Second Life

Chapter One

I climb the stairs but the door is closed. I hesitate outside it. Now I’m here, I don’t want to go in. I want to turn round, go home. Try again later.

But this is my last chance. The exhibition has been on for weeks and closes tomorrow. It’s now or never.

I close my eyes and breathe as deeply as I can. I concentrate on filling my lungs, I straighten my shoulders, I feel the tension in my body evaporate as I breathe out. I tell myself there’s nothing to be worried about, I come here regularly – to meet friends for lunch, to catch the latest exhibitions, to attend lectures. This time is no different. Nothing here can hurt me. It’s not a trap.

Finally I feel ready. I push open the door and go in.

The place looks exactly as it always does – off-white walls, a polished wooden floor, spots in the ceiling that hang off tracks – and though it’s early there are already a few people wandering around. I watch for a minute as they pause in front of the pictures, some standing further back to get a better view, others nodding at a companion’s murmured comment or examining the printed sheet they’ve picked up downstairs. The atmosphere is one of hushed reverence, of calm contemplation. These people will look at the photographs. They will like them, or not, then they will go back outside, back to their lives, and in all likelihood they will forget them.

At first I allow myself only a glance at the walls. There are a dozen or so large photos hung at intervals, plus a few smaller ones between them. I tell myself I could wander around, pretend to be interested in them all, but today there’s only one photograph I’ve come to see.

It takes me a moment to find it. It’s hung on the far wall, at the back of the gallery, not quite in the centre. It’s next to a couple of other shots – a full-length colour portrait of a young girl in a torn dress, a close-up of a woman with kohl-rimmed eyes smoking a cigarette. Even from this distance it looks impressive. It’s in colour, though it was taken in natural light and its palette is mostly blues and greys, and blown up to this size it’s imposing. The exhibition is called ‘Partied Out’, and even though I don’t look at it properly until I’m just a few feet away I can see why this picture is in such a prominent position.

I haven’t looked at it in over a decade. Not properly. I’ve seen it, yes – even though it wasn’t a particularly well-used photograph back then it had been featured in a couple of magazines and even a book – but I haven’t looked at it in all this time. Not close up.

I approach it obliquely, and examine the label first. ‘Julia Plummer’, it says. ‘Marcus in the Mirror, 1997, Cibachrome print’. There’s nothing else, no biographical information, and I’m glad. I allow myself to look up at the picture.

It’s of a man; he looks about twenty. He’s naked, shot from the waist up, looking at his reflection. The image in front of him is in focus, but he isn’t, and his face is thin. His eyes are narrowed and his mouth hangs slightly open, as if he’s about to speak, or sigh. There’s something melancholy in the photograph, but what you can’t see is that up until the moment before it was taken the guy in it – Marcus – had been laughing. He’d spent the afternoon in bed with his girlfriend, someone he was in love with as much as she was with him. They’d been reading to each other – Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, or maybe Gatsby, which she’d read and he hadn’t – and eating ice cream from the tub. They were warm, they were happy, they were safe. A radio was playing rhythm and blues in their bedroom across the hall, and in the shot his mouth is open because his girlfriend, the woman taking the shot, was humming along and he was about to join in.

Originally the picture had been different. The girlfriend was in the frame, reflected in the mirror just over the man’s shoulder, her camera raised to her eye. She was naked, blurred out of focus. It was a portrait of the two of them, back when photographs taken in mirrors were still unusual.

I’d liked the shot like that. Preferred it, almost. But at some point – I don’t remember when, exactly, but certainly before I first exhibited it – I changed my mind. I decided it looked better without me in it. I took myself out of the picture.

I regret it now. It was dishonest of me, the first time I used my art to lie, and I want to tell Marcus I’m sorry. For everything. I’m sorry for following him to Berlin, and for leaving him there, alone in that photograph, and for not being the person he thought I was.

Even after all this time, I’m still sorry.

It’s a long time before I turn away from my picture. I don’t take portraits like that any more. It’s families now, Connor’s friends, sitting with their parents and younger siblings, jobs I pick up at the school gate. Pin money. Not that there’s anything wrong with that: I put my best effort into it, I have a reputation, I’m good. People will invite me to their children’s parties to take shots of the guests to be emailed as souvenirs; I’ve even taken the pictures at a kids’ party arranged to raise money for the hospital Hugh works at. I enjoy it, but the skill is technical; it’s not the same as making portraits like this one – it’s not art, for want of a better word, and sometimes I miss making art. I wonder if I still could, whether I still have the eye, the instinct to know when exactly to trip the shutter. The decisive moment. It’s been a long time since I really tried.

Hugh thinks I should get back into it. Connor’s older now, he’s starting to live his own life. Because of his difficult start we both threw ourselves into looking after him, but he needs us less than he once did. There’s more space for me now.

I look briefly at the other pictures on the walls. Maybe I will, soon. I could concentrate a little more on my career and still look after Connor. It’s possible.

I go downstairs to wait for Adrienne. Originally she’d wanted to come with me, to see the exhibition, but I’d told her no, I wanted to see the picture alone. She hadn’t minded. ‘I’ll just meet you in the café,’ she’d said. ‘Maybe we can grab a bite to eat.’

She’s early, sitting at a table by the window with a glass of white wine. She stands up as I approach and we hug. She’s already talking as we sit.

‘How was it?’

I pull my chair under the table. ‘A bit weird, to be honest.’ Adrienne has already ordered a bottle of sparkling water for me and I pour a glass. ‘It doesn’t feel like my picture any more.’

She nods. She knows how anxious I’ve been about coming here. ‘There’re some interesting photos up there. Will you go and take a look? Later?’

She raises her wine. ‘Maybe.’ I know she won’t, but I’m not offended. She’s seen my picture before and isn’t bothered about the others. ‘Cheers,’ she says. We drink. ‘You didn’t bring Connor?’

I shake my head. ‘Definitely too weird.’ I laugh. ‘He’s busy, anyway.’

‘Out with his mates?’

‘No. Hugh’s taken him swimming. They’ve gone to Ironmonger Row.’

She smiles. Connor is her godson and she’s known my husband for almost as long as I have. ‘Swimming?’

‘It’s a new thing. Hugh’s idea. He’s realized his fiftieth is next year and he’s dreading it. He’s trying to get fit.’ I pause. ‘Have you heard from Kate?’

I look down at my drink. I hadn’t wanted to ask the question, not so soon, but it’s out now. I’m not sure which answer I’d prefer. Yes, or no.

She sips her wine. ‘Not for a while. Have you?’

‘About three weeks ago.’

‘And…?’

I shrug. ‘The usual.’

‘Middle of the night?’

‘Yep,’ I sigh. I think back to my sister’s last call. Two in the morning, even later for her, over there in Paris. She’d sounded out of it. Drunk, I guessed. She wants Connor back. She doesn’t know why I won’t let her have him. It isn’t fair and, by the way, she isn’t the only person who thinks Hugh and I are being selfish and impossible.

‘She was just saying the same old thing.’

‘Maybe you need to talk to her. Again, I mean. When she’s not so—’

‘Angry?’ I smile. ‘You know as well as I do how much good that’s likely to do and, anyway, I can’t get hold of her. She won’t answer her mobile and if I ring the landline I just get her flatmate, who tells me nothing. No, she’s made her mind up. Suddenly, after all this time, all she wants in the world is to look after Connor. And she thinks Hugh and I are stopping her for our own selfish reasons. She hasn’t paused, even for a moment, to wonder how Connor might feel, what he might want. She certainly hasn’t asked him. Once again, it’s all about her.’

I stop talking. Adrienne knows the rest; I don’t need to carry on. She knows the reasons Hugh and I took my sister’s son, that for all these years Kate has been happy with the situation. What neither of us knows is why that has changed.

‘Will you talk to her?’ I say.

She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes. For a moment I think she’s going to tell me I have to sort it out myself, I can’t come running to her every time I argue with my sister; it’s the sort of thing my father used to say to me. But she doesn’t, she just smiles. ‘I’ll try.’

We order and eat our lunch. We discuss our mutual friends – she asks me if I’ve seen Fatima recently, did I know Ali has a new job, she wonders whether I’m planning on going to Dee’s drinks party at the weekend – then she says it’s time she left, she has a meeting. I tell her I’ll catch up with her on Saturday.

I can’t resist going through the gift shop on my way out. They’d wanted to use my picture of Marcus on the cover of the brochure but I never replied to the email and instead there’s a picture of an androgynous-looking guy sucking on a lollipop. I didn’t reply to the requests for interviews either, though that didn’t stop one of the magazines – Time Out, I think – running a piece about me. I was ‘reclusive’, they said, and my picture was one of the highlights of the exhibition, an ‘intimate portrait’, both ‘touching and fragile’. Bullshit, I wanted to reply, but I didn’t. If they want ‘reclusive’, I’ll give it to them.

I look again at the lollipop guy. He reminds me of Frosty, and I flick through the book before moving over to the postcards arranged on the display rack. Normally I’d buy a few, but today I just get one, Marcus in the Mirror. For a moment I want to tell the cashier that it’s mine, that I took it for myself, and that, though for years I’ve actively avoided it, I’m still glad they used it in the exhibition and I’ve had the chance to own it again.

But I don’t. I say nothing, just murmur a ‘Thanks’ then put the card in my bag and leave the gallery. Despite the February chill I walk most of the way home – through Covent Garden and Holborn, down Theobald’s Road in the direction of Gray’s Inn Road – and at first I can think of nothing but Marcus and our time in Berlin all those years ago. But by the time I reach Roseberry Avenue I’ve managed to move on from the past and instead I’m thinking about what’s happening here, now. I’m thinking about my sister, and hoping against hope that Adrienne can make her see sense, even though I know she won’t be able to. I’m going to have to talk to Kate myself. I’ll be firm, but kind. I’ll remind her that I love her, and want her to be happy, but I’ll also tell her that Connor is almost fourteen now, that Hugh and I have worked hard to give him a stable life and it’s important it isn’t upset. My priority has to be to make her realize that things are best left as they are. For the first time I allow myself to consider that Hugh and I probably ought to see a lawyer.

I turn the corner into our road. There’s a police car parked a few doors from the house, but it’s our front door that’s open. I begin to run; my mind empties of everything but the need to see my son. I don’t stop until I’m in the house, in the kitchen, and I see Hugh standing in front of me, talking to a woman in a uniform. I take in Connor’s towel and trunks, drying on the radiator, then Hugh and the officer turn to look at me. She’s wearing an expression of perfect, studied neutrality, and I know it’s the way Hugh looks when he’s delivering bad news. My chest tightens, I hear myself shout, as if in a dream. ‘Where’s Connor?’ I’m saying. ‘Hugh! Where’s our son?’ But he doesn’t answer. He’s all I can see in the room. His eyes are wide; I can tell that something terrible has happened, something indescribable. Tell me! I want to shout, but I don’t. I can’t move; my lips won’t form words. My mouth opens, then closes. I swallow. I’m underwater, I can’t breathe. I watch as Hugh steps towards me, try to shake him off when he takes my arm, then find my voice. ‘Tell me!’ I say, over and over, and a moment later he opens his mouth and speaks.

‘It’s not Connor,’ he says, but there’s barely enough time for the relief that floods my blood to register before he says, ‘I’m sorry, darling. It’s Kate.’

Chapter Two

I’m sitting at the kitchen table. I don’t know how I got here. We’re alone; the police officer has left, her job done. The room is cold. Hugh is holding my hand.

‘When?’ I say.

‘Last night.’

There’s a mug of sweet tea in front of me and I watch it steam. It has nothing to do with me. I can’t work out why it’s there. All I can think of is my baby sister, lying in a Parisian alleyway, rain-soaked and alone.

‘Last night?’

‘That’s what they said.’

He’s speaking softly. He knows I’ll remember only a fraction of what he tells me.

‘What was she doing there?’

‘They don’t know. Taking a short cut?’

‘A short cut?’

I try to picture it. Kate, on her way home. Drunk, probably. Wanting to shave a few minutes off her journey.

‘What happened?’

‘They think she’d just left a bar. She was attacked.’

I remember. A mugging, the officer had said, though they don’t know yet if anything was taken. She’d looked away from me, then. She lowered both her gaze and her voice, and turned to Hugh. I heard her, though. ‘She doesn’t appear to have been raped.’

Something within me collapses as I think of it. I fold inwards; I become tiny, diminished. I’m eleven years old, Kate’s four, and I have to tell her that our mother isn’t coming back from the hospital this time. Our father thinks I’m old enough to talk to her, he can’t face it, not this time, it’s my job. Kate is crying, even though I’m not sure she understands what I’ve told her, and I’m holding her. ‘We’ll be fine,’ I’m saying, even though part of me already knows what will happen. Our father won’t cope, his friends will be no help. We’re on our own. But I can’t say this, I must be strong for Kate. For my sister. ‘You and me,’ I tell her. ‘I promise. I’ll look after you. Always.’

But I hadn’t, had I? I’d run away to Berlin. I’d taken her son. I’d left her to die.

‘What happened?’ I say again.

Hugh is patient. ‘Darling, we don’t know. But they’re doing everything in their power to find out.’

At first I’d thought it would be better for Connor to stay away from Kate’s funeral. He was too young, he wouldn’t cope. Hugh disagreed. He reminded me that our father hadn’t let me and Kate go to our mother’s and I’d resented him for the rest of his life.

I had to concede he was right, but it was the counsellor who decided the matter. ‘He can’t be protected,’ she said. ‘He has to deal with his grief.’ She hesitated. We were sitting in her office, the two of us. She had her hands folded on the desk in front of her. I was looking at the marks on her hands, tiny abrasions. I wondered if she was a gardener. I pictured her, kneeling beside flower beds with pruning shears, deadheading roses. A life she can return to, when this is over. Unlike us.

‘Julia?’

I looked up. I’d missed something.

‘Does he want to go?’

When we got home we asked him. He thought about it for a while, then said he’d like to, yes.

