How well do you know Freya Harlow?
Are you friendly? The two of you?
Since nobody can confirm she made it back from her lesson with you . . .
Chris stood in his hall, staring blankly at the hideous floral wallpaper they hadn’t got round to stripping and repainting in some acceptable neutral shade. His eyes traced peach petals and lime-green leaves as he replayed his interview with the police from a few hours before. He began to feel woozy. The peeled-off edges of the wallpaper revealed crumbling plaster beneath.
He jumped out of his skin when his phone rang.
But it wasn’t the police calling back. It was Tamsin Spence, who lived at number 82 on the street and whose daughter Chris also taught. He cleared his throat and tried to switch into business mode, stuttering out his name as he answered.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel Lily’s session with you on Tuesday,” Tamsin said shrilly.
Chris swallowed. “Oh . . .” He did his best to keep a grip on his professionalism. “Do you want to reschedule?”
Tamsin muttered something about getting back to him and the line went dead. Chris blinked at his phone, reeling from her abruptness, unease curling in his gut. Had word already got around that he’d been whisked away by a police car earlier?
Vicky’s voice startled him again: “Who was that?”
He turned to see her standing behind him in her work tunic and a baggy cardigan. Her short hair was styled differently from earlier. It looked nice, but at some point in recent years he’d lost the knack of telling her so. She was clutching a half-knitted scarf. What was with the knitting lately? Who was going to wear all these scratchy-looking scarves?
“A student,” he said. “Why aren’t you at work?”
“I forgot my ID card. Had to pop back in my break.”
Had she heard anything about Freya? Surely she’d noticed the posters that Chris hadn’t been able to look at as he’d arrived home from the police station in a taxi. Vicky’s face was so expressionless these days. Sometimes when she was lying on the sofa watching TV he’d become genuinely afraid she wasn’t breathing. He found himself thinking often about the Vicky he’d first met. Fun-loving, witty, acerbic. She could open beer bottles with her teeth; at parties people used to hand their San Miguels straight to her. He’d been flattered when, after a few encounters at the parties of mutual friends, she’d made it obvious she liked him. And it had been gratifying to discover her more vulnerable side: the idea that someone like her might want or even need someone like him.
“I thought you had lessons all morning?” she said.
There was a silence in which they both seemed to register that neither had expected to bump into the other.
“Just grabbing a coffee.” He nodded at the orange wool dangling like a dead creature in her hands: “What are you knitting?”
He didn’t catch her answer because his eye was drawn to something sparkly on her wrist. A silver bracelet with white gems and tiny pearls. Not her usual style. Not the kind of thing she’d ever buy for herself.
He was still staring at it after she’d finished speaking. She tugged down her sleeve and walked away into the kitchen.
Chris followed. He knew he had to be careful with his words, his tone, but it was hard not to grab her arm and yell.
“New bracelet?” he said casually.
She had opened a cupboard and was gazing at rows of jars and tins. She swiveled a couple so their labels faced her and Chris heard the bracelet slide along her arm.
“Di gave it to me.”
“Oh, right.”
“I should take it off before I go back on shift.” He saw how she couldn’t help touching it, couldn’t resist a quick look before she smoothed her sleeve back down.
“Real diamonds?”
She snorted. “Di’s not made of money. More so than we are, for sure, but not diamond level.”
With a small dissatisfied noise, she closed the cupboard she’d been peering into and opened the next one along, contemplating a pack of biscuits. Chris didn’t know what she was searching for, what she wanted but apparently hadn’t found.
As he turned to leave, she said, “Did you know the girl from upstairs is missing?”
Chris wheeled back to face her. She was looking at him, her posture and eyes suddenly alert, like a different person. He nodded.
“I feel awful now,” she said. “For calling them those names when we first moved in.”
“We didn’t mean anything by it.”
We were just developing our in-jokes, he wanted to add, back when we still had them. Back when we used them to cling together if we felt like fishes out of water.
He did have lessons booked for the rest of the morning—Saturday was always busy—and there was nothing to do but forge on with his routine. The sense of a street made of eyes was more oppressive than ever as he left the house for the second time. Still he couldn’t look up at the Harlows’ even for an instant. He ducked his head into his car like a celebrity—or a criminal—avoiding the press.
