cleaning sectors with Angie so I could leave early,’ she said, then she told me how she’d gone to the photographic lab where Matt worked, to see if Matt had been there. ‘There were two blokes talking outside his office, one of them said Matt’s name, so I hung around. He said he’d been to find Matt, hadn’t got anywhere, so he’d called the police.’
It was probably Leon, I thought, the friend who’d called me before. ‘But the police weren’t actually there.’
‘No, but—’ she made a gesture with her hands, flustered. ‘Look – I just – are we still OK here? I mean, you’ve been careful, even with Matt, right? They’re not going to find the address?’
I tried to hold her eye, but I couldn’t.
She gaped. ‘Oh no, Ellie. What did you do?’
‘I’d been meaning to tell you,’ I said weakly. ‘It was when we were applying for the volunteering.’
‘You gave them our address?’
‘No, he did it. He didn’t know not to. I could hardly tell him not to, could I? How would I explain it?’
‘Well, fuck!’ She threw her free hand up. ‘Great! Wonderful, good work!’
I wanted to say sorry, but she hated me apologizing.
‘I said this would happen. I said, the first time you brought him round. It was too big a risk. Didn’t I say?’ She went into her bedroom and started to rush about, pulling off her tabard and stuffing it into the washing basket. Then as if remembering, she went out to the kitchen and returned with the bag containing the wet clothes from that morning.
As calmly as I could, I said, ‘Mum. Tell me what’s going on.’
‘Nothing! I just want to be prepared.’ She roughly pulled a shirt on and went to the dressing table, plonked herself down and pulled out her make-up. ‘They’re going to come here, aren’t they? The police. And they’re going to ask questions.’
‘So we answer them.’
‘Yeah?’ She spun round, a blob of foundation balancing on fingertip halfway to her face. ‘With what?’
‘How about the truth?’
‘We don’t know what happened! We’ve got no fucking idea what the truth is, have we?’
I bit into my cheek until I tasted blood. I wasn’t going to cry.
Mum applied the make-up, sighed and got up. She went to the bed and patted the place beside her.
I sat, and she put an arm around my shoulders. ‘Come on then.’ She squeezed. ‘They’re going to come, so let’s think what we’re saying. Where had you been, last night?’
‘The pub, but—’
‘Which pub?’
‘Mum, why are we even—?’
‘Which one?’
‘The Windmill. He had an IPA; I had a lemonade.’
‘And people saw you.’
‘Yes. No. Not people we knew.’
‘You weren’t arguing?’
‘No! Why would we be?’
She sighed heavily and went back to the mirror, flipped open a compact. ‘They’re going to ask you this, Ellie. You need to get this right. If they get a whiff that you might be hiding something, we’ve got trouble. They’re already going to have linked you to … what happened before. You do understand that, right?’
‘I’m not hiding anything!’
She raised her eyebrows, then moved her gaze pointedly to my neck. Gave a loose, open-handed gesture to my shoulder, my hip. Siggy shuddered in the aches, as if she was part of them, like they were hers.
Quietly, I said, ‘I’ll just tell them what happened.’
‘About the bruises?’ she said, incredulous.
‘He might be somewhere right now needing help, Mum!’
‘You can’t talk to them. Not yet. Not until we know what’s happened.’
‘But that’s what they do! That’s what the police do, they find out what happened!’
She said nothing to that, but the rise of her eyebrows said, not always. I looked away. If there was one thing I did not want to be talking about right now, it was Jodie Arden.
My eyes lighted on the bag of wet clothes from the morning. ‘What are you going to do with that?’ I asked, nodding to it.
She peered into the mirror. ‘I am going,’ she said, lifting her lashes now with the mascara wand, ‘to incinerate it.’
I waited for her to face me, to grin. But she wasn’t joking.
‘What did you find, Mum? This morning?’
An infinitesimal pause. ‘Ellie—’
And then, from outside, we heard a woman’s voice. ‘This one. Over here.’
We both stood up, fast. She had turned towards the sound but swung back to face me, hands on my shoulders, pulling me into a hug.
‘Listen to me,’ she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘Let me talk to them. We can make sure they look for Matt properly, and maybe it’ll all be fine. But it wasn’t before, with Jodie, was it? And if something has happened to him, and if you – Siggy – had anything to do with it, we need to control this as best we can.’
Three knocks at the door.
‘You are a good person, Ellie. We are good people. We’ve done our bloody best. I will not allow that bitch to ruin your life, or mine.’ She brought her mouth right against my ear, and in a vicious whisper she said, ‘Do you hear me? Siggy? You’re not having her. You’re not going to take my daughter.’
From the other end of the corridor I could hear a second voice, a man, calling through the front door.
My mother touched my face. ‘Not. A. Sound.’ And then she left the room, closing the door softly behind her.
Mae knocked again.
Cold spiked in the morning air, and the sky above Abson Street was a flat, formless grey. Kit, looking distinctly uncomfortable in a borrowed pinstripe skirt suit, took a step back to assay the building, intermittent clouds of breath forming in front of her face. She stretched, then pressed her fists into the small of her back, wincing.
He cocked his head. ‘Been fighting?’
She let out a small grunt and straightened up. ‘Roller derby.’
‘You’re kidding.’
Kit grinned. ‘Nope. You’re looking at west London’s fourth-finest blocker.’
He’d seen bruises on her legs before, at the gym, and wondered what her sport was. Hockey, he’d guessed, or rugby possibly. But roller derby was something else. Explained the tattoos, too. He tried extremely hard not to think about her in war paint and fishnets. Extremely hard wasn’t hard enough.
‘You play round here?’ he asked, bending to call through the letterbox. ‘Ms Power? Ellie?’
‘Sure. Another reason that I’ll hate you forever for making me wear this—’ she gestured at her skirt, ‘monstrosity. I look like I’m selling insurance. I’ve got a rep to protect.