We bought him a suit, a black tie, a new shirt. He looks much older, wearing them, and walks between me and Hugh as we go into the crematorium. ‘Are you all right?’ I say, once we’ve sat down.

He nods, but says nothing. The place feels drenched with pain, but most people are silent. In shock. Kate’s death was violent, senseless, incomprehensible. People have retreated within themselves, for protection.

Yet I’m not crying, neither is Connor, and neither is his father. Only Hugh has looked at the coffin. I put my arm around our son. ‘It’s all right,’ I say.

People continue to file in behind us and take their seats. There is shuffling, voices are hushed. I close my eyes. I’m thinking of Kate, of our childhood. Things were simple, then, though that is not to say they were easy. After our mother died our father began drinking heavily. His friends – mostly artists, painters, people from the theatre – started spending more and more time with us, and we watched our house become the venue for a kind of rolling party that sputtered and faltered but never quite stopped. Every few days new people would arrive just as others left; they would be carrying more bottles and more cigarettes, there would be more music, sometimes drugs. Now I can see that this was all part of our father’s grief, but back then it had felt like a celebration of freedom, a binge that lasted a decade. Kate and I felt like unwelcome reminders of his past, and though he kept the drugs away from us and told us he loved us, he was neither inclined nor able to be a parent and so it’d fallen to me to look after us both. I would prepare our meals, I’d put a squirt of paste on Kate’s toothbrush and leave it out at bedtime, I’d read to her when she woke up crying and made sure she did her homework and was ready for school every day. I held her and told her that Daddy loved us and everything would be all right. I discovered I adored my sister, and despite the years between us we became as close as twins, the connection between us almost psychic.

Yet she’s there, in that box, and I’m here, in front of it, unable even to cry. It’s beyond belief and, somewhere, I know I let her down.

There’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn round. It’s a stranger, a woman. ‘I just wanted to say hello,’ she says. She introduces herself as Anna. It takes me a moment to place her; Kate’s flatmate, we’d asked her to do a reading. ‘I wanted to tell you how sorry I am.’

She’s crying, but there’s a kind of stoicism there. A resilience. ‘Thank you,’ I say, and a moment later she opens the bag on her lap. She hands me a sheet of paper. ‘The poem I picked… d’you think it’s okay?’

I scan the poem, even though I’ve already read it in the order of service. ‘To the angry,’ it begins, ‘I was cheated, but to the happy I am at peace.’ I’d thought it an odd choice, when surely anger is the only response possible, but I say nothing. I hand the sheet back. ‘It’s great. Thank you.’

‘It’s one I thought Kate might like.’ I tell her I’m sure she’s right. Her hands are shaking and, even though the reading isn’t long, I wonder how she’s going to get through it.

She does, in the end. Though upset, she draws on some inner reserve of strength and her words are clear and strong. Connor watches her, and I see him wipe a tear away with the back of his hand. Hugh’s crying, too, and I tell myself I’m being strong for them both, I have to keep myself together, I can’t let them see me fall apart. Yet I can’t help wondering whether I’m kidding myself and the truth is I can’t feel any pain at all.

Afterwards I go over to Anna. ‘It was perfect,’ I say. We’re standing outside the chapel. Connor looks visibly relieved that it’s over.

She smiles. I think of Kate’s phone calls over the last few weeks and wonder what Anna thinks of me, what my sister had told her.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

‘This is my husband, Hugh. And this is my very dear friend, Adrienne.’

Anna turns to my son. ‘And you must be Connor?’ she says. He nods. He holds out his hand for her to shake it, and for a moment I’m struck again by how grown up he seems.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ he says. He seems totally lost, unsure how he’s supposed to behave. The carefree boy of just a few weeks ago, the child who would race into the house, pursued by three or four friends, to pick up his football or his bike, seems suddenly to have gone. The boy who would spend hours with his sketch pad and some pencils has disappeared. I tell myself it’s temporary, my little boy will be back, but I wonder if that’s true.

We carry on talking, for a while, but then Hugh must sense Connor’s distress and suggests they make their way over to the cars. Adrienne says she’ll go with them, and Hugh turns to Anna. ‘Thank you for everything,’ he says, and he shakes her hand again before putting his arm around Connor’s shoulders. ‘Come on, darling,’ he says, and the three of them turn away.

‘He seems a nice lad,’ says Anna, once they’re out of earshot. The wind has whipped up; there’ll be rain soon. She smooths her hair away from her mouth.

‘He is,’ I say.

‘How’s he coping?’

‘I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet.’ We turn and walk towards the flowers that have been arranged in the courtyard outside the chapel.

‘It must be hard for him.’

I wonder how much she knows about Connor. She and my sister were old friends; Kate told me they’d known each other at school, though only vaguely, through other people. A few years ago they’d reconnected through Facebook and quickly realized they’d both moved to Paris. They met for drinks and a few months later Anna’s flatmate moved out of her apartment and Kate moved in. I’d been pleased; my sister hadn’t always found it easy to keep friends. They must have talked a great deal, yet Kate could be secretive, and I imagine the painful subject of Connor was something she might not find easy to raise.

‘He’s okay,’ I say. ‘I think.’

We’ve reached the south-west wall of the crematorium, the wreaths, the white chrysanthemums and pink roses, the sprays of white lilies pinned with handwritten cards. I bend down to read them, still not quite understanding why it’s Kate’s name I see everywhere. Just then the sun breaks through the clouds and for the briefest of moments we’re lit by its brilliance.

‘I bet he’s quite a handful,’ says Anna, and I stand up. Connor’s a good lad, no trouble at all. We decided to tell him the truth about his background as soon as he was old enough to understand it.

‘He’s fine,’ I say. ‘So far…’

‘He gets on well with his dad?’

‘Very.’ I don’t tell her that it’s how well he gets on with me that I worry about. I try to be as good a mother as I can, yet sometimes it doesn’t come easily. Certainly not in the same way that fatherhood comes to Hugh.

I remember I talked to Adrienne about it once. Hugh was busy with work, and Connor and I were on holiday with her twins. She had been amazing, all day, with all three children. They were much younger, there were tantrums, Connor was whining about everything and refusing to eat. I hadn’t been able to cope, and felt bad. ‘I worry it’s because he’s not mine,’ I said, once the children had gone to bed and she was sitting with a glass of wine, me with a soda. ‘You know?’ She told me I was being hard on myself. ‘He is yours. You’re his mum. And you’re a good one. You have to remember that everyone’s different, and your mother wasn’t around to set an example. No one finds it easy.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. I couldn’t help wondering what Kate would have said.

‘That’s good,’ says Anna now, and I smile. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We’re very lucky to have him.’ We carry on looking at the flowers. We make small talk, avoiding the subject of Kate. After a few minutes we walk back out, towards the car park. Adrienne is waving to me, and I tell Anna I’d better go over.

‘It’s been good to meet you,’ I say.

She turns to me and takes my hands in hers. Her grief has broken through again, she’s begun to cry. ‘I miss her,’ she says simply.

I hold her hands. I want to cry, too, but I don’t. The numbness pervades everything. It’s a defence, Hugh has said. I’m blocking everything. Adrienne agrees: ‘There’s no right way of grieving Kate,’ she says. I haven’t told any of my other friends how I feel in case they think I’m unconcerned about my sister’s murder. I feel bad.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘I miss her, too.’

She looks up at me. She wants to say something. The words tumble out. ‘Can we stay in touch? I mean, I’d like that. If you would? You could come and visit me in Paris, or I could come and see you. I mean, only if you want to, I guess you’re very busy—’

‘Anna, please.’ I put my hand on her arm to silence her. Busy doing what? I think. I had a few jobs in my diary – a couple wanted pictures of them with their eight-week-old baby, the mother of a friend of Connor’s wanted the family and their Labrador – but I’ve cancelled those. Right now I’m doing nothing except existing, thinking of Kate, wondering whether it can really be coincidence that the day I went to look at the picture of Marcus is also the day that claimed her.

I manage to smile. I don’t want to seem rude. ‘I’d like that very much.’

Chapter Three

Hugh is eating breakfast. Muesli. I watch as he pours milk into his coffee and adds half a spoonful of sugar.

‘Are you sure it’s not too soon?’

But that’s precisely why I want to go, I think. Because it’s been two months and, according to my husband, I’m still in denial. I need to make it real.

‘I want to go there. I want to meet up with Anna. I want to talk to her.’

As I say it I realize how much it means to me. Anna and I are getting on. She seems warm, funny. Understanding. She doesn’t seem to judge. And it was Anna who was closer to Kate than all of us – closer than me, closer than Hugh, or Adrienne – so it’s Anna who can help me, in a way that my other friends can’t. And perhaps I can help her, too.

‘I think it’ll do me good.’

‘But what are you hoping to achieve?’

I pause. Perhaps part of me also wants to be sure she doesn’t think badly of me and Hugh, for taking Connor. ‘I don’t know. It just feels like something I want to do.’

He’s silent. It’s been nine weeks, I think. Nine weeks, and I still haven’t cried. Not properly. Again I think of the postcard that’s still in my bag, where I put it the day Kate died. Marcus in the Mirror.

‘Kate died. I have to face it.’ Whatever it is.

He finishes his drink. ‘I’m not convinced, but…’ His voice softens. ‘If you’re sure, then you should go.’

I’m nervous as I step off the train, but Anna’s waiting for me at the end of the platform. She’s wearing a dress in pale lemon and standing in the sunlight that arcs in from the high windows. She looks younger than I remember, and she has a quiet, simple prettiness I hadn’t noticed at the funeral. Her face is one I’d have once wanted to photograph; it’s warm and open. She smiles when she sees me, and I wonder if she’s already shedding her grief, while mine is only just beginning to grip.

She waves as I approach. ‘Julia!’ She runs forward to greet me. We kiss on both cheeks then hold each other for a few moments. ‘Thanks so much for coming! It’s so good to see you…’

‘You too,’ I say.

‘You must be exhausted! Let’s get a drink.’

We go to a café, not far from the station. She orders us both a coffee. ‘Any news?’

I sigh. What’s there to say? She knows most of it already. The police have made little progress; Kate had been drinking in a bar on the night she was attacked, apparently alone. A few people remember seeing her; she seemed in good spirits, was chatting to the barman. Her phone records haven’t helped, and she was definitely by herself when she left. It’s irrational, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m responsible for what happened.

‘Not really.’

‘I’m sorry. How’re you doing?’

‘I just keep thinking of her. Of Kate. Sometimes it’s like nothing’s happened at all. I just think I could pick up the phone and call her and everything would be all right.’

‘You’re in denial. That’s normal. After all, it hasn’t been that long.’

I sigh. I don’t want to tell her how Kate has been haunting me, that I’ve been dialling her number over and over again only to hear a pre-recorded voice, speaking in French, informing me that her number hasn’t been recognized. I don’t want her to know I bought Kate a card, that I wrote out a message and sealed the envelope, then hid it in the bureau underneath a pile of paperwork. I don’t want to admit that the worst thing, the hardest thing, is that some small part of me, a part of me I hate but can’t deny, is glad she’s gone, because at least now she’s not ringing me up in the middle of the night to demand I return her son.

‘Two months,’ I say. ‘Hugh says that’s hardly any time at all.’

She smiles sadly, but says nothing. In a way I’m relieved; there’s nothing anyone can say that might help, everything is irrelevant. Sometimes silence is better and I admire her for braving it.

‘How about you?’ I say.

‘Oh, you know. I’m really busy with work, which helps.’ I remember that she’s a lawyer, working in compliance for a big pharmaceutical company, though she hasn’t told me which one. I wait for her to say more but she doesn’t.

‘How’s Connor?’ she asks. She seems genuinely concerned; I can’t believe it had once crossed my mind that it’d been her trying to help my sister to get him back.

‘He’s all right. I suppose…’

Our coffees arrive. Two espressos, sachets of sugar in each saucer, a single foil-wrapped chocolate.

‘Actually, I’m not sure he is. All right, I mean. He seems angry all the time, slamming doors for no reason, and I know he’s crying a lot. I hear him, but he denies it.’

She doesn’t respond. Part of me wants to tell her I’m worried I’m losing my son. For so many years we’ve been so close, more like friends than mother and child. I’ve encouraged him in his art, taken him out sketching. He’s always turned to me when he’s been upset, as much as he has to Hugh. He’s always told me everything. So why does he now feel that he has to suffer alone?

‘He keeps asking if they’ve caught anyone yet.’

‘It’s understandable,’ she says. ‘He’s young. He’s lost an aunt.’

I hesitate. She’d known, surely?

‘You know Kate was Connor’s mother?’

She nods.

‘How much did she tell you?’

‘Everything, I think. I know you took Connor when he was a baby.’

There’s a tightening in my throat, a defensiveness. It’s that word. ‘Took’. I feel the same familiar spasm of irritation – the rewritten story, the buried truth – and I try to swallow it down.

‘We didn’t take him, exactly. Back then, Kate wanted us to have him.’

Even if she didn’t later, I think. I wonder what Kate’s version of the story became. I imagine she told her friends that we’d swooped in, that we snatched Connor when she was managing perfectly well, that we only wanted her baby because we couldn’t have one of our own.

Again the tiny part of me that’s relieved she’s gone bubbles up. I can’t help it, even though it makes me feel wretched. Connor is mine.

‘It was complicated. I loved her. But Kate could have a very distorted sense of how well she was coping.’

Anna smiles, as if to reassure me. I go on. ‘I know it wasn’t easy for her. Giving him up, I mean. She was very young, when he was born. Just a child herself, really. Sixteen. Only a little bit older than Connor is now.’

I look down at my coffee cup. I remember the day Connor was born. It had only been a few months since I got back from Berlin, and I’d been at a meeting. I was back in the programme, and I was glad. Things were going well. When I got home Hugh had packed an overnight bag. ‘Where are we going?’ I said, and he told me. Kate was in hospital. In labour. ‘I’ve called your father,’ he added. ‘But he isn’t answering.’

I couldn’t process what I was hearing, yet at the same time part of me knew it was true.

‘In labour?’ I said. ‘But—?’

