofa and attempted to make supper.
Tom came home late. He apologised while searching a drawer for the bottle opener.
“Strange day at work?” I asked.
“Busy. There’s something we need to discuss, actually. Properly, when things calm down.”
I nearly laughed.
“We might have to accept improperly.”
He smiled but did not explain. Poppy called from upstairs because the bath water was getting cold. He went to her, taking the conversation with him.
My phone lit up beside the chopping board.
It was Vivienne. A woman had contacted her about help with transport to a temporary job. The application had arrived through the fund’s old email address.
I don’t know what we’re allowed to promise, she wrote.
I looked at the message while the onions began to catch in the pan.
Somewhere in town, a woman needed to get to work on Monday.
Our doubts had acquired a deadline.
I turned off the hob and rang Vivienne. She started explaining what she normally authorised, how small the sum would be, how difficult it was to leave somebody waiting.
“Have you answered her?” I asked.
“Only to say we received it.”
“Then tell her there’s a problem with the fund. Ask whether she’d like information about other help while we establish what we can do.”
“She’ll think we’ve let her down.”
“Perhaps we have. She still needs enough information to make another plan.”