Cross Her Heart(29)

24


LISA

‘I couldn’t get hold of you. Your phone’s going straight to answerphone. Richard’s out for an hour doing a quote, so I thought I’d pop over.’

I can’t decide if I’m happy to see her or not. I’ve just finished washing the dinner plates after a less than pleasant chicken salad with Ava, who grunted answers to my questions and has now locked herself away in her room, her friends no doubt on their way over, only ever fleeting figures on the stairs. I’m not sure I have the energy for Marilyn now. I’m emotionally exhausted. It takes everything I have to stay in this state of nervous anxiety alert.

‘What’s up?’ I ask, boiling the kettle.

‘Nothing’s up with me.’ She slings her bag over the corner of a chair before flopping into it. ‘But you were a bit off this afternoon. Something on your mind?’

I can feel her eyes on my back as I busy my hands getting mugs and tea bags and milk. I have to tell her something. She knows me too well if also not at all. She knows my tics. I need to give her something and I can’t tell her about my worries from the weekend so I choose the lesser of two evils.

‘I think I know who took the petty cash.’

Her eyes widen. ‘Who?’

I pour the hot water and join her at the table.

‘Julia,’ I say. ‘It’s Julia.’

For a moment Marilyn says nothing, and then she exhales loudly. ‘I should have known. The way she’s always sucking up to Penny with little gifts for the office, or cakes for everyone. How did you find out?’

‘I got in to work early today.’ I’ve been in early every day since the weekend. Anything is better than lying awake with all my worries and it’s not like I have to get Ava up for school now the exams are done. ‘Sorting out the details for the Manning contracts. When I got there, she was coming out of Penny’s office. I startled her.’

‘Did she say what she was doing?’

‘Putting some invoices on her desk.’

‘Maybe she was?’

‘I checked when she went to get coffee and she had put some papers in there. But this is Julia. She wouldn’t be so stupid as to go in there without a reason.’

I see a flicker of doubt on Marilyn’s face.

‘There’s more,’ I say. ‘Something happened at the salsa club night. You know, the office party. Something I saw.’

‘Go on.’ I start to tell the story and she leans forward as I speak as if sucking in my words from the air, to savour and swallow them, until finally I finish and we both sit back.

‘Why didn’t you say something?’

‘What could I say?’ I shrug. ‘I didn’t have any proof. It’s not like I caught her red-handed. I was on the other side of the room and by the time I realised what she’d done she was halfway to the bar. It would have been my word against hers, and you know what Penny’s like, she probably wouldn’t have known how much cash she had in her wallet, let alone if twenty pounds was missing from it.’

‘We need to tell Penny,’ she says. Decisive. She’s always decisive.

‘But there’s still no proof.’

‘Then we get some. We can set a trap. Mark the notes in the box or something and do a spot check.’

‘We’re not the police, Maz.’ I half-laugh. ‘We can’t go around demanding people show us what’s in their wallets.’ The relief of telling is being consumed by the anxiety of potential action.

‘We’ve got to do something. Penny thinks the sun shines out of that girl’s arse.’

‘She’s not a girl. Look more closely. I bet she’s not far off our age.’

‘You think?’

I shrug.

‘Thank God I’m married, eh? I can let it all go.’

I almost laugh. Marilyn has never let herself go. Me, maybe, but I never had it in the first place.

‘You’re not doing so bad,’ I say. ‘For an old bird.’

‘Cow.’

We both smile and it feels good, even with the constant nausea and ache in my stomach.

‘We need a drink,’ she says, decisive again. ‘I’m driving but I can have one. Sod it. Get your bag. Let’s go to the pub.’

‘But Ava …’ I mutter.

‘… Is sixteen,’ she finishes. ‘I keep telling you – you’ve got to give her space. Now sort yourself out while I have a wee. Let’s go.’

It’s past eleven when I crawl into bed. I feel better than I have all week. The pub was good, old-fashioned and cosy and no one paid us any attention at all, which reminded me how this whole business with Ava and the river is only important for the bubble of our social circles, such as they are. No one else cares, they’re all getting on with their own complicated lives. We bitched about Julia, she quizzed me about what Ava was going to do over the summer and in sixth form and then we talked about Simon – who texted while we were out, asking for another dinner, and she made me answer yes. It was a good escape but as soon as I relaxed I felt shattered and couldn’t stop yawning. Relief and release. The sheer exhaustion that comes from having been wound tight for days and the comedown from living in fight-or-flight mode. I’m out of practice.