‘That’s what they said.’

But she’s sixteen, I wanted to say. She has no job. She’s living at home, our father is supposed to be looking after her.

‘She can’t be.’

‘Well, apparently she is. We need to go.’

By the time we arrived Connor had been born. ‘Don’t be angry,’ said Hugh, before we went in. ‘She needs our support.’

She was sitting in bed, holding him. She passed him to me as soon as I walked in, and the love I felt for him was instant and shocking in its intensity. I couldn’t have been angry with her, even if I’d wanted to.

‘He’s beautiful,’ I said. Kate closed her eyes, suddenly exhausted, then looked away.

Later, we talked about what had happened. She claimed she hadn’t even known she was pregnant. Hugh said it wasn’t that uncommon. ‘Particularly with teenage girls,’ he said. ‘Their hormones might not have stabilized, so their periods can be irregular anyway. It’s surprising, perhaps, but it does happen.’ I tried to imagine it. It was possible, I suppose; Kate was a plump child, faced with a body that was now unfamiliar. She might have missed the fact she was carrying a baby.

‘She tried to manage,’ I say to Anna now. ‘For a couple of years. But…’

I shrug. She had nothing. By the time Connor was three she’d taken him to Bristol – without telling anyone why – and was living in a tiny bedsit with a shared bathroom and no kitchen. She had an electric hob plugged in next to the sink and there was a travel kettle balanced on an upturned washing-up bowl. The only time I visited, the place smelt of urine and soiled nappies, and Kate was in bed while her son sat strapped into a car seat on the floor, naked and hungry.

I look up at Anna. ‘She asked me to take him. Just for a few months. Until she got on her feet. She loved Connor but couldn’t look after him. Mum wasn’t around, of course, and Dad had no interest. Six months turned into a year, and then two. You know how it is. Connor needed some stability. When he was about five we decided – all of us – that it’d be better if we formally adopted him.’

She nods. ‘You didn’t try to contact the father?’

‘It was all a bit of a mess. Kate never told us who he was.’ There’s a pause. I feel a sense of great shame, on Kate’s behalf, plus sadness for Connor. ‘I don’t think she really knew.’

‘Or maybe he wasn’t someone whose help she wanted…’

‘No.’ I look out of the window at the traffic, the taxis, the bikes wheeling by. The atmosphere is heavy. I want to brighten it. ‘But he has Hugh, now. They’re incredibly close. They’re actually very similar.’

I say it in a kind of rush. It’s ironic, I think. Hugh is the one person that Connor has no blood relationship to, yet it’s Hugh who Connor looks up to.

‘You know,’ says Anna, ‘Kate always told me that although it was very painful she was relieved when you offered to look after Connor. She said that, in a way, you saved her life.’

I wonder if she’s just trying to make me feel better. ‘She said that?’

‘Yes. She said if it hadn’t been for you and Hugh she’d have had to move back in with your father…’

She rolls her eyes, she thinks it’s a joke. I keep quiet. I’m not sure I’m ready to let her into the family story. Not that far, not yet. She senses my discomfort and reaches across the table to take my hand.

‘Kate loved you, you know?’

I feel a flush of relief, but then it’s replaced with a sadness so profound it’s physical, a beat within me. I look at my hand, in Anna’s, and think of the way I’d held Kate’s in mine. When she was a baby I’d take each tiny finger and marvel at its delicacy, its perfection. She was born early, so fragile, and yet so full of energy and desire for life. I wasn’t yet seven, but already my love for my sister was fierce.

And yet it wasn’t enough to save her.

‘She said that?’

Anna nods. ‘Often.’

‘I wish she’d told me that when she was alive. But then I guess she wouldn’t, would she?’

She smiles. ‘Nope…’ she says, laughing. ‘Never. That wouldn’t have been her style.’

We finish our drinks then take the Métro as far as Rue Saint-Maur. We walk to Anna’s apartment. She lives in a mansion block, above a laundrette. There’s a communal door and Anna tries the handle before punching the code into the entry lock. ‘It’s broken, half the time,’ she says. We go up to the first floor. There’s a writing desk on the landing, littered with post, and she pulls out one of its drawers and feels underneath it. ‘There’s a spare key here,’ she says. ‘It was Kate’s idea. She was always forgetting her keys. It’s handy for my boyfriend, too, if he gets here before me.’

So, there’s a boyfriend, I think, but I don’t ask questions. As with any new friendship, these are the details I’ll discover gradually. We go in, and she takes my bag, dropping it by the door. ‘You’re sure you won’t stay here?’ she says, but I tell her it’s fine, I’ll stay at the hotel I’ve booked, a few streets away. We’ve talked about it; I’d be in Kate’s room, surrounded by her things. It’s too early. ‘We’ll have a drink, then you can check in on the way to dinner. I know a great place. Anyway, come through…’

It’s a nice flat, big, with high ceilings and windows to the floor. The furniture in the living room is tasteful, if bland. There are framed posters on the walls, the Folies Bergère, the Chat Noir; the prints anyone might pick in a hurry. It hasn’t been decorated with love.

‘You rent this place?’ She nods. ‘It’s very nice.’

‘It’ll do for a while. Would you like a drink? Some wine? Or I might have beer.’

So there are some things Kate hasn’t told her. ‘Do you have any juice? Or some water?’

‘Sure.’ I follow her into the kitchen. It’s at the back of the flat, neat and clean – unlike mine when I left this morning – but still Anna apologizes. She quickly puts away a loaf of bread that’s been left out, a jar of peanut butter. I laugh and go over to the window. ‘I live with a teenager. This is nothing.’

I think of my family. I wonder how Hugh’s coping with Connor. He said he’d take him out tonight – to the cinema – or maybe they’d play chess. They’ll get a takeaway, or maybe eat out. I know that I ought to give them a call, but right now it’s a relief to have only myself to think about.

Anna grins and hands me a glass of apple juice. ‘You sure that’s all you want?’

‘Yes, thanks.’ She takes a bottle of wine out of the fridge. ‘I can’t tempt you? Last chance!’

I smile, tell her again that I’m fine. I could tell her I don’t drink, but I don’t want to. She might have questions, and it’s not something I want to talk about. Not right now. I don’t want to be judged.

Anna sits opposite me and holds up her glass. ‘To Kate.’

‘To Kate,’ I say. I take a sip of juice. I register the briefest wish that my glass was filled with wine, too, and then, like every other time, I let the thought go.

‘Do you want to see her room?’

I hesitate. I don’t want to, but there’s no avoiding it. It’s one of the things I came here to do. To confront the reality of her life, and therefore also of her death.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Let’s.’

It isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. There’s a window leading on to a little balcony, a double bed with a cream duvet cover, a CD player on the dressing table next to the perfumes. It’s tidy; everything is neatly arranged. Not how I imagined Kate living at all.

‘The police have searched the room,’ says Anna. ‘They left things pretty much as they found them.’

The police. I picture them dusting for fingerprints, picking up her things, cataloguing her life. My skin is white-hot, a thousand tiny detonations of shock. It’s the first time I’ve connected the place I stand with my sister’s death.

I inhale deeply, as if I can breathe her in, but she’s gone, not even her ghost remains. The room could be anybody’s. I turn away from Anna and go over to the bed. I sit down. There’s a book on the dressing table.

‘That’s for you.’

It’s a photo album, the kind with stiff pages and sheets of adhesive plastic to keep the pictures in place. Even before I open it I sense what’ll be inside.

‘Kate used to show these to people,’ says Anna. ‘“That’s my sister,” she’d say. She was so proud, I swear.’

My photographs. Anna sits on the bed beside me. ‘Kate told me your father kept these. She found them when he died.’

‘My father?’ I say. I never suspected he was even remotely interested in my work.

‘That’s what she said…’

On the first page is that picture. Marcus in the Mirror.

‘My God…’ I say. I have to swallow my shock. It’s the full picture, unedited, uncropped. I’m there, standing behind Marcus, the camera raised to my eye. Naked.

‘That’s you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And who’s the guy? I see him everywhere at the moment.’

I feel an unexpected flush of pride. ‘The photo’s been used in an exhibition. It’s become quite popular.’

‘So who is he?’

I look back at the picture. ‘An ex. Marcus.’ I stumble over his name; I wonder when I last said it out loud. I carry on. ‘We lived together, for a while. Years ago. I was… what…? Twenty? Maybe not even that. He was an artist. He gave me my first camera. I took this in our flat. Well, it was a squat, really. In Berlin. We shared it with a few others. Artists, mostly. They came and went.’

‘Berlin?’

‘Yes. Marcus wanted to go there. It was the mid-nineties. The Wall was down, the place felt new. Like it’d been wiped clean. You know?’ She nods. I’m not sure she’s that interested, but I carry on. ‘We lived in Kreuzberg. Marcus’s choice. I think it was a Bowie thing.’ She looks puzzled. Maybe she’s too young. ‘David Bowie. He lived there. Or recorded there, I’m not sure…’

I put my fingers to the photograph. I remember how I used to take my camera with me everywhere, just as Marcus would take his sketchbook and our friend Johan his notebook. These objects weren’t just tools, they were part of who we were, they were how we made sense of the world. I developed an obsession with taking portraits of people as they got ready, got dressed, put make-up on, checked their hair in the mirror.

Anna looks from me to the picture. ‘He looks…’ she begins, but then she stops herself. It’s as if she’s seen something in the picture, something upsetting, that she can’t quite define. I look at it again. It has this effect on people. It creeps up on them.

I finish her sentence. ‘Unhappy? He was. Not all the time, I mean, he was singing along to some song on the radio just after this picture was taken, but yes. Yes, he was sometimes.’

‘Why?’

I don’t want to tell her the truth. Not all of it.

‘He was just… he was a little bit lost, I think, by this point.’

‘Didn’t he have family?’

‘Yes. They were very close, but… you know? Drugs make things like that difficult.’

She looks up at me. ‘Drugs?’

I nod. Surely she can see it?

‘Did you love him?’

‘I loved him very much.’ I find myself willing her with a fierce hope not to ask what happened, just like I hope that she won’t ask how we met.

She must sense my reluctance. ‘It’s an amazing photo,’ she says. She puts her hand on my arm. ‘They all are. You’re very talented. Shall we look at some more?’

I turn to the first page. Here Kate has pasted a picture taken much earlier; black and white and deliberately bleeding at the edges. Frosty, made-up, but not wearing her wig, putting her heels on. She was sitting on our couch, an overflowing ashtray at her feet, next to a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. It was always one of my favourite photographs.

‘Who’s that?’

‘That’s Frosty. A friend.’

‘Frosty?’

‘I can’t remember her real name. She hated having to use it, anyway.’

‘She?’ Anna looks shocked, and I understand why, I suppose. In the picture Frosty’s hair is cropped short; even with the make-up she looks more male than female.

‘Yes. She was a woman.’ I laugh. ‘Actually, she was sort of neither, but she always called herself she. She used to say, “You gotta decide, in this world. There’s only two bathrooms in the bars. There’s only two boxes on the forms. Male or female.” She decided she was a woman.’

Anna looks again at the picture. I don’t expect her to understand. People like Frosty – or even people like Marcus – aren’t part of her world. They aren’t even part of mine any more.

‘What happened to her?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘None of us thought Frosty would last long. She was too fragile for this world… But that might have just been our own melodramatic nonsense. The truth is, I left Berlin in a hurry. I left them behind. I have no idea what happened after I’d gone.’

‘You didn’t look back?’

It’s an odd phrase. I think of Lot’s wife, the pillar of salt. ‘I couldn’t.’ It was too painful, I want to say, but I don’t. I close the photo album and pass it back to her.

‘No. They’re yours.’

I hesitate.

‘Keep them. This, too.’

She hands me a box that was on the floor next to Kate’s bed. It’s a biscuit tin. On the lid are the words Huile d’Olive, a picture of a woman in a red dress.

‘It’s for you.’

‘What is it?’

‘It’s just some personal stuff of Kate’s. I thought you should have it.’

So this is what’s left of my sister. This is what I’ve come to take home. Back to her son.

I’m nervous, as if the tin might contain a trap, a rat or a poisonous spider.

I take off the lid. The box is full of notebooks, photos, paperwork. Her passport is on the top and I open it to her photograph. It’s recent, one I haven’t seen before. Her hair is shorter and I can see she’d lost weight. She looks almost like someone else.

I look at the expiry date. It’s valid for eight more years. Eight years she’ll never need. I snap it shut and put it back, then close the box.

‘I’ll look at the rest later,’ I say. I realize I’ve begun to cry, for the first time since she died. I’m exposed, raw. It’s as if I’ve been slit open like one of Hugh’s patients, neck to groin. I am flayed, my heart a jagged slash.

I put the box down. I want to get away, to find somewhere quiet and warm where I can stay for ever and not have to think about anything at all.

But isn’t this what I came for? To mine the memory of my sister, to make sure there is a tiny part of her that survives for Connor? To feel something, to say sorry, to say goodbye?

Yes, I think. That’s why I’m here. I’m doing the right thing.

So why do I hate myself?

‘It’s okay,’ says Anna. ‘You go ahead and cry. It’s okay.’

Chapter Four

We take a cab to the restaurant. We’re shown to our table, outside on the pavement. White tablecloth, held down with plastic clips, a basket of bread. The evening is warm and pleasant, the air still, loaded with promise.

We chat. Once I recovered we told ourselves we must spend the evening celebrating Kate’s life as well as mourning her death. We laugh, there’s an ease between us; Anna even takes out her phone and takes a snap of the two of us with the river in the background. She tells me she likes this area of the city and wants to live here, one day. ‘It’s very central,’ she says. ‘By the river…’ She orders a carafe of wine. As the waiter begins to pour I put my hand over the top of my glass and shake my head.

‘You’re not drinking?’

‘No,’ I say. I think of the excuses I’ve made in the past – I’m on antibiotics, I’m dieting, or driving – but then the inevitable happens. Other excuses begin to crowd in, the ones that tell me why this time, this one time, I can take a sip. It’s been a difficult day, I’m stressed, it’s been fifteen years and it won’t do any harm.

