‘I’m about half way through, I think.’
‘Hmm.’ Holden continued to flick through the pages. ‘It’s just that I can’t find a bookmark. Don’t you use one?’
There was the briefest of pauses before Bella replied. ‘Not a bookmark as such. Usually just a scrap of paper.’
‘There’s no scrap of paper.’
‘It must have fallen out.’
‘That’s awkward for you.’
‘Not really. I know where I got to. I’m at “Yet”.’
‘Sorry?’ Holden looked at her hard. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that I’ve reached the chapter called “Yet”.’ She paused, enjoying the confusion in the detective’s eyes. ‘All the chapters have strange names, like “Wherein” and “Otherwise”. I’m at “Yet”.’
Holden ate at her mother’s flat again that night. It was becoming one-way traffic. She couldn’t remember when she had last cooked for her mother. She had taken her out to the new restaurant on Folly Bridge a couple of weekends previously, but she hadn’t actually cooked for her for ages. Whereas her mother had fed her at the drop of a hat last Friday, and had then rung her up on Sunday and invited her round for Tuesday. It was strange how they had slipped back into the role of mother and daughter. Only to describe it as slipping back wasn’t quite accurate. It had been with her father that she’d had the stronger – and more troubled – relationship as a girl and then, as a teenager. When he’d died, she and her mother had found themselves washed up high and dry with only each other for support. It hadn’t taken long for this enforced closeness to have its consequences: Susan had moved to Oxford, leaving her mother to fend for herself. When she had thought about it – and that hadn’t been often – Susan had felt ashamed of herself. And it was because of that shame that she had eventually, on one of her rare visits home, suggested that her mother might like to move into one of the rather smart retirement flats in Grandpont, a stone’s throw from where she herself lived. To her surprise, her mother had agreed, and six months later they had become almost neighbours. And then they had begun the awkward process of rebuilding their relationship.
‘Ah, there you are.’ Her mother opened the door, a smile on her face. ‘Look at you!’
‘It’s been a bit of a day.’ They exchanged kisses and Susan kicked off her pumps.
‘Supper’s almost ready. Why don’t you unwind in front of the telly?’
Susan dutifully moved through to the drawing room, turned the television on, and slumped down on the sofa. Her mother had been an absolute brick since Karen’s death. Her own suspension from work had followed, and then an extended break on medical grounds, and through all that desperate time her mother had been there for her. Feeding her, ringing her, calling round. The old Susan would have rebelled at the unwanted intrusion, but the fact was she couldn’t get enough of being mothered. She had not had it for so long. She had fought against it all through her teenage years, and now extraordinarily she needed it more than she could ever have imagined. She felt tears welling up. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, and unconvincingly told herself to take a grip.
They ate in virtual silence, punctuated by only the occasional comment: ‘Pass the pepper, would you?’ ‘This is very good, Mother.’ ‘It’s nice to have someone to cook for.’ Afterwards, Susan cleared the table, putting the dirty things in the dishwasher, and then she retreated again to the sofa, until her mother brought the coffee through.
‘So,’ her mother said, when they were both settled, ‘how was your day?’
‘Where to begin?’ Susan balanced her mug on her lap. Now that she had eaten and unwound, she was more th
an ready to answer questions. It was good to have someone to use as a sounding board, and sometimes – as she knew from experience – her mother could be really quite perceptive.
The day had begun, of course, with Wilson and Lawson overhearing that lively encounter between Bella Sinclair and Peter Greenleaf. She recounted this to her mother, and then her own interviews of the two, with Greenleaf claiming that they had had a brief affair which he had terminated, and then adding the damning allegation that Bella was a pathological liar.
‘Do you believe him?’
‘I don’t want to believe him, and yet …’ She tailed off, not finishing her sentence, took another sip of coffee, and then described her own conversation with Bella about the book Unless.
Mrs Holden frowned. ‘I take it that you don’t think that Bella was in the middle of reading that book?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘So maybe Greenleaf is right, and she is a pathological liar. Or,’ she continued, raising her finger like a schoolteacher making a point, ‘she was lying about the book because she was trying to distract you from something else she had removed from the locker.’ Mrs Holden gave the smile of someone suddenly rather pleased with herself. ‘You didn’t search her did you, by any chance?’
‘I had no grounds.’
‘What about the ring she showed you?’
‘It was a nice enough ring, but not exactly a knuckle duster.’
‘That was probably to distract you too. I bet there was something else she removed from the locker. Some incriminating bit of evidence. The packaging of the morphine that she gave to the old woman, for example.’
‘Mother! That’s pure speculation.’
‘Maybe, but hasn’t the thought occurred to you?’