Vivienne completed her account on Sunday after Christmas. She told me afterwards, not before, which I took as progress in itself.
“I didn’t want you checking it into something more comfortable,” she said.
“I might not have made it comfortable.”
“No. But I might have tried to make you.”
We were walking to the postbox with cards that should have gone days earlier. The street was quiet, its bins full of evidence that everybody had eaten and unwrapped more than intended.
She had used messages and her own records to distinguish the original date heading from the later additions. Where she could establish a day, she gave it. Where she could not, she said so. She described Celia’s suggestion that twenty past sounded right, the purpose she had wanted the notes to serve and the people who had seen them.
“I also told them I wanted something that looked firmer than my memory was.”
She posted an envelope and kept her hand against the flap for a moment.
“That was the sentence I kept avoiding.”
I didn’t soften it for her.
Her first correction had acknowledged the additions. This account set out the process in greater detail and made her own intention less flattering. She had obtained legal advice about her position and was cooperating with the separate questions about her conduct. She did not expect an apology to decide the legal consequences.
“Peter knows all of it now,” she said.
“How is he?”
“Angry that I thought he would prefer the edited version.”
We walked a few paces in silence.
“He’s also made lunch,” she added. “Apparently both are possible.”
I smiled, though she did not.
At the corner, she asked whether I remembered our first meeting at her house. The welcoming room, the books, the cake. I did.
“I was proud of making a place people wanted to come.”
“You did make one.”
“Then I started thinking their wanting it meant they needed me to decide how it worked.”
She looked towards number twelve. From this distance, the house was indistinguishable from other well-kept houses on the crescent.
“I don’t know when that happened.”
“You may not find a single date.”
She nodded. Dates had become important to her lately, perhaps because some things could be pinned down and others refused.
At home, I found a message from the officer asking to confirm one point about when Vivienne had shown me the notebook. I answered from my original note and the arranged visit message. I didn’t ring Vivienne to make sure our answers sounded alike.
The process felt colder than friendship until I remembered what our warm agreement had nearly done to the truth.
Later, Beth called to ask whether Vivienne had told her own account completely. I said Vivienne had informed me she had supplied a fuller explanation, but I had not read it or verified every part.
“That’s enough,” Beth said. “I don’t need a copy.”
She was spending the afternoon sorting business paperwork. The payment for the homewares launch had been confirmed under the agreed terms. She wanted to use part of it to reduce the private advance she’d received from Priya and me.
“There’s no need to rush because it’s Christmas,” I said.
“I’m not. I’m following the schedule.”
I apologised for trying to improve an arrangement that already worked.
The transfer arrived with a clear reference. I acknowledged it without adding a speech about how proud I was of her. Pride was real, but she wasn’t a child returning pocket money.
That evening, Vivienne sent one final message.
They have the original book and the account. I haven’t kept anything back because it made me look better.
I read it twice, then replied that I hoped she could rest for the evening.
She answered that she and Peter were watching a film neither of them had chosen particularly well.
I liked the ordinariness of that. Their evening did not have to become a reward for cooperation or a punishment for the past.
Before bed, I opened my own novel and read until I reached a disagreement the characters could not resolve. I left the bookmark there.
Vivienne had given the original notebook away without removing the pages that embarrassed her.
For the first time, the record no longer depended on her being the person who held it.