My sister has been killed.

‘I’m fine.’

I think back to what I’ve learned. I can’t avoid the temptation to drink, I have to recognize the urge. I have to know that it’s normal, and temporary. I have to challenge it, or ride it out.

‘To be honest, I don’t drink. I haven’t for a while.’ Anna nods and sips her wine while I ask for some sparkling water. She looks interested but asks no questions, and I’m relieved. When she puts her glass down I see that she’s distracted, restless. She shifts in her seat, rearranges her napkin.

‘I wanted to talk to you about something.’

‘Go on.’

She hesitates. I wonder what she’s going to say. I know the police have interviewed her extensively; the bar Kate was in that evening is one she goes to. I brace myself for a revelation.

‘It’s about the money…’

I smile. Kate’s will must have surprised her, and Hugh warned me she’d probably mention it.

‘The money Kate left to you?’

‘Yes. It was a shock…’ She picks off some bread. ‘I really wasn’t expecting it. To be honest, I had no idea she had any money to leave, let alone that she’d leave some of it to me… And I didn’t ask her for it. I do want you to know that.’

I nod. I remember it’d been Hugh who had persuaded Kate to write a will in the first place, and we’d both been relieved when she’d later changed it to include Anna. It meant she had friends, she was putting down roots.

‘I know. It’s okay.’

‘Were you surprised? That she left money to me?’

‘No. It makes sense. You were her best friend. Kate was a generous person. She must have wanted you to have it.’

She looks relieved. I wonder whether it’s because of the money, or the fact that this conversation isn’t proving as awkward as she’d feared.

‘Where did it come from?’

‘Our father. He died a couple of years ago and left his money to Kate. Just what was in the bank, plus the proceeds from the sale of his house. It came to a lot more than anyone expected.’

A lot more, I think. Almost a million pounds. But I don’t say it.

‘Did he leave some to you?’

I shake my head. ‘He thought I didn’t need it, I guess.’

Or maybe it was guilt. He knew he’d neglected his younger daughter. He was trying to make it up to her.

Anna sighs.

‘Oh, it’s okay,’ I say quickly. ‘Hugh has money in the family and Kate was struggling.’

‘But she didn’t spend it.’

‘No. Hugh suggested she put some of it away, save it for a rainy day. But neither of us thought she would actually listen to him.’

‘I would happily give my share to you. If you want?’

She’s being serious. I put my hand on her arm. ‘Absolutely not. Besides, she left the rest to Connor. It came to quite a lot.’ A lot more than she left to you, I think, though again I don’t say it. ‘I’m his trustee, though I’m not giving it to him until I’m sure he won’t spend it all on computer games and new trainers.’

She says nothing. She looks unconvinced.

‘Kate clearly wanted you to have that money. Enjoy it…’

Her face breaks into a smile of relief. She thanks me, and a moment later the waiter comes over and for a minute we’re lost in the choosing and ordering of our food. Once he’s retreated, there’s silence. The sun pours its golden light over the river. People stroll, arm in arm. The veil of my grief lifts, briefly, and I glimpse peace. I feel myself almost capable of relaxing.

‘This is so lovely,’ I say. ‘I can see why Kate came to Paris.’

Anna smiles. I think how things might’ve been, if my sister and I had somehow managed to reconcile our differences and found a way back to the closeness we’d shared until the last few years. Perhaps then I could’ve visited them both. It might’ve been the three of us sitting here, chatting, gossiping, having fun. Were we really that different, Kate and I?

I turn to Anna. For the first time I feel able to ask her. ‘I wish I knew what happened,’ I say quietly. ‘That night…’

She sips her wine then pours herself more.

‘Normally we’d have gone out together,’ she says. Something in her tone makes me think I’m not the only one who feels guilty. ‘But I was busy that day. She was on her own.’

I sigh. I don’t want to imagine it.

‘Is it a bad area? Where she was found?’

‘No. Not particularly.’

‘What happened, Anna?’

‘What’ve the police said? Do you talk to them?’

‘Yes. Not as much as Hugh. The Foreign Office said they’d prefer to liaise with just one of us. It keeps it simple, I suppose, and he volunteered. But I speak to them, too.’

‘And you discuss what they say?’

‘Oh, he tells me everything. But none of it’s very helpful.’

‘Really?’

‘No. It’s all dead ends. There’s no motive. They said they’d talked to her friends, but—’

‘But none of us knew anything…’

‘No. So they just keep drawing blanks. The only thing they’re puzzled about is her earring.’

I close my eyes. This is hard. I can’t help but visualize my sister’s body. She was found wearing one earring. It looked as though the other had been torn off.

‘They asked me about that.’

‘You don’t remember anything?’

She shakes her head. ‘No. Was it expensive?’

‘It was cheap. Costume jewellery. Cheap gold, I think. A funny kind of dreamcatcher design with turquoise feathers. I suppose in the dark it might’ve looked expensive, but why take only one? And, as far as they can tell, nothing else was missing. She still had her phone, her purse.’ I hesitate. ‘I think that’s why I find it so hard. It seems so senseless. Hugh keeps suggesting I have some therapy.’

‘And do you think you should?’

I pick up my glass. ‘I’m just not sure what good it would do. It’s typical of Hugh, though. He’s a wonderful man, but he’s a surgeon. If something’s broken he just wants to fix it and then move on. Sometimes I think he’s secretly angry that I’m not getting back to normal quickly enough. You know? He thinks I’m over-obsessing about knowing who killed her.’

‘And are you?’

‘Of course not. I know it won’t bring her back. It’s just… we used to be as close as two people can be, you know? We used to finish each other’s sentences. How could I have not known when she was in trouble?’

‘You’re not to blame—’ she begins, but I interrupt her.

‘You knew her, Anna. What was she even doing there, in that bar, alone?’

She takes a deep breath. ‘I’m not sure.’ She looks out, towards the river. The coaches on the bridge are silvered in the last of the evening sun, the buildings on the right bank glisten.

‘What? What is it? Anna?’

‘I think she might’ve been seeing someone…’

‘A boyfriend?’

‘Kind of…’

I feel a surge of energy. A Pavlovian response to the promise of progress.

‘What d’you mean? Who was she seeing? Did the police know?’

‘It’s not that simple.’ She looks uncomfortable. ‘She… she had boyfriends. Boyfriends, plural.’

I take a deep breath and put down my fork. ‘You mean more than one at the same time?’

She nods.

‘You think one of them found out about the others? Did you tell the police?’

‘I told them as much as I knew. I presume they looked into it, I think they still are looking into it. The thing is… it wasn’t as straightforward as that.’ She hesitates but doesn’t lower her voice, even though there are people at the surrounding tables. ‘They weren’t really boyfriends as such. Kate had fun. You know? She liked meeting guys and having a good time. We both did, occasionally.’

‘In bars?’

‘No. Online.’

‘Okay…’ I say. ‘So she dated people off the internet?’

‘Not just dating.’

‘She was meeting men for sex.’

She looks defensive. ‘It happens! But, anyway, I know she didn’t meet them all. She was more into it than me, but still a lot of it was just sex talk, you know? Fantasy.’

I try to picture Kate, alone in her room, in front of her laptop. For some reason I think of Connor sitting at his computer, his face illuminated by the screen, then of Hugh doing the same thing.

I dismiss the thought. Hugh isn’t that sort of person.

‘We both used to go online together. This is before I met my boyfriend, of course. We’d chat to people, compare notes, sometimes go on dates. You know?’

‘But the police said she left alone.’

‘Maybe she’d been stood up?’

‘Promise me the police know this? They didn’t say anything… She might have put herself in real danger.’

‘Oh, yes. I told them. They questioned me for hours. They asked about everything. Her friends. People she knew. Even you and Hugh.’ She looks at me then down at the table. Anger prickles. Have we been investigated? Do they think I’m capable of hurting my sister? ‘They took away her computer, her phone. I guess they didn’t find anything…’

‘Maybe they didn’t look hard enough?’

She smiles sadly. ‘Well, I suppose we have to trust that they know what they’re doing. Surely?’ She pauses. ‘I’m sorry. If I’ve upset you.’

I look out over the city. It’s dark now, the sky is lit, Notre Dame sits in front of us, owning its own ghostly history. I’m overwhelmed with sadness. All these questions that lead nowhere.

I begin to cry again. It’s as if it’s a new skill; now I’ve started, I can’t stop. ‘How can someone do this to my sister – to anyone – and get away with it?’

‘I know. I know.’ She hands me a tissue from her bag then puts her hand on mine. ‘You need closure.’

I shut my eyes. ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But everything I try to do just opens it all up further. It’s like a cut that won’t heal.’

In my mind I see Kate as a toddler: we’re ready to go to a party, she’s wearing a dress in lemon that had once been mine and a band in her hair with a yellow bow. She’s just pulled herself up on a chair but has let go. She wobbles then looks at me. She’s hesitant, determined, and after a couple of false starts she lifts one foot, then the other. She takes a few steps, her arms out wide, then begins to fall. I remember I’d caught her, swooped her up – already she was giggling – and carried her through to where our mother stood, putting on her gloves. ‘She walked,’ I said. ‘Katie walked!’ And our mother hugged us both to her, all three of us laughing, delighted.

The weight of my grief presses down and I blink the image away. She puts down her wine. ‘Might it help to go there?’

‘Where?’

‘To the place it happened.’ I shake my head, but she goes on. ‘I went. The other week. I had to see it for myself.’ She squeezes my hand. ‘It’s just an alleyway. Nothing special. Next to a train line.’

I don’t speak. I can’t tell her how many times I’ve seen it, how many times I’ve imagined my sister there.

‘I left some flowers there. I think it helped.’

Still I say nothing. I’m not ready. I’m not ready to stare Kate’s death in the face. I’m not strong enough.

‘You just need more time…’

Time. The thing I have plenty of, the thing Kate ran out of.

‘Come with me?’

I close my eyes. Kate is there, I want to say. Her ghost. She’s trapped there, screaming. She can’t escape, and I can’t help her.

‘No. No. I can’t.’

Something snaps. I feel it give, then there’s a release. I reach for the carafe. The gesture is automatic, I’m barely aware I’ve moved. I’m thinking of Kate, of her sitting at her computer, chatting to strangers, telling them her secrets. I’m thinking of Anna. I’m thinking of Hugh, and of Connor, and of Frosty and Marcus, and before I know what I’m doing my glass is in my hand, and it’s full of wine, and I’m thinking, It can’t hurt now, surely? and, Haven’t I waited long enough?

The answers will come, if I’m not quick. I raise the glass to my lips, I push all thought away, and then, for the first time in fifteen years, I’m drinking, and drinking, and drinking.

Chapter Five

I sit on the train. I’m thirsty, my lips are dry, but my head is remarkably clear. I remember hangovers, and this isn’t one. I didn’t drink that much. I can’t have done, or I’d know it.

I think back to last night. The drink slid down my throat as if it were something that belonged, a key in a lock, something that completed me, and as I swallowed I felt myself relax, the unclenching of muscles I didn’t know I’d been tensing. It felt a little too much like coming home.

This isn’t good. I know that, I tell myself that, over and over. Unless I’m careful I’ll forget that there are no halfway houses, I’ll convince myself that I can handle one drink, here and there, or that I’m fine as long as I only drink wine, or don’t drink before the evening, or drink only with a meal. One excuse will bleed into another.

I know I have to do something. I know I have to do it now.

When I get home I call Adrienne. She’s the person I always ring, when I need help. She understands, though she’s never been in the programme. Her addiction is to work, if it’s to anything. She answers straight away.

‘Darling, you’re home. How was it?’

I’m silent. I don’t know what to say. So many years of vigilance, all wasted, all gone in one night. I should confess everything, yet part of me doesn’t want to.

‘I just…’

‘What is it?’

‘Can I talk to you about something?’

‘Of course.’

I can’t say it. Not yet.

‘Did you know Kate was using websites? To meet men, I mean?’

‘Well, I know she used dating sites. Like everyone else. Is that what you mean?’

‘Yes. But she wasn’t just dating. Anna said she was having fantasy sex.’

‘Cybersex?’

‘Yes. And she’d meet up with people, apparently.’

I hesitate. I’m aware this isn’t why I called her, this isn’t the reason I wanted to speak to her. But it seems easier. It’s a build-up, a preparation. Adrienne says nothing.

‘Did you know?’

‘Yes. She told me.’

Jealousy prickles my skin.

‘She never told me.’

Adrienne sighs. ‘Darling, she was having fun. It wasn’t a big thing, just something she did occasionally. And, anyway, you hadn’t really been talking for a while.’

She’s right. Not about anything that really mattered, I guess. There’s another wave of nausea.

‘What if the man who killed her was someone she met online?’

‘The police know what she was doing. I’m sure they’re looking into it.’

Are they? I think. I can’t focus on it, now. I close my eyes. I take a deep breath. I open my mouth to speak, but the words still won’t come.

‘Darling, are you all right?’

She knows, I think. She’s my oldest friend and she can just tell. I lower my voice, even though the house is empty.

‘Julia, what is it?’

‘I had a drink.’

I hear her sigh. I can’t bear her disapproval, but I hear her sigh.

‘I didn’t mean to. I mean, I wasn’t going to, but…’

I stop myself. I’m making excuses. Not taking responsibility. Not admitting that I’m powerless over alcohol. Basic stuff.

I take a deep breath. I say it again.

‘I had a drink.’

‘Okay. Just one?’

‘No.’

Please don’t tell me it’s a slippery slope. I know that. Please don’t make me feel worse than I already do.

‘Oh, darling,’ she says.

‘I feel pretty bad. Awful, in fact.’

Another pause. Please don’t tell me it’s nothing and I ought to forget it.

‘Adrienne?’

‘You’re going through a lot,’ she says. ‘It happened. It’s a slip, a relapse, but you need to forgive yourself… Have you thought about what we talked about?’

