No one I know would go to Carol’s café, which is why Jess suggested it again; it’s safe to talk. She wanted to meet sooner than Saturday, but I couldn’t fit it in and needed time to think.
I’ve barely slept the past few nights, and work has been such an effort. It’s not that I don’t know what to do about this or what I want. It’s a case of expressing myself well enough to make them listen. They’re seriously considering contacting Nicola Waite’s friends, unless I can come up with something solid to persuade them otherwise.
Carol’s is overflowing with Bath rugby hats and the smell of fried food. There’s a big game on today that Dan is taking Georgia to. She hates rugby, but hasn’t found a way to break it to him yet.
The ground is near the leisure center where I’m parked, so I’m having to be extra careful. Thankfully, it’s sunny out, so I’m wearing large sunglasses and a ski jacket that no one would associate with me. I feel bulky and self-conscious, even though the idea is that no one will notice me.
Making my way upstairs, I leave the noise behind but not the greasy smell that lingers underneath the dingy tables. It’s so gloomy, I can see the light below through the cracks in the floorboards as I make my way over to the others in the corner, the only ones here again.
On seeing me, Jess smiles warmly. “Thanks for coming, Stephanie. How you doing?”
“Not too bad, thanks.” I nod hello to Priyanka, who looks at me uncertainly. She’s wearing a knitted dress, her eyes dark brown today.
“Well, I’ve had a bloody awful week,” Jess says, puffing out her cheeks. “It’s a nightmare trying to cover up why I’m being off with him.”
“What have you said?” Priyanka asks, folding her parka coat and dropping it carelessly on the condiments table behind her.
“Oh, I’ve been blaming everything on my mum.”
“Is she...?”
“In a care home. Dementia, two strokes.”
“Gosh. I’m sorry,” Priyanka says. “That must be really difficult.”
“It’s just one of those things...” Jess turns to me. “Are your parents still alive?” Maybe she’s hoping we might have something in common.
“No.” I leave it at that.
“How do you manage to juggle it all?” Priyanka asks. “Do you work full-time?”
“Yeah... I dunno, to be honest.” She rubs her face brusquely, settling the question in my mind as to whether or not she wears foundation. “I guess you just do what you have to do, you know?”
Is that a dig at me—at our situation? I’ve no idea. I don’t know how to read her.
“What are you two doing about sex?” she asks bluntly. “I mean, it’s tricky, isn’t it, in the circumstances?”
She must know I’m not going to answer that. I pretend I haven’t heard.
But to my surprise, Priyanka takes it seriously, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Well, it’s easier for me. I’ve got a toddler—a ready-made excuse. We’re always too exhausted to do anything, although I do miss it.”
I look sideways at her in wonder and with some envy, the same way I used to look at girls at school who swapped makeup or shared a toilet cubicle. That wasn’t how I was raised to be. I don’t know how to do that.
“Me too,” Jess agrees. “What about you, Stephanie?”
“What about me?”
Something about the way I say this makes her laugh, but it’s short-lived. She seems very tired, and her face falls serious again as she picks at a chip of paint on the table, digging it with her thumbnail.
“So...” She pulls a long strip of paint off the table. “Whoops.” Tries to put it back the way it was. “We need to talk about Nicky’s friends, about whether we want to try to contact them.”
My pulse quickens as I reach into my bag for my notebook and reading glasses, summoning the nerve to speak. “If you don’t mind...I made a list.”
She looks intrigued. “What sort of list?”
I falter, embarrassed. “Of questions, if that’s all right?”
“Impressive.” She nods in approval. “Go on, then.”
I glance around the room even though I know it’s empty, aside from the faces in the wall photos: archaic people who seem to share my fear of the spotlight. These days, children practice public speaking at school, encouraged from an early age not to be frightened to speak up. Yet I went through twelve years of education barely saying a word.
“I should explain... I’m not very...”
They look at me with curiosity.
They don’t need to know that. Just read the list.
I look at my first question, my eyes blurring. “You said...you would take Holly’s letter to the police and perhaps now the diary too. But do you think they’d take it seriously? Isn’t it just someone’s opinion? Creative writing?”
Jess opens her mouth to reply, just as the waitress bounds up the stairs, floorboards creaking. I’m relieved at the interruption, even though I’ve only just started. I hide the list on my lap.
“What can I getcha, ladies?” The waitress has a nose ring, which she fiddles with as she waits. I hope she washes her hands before handling the food. I glance at Priyanka, who wears a nose stud, if I remember rightly. But there’s nothing there today, merely a dot on the side of her nose that could be a hole or a mole. I don’t like to stare.
The waitress stomps off again. No one’s hungry, aside from Jess, who ordered a currant bun. The waitress said she liked her Snoopy sweatshirt; the sort of thing my Rosie would wear ironically. No one ever says things like that to me and I’m in cashmere.
