THE OFFICE DOOR fell shut behind her. I didn’t lean back in my chair until I heard the outer door open and close. She was on the pavement, my view striped by the blinds on the window. She was shrugging a rucksack over her shoulder and heading towards the Fitzwilliam. Typical student; typical twenty-something. But she was the second client to bring up Annalise Wood to me within months.
I shimmied my shoulders in a dismissive little shiver. Ms. Williams had been my last appointment of the day. I was eager to leave but needed to wait for Blake. He’s always been late, ever since coming into the world two weeks after his due date. I tidied the desk. I checked my phone for texts and missed calls. None. Nothing to be done; adult children have their own minds.
Ms. Williams wouldn’t have known this, but I grew up not far from the Annalise murder. Not in Lilling itself, like she did, but I’m almost twice her age so was alive when Annalise was killed. I was five then, and then nearly graduating from Cambridge when her body was found.
Even sixteen years after the disappearance, that was big news. That day I had been in a charity shop buying a shimmery purple wrap to go with a party dress I was planning to wear, and the woman at the till had been the one to tell me. She’d said, “They found Annalise,” without context or explanation, but it was the very bareness of the statement that had made it clear that she was talking about the Annalise, not just someone who also happened to have that name.
I should clarify that this was true only because of geography. I was home for Easter break at that time. At home, just the name Annalise is enough. I was surprised when I then returned to Cambridge how few people were discussing it. It was in the national newspapers, of course, but not the local one. In Cambridge, one had to say “Annalise, that girl from Hertfordshire who was killed ages ago” or, at least, “Annalise Wood.” Just fifty miles away from Lilling, less than an hour’s drive, and the public wasn’t on a first-name basis. I grant that this is mostly to do with Cambridge having so much of a student population, constantly leaving and being replaced, often from much farther away. Still, it was one of the first times I can remember feeling suddenly foreign so close to my own home.
Back in that charity shop, the woman behind the till had looked blank and stunned and that’s how I’d known that Annalise was dead, not found alive. I must have naturally assumed that that would be the case by then, but knowing it for certain was terrible. It really was. She wasn’t the girl in the school uniform any more, or whomever that girl would have grown into. She was just a body, not even a whole body by then, surely. She would be bits and pieces.
I wrapped my arms around myself. The heating in our office hadn’t yet caught up with the autumn chill.
My phone rang, quivering in my pocket. I snatched it up. “Blake?” I said, without first checking that it was actually him.
“Sweetheart!” Dad said, and he sounded unstressed, ready for a chat. I gave in, to give Blake more time.
Mum was fine, Dad told me. Everything was the same. We talked about my sister, Helen, and how Dad used to come to all of my tennis matches.
“Dad, do you remember Annalise?”
He hesitated. “Sure! Uh, who? Was she a friend of yours?”
I hesitated too. Maybe Dad’s memory was going, like Mum’s. No, I assured myself. Maybe just not everyone is wrapped up in collective concern for a singled-out and taken-down teenage girl.
“Never mind. She was just a girl I . . .” I almost said “knew.” That’s what it feels like sometimes, when you grow up in the shadow of something like that. I had forgotten that. This new client was bringing it all back.
“I can look in your mother’s phone book. I can see if her parents are still—”
“Aw, Dad, that’s sweet but it’s all right. I don’t need—”
“Did she play tennis with you?” Dad asked, not letting go.
“She was a school friend, Dad,” I said expediently. It was easier than trying to explain. But even in lying I didn’t take the simpler road of saying yes, yes, we played tennis together. I’ve never seen a picture of Annalise playing tennis or any reference to sport in her life at all. It didn’t feel right to lie about the dead more than strictly necessary. “Remind Mum that we’ll all be coming for Christmas.”
“Christmas!” he said, sounding pleased and surprised, but I’d told him weeks ago that we’d be there for the looming holiday. It was already November; not long now.
And November is a busy time at the University, first term of the new academic year. No sense waiting any longer for Blake, or chasing him up. I should be relieved he has better things to do than meet his mum for dinner.
“I have to go, Dad,” I said, ending the call with just a few more back-and-forths, and fumbled in my handbag for my car keys, which reminded me of taking away Mum’s car keys last Christmas, and how it had shamed her. But she would have kept driving if we hadn’t. Nothing short of an accident was going to convince her she wasn’t able to any more. Now Dad has to keep his keys where she can’t reach them. It was one of the most difficult things I’d ever been part of; thank goodness for my sister and father. I don’t know if I could have resisted her tears and pleading by myself.
As I stepped outside our old Victorian office building, and breathed in the sound and smell of the rush-hour traffic on Trumpington Street, the office phone inside rang brightly, chipperly. I wouldn’t have been able to get in fast enough to pick it up, so I waited a few minutes at the door and then dialled into the office voice mail from my mobile.
“Dr. Ambrose?” said a young, female voice. “This is Anna, from today. Annalise Williams?” She paused as if we were talking together, waiting for me to fill in the blank with an acknowledgement. “I just want to say thank you. I’m already thinking of what else I’d like to tell you. Well, everything, really. It’s good to talk. Sometimes everything is all tangled up inside but when it comes out in words somehow the mouth has funnelled it all into a straight line that makes sense. It makes a proper story. I can’t wait to see you again.”
There was no click, just a hanging-on. I listened to that airy sound of being connected for about twenty more seconds before there was a staticky clack and the recording cut off. I wasn’t sure if she’d hung up, or if it was the system that had automatically limited the message. It was discomfiting, the way the message had stopped but not properly ended. Sometimes clients get a little too close. It was best to take care.
I looked around before descending the steps. It was darkish already, the normal but somehow always surprising autumn early dark, and thoughts of dead Annalise made me stupidly anxious. The murder had never been solved. Her body had been eventually found, but not her killer. I wondered if any police were still looking.
Once in my car I made a note of the client’s call, to put in her file. I abbreviated her name as “Anna,” which is how she’d booked the appointment. The full “Annalise” felt taken.