She means therapy. She agrees with Hugh, and like everyone in therapy she thinks I should go too, or see a counsellor. She’s even recommended someone. Martin Somebody-or-other.

But the truth is, I don’t want it. Not now, not yet. Not while I’m like this. I think it would fail, and then it would no longer be something I can have in reserve.

‘No,’ I say.

‘Okay, well, I won’t say any more, but I wish you would. Think about it at least.’

I tell her I have, and I will. But I’m beginning to wonder if I deserve this pain, if somehow I owe it to my sister to live through it. I couldn’t save her. I took her son.

‘Have you told Hugh?’

I don’t answer.

‘About having a drink. Have you told him?’

I close my eyes. I don’t want to. I can’t.

‘Julia—?’

‘Not yet,’ I say. ‘There’s no need. It won’t happen again—’

She interrupts me. ‘Darling. Listen. You’re my oldest, dearest friend. I love you. Unconditionally. But I think you need to tell Hugh.’ She waits for me to speak, but I don’t. ‘I know it’s entirely up to you, but I’m sure it’s the right thing to do.’

She’s being tender, kind-hearted; yet still it feels brutal. I tell her I’ll do it tonight.

Hugh is out for the evening. He’s playing squash, then there’ll be drinks afterwards. He isn’t late, though, and Connor has only just gone to bed when he gets in. Almost straight away I decide I’m going to tell him.

I wait until we’re sitting in the living room, watching television. At the first ad break I pause the screen then turn to him, as if I’m going to ask if he wants a cup of tea.

‘Darling?’

‘Uh-huh?’

I stumble over the words.

‘I’ve had a relapse.’

I don’t say any more. I don’t have to. He knows what it means. He hasn’t been through the programme, or even to a meeting, but he’s read the literature. He knows enough. He knows what a relapse is, just like he knows he mustn’t try to control my behaviour by modifying his own, that he can’t stop me drinking by never drinking himself.

He also knows better than to ask how many drinks I had, or when, or why. It’s pointless. The answers are irrelevant. I had a drink. Whether it was the tiniest sip or a whole bottle makes no difference at all.

He takes my hand. I thought he was going to be angry, but he’s not. It’s worse. He’s disappointed. I can tell, from his eyes.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You don’t have to apologize to me.’

It’s not what I want to hear. But what do I want to hear? What can he say? Addiction is a sickness unlike those Hugh is used to facing. He’s someone who cuts the bad parts out, sends them to the incinerator. The patient is cured, or not.

I look at him. I want him to tell me he loves me. I don’t want him to tell me he knows what I’m going through. I want him to remind me that a lapse doesn’t have to be a relapse, or tell me that I can start going to meetings again, or make me feel that we’re in it together.

‘I won’t drink again,’ I say.

He smiles, and tells me he hopes not, for my sake, and for Connor’s. He tells me he’s here for me, always, but it’s too late. He layered the guilt on first, and now I’m hardly listening. Instead, I’m thinking of my sponsor, Rachel. I wish I could ring her, but she’s moved away, it’s been too long. And I’m thinking of Kate.

Finally he’s silent. I wait for a moment then thank him. We sit for a few more minutes, then I tell him I need to go to bed. He kisses me, and says he’ll be up in a minute.

I’m on my own, but I won’t let this happen again, I tell myself. I’ll be vigilant. Whatever happens, whatever it takes, I won’t drink again.

Chapter Six

I wake early. My eyes flick open. Another bad night. It’s June, two months since I went to Paris, four since Kate died. It’s still dark. It’s the middle of the night.

The room is hot and airless, the sheets soaked. Hugh has kicked the duvet off and lies next to me, snoring gently. The clock on my side of the bed ticks, too loud. Four forty. The same time I woke up last night, and the night before that.

I’ve been dreaming of Kate. This time she was about four, it was summer, we were in the garden. She was wearing a yellow dress, angel wings made out of yellow paper, black tights. She wanted me to chase her; she was making a buzzing sound, pretending to be a bee. ‘Come on!’ she was saying, over and over, but I was bored, I wanted to stop. I wanted to get back to my book. ‘Come on, Julia!’ she was saying, ‘Come on!’ then she turned and ran, towards a wood. I wanted to tell her not to go in there, but I didn’t. I was too hot, too lazy. I just let her run away from me, and then turned to go back to the house. As I did the dream morphed, we were adults now, something terrible was happening, and suddenly it was me who was running, running after her, calling her name, and she who was disappearing into an alleyway. It was dark, I was desperate to catch up with her, to save her. I ran round a corner and she was there, slumped on the floor. I was too late.

I sit on the edge of the bed. Every night it’s the same, a dream of Kate, bleeding to death, and then in a dream behind a dream there’s Marcus, always Marcus, his mouth open and accusing. I know I won’t sleep again, I never do.

Tonight I’m weak. I can’t help it. And so I let myself think of him. Of Marcus. For the first time in years I think of the day we met. I close my eyes and I can see it. I’m back there. Marcus is sitting opposite me, the other side of the circle. It’s his first meeting. We’re in a church hall, it’s draughty, a tea urn fizzes in one of the corners. The chair – a guy called Keith – has already outlined the programme and introduced the first speaker, a woman whose name I’ve forgotten. I barely listen as she speaks; I’ve been coming for a while, ever since I caved in and admitted I’ve been drinking too much for too long. Plus, I’m watching Marcus. He’s the same age as me, and we’re both much younger than the others in the group. He sits forward in his chair. He looks eager, attentive, yet at the same time he doesn’t seem wholly interested. Something about him is wrong. I wonder if he’s here for himself, or for someone else. I picture a girlfriend, someone who he’d hoped to persuade here tonight but who refused to come. Perhaps he wants to go home, back to her, and tell her what he’s learned. It’s not so bad, he might say. These people want to help. Next week come with me.

I wanted to find out. I don’t know why; maybe he looked like someone I thought I could get on with. I went up to him, during the break. I introduced myself, and he said his name was Marcus. ‘Hi,’ I said, and he smiled, and in that moment I realized just how attracted I was to him. It was a desire that felt solid, had a shape, a pull that felt physical. I’d never experienced it before, not like this. I wanted to reach out, to touch his neck, his hair, his lips. Just to be sure he existed, was real. ‘First time?’ I said, and he said yes, yes it was. We chatted for a while. Somehow – I don’t remember how, or even whether he volunteered the information himself – I learned that the girlfriend didn’t exist. He was single. When it was time to go back to our seats he came and sat next to me, and after the meeting we went outside. We paused to say goodbye, about to head off in different directions.

‘Are you here next week?’

He shrugged, kicked the kerb. ‘Probably.’ He turned to leave, but then he pulled a scrap of paper out of his wallet.

‘Got a pen?’ he said.

Was that it? I wonder now. Was that the moment my life slipped out of one track – recovery, stability, sobriety – and into another? Or did that come later?

I open my eyes. I can’t think of him any more. He belongs in the past; my family is here, now. My family is Hugh, and Connor.

And Kate.

I get up. This can’t go on, this waking up in the middle of the night. This avoiding of things. I’m haunted by the place she lost her life; I should’ve gone to see it when I had the chance, but there are other ways.

I go downstairs and sit at the kitchen table. I’m determined, I have to do this. In Paris I was a coward, but now I can put it right. I open my laptop and log on to the map programme. I type in the address.

I press enter. A map appears on the screen, criss-crossed with roads, scattered with points of interest. There’s an arrow dropped into it and when I click on Street View the map disappears, replaced by a photo of the road. It looks broad, lined with trees, with shops and banks and a stack of prefabs covered in graffiti. The photo has been taken during the day and the place looks busy; passers-by frozen as they walk along it, their faces blurred inexpertly by the software.

I stare at the screen. It looks ordinary. How could my sister have lost her life here? How could it have left no trace?

I steel myself, then navigate along the road. I see the alleyway, cutting down between a building and the raised railway line that crosses the road.

I’m here, I think. The place she died.

I zoom in. It seems anodyne, harmless. At one end there’s a kiosk, painted blue with a sign advertising Cosmétiques Antilles, and there are two rows of bollards dotting the pavement. The alleyway curves after what looks like four or five yards, and I can’t see down it.

I wonder where it leads, what’s at the other end. I wonder why there was no one there to save her and, for the millionth time, what she was doing there.

I need answers. I fetch the box that Anna gave me from under my bed and take it back downstairs. I look at the picture on the front, the woman in the red dress. For two months I’ve tried to ignore this, terrified of what I might find, but I can’t any longer. How bad can it be? I ask myself. Didn’t Anna say it was just some paperwork? That’s all.

Yet still I’m afraid. But what of? Evidence of how far she’d come, perhaps. Proof that she was right, that Connor would have been better back with her?

I take out her passport and hold it for a moment before putting it to one side. Underneath it there are some letters, and beneath them her birth certificate and driving licence, along with her medical card and a note with what I assume is her National Insurance number.

It calms me, somehow. I’m facing something that’s been waiting for me. I’m doing well. I feel surprisingly okay.

I dig further in. It’s more difficult; there are photos, taken at parties, one of Connor that I’d sent her, another of some friends on a boat trip along the Seine. I tell myself I’ll look at them properly later. Further down there’s a pink Filofax, pocket-sized. This seems hardest of all, but when I flick through its pages I see she seems to have stopped using it when she got an iPhone last summer. Tucked into it is a single sheet of paper. I take that out and unfold it.

Straight away I see a name I recognize. Written at the top is ‘Jasper1234’. It’s the name of the Labrador we had when we were little, followed by four digits, and next to it she’s written ‘KatieB’, and then a Web address, encountrz.com. The rest of the page is filled with a list of odd words – ‘Eastdude’; ‘Athletique27’; ‘Kolm’; ‘Ourcq’ – all written at different times, in different inks and with different pens. It takes me only a moment to piece it together. Encountrz is the site Anna told me about, the one they both used. Kate used our dog’s name as a password, KatieB as her username.

I refold the page and put it back. The guilt I’ve told myself I shouldn’t feel rolls again in my stomach. I should’ve looked at this sooner, I think. It might be important, something the police have missed. I’ve let her down; there was something I could’ve done to save her, something I could still do to make it all right.

I dial Anna’s number. It’s early, but this feels urgent. And it’s an hour later in Paris. Nearly six.

She answers almost immediately. Sleepy, anxious. ‘Hello?’

‘Anna? It’s me. Julia.’

‘Julia. Is everything okay?’

‘Yes, fine. I’m sorry to call so early. I didn’t mean to wake you, but that box you gave me? You’re sure the police have gone through it?’

‘Box? You mean Kate’s things?’

‘Yes. The police have definitely looked at it?’

‘Yes, I’m certain. Why?’

‘I’m just looking at it all now—’

‘Now? It’s very early…’

‘I know, but I couldn’t sleep. The thing is, there’s a list of names. I think they might be people she was talking to. Online, I mean. I thought the police should see them…’

‘They did, I think. They had everything in that box. They said they’d kept everything they might need.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I think so, yes. Give me a second.’

She’s quiet for a moment; I imagine her shaking herself awake. ‘Sorry. What names are they?’

I read the first couple out. ‘Do any of them sound familiar? Did she mention any of them to you?’

‘No—’

I carry on reading. After a few more names she stops me. She’s wide awake now.

‘Wait. Did you say “Ourcq”? That’s not a username. It’s a Métro station.’

I know what she’s going to say.

‘It’s near where they found her body.’

‘So that’s what she was doing there? Meeting someone off this list?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says. But already I’m feeling a curious surge of energy. ‘But I guess it’s possible.’

I end the call. I look again at the list of usernames in her Filofax. It’s as if I’ve found a weak spot in the wall of my grief, something that might lead me first in and then through, on to the other side. To peace.

I wake my laptop. I type quickly: encountrz.com. I tell myself I just want to have a look. I can’t do any harm. I’m about to press enter when I hear a noise. A cough, then a voice.

‘Darling?’ It’s Hugh. ‘It’s half five in the morning. What on earth are you doing?’

I close the browser window and turn to face him. He’s wearing his gown, tied around his waist, and yawns as he rubs his eyes. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes. I couldn’t sleep.’

‘Again? What’s wrong?’

‘I just keep thinking the police must’ve missed something.’

He sighs. I say the same thing to him every single day.

‘I think they’re being incredibly thorough.’ He comes over and sits next to me. I know he can see what’s on my screen.

‘If I hear anything new I always tell you straight away. You know that.’

‘Yes. But do you think they’re still investigating what happened?’

‘I’m sure they’re doing everything—’ he began, but I interrupted him.

‘I mean, really investigating it?’

He smiles. It’s his sad smile, full of compassion. His surgeon’s smile. I used to imagine him practising it in the mirror, determined not to be one of those doctors accused of having a poor bedside manner.

‘I’m sure they are. We’ve discussed it with them. They’ve interviewed all her friends, all the people she worked with. They’ve been through her phone records, they’ve taken the information off her computer. They’ve followed up every lead. But something like that? It can’t be easy. Random, unprovoked…’

‘You told them about the dating sites?’

‘Yes. I rang them as soon as you told me. But they already knew. Anna told them. They said Kate didn’t have a boyfriend…’

‘But they’re not just about dating. Anna implied she was using them for sex. Casual sex.’ He shakes his head but I go on. ‘You know. One-night stands. Anna says it wasn’t that often, but she did it. And she didn’t always tell her where she was going, or who she was meeting.’

A look of disapproval flashes on his face. I wonder for a moment whether he thinks she deserves what she got, and then instantly I dismiss the thought.

‘D’you think that’s who killed her?’

‘Who?’

‘Someone she went to meet. To have sex with, I mean. Or someone she was messaging, at least?’

‘I’m sure the police are looking into that—’

‘They haven’t told us they are.’

‘Look, we’ve been through all this, Julia. They’re looking into it. The truth is, I think she talked to a lot of people online but only met up with one or two.’

I hesitate. I need to push him; I’m almost certain he knows more than he’s telling me, that there might be a tiny fragment that’s been overlooked, a detail that will unlock the rest and make it all fit into place.

