The next morning, Felix had a meeting on the other side of London, and he left early, hovering on the threshold to tell her yet again to take care of herself, to call him if she felt agitated. At last Nancy heard his footsteps on the stairs, the main door slamming shut.
She had barely slept, but had lain next to Felix, hearing the rumble of trains, the cry of the baby. Now she was tired, but her mind was still full of images that she couldn’t chase away, a dread that clung like a smell.
She needed to do something physical. She looked around at the chaos in the living room. Life is so fragile: you think you’ve got it all ordered and arranged but then, almost in a moment, you take it apart and put it in boxes and it just looks like rubbish, like junk. Easy to take apart, harder to put back together again: could these half-open boxes, piles of books, random pieces of furniture, ever be assembled into something that would look like a home and a life?
She fetched a knife from the kitchen and began to slice the masking tape that held the nearest packing case shut. It was marked ‘odds and ends’ in Felix’s handwriting, and that’s just what it was. She lifted out a sieve, a glass vase wrapped in a tea towel, a cookery book, a puncture repair kit, several wooden spoons, some insect repellant. She sat back on her heels, at a loss for where to put them. It was a relief when there was a knock on the door.
She opened it to a woman she didn’t know. The woman looked as if she was in her mid-fifties, with shoulder-length grey-streaked hair. She was wearing dark slacks and a dark sweater and there was something strange about her face. It looked bleached, as if it had been squeezed out. Nancy saw the fine lines at the corners of her eyes and her mouth.
‘My name’s Ruth Mullan.’ Nancy’s puzzlement must have been obvious. ‘I’m Kira’s mother. I’ve just been in her flat.’
Nancy felt a lurch of panic and pity.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said in a rush. ‘So very, very sorry.’
The woman raised both her hands as if she were warding off a blow. She shook her head slowly. Her lips were tightly shut. Nancy could see that she didn’t trust herself to speak. Then she brought her hands together as if in prayer and put them over her nose and mouth.
‘Come in,’ Nancy said, and she reached out and took the woman by her arm and led her into her main room. She asked if she would like some coffee or tea and the woman nodded. Nancy steered Ruth Mullan into a chair and then went to the kitchen. Coffee would be quickest. By the time the water had boiled, she had ground the beans. She stirred the cafetière vigorously and then immediately poured the coffee into two mugs and returned to the living room. She handed one of them to Ruth Mullan.
‘I don’t know if you want milk or sugar,’ she said, but Ruth didn’t seem to hear, just cradled the mug in her hands as if they needed warming. Nancy pulled a wooden chair across so that the two women were more or less facing each other. Ruth was staring in front of her but Nancy felt she was looking through her or past her. Her eyes suddenly focused and she looked down at her untouched mug of coffee and then at Nancy.
‘Would you take this?’ she said. ‘Because I’ve got nowhere to put it down and I think I’m about to drop it.’
Nancy leaned forward and took the mug.
Ruth took two deep breaths and then a howl seemed to come up from her chest and through her throat and into her mouth and then to spill out. It wasn’t like crying. It was like a huge, drawn-out moan of pain from an animal. Fluid ran down her face, from her eyes and her nose and her mouth. The moans came and went, as if they were being breathed out from her lungs.
Nancy stood for a moment, holding a coffee mug in each hand, transfixed. She walked to the kitchen, put the mugs into the sink and came back with a kitchen roll. She tore off two sheets and handed them to Ruth who buried her face in them, muffling the bestial sound. She blew her nose loudly and wiped her face and scrunched up the paper and stowed it in the side pocket of her jacket.
She started to talk. She spoke in a numbed tone, describing everything that had happened since she had taken the call, while out walking with her dog in the park: what the female officer had said on the phone, the neighbours she had left the dog with, the long journey from Derbyshire through heavy traffic and – as if it was just another part of the itinerary – how she had been taken to identify the body of her daughter. Her beloved daughter, who had been the sweetest daughter anyone ever had, her heart on her sleeve, so eager, and what would she do now, what would she ever do? It was a terrible dream, and she would wake up from it, but she knew it wasn’t a dream, she had seen the body, the neck with the ghastly red groove on it.
Nancy felt helpless. She nodded and murmured her sympathy, made small sounds of meaningless comfort. At last Ruth paused, took the sheets of kitchen roll from her pocket and blew her nose again. She shook her head slowly.
