The Things We Do to Our Friends(76)

I very nearly picked up the phone, because, despite everything, hearing her voice made me want to speak to her badly, an instinctive thought before my mind could catch up and remember what she’d done.

And then there was the strong desire for someone to save me if I couldn’t save myself. I craved the simplicity of Imogen. She’d scrub away any mold or say Don’t be so silly. She had more information as well, I was sure of it. And if not Imogen, just someone who would hold their palm to my forehead and take my temperature and tell me I was fine and that I was worrying over nothing, that my world wasn’t falling apart, that one day I would stop feeling those hands on my neck and the sensation that I was going to die would go away. Tell me I would stop seeing the mold and scratching off the skin around my fingers. That I would stop dreaming of a hook in my back, and thinking about what Tabitha might do with the video.

I needed to understand why Imogen and Samuel had left.

I thought of Imogen’s face, the pained expression when she’d realized what had happened to me in the Highlands. Had she been exiled or had she left of her own accord?

I picked up the phone and called her.

“Hello?” She answered on the first ring.

“Imogen, it’s Clare.”

“What do you want?” She sounded wary. Although I had her number, she was like Tabitha and rarely used a mobile, so I was surprised she’d answered at all.

“You’re out, you and Samuel. I just wanted to speak to you again. Understand more about why you left.”

She cut me off. “Clare, I can’t talk to you. Not about any of this. I’m sorry.”

She hung up.



* * *



—

A day later, and Imogen was still on my mind. I needed to work out how to get her to talk to me and to understand exactly what she knew and why she’d left. Maybe she had something on Tabitha that I could use?

“Clare,” Ashley called through the flat to me. “Someone for you.”

I got up, running through the options of who it could be.

In the living room, I saw her, and I thought I might be sick. A girl a little younger than me sat on the sofa waiting, with her hands clasped together on her lap. She was dressed simply in trousers and a loose top. I recognized her, of course, although she looked different from how I remembered her, and different still to how I had thought she would grow up back when we’d been deep in the throes of it all. When I moved closer to her, I could see that she was washed out, and fatigue sat on her face like someone had pressed charcoal under her eyes.

She greeted me. If she looked shocked at my appearance, she didn’t say anything. I hardly recognized myself in the mirror by that point. My face looked like a chunk of fatty meat—white like gristle in some places, red and raw in others.

“Hello,” I said, feeling sick at the sight of the girl.

Ashley stood up as if she might leave, then, desperate to be involved, she sat back down and jiggled on the edge of the sofa.

“So, who’s this?” Ashley asked me, smiling at the girl as she spoke.

I turned to her and channeled my most Tabitha-like commanding voice. “Could you give us a minute?”

Ashley looked a bit confused. She nodded. “Sure, sure.”

She left, so it was just the two of us, and I took a seat opposite the girl.

“Would you prefer we spoke in French?” she asked, after greeting me with my old name.

“No, I never speak French anymore, and you can call me Clare now.” I didn’t use her name. To use her name would be accepting that we could go back so easily, as if it was fine to discuss, so I avoided calling her anything at all.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“What a welcome!” she replied.

“I’m just surprised to see you. Would you like a drink?” I sounded like a robot.

“No, I would not like a drink. You mean you’re surprised I found you, you are able to just say it.” Her English was good but not great. The phrasing was a bit clunky, and I was relieved. I was hopeful she was just visiting and that she hadn’t moved to Scotland.

“Okay, yes, I’m surprised.”

“Your voice, it sounds strange,” she said.

“Maybe just hearing me speak English.”

“Maybe.”

“What do you want?” I asked.

She fidgeted a little before speaking. “I don’t want much. I just need you to tell me about that night. Everything exactly how it happened.”

“You know what happened.” I tried to sound convincing.

She seemed unmoved. “That’s the thing. I don’t believe you. You’re a liar.” She paused, to let it sink in. “What you said back then, we all know it doesn’t stand up at all. It doesn’t make sense. I’m not trying to make trouble. I’m not going to go to the police. I just want to go back home, to see my mother and to be able to tell her what happened.”

I shrugged.

She tried again. “Come on! I don’t even care about telling anyone else; I just want her to be able to go to sleep at night without it hanging over her that my papa had some kind of ‘thing’ for young girls.”

There it was.

We had danced around it, but she wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed that she was his daughter. She suspected things, had interrogated the facts.