‘But—’

He interrupts me. ‘Julia, we’ve been through all this a thousand times. They’ve kept her laptop; they’re doing everything they can. But if she was doing that and keeping it secret then it would be almost impossible to find everyone she might have been in contact with. There might be sites she used that we don’t know about, any number of people she was talking to… What’s that?’

At first I don’t know what he means, but then I see that he’s looking at my screen.

‘It’s a photograph.’ He isn’t wearing his glasses and has to lean forward to get a better view. ‘It’s where Kate died.’

He puts his hand on my shoulder. It feels heavy, meant to reassure. ‘Are you sure it’s a good idea to look at that, darling?’

‘No,’ I say. I’m not desperate, but I’d like him to approve.

But why would he? He thinks the police are doing their best and that’s the end of it.

‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea at all, but what else am I supposed to do?’

‘Come back to bed?’

‘Soon…’

‘Come on.’ He squeezes my shoulder then gently closes the lid of my machine. ‘Come and get some rest. You’ll feel better. I promise. Doctor’s orders.’

I stand up. I won’t feel better, I want to say, I never do. He turns to go back upstairs.

‘I’ll be up in a minute,’ I say. ‘I’m just going to make myself a cup of tea. I might read for a bit. Until I feel sleepy.’

‘Okay,’ he says. He knows I have no intention of following him. ‘You haven’t forgotten we’ve got people coming for supper? Have you?’

‘No,’ I say, even though I had.

‘Maria and Paddy…’

Of course. We’ve known the Renoufs for years, ever since Maria joined Hugh’s department as a registrar. Hugh tipped her for success even then, said she was going places, was someone he mustn’t let go. I like them both, but this is the first time he’s invited them – invited anyone, in fact – since Kate died. I suppose he thought cooking would do me good. Maybe he’s right. Following a recipe. Chopping, weighing, measuring. I used to enjoy it, before Kate. I went on courses, I was proud of the fact that I’d gone from someone who knew nothing about cooking to someone who could make their own pasta.

But, now? Now, I don’t want to see anyone.

‘Can’t we cancel?’

He comes over. ‘Darling. It’ll do you good, I promise.’ He kisses the top of my head. It’s a tender kiss, warm. For a moment I want to climb inside him, have him protect me. ‘We’ll have fun. We always do. Maria will talk endlessly about work and Paddy will flirt with you, and then when they’ve gone we’ll laugh about it. I promise.’

He’s right. I know he is. I can’t keep running.

‘I’ll go shopping this morning,’ I say.

He goes back upstairs. I sit in the chair. I leave my machine closed. I don’t want to log on to encountrz. I’m afraid of what I might see.

I make tea, I sit with my book. An hour passes, two. Hugh comes downstairs, showered now, ready for work, then a little while later, Connor.

‘Hi, Mum,’ he says. He’s dressed, wearing his uniform, the grey jumper, the white shirt with a maroon tie. I watch as he gets himself a bowl of cereal, pours himself some juice. He’s looking older every day, I think.

‘Are you all right, darling?’ I say, and he replies, ‘Yep,’ with a friendly shrug, as if there’s no reason at all he might not be.

Maybe he really is fine, but I doubt it. He’s stopped crying now, but if anything that’s more worrying. The only time he ever talks about Kate’s death is to ask if there’s ‘any news’, by which he means, ‘Have they got them yet?’ I’d felt angry at first – it’s all he can focus on – but now I see that it’s the only prism through which he can process his grief. After all, he’s just turned fourteen. How else is he supposed to respond?

He sits down with his breakfast and I watch as he begins to eat.

The counsellor we’ve taken him to says all this is normal. He’s doing as well as can be expected, working through his grief in his own way, and we should try not to worry. But how can I not? He won’t talk to me. He’s slipping away. Now, I need him to know how much I love him, that there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him, but it’s almost as if he’s decided he no longer cares.

I clear my throat. ‘It’s okay, if you want to talk.’

‘I’m fine.’ He eats his cereal quickly as I make myself a coffee. For a moment I’m back with Kate, it’s her getting ready for school, not her son, but then a moment later Connor is standing, gathering his things. Don’t go, I want to say. Sit with me. Talk to me. But of course I can’t. ‘See you later!’ I say, and before I know it he’s almost out of the door. From nowhere comes an almost overwhelming urge to hug him.

I would have done, once, yet now I don’t. These days he’s as likely as not to respond to a hug with indifference, as if what I’m doing is of no concern to him, and today I couldn’t bear that. ‘Love you!’ I shout instead, and he says, ‘Bye, Mum!’ as he leaves. It’s almost enough.

He’s growing up. I know that. He’s becoming a man; it would be a tough time even if he didn’t have Kate’s death to wrestle with. I have to remember that, no matter what happens, how hard it gets, how distant he becomes, he’s in pain. I might feel like I’ve already failed him a million times but still I have to look after him, to protect him, like I looked after and protected his mother when she was a child.

I turn away from the window. I’m photographing a family next week – a colleague of Adrienne’s, her husband, her two little girls – and I need to think about that. It’s the first time I’ve felt able to work since Kate died and I want it to go well. Plus, I have a dinner party to prepare. Things must get done.

Chapter Seven

I call Adrienne to get her friend’s details. I want to make arrangements. I have my studio at the bottom of the garden in which I keep my tripods and lights, a couple of backdrops I can suspend from the ceiling. I have a desk there, though usually I do my editing on my laptop in the house, at the kitchen table, or in the living room. ‘It would be good if they could come to me,’ I say. ‘It’ll make it easier.’

She can hear the lack of enthusiasm in my voice.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘You can tell.’

‘Of course. Talk to me.’

I don’t want to, but I can’t work out why. Is it because I’m worried she’ll just tell me to leave things alone, to stop meddling, to stop worrying?

‘I looked through Kate’s things. The stuff Anna gave to me.’

‘Darling—’

‘I found her login details. For the website she was using.’

‘For what?’

‘Meeting men. There was a list of names. Of people she was talking to – or meeting, I guess.’

‘Have you given them to the police?’

‘Hugh said they already had them.’

‘Good. Then there’s nothing more you can do.’

But there is, though.

‘I could log on. As her, I mean. I have her password. I could find out if there was anyone else.’

For a long time she’s silent.

‘Adrienne?’

‘Wouldn’t the police have done that?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe they don’t realize what encountrz.com is? Or that Jasper1234 is her password? I thought I could go online and just look at her chat history. See if there are any other names on there.’

‘I don’t know… it sounds risky.’

Her reservation strengthens my resolve.

‘I’m just talking about getting a list of names.’

There’s a long pause, as if she’s trying to weigh something up. The wisdom of me having something to do, perhaps, versus the chance, the likelihood, it will just lead to more disappointment.

After all, she’s right. In all probability the police have done all this already.

‘I suppose it can’t hurt,’ she says. ‘As long as you’re only talking about getting the list. But why not double-check with them first?’

Suddenly I’m not sure it’s a good idea at all. A list of names. What would the police even do with it?

‘I probably won’t even bother.’

She sighs. ‘Just be careful, Julia. Whatever you do. And keep in touch.’

I spend the afternoon shopping, cooking. For a while I lose myself in the rhythm of the recipe. Just for a moment. But the evening gets off to a bad start. Connor announces that he’s doing homework and wants to eat in his room, which means that Hugh and I bicker about whether we should let him. Tensions fester, and things don’t pick up until our guests arrive.

After that the evening follows its usual pattern, yet the atmosphere is undeniably different. Kate’s death casts its now-familiar shadow – Paddy mentions it almost as soon as they arrive, and they both say how sorry they are – but it’s more than that. I’m detached, I can’t engage. They talk a lot about Geneva, where Hugh’s been invited to deliver a keynote speech at a conference next week. Maria’s going to present her work, too, and even though I’ve been there I don’t contribute. I feel outside of it all, observing from a great distance. I watch as Hugh pours wine and nod as they all sip it appreciatively, I eat the beef Wellington I’ve cooked and accept their compliments graciously, but it’s an act, I’m pretending to be a normal person. It’s not me.

When we’ve finished Paddy says he’d like to pop outside for a cigarette. ‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ I say.

‘Filthy habit,’ he says, ‘but…’ He shrugs his shoulders. I tell him we’re happy for him to smoke in the house near one of the open windows but Maria protests.

‘No way! Make him go outside!’

He pretends to be upset, but it’s good-natured, humorous. He takes his cigarettes out of his jacket and looks at me. ‘Keep me company?’

I say I will. Hugh looks at me but says nothing. We go outside, closing the patio door behind us. It’s almost dark, still warm. We sit on the wall, at the edge of the pool of light that shines from the kitchen; behind us sits my studio. He holds a cigarette out to me. ‘You don’t, do you?’

I take it. ‘Very occasionally,’ I say. He lights his cigarette and hands me the lighter. I inhale deeply, feeling the draw of the smoke, the instant hit. We sit in silence for a moment, then he asks me how I’m coping.

‘Really, I mean.’

I swallow hard. ‘It’s tough. You know…’

‘I do. My brother died. Years ago. Cancer. He was older than me…’

‘Oh, God,’ I say. ‘I had no idea.’

‘No reason you should.’ There’s silence. A beat. ‘The end wasn’t unexpected, but it was still awful. I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re going through.’

We sit for a few moments.

‘How’s Connor?’ he says.

I sigh. There’s nothing to say, yet still I’m glad he’s bothered to ask. ‘He’s all right, I think. He’s not really talked about it. I’m not sure that’s a good thing, though…’

‘He will, I guess. When he’s ready.’

‘I suppose so. I just wish I knew what he was thinking. What was going on in his mind. He spends hours in his room, though that’s nothing new, I suppose. It’s as if he’s avoiding me.’

‘He’s at that age, I suppose. Plus, he’s a boy.’

I look at him, at his profile, silhouetted against the light in the house. Is it as simple as that? I lost my mother when I was young; I have no idea what’s normal. Maybe he’s right, it’s just the fact that he’s a boy, and I’m a woman, and that’s why he’s slipping away from me. I find the thought curiously reassuring. Maybe it has nothing to do with the fact that I’m not his birth mother.

‘Have you and Maria ever thought about children?’

He looks over at his wife, visible in the kitchen, helping my husband to prepare the dessert. Connor has joined them, they’re laughing at something.

‘Not really,’ says Paddy, looking back to me. ‘Maria’s career… you know? And I’m not that bothered. I’m from a big family. We have a lot of nieces and nephews…’

He sounds disappointed, but I don’t know him well enough to probe further. Not really.

‘That’s good,’ I say. I grind my cigarette out.

‘Shall we go back in?’

‘Sure!’ He wipes his hands on his jeans, then stands up and holds out his hand for me to take. ‘Are you going to Carla’s party?’

I’d completely forgotten. Another colleague of Hugh’s, with a big house in Surrey, a large garden, a gas-fired barbecue. She throws a party every July and invites everyone. Last year had been fun, but now I’m not looking forward to it at all. I’m trapped, though; she sends the invites out in April. There’s no way we can get out of going.

‘I guess,’ I say, standing up. He smiles, and says he’s glad. It’s a fraction of a second before he lets go of my hand, not long enough to be sure it means anything at all. I’m not certain whether I’m holding on to him, or him to me.

They leave. Hugh goes into the kitchen, without saying a word. I follow him. He begins to tidy up, scraping each plate before rinsing it and putting it in the sink. He doesn’t smile, or even look at me as I speak.

‘What’s up with you?’

Still no eye contact. A plate clunks into the sink. Is this because I went outside to sit with Paddy?

‘It’s Connor,’ he says.

‘Connor?’ I pick up a cloth and begin to wipe down the worktop. ‘What about him? Are we still arguing because I said he could eat in his room?’

‘Among other things.’

I choose to ignore him. If he wants to bring anything else into this, then he’ll have to talk about it rather than make me guess.

‘He’s been really upset recently,’ I say instead. ‘I don’t think we should force him to do something he doesn’t want to do. I think we need to cut him some slack.’

He puts down the plate he’s holding and turns to face me. ‘Yes, well, I think we’ve been cutting him far too much slack lately. We shouldn’t indulge him. It’s really important we keep things normal, Julia.’

‘Meaning?’

He turns his palms upwards. ‘The grief counsellor said we mustn’t make too many allowances. He has to realize that life goes on.’

Life goes on? My anger ratchets up another notch. Life didn’t go on for Kate, did it? I take a deep breath. ‘I’m just worried about him.’

‘And I’m not? He comes in, smelling of cigarettes—’

‘Cigarettes?’

‘Hadn’t you noticed? On his clothes…’

I shake my head. I haven’t noticed any such thing. Either I’ve become neglectful, or Hugh is imagining things, and I suspect it’s the latter. ‘Maybe his friends smoke? Have you thought about that?’

His eyes narrow in accusation.

‘What next? Drinking?’

‘Hugh—’

‘Fighting at school—’

‘What?’

‘He told me. He got involved in some scrap.’

‘He told you?’

‘Yes. He was upset. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about, but it’s not like him, Julia. He’s never fought at school before.’

He’s never lost his mother before, I think, but I don’t say it.

‘Maybe we need to let him make his own mistakes? He has to grow up. He has to let off steam, especially given what’s happened.’

‘I just think we need to keep a closer eye on him.’

‘Me, you mean. You think I should be keeping a closer eye on him. You know, it seems to me that you’re a perfect father whenever it just involves playing chess or ordering takeaways when I go away. Yet whenever he needs some kind of discipline that’s suddenly my job?’ He ignores me. ‘Well?’

‘I don’t mean that. Look, I’m just not sure you’re—’

‘I’m what?’

I know exactly what he means. Setting a good example. This is about what happened in Paris.

‘I’m not sure you’re there for Connor at the moment like he might need you to be.’

I can’t help but laugh, but it’s a reflex. At some level he might be right.

‘Meaning what, exactly?’

He lowers his voice. ‘Julia, please calm down. Be reasonable.’