‘She was looking for a new job and she was all excited about it. She was coming home for a visit at Christmas. She was going to see friends.’
Nancy thought of her own parents and their reaction – or non-reaction – when she had her breakdown. Even now, they pretended it hadn’t really happened.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to know what people are feeling, even when you’re close to them.’
Ruth’s flushed, damp face crumpled. Nancy could see all the lines and furrows she would have when she was old.
‘I am her mother; I should have known. She told me she was happy. She kept saying not to worry about her, everything was good. I wanted to believe her, so I believed her.’
‘I can’t imagine what you are going through,’ said Nancy feebly.
‘Perhaps she wanted to protect me. But I’m her mother. I should have protected her.’
Her shoulders began to shake again. Nancy cautiously put out an arm and touched the woman’s arm and waited. Gradually the fresh burst of sobbing subsided and Ruth sat up straighter, wiping the slime of snot and tears from her face.
‘I’ve got things to do,’ said Ruth. ‘Things that a mother shouldn’t ever…’ She paused and took more deep breaths, visibly preventing herself from breaking down once more. ‘Certificates and clearing her things. It’s a nasty little flat. She told me it was fine, but it isn’t. It’s falling apart. I wanted to talk to people who knew my daughter, her neighbours, the people who lived with her. I know it’s too late, but I thought I could make some kind of sense of it all.’
Nancy had been waiting for this. All the time, while listening to Ruth’s outpouring of grief, she had felt something of a fraud. She should have stopped Ruth and told her the truth, but she couldn’t find the right time.
‘Ruth,’ she began. ‘Is it okay if I call you Ruth?’ The woman nodded. Nancy gestured around the room. ‘As you can see, we’ve only just moved in. We’re still unpacking. I’m probably not so useful for you to talk to. There are other people here who’ve been here a long time.’
‘Did you never meet my daughter then?’
Nancy thought of that terrible day, walking through the market, being harassed by the voices and the encounter as she returned. She thought of the green boots with their yellow laces that she’d glimpsed in the frame of the door.
‘Do you have a photo of her?’
‘A photo?’
Ruth took her mobile out of her pocket and started scrolling through images.
‘This is a nice one,’ she said, her voice thick with tears again.
Nancy looked at the face on the screen, pale and freckled, tawny hair, large eyes, a full mouth that was smiling; she looked radiant.
‘She looks lovely,’ she said.
‘She was lovely.’ Ruth Mullan’s voice filled up with tears, and her sore, bloodshot eyes started streaming again, tears falling unchecked. ‘Everyone loved her. There was no side to her. Maybe that’s what got her into trouble. Too trusting. I told her to be careful, but who wants to be careful when they’re young?’
‘I did meet her,’ Nancy said slowly. ‘Just once. Very briefly. It was the day before yesterday. I met her when I was coming in and we had a sort of conversation.’
‘What do you mean, “a sort of conversation”? What does that mean?’
Nancy found this question difficult to answer.
‘I wasn’t feeling very well,’ she said. ‘I had a sort of fever.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Ruth woodenly.
‘No, no,’ said Nancy quickly. ‘It was nothing. That’s not the point. The point is, I can’t remember very clearly.’
‘But you did talk to my daughter just before she died?’
‘Yes. On my way in.’
‘And you spoke to each other.’
‘Kind of. I actually bumped into her. She dropped her stuff. I helped her pick it up and we just said a few words to each other.’
‘How did she seem?’
Nancy tried to remember it. It was like looking into a fog full of murky shapes and blinding lights. It was hard to separate what was real and solid. She looked at Ruth. Should she try and soften it for this harrowed woman? She decided that she couldn’t; she deserved the truth, whatever that was.
‘I don’t know what she was normally like. But she didn’t seem in a good way. I can’t remember her exact words, but she said something bad was happening to her, and she was going to do something about it.’ Nancy concentrated so much that it hurt, trying to remember. ‘I think I offered to help, and she said I couldn’t. But maybe she was only talking about the things I’d knocked onto the floor.’
Ruth’s face looked if anything paler than before.
‘Are you saying you met my daughter when she was about to kill herself?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I did.’
‘Perhaps you were the last person to see her alive.’