Secret Smile

Lizzie. Frances. Cathy. Jean. Alice. No.

I couldn't manage much more than a shrug.

'Isn't it unbelievably sad?' she said. 'I just can't believe it.'

'I know,' I said. I should have asked her name straight away and apologized. It was too late now. Julia. Sarah. Jan. Maybe someone else would come up and address her by name. As long as I didn't have to introduce her to anyone.

'Are you coming along to the house?' she said.

'I don't know,' I said.

'You must come,' she said. 'Just for a bit, at least. I want to talk to you.'

'All right,' I said, and we set off. She had a card with the instructions written on it. I had a moment of inspiration. I asked her if I could have a look at the instructions and she handed me the card. I turned it over. Written in pen in the corner was the name ' Sian '. Of course. How could I possibly have forgotten that? What a relief. Finally something in my life had gone right.

'It's funny,' she said. 'This is the first time I've ever been to the funeral of anyone my own age.'

'Yes, Sian,' I said, just to show her that I knew her name. 'It's strange.'

I didn't say anything about Troy. His death seemed something too precious to be brought out and bandied around in conversation as something interesting to talk about with someone I hardly knew and would probably never meet again. Sian talked about Laura and how they hadn't met for over a year and how she had heard about her marriage from mutual friends. They had just got married at the register office without telling anyone.

'She married someone I've never heard of,' Sian said. 'It must have been so sudden.'

I didn't want to say anything, but I knew that if I didn't it was an absolute certainty that someone would come up to us and start talking about Brendan and me and it would make me look ridiculous again.

'I knew him,' I said. 'It was pretty sudden.'

'He must have been the one walking behind the coffin.'

'That's right.'

'He was very good-looking,' said Sian. 'I can see why she might have fallen for him.'

'I'll introduce you,' I said.

Sian looked embarrassed.

'I didn't mean…' she started and then stopped. She seemed unable to say what it was she didn't mean.

The house was crowded. It was a big party, though I couldn't see Tony anywhere, the one person I wanted to see and to hug. There was a table with sandwiches, boiled eggs, dips, chopped vegetables, crisps. There was tea, coffee, juice. I thought of Laura's mother superintending the preparations. She wasn't invited to the wedding, but here she was, just a few weeks later, organizing the funeral. I looked around for someone I knew. I still saw no sign of Tony. I assumed he must have slipped away after the ceremony. Laura's parents were leading a very old woman across the living room into a corner and helping her into an armchair. I considered offering my condolences and then thought how could I possibly without getting myself lost in horrendous explanations, and then told myself I ought to talk to them anyway. This argument with myself was still going on when I became aware of someone's presence beside me. I looked around. The face I saw was so unexpected that for a moment I had trouble placing him. It was the detective, Rob Pryor.

'What on earth are you doing here?' I asked.

He didn't answer, just handed me a cup of tea.

'I'd sort of hoped for something stronger,' I said.

'There isn't anything stronger.'

'All right.'

'I know what you're going to say,' he said.

I took a gulp of tea. It was scaldingly hot and it burned my mouth and almost everything else as I swallowed it.

'What am I going to say?'

'I thought you'd be here,' he said. 'I thought it was important that I head you off.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'I've looked into this,' Rob said. 'Laura's death is terribly sad. But that's all.'

'Oh, for fuck's sake, Rob,' I said. 'Do you mind if I call you Rob?'

'Go ahead,' he said.

'Come off it,' I said. 'Don't insult my intelligence.'

'I know what you mean,' he said. 'I thought of you as soon as I heard. I made calls. I talked to the investigating officer.'

'Forget all that,' I said. 'Just think about it. I come to you with my suspicions about Troy. You pooh-pooh them. Fine. Then Brendan dumps my sister for my best friend and runs off with her. A few months later she's dead. Do you see a pattern here?'

Rob sighed.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I'm not very interested in patterns. Facts are stubborn things. Laura died by accident.'

'How many twenty-five-year-olds drown in the bath?' I asked.

'She'd been at a party,' Rob said. 'She was clearly intoxicated. She had some sort of altercation with Mr Block. She left early. She returned to their flat alone. She ran herself a bath. She slipped and struck her head while the bath was running. She drowned. The bath overflowed and, at just before twenty past midnight, Thomas Croft, who lived in the flat beneath, became aware of water coming through the ceiling, ran up, found the front door of the flat unlocked and discovered Mrs Block dead in the bath.'

I hated to hear him call Laura 'Mrs Block'. It was another way that Brendan had got his clammy hands into somebody's life. I looked around to make sure nobody could overhear us.

'That's exactly what he did when he and Kerry were living in my flat.'

'What?'

'He deliberately let the bath overflow. It's a message.'

'A message?'

'To me.'

Rob Pryor looked at me almost with an expression of pity.

'Mrs Block's death was a message to you'?' he said. 'Are you insane?'

'It's easy to bang someone over the head,' I said. 'Hold them under the water.'

'That's true,' said Rob.

'And it wasn't a dinner party, was it?' I said. 'There must have been lots of people around. In the house. In the garden. Were people keeping track of Brendan every minute?'

Rob gave an impatient frown.

'It's a twenty-minute walk from the party at Seldon Avenue back to their flat. Maybe twenty-five. Anybody who left the party to kill her would have been away for about an hour.'

'They could have caught a cab,' I said, a bit feebly.

'I thought your theory depended on nobody noticing,' said Rob. 'Your murderer calls a cab, it arrives at the party with nobody noticing. And what? Did he ask the cabbie to wait while he went inside and committed the murder?'

'He could have followed her back. Nobody noticed she was gone.'

'Oh, I forgot,' said Rob, and at that very moment I felt hands on my shoulders. I looked round and a face leaned into mine, kissing me on both cheeks, hugging me too close. It was Brendan.

'Oh, Miranda, Miranda, Miranda,' he murmured in my ear. 'What a terrible thing. It's so good of you to come. It means a lot to me. It would have meant a lot to Laura.' He looked over at Rob Pryor. 'Rob has been a good friend to me, ever since the business with Troy.' He looked back at me. 'I'm sorry, Mirrie. I'm so sorry. I seem to bring bad luck wherever I go.' I didn't reply. I couldn't. 'I needed to talk to you, Mirrie.' He smiled at me, looking me in the eyes. I always felt he was just a bit too close, his breath warm on my cheeks. 'You're the one who understands me. Better than anyone else. There's something strange. Has Rob told you?' He looked over at Rob, who shook his head. 'Almost at the moment when it – you know, the thing with Laura, I can't bear to say it – do you know what I was doing?'

'Of course I don't,' I said.

'You do,' he said. 'I was talking to you.'

Dearest Troy,

There's this memory that keeps coming back to me. When you were about nine you insisted on waking me up at four in the morning to listen to the dawn chorus. I staggered blearily out into the garden in my dressing gown even though it was freezing cold and the grass was soaking wet. I thought I'd just stay out there for a few minutes to humour you and then race back to my warm bed. But you were all dressed up in jeans and Wellington boots and a big jacket, and you had Dad's binoculars hanging round your neck. We stood at the end of the garden in the dawn and all of a sudden – as if a switch had been thrown – the birds started to sing. A great wall of sound all round us. I looked at your face and it was so incredibly joyful that I forgot to feel cold. You showed me the birds in the branches and then I could match the sounds with the open beaks and pulsing throats. We stayed out there for ages and then we went into the kitchen and I made us hot chocolate and scrambled eggs. You said, with your mouth fulclass="underline" 'I wish it could be like this all the time.'