I go back to the table, to finish clearing it, to turn my back on him. It’s then that it happens. In front of me is the glass I’d been drinking from and as I pick it up a sudden and almost irresistible urge bubbles up from nowhere. I imagine filling it from the bottle of red wine they hadn’t quite finished, drinking it down. I can feel it, heavy in my mouth. I can taste it, peppery and warm. I want it, more than anything.

I hold the glass in my hand. I tell myself this is the first time since Paris, the first time I’ve even been tempted. It isn’t a relapse. It only means what I let it mean.

‘Julia?’

I ignore him. Ride it out, I tell myself. Ride it out. The desire will crest like an ocean wave and then subside. I just have to wait. Hugh is here, anyway, and whatever happens I won’t drink in front of him.

Yet I managed to drink in Paris, and that was weeks ago. I haven’t even been tempted since. Even if I were to drink now it wouldn’t have to signify the beginning of the end.

I think back to the programme. The first step. This isn’t something I can control; the fact I’ve gone for weeks without being tempted again doesn’t mean I’m over it. All control is an illusion.

I think of my sponsor, Rachel. ‘Addiction is a patient disease,’ she said to me, once. ‘It’ll wait for your whole life, if it has to. Never forget that.’

I haven’t, I tell myself. I won’t.

‘Julia?’ says Hugh. He sounds annoyed. I’ve missed something; he’s been talking to me.

I turn round. ‘Yes?’

‘I know he’s upset about his mother’s death—’

His choice of words stings, but my anger forces the desire to drink to slip down another notch.

‘He’s never thought of Kate as his mother.’

‘You know what I mean. Kate’s death is bound to bother him, but—’

‘But what?’

‘But he’s still not really talking about it, and I find that worrying. He should be, by now.’

His comment enrages me. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that it’s a process? There isn’t a timetable. Not everyone can deal with Kate’s death in the same way that you have.’

‘Meaning?’

‘It’s going to take Connor a good deal longer to get over Kate’s death than it’s taken you, that’s all.’

I think of what Adrienne has told me. ‘Don’t ever think Hugh doesn’t care. It’s just his prissiness. Grief is messy, and he doesn’t like mess. Plus, don’t forget he has to deal with life and death at work. All the time. It must harden you, a little bit.’

He looks shocked. ‘I’m not over her death. Kate and I were close once. I miss her, too. What makes you say that? It’s hurtful.’

‘Are you still talking to the Foreign Office? Or are you leaving it all to me—?’

‘I talk to them all the time, Julia—’

‘You don’t think I should go online and look at the place she was killed—’

‘I just think you’re in a bad enough state as it is. You need to concentrate on Connor, on your work. On the future, not the past.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

He opens his mouth to speak, but then seems to think better of it. A moment later he turns and throws down the tea towel that he’d hooked over his shoulder.

‘Julia, I’m really worried about you.’

‘About me?’

‘Yes, believe it or not. I think you need to go and see somebody. You’re not coping. I’m going to Geneva on Monday and you’ll be here on your own—’

‘Oh, I’ll be fine,’ I say, but he’s still talking, he doesn’t seem to have heard me.

‘—and I just wish you’d at least consider going to see someone—’

My fury surges, doubled in strength. Something breaks. I can’t take it any more. ‘Oh, just piss off, Hugh.’ The glass I hadn’t realized I was still holding smashes on the floor. I don’t remember throwing it.

He takes a step towards me, then seems to think better of it and turns as if to leave. He’s finally angry, and so am I, and it almost feels better. It’s something other than numbness, or pain.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Out. I’m going for a walk. I need to cool off.’

He leaves. The whole house shudders, then falls silent, and I’m alone.

Chapter Eight

I sit on the edge of the bed for a while. I stroke the duvet cover. Egyptian cotton, duck-egg blue. Our bed, I think. What happened?

We bought it when we moved in here four years ago and it’s nothing particularly special. It’s a place we sleep, talk, read. Occasionally we make love, and when we do it’s still tender, slow. Enjoyable, usually, if not exciting.

Was it ever exciting? I think so, for a while, but the frenzy of a relationship’s early days is unsustainable; it has to burn out, become something else. It’s not his fault, or mine. It happens to everyone.

Maybe it happened sooner, with us. Hugh is the son of my father’s best friend; he’s known me since I was at school. Though he was older than me, we always got on, and as his father tried to look after mine, Hugh looked after me, and helped me to look after Kate. Our passion, when it eventually came, was muted. It was already accompanied by a history. Sometimes I think it’s as if we missed out a stage, as if we went from being friends straight to being companions.

I hear Hugh come back home. He goes into the living room. I stand up. I have to go downstairs, to talk to him, to sort things out. If I don’t he’ll sleep on the couch in his office and I’ll spend another night lying in bed, alone, trying to sleep while my brain fizzes with images, with thoughts that won’t subside. I’ll turn the events of the evening over and over, and always at the centre will be Kate. Walking down the alleyway, looking up to see a figure in the shadows in front of her, smiling a greeting but then, as she steps forward, he raises his hand and her smile turns to terror as she realizes that things have gone wrong, this time she’s made a mistake. The man she’s come to meet isn’t who she thought he was.

I know that if I were to close my eyes I’d see it, as clearly as if it were happening in front of me. A fist in the face, a booted foot. Why didn’t I know, somehow? That psychic connection I always thought we had; why did it let us down, when it really mattered? Was it severed when we took Connor? I’d see her blood, spilled on to the concrete. I’d see her nose, broken. I’d hear her cry out. I’d wonder if she knew, if she sensed this was it. I’d wonder how much pain there was. I’d wonder if she thought about me, and if so whether it was with love. I’d wonder if, at the end, she forgave me.

I go downstairs. ‘Hugh?’

He’s sitting in the living room with a glass of whisky. I sit down opposite him.

‘You should go to bed.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He looks at me, for the first time since I came into the room. He sighs, sips his whisky.

‘It hurts.’

‘I know.’

There’s nothing else to say. We go to bed.

In the morning I talk to Connor.

‘I don’t know what you heard last night,’ I say. ‘But your father and I love you very much.’

He’s sloshing milk into his cereal bowl and some spills on the table. I resist the urge to dab it dry. ‘I just heard you arguing.’

It feels like a slap. It’s the very opposite of what I want for my son, of what I promised Kate. Stability. Loving parents. A home free of conflict.

‘All couples argue. It’s normal.’

‘Are you going to split up?’

‘No! No, of course not.’

He goes back to his cereal. ‘What were you arguing about?’

I don’t want to tell him.

‘It’s difficult. The last few months have been tough. On all of us. With Auntie Kate, and everything.’ I know I’m stating the obvious, but it feels true, and necessary. A shadow crosses his face and for an instant I see how he’ll look when he’s much older, but then it passes, leaving a kind of sadness. I think he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t.

‘Do you miss her?’

He freezes, his spoon midway between the bowl and his mouth. He puts it back. Again he looks thoughtful, much older. For some reason he reminds me of Marcus – it’s the same expression he had when on those rare occasions he was worried or pensive – but then he speaks and becomes a teenager once again.

‘I don’t know.’ His face collapses, tears come. It’s unexpected and I’m swept to my feet in an urge to soothe and comfort.

‘It’s okay. Whatever you feel, or even if you don’t know, it’s okay.’

He hesitates. ‘I suppose I do miss her. A bit. Do you?’

‘Yes. Every day.’

‘I mean,’ he goes on, ‘we didn’t see her that often, but still…’

‘It’s different, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. When someone is alive you might not see them very much, but you know you can. If you want.’

‘Yes.’

‘And now I can’t.’

I remain silent. I want to give him the time to speak, but also I’m wondering whether he really had felt that he could see his mother. Hugh and I may have given him permission if he’d asked – to do that, to go and stay with her – but we had never really encouraged it. Maybe I was too frightened that she wouldn’t let him come back.

‘You know,’ I say eventually, ‘whatever you’re feeling, you can ask me about anything. Anything at all.’

Even though I mean it, my words sound hollow. Because the truth is, there are secrets, things I won’t tell him, even if he asks.

There’s a long pause, then he asks, ‘Do you think they’ll get them? The people who killed Kate.’

It stops me in my tracks. He hasn’t called her Auntie. I wonder if it’s the first step on the path to calling her Mum. The air between us crackles.

‘I hope so, darling. But it’s difficult.’

There’s a silence between us.

‘Dad says she was a nice person who fell in with a bad crowd.’

I press some bread down into the toaster and look up. I smile. That’s exactly what Hugh used to think of me. A nice person, over-influenced by those around me. He would tell me, while I was in Berlin, ‘Look after yourself,’ he’d say, ‘We all miss you…’, and I knew he meant, Those people aren’t your friends. He was trying to save me, even then; I just wasn’t ready to be saved.

‘She was a really lovely person. Full stop.’

He hesitates.

‘So, why didn’t she want me?’

‘Connor,’ I begin. ‘It’s complicated—’

‘Dad says I shouldn’t worry about it. He says that Auntie Kate loved me very much but she wasn’t coping, that she couldn’t afford a baby, but you could, so it made sense.’

‘Well, that’s really a very simplistic way of looking at it…’

I wonder when Hugh’s been telling Connor all this. I didn’t even know they’d talked. I tell myself we need to make more of an effort, to be upfront with Connor, to be united. Like we’d decided years ago.

‘If you wanted children, why didn’t you have one?’

‘We couldn’t.’ I’m trying to keep my voice even; I don’t want it to crack, to betray how much loss I contain. ‘We’d been trying. For several years. But one of us…’ I stop. He doesn’t need the details. ‘We just couldn’t.’ It comes to me, then. The clinic: white walls and rubber floors, boxes spilling blue gloves, posters advertising helplines and charities that I knew I’d never call. I remember the stirrups, the cold metal between my legs. It felt like a punishment.

I realize I’ve still never told anyone about that, certainly not Hugh. He doesn’t know anything about that baby I could have had but didn’t.

‘Who couldn’t?’

I look at my son. At Kate’s son. ‘I don’t know.’ The familiar sense of shame comes, then. I thought I’d conquered it, years ago. I was mistaken. ‘We don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. It makes no difference. We love you, Connor. You’re our son.’

The toaster pings, the bread pops up. I’m startled, briefly, then I begin to butter his toast.

‘Thanks, Mum,’ he says, and I’m not sure what he’s thanking me for.

I take the key from my bag and unlock the padlock. The shed door swings inwards with a creak and I wait for a few moments to let some of the heat out before stepping in. Even though the walls are lined and painted and I light scented candles in here when I work, it still smells vaguely of wood. Yet it’s comforting; my own space, a refuge.

I close the door behind me and sit at the desk. I put the biscuit tin in front of me, the one Anna gave me. I feel calmer, now. I know what I have to do.

I take Kate’s Filofax out of the tin and put it on the desk, next to my laptop. The light that streams into my studio through the window behind me reflects off its surface and I adjust my chair and change the angle of the screen. Finally I press a key.

My background picture is an old photo of me, sitting on a bench on the Heath with Connor on my lap. In the photo he’s four, maybe five. A decade ago, and I look so happy, so excited finally to be a parent, yet now it feels as if it belongs to a different time completely. I realize once again how Kate’s death has sliced my life in two.

I press another key and the picture of Connor disappears, replaced by the last window I’d had open. It’s a video.

I press play. It’s a film of the two of us, me and Connor, on a beach. Hugh took it, years ago, back when he still used his camcorder. Connor is about five, dressed in red trunks and slathered in sunblock, and the two of us are running away from the camera, into the sea, laughing as we do.

It was a glorious summer; we’d hired a villa in Portugal. We spent the days by the pool, or on the beach. We had lunch in a restaurant in the village, or we’d take a drive into the hills. We sat on the terrace and watched the sun go down after we’d put Connor to bed. We’d sit, and talk, and then we’d go to bed ourselves, where, quietly, carefully, we made love. We were happy. So very, very happy.

The video is almost over when I get a call; it’s Anna, on Skype. I don’t want to talk to her now. I click ignore. I’ll call her back later. What I have to do won’t take long.

The video finishes; Connor is frozen in the distance.

I’m ready.

I open my browser and begin to type the web address: encountrz. I only have to type the first few letters; the rest autofills from the night before last, the time I hadn’t got as far as pressing enter.

I press it now. I have a sense of weightlessness; it’s inexplicable, but real. My body has become unmoored. I’m floating. The window loads. A photo appears, a couple, walking along a beach, laughing. It looks somehow banal, but what had I expected?

At the top of the screen is a box marked ‘Username’, and another headed ‘Password’. I type in ‘KatieB’, then ‘Jasper1234’. I select enter.

I’m not sure what will happen. The machine seems to hang, to take an age, but then the screen changes and a message appears across its centre.

‘Welcome back, Katie. It’s been a while!’

It feels as if something has struck me, slammed me back to earth. I’m winded, I can’t breathe, but then I realize the message is automated. I breathe deeply, try to calm down. Next to it there’s a button marked ‘Enter’. I press it.

I’m not ready for what I see; there’s a picture of my sister, in the top-left corner of the screen beneath the website’s logo. It jolts me again. It’s like she’s there, sitting at her computer. It’s as if all I have to do is type a message and press send – just like I can with Anna, and Adrienne, and Dee and Fatima – and then I’ll be able to talk to her again, tell her I’m sorry, that Connor is safe. That I miss her.

But I can’t. She’s gone. I focus on why I’ve logged on here, I make myself look at the photo she used. It looks like it was taken on a holiday. It’s a close-up. She’s lying on a beach towel, on her front, reading a book. Her sunglasses are pushed back on her head, her skin is tanned. She’s wearing a bikini and has hoisted herself up on her elbows. Her breasts push up against the fabric of the towel, yet it looks unposed, natural.

She’s smiling. Happy. I stare at the picture. I wonder when it was taken, and by whom. She looks so relaxed. I can’t believe the little girl I’d once held, once bathed, once read to, is gone. I can’t believe I’ll never speak to her again.

I begin to cry. I’m sliding, backwards, towards pain. I can’t do this, I think. Not alone.

I call Anna back.

‘There should be a tab at the top for recent activity. You could look there. It lists the last few people who have looked at her profile.’