Now that we’re alone again, Jess is looking at me, thinking about how to answer my question, picking the skin on her thumbnail. I’d like to ask why she’s wearing a tuque indoors. It’s not very flattering, making the grooves around her mouth even more distinct.
“I wondered the same thing, so looked it up online,” she says, sucking her thumb. She seems to have no qualms about biting and picking things in front of us. “I think it would be considered documentary evidence, but it’s hard to tell. You’re right. Nicky could have been writing creatively. That’s what makes it so difficult. And if there was no way of telling for sure, then it would be classed as hearsay, making it inadmissible.”
“In court?” Priyanka asks, wriggling fretfully.
“Yep... Even if it was hearsay, that doesn’t mean it would be automatically ruled out. It’s more complicated than that, from what I can gather.” She removes her tuque at last, running her hand through her hair. “But going back to what you asked, yes, I’d hand it in, if it came to it... Okay?”
“Um. Yes.” Well, she answered the question, at least.
Satisfied, Jess sits back in her seat, pressing her hat between her hands, waiting for the next one.
I look at my list.
Question two is whether she still intends to go to the police in any event, but I don’t want to ask that now that I’m in front of her, in case I don’t like the response.
“I...uh... How do we know that Nicola wrote the diary and not someone else?”
“Well, I don’t see why anyone else would have,” Priyanka replies. “Surely there are ways of testing it, though? Can’t they do that?”
Jess tosses her hat onto the condiments table with Priyanka’s coat. “I expect so. But I think we should assume she wrote it because that’s the most logical answer, or we’ll just start going around in circles... What else is on your list?”
I skip number four, sensing danger. Don’t you think she brought it on herself? And head straight to number five.
“Why do you believe her?”
Jess fiddles with her wedding ring, twisting it around, a look of apprehension on her face. “I dunno. I just do.”
“But her mother was a...” I look at my notes. I wrote it down somewhere. I can’t remember the word.
“Agoraphobic?” Priyanka offers.
“Yes.”
“So?” Jess says. “That doesn’t make Nicky a liar, though, does it?”
I curl my toes inside my shoes, pressing them against the leather, trying to find the right words. “I...I meant that her mother had mental health problems and wondered if Nicola was the same way.”
“And what are you basing that on?”
“I...” There was something in the diary that made me think the girl was unstable. But what? This is what always happens. It’s why I’m supposed to stick to the list, to my notes.
“Don’t worry.” She pats my hand, smiles. “This isn’t about putting you on the spot. It’s about us having a conversation... Let’s move on. Anything else you want to ask?” But the waitress is back again, bringing a tray.
My shoulders subside as a large mug of tea is set down before me. This hasn’t gone very well. Despite her assurances, I can tell that Jess doesn’t like my questions; I’m asking the wrong ones. Yet they were always going to be the wrong ones for her because they’re the right ones for me. I think we’ve already established that we’re incompatible.
I pick up my tea gratefully, my mouth horribly dry. Thankfully, I’ve only one question left. There were others, but I’ve lost my momentum, not that I had any to start with.
They’re both looking at me expectantly now that the waitress has gone, and I can see that bringing my notebook was unwise. I know what they must be thinking. The list has shown them that I need a script, a prop, and without meaning to, I’ve made myself look weak. I’m not as clever as them. They’re educated, well-informed, whereas I’ve been living in the past for too long to know how modern women think.
“I...I just wanted to ask one last thing—she didn’t write very much about what actually happened, but the one thing she did say was that she didn’t tell them to stop. Why was that?”
A silence falls. Downstairs goes quiet at the same time, with uncanny timing. Jess picks at her currant bun. “Good question.”
She doesn’t have an answer?
My heart skips and I hope that, somehow, despite being out of my depth, I’ve stumped them.
But then Priyanka sits forward, one hand flat on the table. “That was bothering me too, so I did some research and it’s a known phenomenon. It’s the body’s way of dealing with trauma, going numb to survive the ordeal. It’s a myth that everyone fights back. That’s just not the case. Everyone deals with it differently, and you don’t know until you’re in that situation how you’d react.”
“Oh... I see.” I try not to show my disappointment, busying myself with returning the notebook to my bag, taking off my glasses.
“Talking of myths...” Jess says. “I thought you were going to ask whether she was asking for it because she was drunk. Or whether she meant yes because she didn’t say no out loud.”
I know she’s outsmarting me in some way. But to me, these are valid questions. And I wonder whether she read my list somehow when I wasn’t looking.
I don’t feel so good. My mouth is still dry, despite the tea, and I’m too warm.
“You all right?” Priyanka asks. I well up, tapping my pockets for a tissue, but there are no pockets in my cashmere sweater, so I look even more stupid.
“I didn’t upset you, did I?” Jess says. “I was only joking...” And then she peers at me. “Wait, you didn’t actually have those questions on your list, did you?”