Something made him flip open the glove box and check it yet again, reaching his hand to the back and patting his way around the carpeted emptiness. He sat back and fastened his seat belt but the jitters wouldn’t settle. This car used to feel like a haven. His domain, where he was in charge, the expert. He’d liked being alone in it, listening to nostalgic soft rock and swigging coffee from his travel cup, but he’d also liked the ebb and flow of students, the way he could allow them in for prescribed blocks of time. Recently, though, he’d felt trapped if he spent too long sitting there, felt like he was running out of air.
His mind returned to his conversation with Vicky, the bracelet glinting from her wrist. It was possible her sister had given it to her. Chris knew he shouldn’t ring Di and ask, but the compulsion to do so was taking root. He needed to get to his next appointment, find a distraction. He’d see Di later at the weekly lunch. Maybe he’d—
He sat bolt upright. A navy Puffa jacket was moving toward him along the street.
Seconds later his vision adjusted, but his heart still charged. Red hair, not blonde; scurrying steps, not long, athletic strides.
Jess, not Freya.
And, in fact, the coat was black rather than navy, different from Freya’s now that he saw it properly.
Jess spotted him and faltered. Struggling to recover, Chris lowered his window. She stopped but he noticed she didn’t come too close, which made him feel grubby, tainted.
“You okay?” he asked her.
She shook her head, her eyes filling.
“Sorry,” he said. “Stupid question.”
“I’ve come to talk to Steph.”
She looked younger than usual and Chris realized she was wearing no makeup. There was a childishness about the way she was standing, too, with toes pointed inward, hands clutching opposite elbows. He felt a sudden sharp twist of sorrow. “Has there been any news?” he asked.
Her chin thrust out. “I thought you’d know more than me. Judging by what the police have said.”
Chris flinched as if she’d spat through his window. Not for the first time, he wondered how much Freya had told Jess about him. Her eyes were wide with accusation, but she couldn’t seem to keep them trained on his face. Lines marred her forehead; the overall effect was more confused than confrontational.
“Jess . . . I don’t know what the police have been implying. Of course they’ll be checking out my story, testing other possibilities—that’s their job. But as far as I knew, she’d gone back to school after our lesson. I really thought she had.”
There was a silence. Recycled air blew from his dashboard heaters. Jess didn’t seem to know what to think. Her lip had started to tremble.
“Seriously.” He leaned forward. “I wish I knew more. Wish I could help.”
She let out a sigh that inflated her bare cheeks. “Fuck, this is all so weird. Sorry for the language.”
“You don’t have to apologize.”
He smiled at her and she eventually smiled back through her tears, her body language softening. Chris found himself wanting to keep the conversation going, wanting to secure her as an ally, pathetic as that was. Why should her opinion matter? Yet somehow it did.
She wound a rope of hair around her fingers and glanced toward Steph and Paul’s flat. Chris finally dared to look, too, squinting at the upstairs sash windows with their heavy taupe-colored drapes. The sun flashed and he thought he saw a pale face between the curtains, the whip of a blonde ponytail, but as he caught his breath it was gone.
He took in the Harlows’ immaculate paintwork, noticeably brighter than his own, the house seeming to wither as the eye traveled down. Anger swept him, like a flare of heat. It was old resentment rolled in with something new, a kind of outrage with a ball of fear at its center. Steph and Paul had everything and they’d never appeared grateful. And they didn’t know their daughter, any more than she knew them. They’d accused him of milking them for money, when really it had been Freya who’d wanted more sessions . . . It came from her . . .
“Oh, before I forget.” Jess broke his thoughts, holding a crumple of cash toward him. He had a memory-surge of Freya doing the same: those banknotes with her mum’s little car drawings in the corners.
“What’s that?” He stared at Jess’s offering, sliding his hands beneath his thighs to flatten their trembling.
“For yesterday’s lesson. I didn’t pay you.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be silly. We didn’t really have a lesson in the end.”
She shrugged and put it away. “Thanks, Chris,” she said, and he felt an unexpected flood of affection. Perhaps a displaced feeling, perhaps a reaction to hearing his name said without hostility.
Jess leaped back as the house’s main door opened. Chris felt his own body jolt, the seat belt snapping tight around his neck.
Blue-haired Emma emerged, rather than one of the Harlows. His breath gushed out and the belt slackened. But he could see that Jess was rattled to have been caught talking to him, even by Emma. Was he already the enemy?
Jess fled without saying good-bye. Emma’s gaze lingered on him as she held the door for Jess, then got into her own car. When Chris caught movement again in the Harlows’ window, he started his engine. Freya’s frozen image watched from every tree as he accelerated away.