But Jenna thought she knew.
‘Don’t ask me, please. I can’t tell you. I wish there was something I could do.’
The young woman dissolved into sobs and Jenna, who had wanted to hate and condemn her, found that she couldn’t. She was a confused kid, who’d got in too deep, and couldn’t find a way out. Just like Jason. Just like all of us.
‘I wish there was, too,’ said Jenna, gently. ‘Because then you won’t have to go through your entire life knowing that you’ve sold someone you love down the river for the price of a karaoke rig.’
She stood up and walked away. Now it was up to Mia to come back to her.
But if she didn’t feel she could confess, there was one other new, and rather disturbing, avenue to explore …
The explorations would have to wait until later, though, because when she arrived home, Jason ran down the staircase to meet her waving the newspaper she had delivered daily.
‘Guess who’s in the fucking Times?’ he opened, and he didn’t sound happy about whoever or whatever it was.
‘What is it? Show me.’
He marched into the kitchen and laid the broadsheet out flat on the table, tearing through it until he reached the Arts pages.
‘Voi-fucking-là,’ he said, stabbing a forefinger directly in the photographed face of Tabitha Lightfoot. Beneath the headline, taking up the top third of the page, was one of the pictures Jenna had taken to show her at the gallery.
‘Oh, God,’ said Jenna. ‘She never told me she was going to …’
She exchanged a look of dismay with a smouldering Jason.
‘Are you sure about that?’ he said. ‘Sure you didn’t cook it up between you? Get your little project off the ground?’
‘Quite sure, thanks,’ said Jenna, bristling at the implication that Jason thought she had learned nothing from their earlier disagreement on the subject. ‘Let me read it. OK. It seems to have started life as a straightforward profile of Tabitha, but taken a turn somewhere into this mystery artist thing. Oh, Tabitha. I know you need publicity, but …’
‘Jen, if someone recognises my work, she’s going to have the boys in blue round there. It’ll lead straight here. Fuck. I’m done for. I might as well go and give myself up.’
‘Christ,’ said Jenna. ‘What can we do? There must be something. I’ll call her.’
‘What, and tell her to lie to the police? You can’t ask her to do that.’
‘I can ask her, Jason. I can’t make her, that’s all.’
‘It won’t make any difference.’ He was shouting now, but Jenna still punched the number into her phone, wondering if she’d be able to string a sentence together when Tabitha answered.
‘Oh, do what you want, I’m going to pack a bag,’ he said, banging the table with his fist before storming out.
But his fist was not the only banging to be heard.
Jenna pressed End Call before Tabitha could answer, horrified by the hammering at the door. Was it the police already? Could it be?
‘Let them in,’ shouted Jason from the landing. ‘What’s the use? I’ve got “jailbird” stamped on my forehead already.’
‘But—’
Jenna stood in the hallway, paralysed with dread, until she heard a voice call her name.
Not the police.
Without stopping to think, she opened the door.
‘Lawrence. I want to talk to you.’
‘And I want to talk to you. I hear you’ve been quite the private eye, around the estate.’