I thought of what Peggy Nolan had said: there was a Hannah Flood, who used to be Skye’s friend; a Hannah Flood, who had a shop off Marylebone High Street selling candles. I googled the name and found nothing, and nothing about candles and Marylebone either. But it was my only possible connection so the next morning, after dropping Poppy off at school, I went there by bus and underground.
I wandered aimlessly up and down the neighbouring streets – past well-heeled houses, past shops that sold designer-wear and simple, scarily expensive pottery, a place that mended and sold violins, past little cobbled courtyards and a florist with its cool green interior beckoning. No candle shops, until I went down a narrow street whose apartment blocks blocked out the sky. A newsagent. A shop selling electrical items. A shop called Rainbow that sold aromatic oils and candles.
I stepped inside. There were pillar candles and taper candles and tea lights and floating candles and scented ones and ones carved into the shape of a skull, an elephant, a pyramid and a water lily. There was an incense stick burning on the wooden table that served as the counter and behind it stood a tall, strong-boned young woman. She wore a dress that looked like a tent and her brown hair, centrally parted, reached almost to her waist. Her face was a smooth, surprised oval.
‘Hannah?’ I asked.
‘Sorry, do I know you?’
‘Peggy Nolan told me you were a friend of her daughter Skye.’
Hannah Flood’s face closed down on me; became a blank surface. She looked down at her hands, which were resting on the table, and blinked several times.
‘Who are you?’ She seemed suspicious. Rightly.
‘My name’s Tess. I knew Skye a little bit and since her death I’ve met her mother and Charlie.’
‘You know Charlie?’
‘A bit.’
‘He’s nice. She should have stayed with him. I always told her that.’ Hannah gave a sigh, and her shoulders slumped. ‘But then, when did Skye ever listen to anything anyone told her?’
‘I’m trying to find out about her last few weeks and months,’ I said.
‘Are you a journalist?’ She was twisting a wooden bangle round and round on her wrist.
I told her my connection with Skye and she seemed convinced – or convinced enough.
‘I didn’t see her that much,’ she said wretchedly. ‘We’d drifted apart a bit. You’d think that would make it easier but it doesn’t. I wasn’t there when she needed me.’
‘Peggy said you knew her from when you were children?’
‘I never knew why she chose me. She was quick and clever and one of the popular ones. I was slow and clumsy and hated the way I looked. I was like a giant beside her. They called us Little and Large. She was the naughty one. She used to get me into such trouble.’ Hannah managed a smile at the memory of this.
‘And then?’
‘She went off the rails, but you probably heard about that. I tried to help, but she was difficult. She’d turn on me. She could be really cruel.
‘After she met Charlie, it got better for a bit. When I moved down to London, I saw her again. I’d see her from time to time. She was nicer to be around when she was with Charlie. She could be really generous. She’d see some madly expensive thing she thought I’d like and buy it without thinking about the price. She bought me a dressing gown once and a big book about trees. I love trees. I always did, even back when I was a kid.’
‘What went wrong?’
‘I don’t know. She got restless or bored. It’s like that saying, you don’t know what’s enough until you know what’s more than enough. For her it always had to be more than enough.’
‘Did you stay in touch?’
‘Just about.’ Hannah gave another sad smile. ‘I think I was too boring for her and she was too scary for me but we always kept a connection.’
‘When did you last see her?’
She thought for a moment. ‘About ten days before she died, I guess.’
‘How was she?’
‘She was fizzing and manic and it made me feel panicky just to be near her. If it sounds exciting, it wasn’t, it was horrible. I just wanted to get away from her.’ She caught her lower lip between her teeth and screwed up her face, hearing her words. ‘Like it was catching or something.’
‘What did she talk about?’
‘Dogs,’ said Hannah bitterly. ‘And how she wanted to be a foster parent, which was ridiculous. She couldn’t even look after herself. And the old days a bit, when we were kids and she got me into scrapes. We always talked about that. And she told me about this man she’d met – that was another thing we always talked about.’
I went still.
‘Man?’ I asked.
‘Someone she’d met in a bar when she was out of it. Except being Skye, she didn’t think he’d picked her up. She thought he’d rescued her. He took her back to her flat and she doesn’t really know what happened between them, but she says he was nice to her. I’ll bet. And then he came back to see her. She told it like it was a big romantic story.’
‘Do you,’ I said in a voice I tried to keep neutral, ‘do you know his name?’
She wrinkled her brow. ‘I don’t think so. It sounds like something I should remember, but she told me this kind of story pretty much every time we met – how she’d met a man and he wasn’t like the others. He was different. This time it would work out.’
I nodded. This was exactly what Charlie had said too.
‘Was it a common name, or unusual?’
‘Probably common, or I’d remember it, don’t you think?’
‘Jason?’ I suggested.
‘Hmmm. Maybe. I can’t say yes and I can’t say no.’
‘Or Ben?’
‘Could be.’
‘Or Aidan? Or Bernie?’
‘Honestly, I can’t say. She probably didn’t tell me his name.’
‘Or what he did for a living?’
Hannah shook her head apologetically. She spread her hand at the base of her throat and leaned towards me.
‘Do you think he could have killed her?’
‘I don’t know. It happened in her flat so it might have been someone she knew.’
‘I thought it was a robbery.’
‘Yes, that’s what the police think.’
‘Who were those men you mentioned?’
I didn’t answer that, saying instead, ‘Is there anything else she said about the man? What he looked like? Anything about what he did, where he lived?’
‘She just said he was nice.’
‘Nice.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And it was only a couple of times?’
‘I think they met somewhere else as well. I don’t know if it was more than one time. Also—’ She stopped.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, I think she kind of followed him. She knew where he lived; she said it was a nice place. And she knew he was with another woman. Or maybe she said women, plural. That didn’t put her off. She was sure they had something special and they’d be together in the end. I think he was angry with her, but she said she had to be patient.’ Hannah gave a laugh. ‘Though patience wasn’t exactly Skye’s strong suit.’
‘So basically she stalked him?’
‘I wouldn’t use that word; it makes it sound too creepy. But I guess so.’
‘Where did this man live?’
She made a helpless gesture. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think she said.’
‘A house, a flat?’
‘She just said it was nice.’
‘This other woman, did she live with him?’
‘I assumed that’s what she meant, but I don’t know. I just thought it was Skye, doing her thing again – taking a sleazy encounter and turning it into romantic destiny.’
‘Children?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Hannah slowly, frowning. ‘All I know is that I felt this man had a whole other complicated life and Skye was deluded enough to think he would leave it for her.’
‘She thought he’d come to her?’
‘Skye always thought that. She never learned to protect herself. She was always bright and shiny with hope.’
Without warning, Hannah’s face crumpled. She leaned her body over the table and started to cry, her brown hair swinging and fat tears falling.
‘I always thought I was the one to get let down by her,’ she gulped out between sobs. ‘Now look.’
Cautiously, I put a hand on her shoulder and waited. Gradually the sobs halted and she straightened up, wiping the back of her hand across her smeary face.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’
‘No. I’m sorry.’
‘Do you want to buy a candle? As you can see, I don’t have many customers.’
‘I’d love to,’ I said.
I selected a bag of tea lights, four taper candles, six floating ones, and a candle in the shape of an elephant that I thought Poppy would like.
‘If you think of something,’ I said, ‘this is my number.’
I wrote it on a scrap of paper that she pushed at me and then keyed hers into my mobile.
‘If you see Peggy,’ she said, ‘tell her I’m thinking of her and I’m going to write a proper letter. I should have written. I didn’t know what to say. And tell her I’m sorry.’