Priyanka frowns at her, before pulling a handful of napkins from the dispenser and handing them to me as though expecting me to break down. “There you go, hon,” she says gently.
I’ve managed to pull myself together. Straightening my back, I focus on the wall, my eye trailing the dried brushstrokes of paint.
“I almost don’t want to have to bring this up now,” Jess says, her eyes on me. “But I’m conscious of the time and the fact that we’ve probably all lied about where we are... So I think we should decide here and now—are we going to contact Lucy and Kim?”
I look at Priyanka, hoping the warning I gave her on my front porch last Sunday had some effect. “Is that what you want?” I ask her.
She drops a sugar cube into her coffee, stirs it pensively. “Yes, if it helps bring clarity.”
“But what about your husband?”
“What about him? If he did this, it changes everything. Which is why I need to know one way or the other.”
“Then what about your children?”
“Child,” she replies. “Only one.”
“That’s enough, surely? How many people’s lives need to be destroyed before you’ll put the brakes on? Both the Waite women are dead. This isn’t going to help them. All it’s going to do is tear our families apart.”
This is more than I’d normally say and they look at me, not inspired exactly, but with new hesitance.
I hope it’s enough. It has to be. I don’t have anything left to add.
“Look,” Jess says, touching my hand. Her skin feels so cold. “I know this goes against your instincts, but we need you on board, Steffie.”
No one’s called me that in a long time, except Shelley Fricker. My mum always used to call me Steffie too.
“Why?” I ask. “Why do you care what I think?”
When you’ve made it perfectly clear that you think I’m out of touch.
“Of course I care what you think. Pree does too. I can’t keep stressing how much we’re in this together. Our opinions carry equal weight. And when you say no, it casts doubt over the whole thing.”
So, I have more power, more sway than I thought? If I continue to say no, I could stop her?
If that’s the case, it seems like a foolish thing to have admitted.
“Is it a yes to contacting Lucy and Kim, then?” she asks.
“No.”
“Wow.” She laughs lightly. “That never grows old, does it? The way you say no like that... Gets me every time.” She shakes her head, glances at Priyanka.
“Jess, I...”
I’m trying to apologize; I don’t like being difficult, obstructive. I’m not sure how to phrase it, though. It’s taking me a little while to summon the right words.
She’s looking at me hopefully.
“I... It’s just that I can’t do this. I can’t agree with you. I’m very sorry.”
And just like that, her hopes are dashed.
“Then I think we’re going to have to go ahead without your blessing, Stephanie.”
I gaze at her in surprise. Beside her, Priyanka remains quiet, still stirring her coffee, eyes cast downward.
“I see. So that was a lie about our opinions carrying equal weight,” I say.
The air thickens around us as no one speaks. I look once again at Priyanka, but she’s unreachable. Perhaps she agrees with me; perhaps she doesn’t. She’s not going to say either way.
There seems little point in my staying any longer. “It’s probably best if you don’t contact me again,” I say quietly, leaving some money on the table for my tea.
“As you wish,” Jess replies.
I withdraw shakily, hoping one of them will call after me, but they don’t. They let me go.
As I descend the stairs, becoming engulfed in the heat and the noise of the crowded room, I imagine what they’ll be saying about me now that they’re free to speak—whether they’ll say I’m a disgrace to the women’s movement.
Outside, I’m gulping in the fresh air, trying not to cry, fiddling with the unfamiliar togs and zips on my ski jacket, when I bump into Vivian.
“Mum!” She glances at Carol’s in surprise. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at Pilates?”
“I...”
She points at the window, at the crowd of blue rugby hats. “Are Dan and Georgia in that dump?”
“Yes.” That was stupid. What if she mentions it later? “No.”
She laughs in confusion, her mouth wonky with the cold. I feel awful for lying to her—the undisputed kindest of my girls. “Are you all right, M?” she asks.
I want to tell her everything. Instead, I put on my sunglasses. There’s no need for my daughters to get caught up in any of this; I’m doing all this so that they don’t have to.
“Is that the ski jacket Dan bought you, the one you’ve never worn because you hate travel, heights, snow and sport?” she says teasingly.
“Yes. That’s the one. It’s chilly out.”
“O...kay...” She doesn’t sound convinced. “So, are you walking my way? I’m going to Tom’s.”
“No. I’m going home, darling.”
“See you later, then, M.” She kisses me on the cheek, pressing my hand. “You take care now.” She says this as though she’s the parent. Well, she is a little taller than me.
I don’t look back as I walk away. I’m too upset. Behind my shades I cry, tears running into the fur trim on my hood. I’ve let Dan down and I lied to my beautiful daughter and all for nothing. Because they’re going to do it anyway. Those silly, silly women. They’re going to destroy our lives and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.