She’s already asked me if I’m all right, what I’m up to. She’s already questioned whether this is a good idea and I told her the half-lie that Adrienne had suggested it. ‘I just want to see if there’s anything the police might’ve missed.’

‘Right. Got it.’

‘Then you should see the rooms. On the right?’

I minimize the chat window and Anna’s face disappears. Behind it is the dating site, the list of chatrooms. Looking for Love? Something Extra. A Bit on the Side. Couples and Groups. I wonder which one Kate would have gravitated towards.

‘Okay.’

‘Kate and I used to go to Casual Chat,’ says Anna. ‘But there should be a tab, at the top. Friends and Favourites.’

‘I see it.’

‘They’re the people Kate was chatting to. The ones she’s connected with, linked her profile to.’

I click on the tab and the page changes. A list of names appears, with thumbnail photographs. I freeze. My right hand begins to shake. Robbie676, Lutture, SteveXXX… this list goes on.

I scroll down; there are about fifteen names in total.

‘Anything?’ says Anna.

My hope floods away and I’m suddenly empty. Hollowed out. This is futile, and I’m an idiot. What did I think I’d see? A message from one of her friends, telling me he killed my sister? A message to her: ‘I got you in the end’?

‘I don’t know. Just a list of names. They could be anyone.’

She says nothing.

I realize for the first time that she might be scared. She’s been on the same site, possibly even talking to the same people. She must be thinking how easily it might have been her in that alleyway instead of Kate.

For a moment I wish it had been, but then I push that thought away. I don’t wish that, not on her, not on anyone.

‘Maybe you should look at some of them?’ she says. ‘Their profiles? Find out if any live nearby.’

I’m surprised. ‘Won’t they all?’

‘Not necessarily. Don’t forget, Kate wasn’t only interested in meeting up with people in the real world. With some of them it was all virtual. They might be anywhere, on the other side of the planet.’

She’s right, of course. I select a couple of the profiles to look at in detail. SexyLG, whose profile picture is of a sunset, lives in Connecticut; CRM1976, it turns out, is a woman. I click on a few more and find that most seem to live abroad – in Europe, the States, Australia. Some are much older than Kate, a couple younger. None looks like the kind of person I imagine Kate being interested in, sexually or otherwise.

‘Anyone?’

‘Not yet. I need to look in more detail.’

I scan through the rest. I can see only one who fits the bill. Harenglish.

‘Here’s one. Male, lives in Paris.’ I click on his profile. He’s used a head-and-shoulders photo, and is bald. He wears glasses and a leather motorcycle jacket. He’s hidden his age but looks as though he’s in his mid- to late thirties. He’s a Pisces, he says, single, looking for love or ‘fun along the way’.

‘What’s he called?’ says Anna. I tell her, and then hear her typing. I guess she’s logging on to the same site, searching for his profile.

I stare at his picture as if it’s a puzzle I need to solve. He looks nice enough, sort of innocent, but then what does that even mean? Anyone can find a decent picture of themselves, anyone can present themselves in the best light. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do, on some level? Show our best face to the world, leave the darkness within? The screen of the internet just makes it easier.

If only there were some way I could find out how well he’d known my sister. If they’d been close enough that she’d listed him as a friend, why hasn’t he messaged her, why hasn’t he expressed shock, or at least surprise, when she disappeared?

‘I don’t recognize him.’

I imagine doing what Adrienne suggested. Taking down his name, along with any more that look as if they might be people Kate had met, then handing the information over to the police. But maybe they’ll have looked at these names already.

‘I’m going to message him.’

‘Wait!’ There’s an edge in her voice; it’s alarming, surprising. I open her Skype window; her eyes are narrowed as if she’s concentrating, she looks anxious.

‘What is it?’

‘That might be dangerous. I mean, think about it. You’re logged on with Kate’s profile. If it is him who killed her he’ll know you must be someone else, pretending to be her. It’ll just drive him underground. We have to be clever about this.’ She hesitates. ‘Maybe I should send him a message? Say hi. See if I can find anything out.’

I hear her begin to type. ‘Sent,’ she says after a few seconds, and as she does my machine pings with a message. It’s not from her, though, and neither is it from Harenglish. Someone else has messaged Kate. Eastdude.

There’s a peculiar rush of excitement, one I wasn’t expecting.

‘I’ve got a message!’

‘Who from?’

I tell her. The name’s familiar. I open the list of usernames Kate had tucked into her Filofax and see that I’m right. It’s there.

‘This guy’s on Kate’s list. It’s him.’

‘Julia, we don’t know that.’

She’s right. Even as I begin to argue, I realize my logic is flawed. If he’s killed my sister, why would he be messaging her now?

I stare at the message as if it’s dangerous, poisonous.

‘Maybe he just wonders why Kate’s been so quiet.’

‘I’m going to read it.’

I click on Eastdude’s message and it opens in a new window. It looks as though it’s been typed hurriedly. ‘Hey katie. You’re back! Missed u! If u fancy another hook up – I’m still up 4 it!’

I try to imagine what Kate would’ve done. Would she have just sent a reply, a yes? And after that? They’d arrange a date, I suppose, they’d meet up. Drinks and dinner? Or would she have just gone to his place, or had him round to hers? Would it be simpler just to cut out the preliminaries?

‘He wants to know if she wants to hook up.’

‘Hook up where?’

‘He doesn’t say.’ I click on his profile. He’s in his early thirties, he says, though the photo suggests an extra ten years at least. Under ‘Location’ he’s written ‘New York’.

‘New York.’

‘But that doesn’t make sense.’

I read it again. ‘“Another hook up”. I don’t remember Kate ever going to New York. Did she?’

‘No. He must mean cybersex.’

Cybersex. Just endless descriptions of who’s doing what to who. What they’re wearing, how it’s making them feel. Adrienne has always joked that the reality is lots of people sitting around in jogging bottoms, covered in baby puke.

‘But would they call that a hook up?’ I say.

‘I guess they might.’

‘There’s no message history.’

‘Then you should forget it, Julia.’

‘I could answer his message. He thinks I’m Kate.’

‘And achieve what?’

‘Just to find out what he knows…’

I look at the picture again. This Eastdude. He looks innocent, harmless. His hair is receding, and in the picture he’s chosen he has his arms around a woman who’s been inexpertly cropped out of the shot. Just as I’d removed myself from the picture of Marcus.

I wonder what he and Kate had talked about. I wonder how well he knew her, if at all.

Isn’t that why I came on here? To find out?

‘I’m not sure it’s going to help,’ says Anna.

‘Trust me,’ I say. ‘I’ll talk to you later.’

Our messages scroll up the screen. Eastdude thinks he’s talking to Kate.

– You don’t remember how hot it was? I’m upset.

On the next line is a symbol, a round face, yellow, winking. He’s joking.

I feel uncomfortable. Is this how a sex chat begins? A reference to hotness?

– I’ve had a lot on, lately.

His reply is almost instantaneous.

– Work?

I’m not sure what he means. Kate had had only temporary jobs, I thought; bar work, waitressing, office admin. Again I wonder what she’s told him.

I need to keep it vague.

– Sort of.

– Too bad. Anyway, would love to carry on where we left off. Are you okay? I thought something had happened to you.

– Why’s that?

– You went quiet. Then I had a visit from the police. Asking me what we’d been talking about. If I’d been to Paris recently. I guessed it might be something to do with you.

I freeze.

– Did you tell them?

His reply takes a moment.

– What do you think?

What does he mean? Yes, he has, or no, he hasn’t?

I remind myself he can’t have killed my sister. He thinks he’s talking to her.

Unless he’s lying.

– Nothing’s happened to me, I say. I’m fine.

– Better than fine if you ask me!

There’s another icon; this one a red face with horns.

– Thanks, I say. I realize I need to be careful if I’m going to draw him out. So, you said you wanted to carry on where we left off.

– Tell me what you’re wearing, first.

I hesitate. This is wrong, and I feel awful. I’m impersonating my sister – my dead sister – and for what end?

I try to persuade myself. I want to find out who killed her. I’m doing this for the right reasons, for the sake of Kate and her son.

So why do I want to throw up?

– What was I wearing last time? I type.

– You don’t remember?

– No, I say. Why don’t you tell me?

– Not much, by the end.

There’s another smiling face, this one with its tongue hanging out.

I hesitate. The cursor blinks, waiting for me to decide what to type, how far to take this. It feels surreal; me in London, him in New York, separated simultaneously by thousands of miles and nothing at all.

– I’m imagining that’s what you’re wearing now.

I don’t reply.

– I’m thinking of you wearing nothing at all…

Still I don’t say anything. This isn’t what I wanted to happen.

– I’m getting hard here.

I close my eyes. I shouldn’t be doing this. I’m a voyeur, I am sampling my sister’s virtual life, my dead sister’s private life. I’m a tourist.

I should stop, but I can’t. Not now. Not until I know for certain that it isn’t him.

Another message arrives.

– How about you? You want me?

I hesitate. Kate would forgive me, wouldn’t she? I type:

– I do.

– Good, he says. Tell me you remember. Tell me you remember how hot it was. The way you described your body. The things you did.

– I remember.

– Tell me what you want, right now.

– You.

– I’m kissing you. All over. Your lips, your face. I’m going down. Your breasts, your stomach.

Again something within me tells me this is wrong. He thinks he’s talking to Kate. He’s imagining having sex with my dead sister.

– You like that?

My hands hover over the keyboard. I wish I knew what to say.

– You like feeling my tongue on your body? You taste so good…

What would Kate have said?

– You want me to go lower?

What can I say? Yes? Yes, I do? I can tell him I want him to go lower, I don’t want him to stop, or I can ask him what he’s told the police, where he was in February on the night of Kate’s death, whether he murdered my sister. Even as I say it in my head it sounds ridiculous.

I grab my machine and stand up. I don’t know what to do.

– Are you ready for me?

The ground beneath me opens. I begin to sink. My heart is beating too hard, and I can’t breathe. I want to stop my mind from spinning, but I keep thinking about what Kate might’ve said, what she might’ve done.

I look at the machine in my hand. For a moment I hate it; it’s as if it contains all the answers and I want to shake them loose, to demand the truth.

Yet it won’t. It can’t. It’s just a tool, it can tell me nothing.

I slam it closed.

Hugh comes home from work and we eat dinner, the three of us, at the table. Afterwards he packs his suitcase, occasionally asking me where a shirt is, or if I’ve seen his aftershave, then goes upstairs to finish off his speech while Connor and I sit in the living room with a DVD. The Bourne Identity. I can’t really concentrate; I’m thinking about this afternoon, wondering whether the guy Anna messaged – Harenglish – had got back to her. I’m thinking about cybersex, too, which I guess is really no different to phone sex. It makes me think of Marcus; there were no texts back then, no emails, no instant messaging services, unless you include pagers, which almost no one had. Just the voice.

Connor leans forward and grabs a handful of the popcorn I’ve made for him. My mind drifts.

I remember the first time Marcus and I had sex. We’d known each other a few weeks, we spoke on the phone, we hung around after the meetings drinking coffee. He’d started to tell me his story. He came from a good family, his parents were alive, he had a sister who was nice, normal, stable. Yet there was always alcohol in the house, forbidden to him, and he was drawn to it. The first time he got drunk was on whisky; he didn’t remember anything about it, other than the fact that he felt some part of himself open up, then, and that one day he would want to do it again.

‘How old were you?’ I’d asked.

He’d shrugged. ‘Dunno. Ten?’

I’d thought he was exaggerating, but he told me he wasn’t. He started drinking. He’d always been good at art, he said, but the drink made him feel he was better. His painting improved. The two became intertwined. He painted, he drank, he painted. He dropped out of college, his parents kicked him out of their home. Only his sister stood by him, but she was much younger, she didn’t understand.

‘And after that I was on my own. I tried to cope, but…’

‘What happened?’

He made light of it. ‘One too many times waking up with no idea where I was or how I got there. One too many times wondering why I was bleeding. I rang my mother. I said I needed help. She got a friend to take me to my first meeting in the fellowship.’

‘And here we are.’

‘Yes. Here we are.’ He paused. ‘I’m glad I met you.’

It was a couple of weeks later that he called me. Kate was watching television with a friend and I took the call on the extension in the kitchen. He sounded upset.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

‘I’ve had a drink.’

I sighed, closed my eyes. ‘Have you called Keith?’

‘I don’t want to speak to Keith. I don’t want to see him. I want to see you.’

I felt both awful and thrilled at the same time. He’d had a drink, but it was me he’d turned to. He asked me round to his flat, and I said of course I’d go. When I arrived he was sitting on his threadbare sofa, a bottle at his feet. I sat next to him and took his hand. Had I known we were going to kiss? Probably. Did I know it was almost certainly a mistake?

Probably not.

The film ends and Connor goes upstairs, then a little while later so do I. I listen at his door on the way up, but I hear nothing except the rhythmic tap of his fingers on the keyboard. I run myself a bath and lie in the water for a long time, my eyes closed, drifting in and out of an exhausted sleep, occasionally topping up with hot water. When I get out Hugh’s in bed already.

‘Come,’ he says. He pats the bed next to him, and I smile. ‘In a minute.’ I’ve wrapped a towel round my chest and I tuck it tighter, then sit at the dressing table and apply my moisturizer. By the time I’ve finished Hugh is snoring and I turn off the light. It’s hot, but there’s a light breeze and I go over to the window to adjust the curtains. Outside, there’s a figure, barely visible in the shadows, an image as thin as smoke. It looks like a man, and I turn to wake Hugh, to ask him if he can see it, or whether he thinks it’s my imagination. But he’s fast asleep, and when I look back the man has gone, and I wonder whether he’d ever been there at all.

Chapter Nine

I drive Hugh to the airport then return home. It’s Monday, the traffic is bad, the air thick with heat. I’ve been determined to keep busy during his absence – to get on with jobs, sort out Connor’s room, go through the files on the computer, make sure everything is charged and ready for the shoot on Wednesday – but by the time I get home it’s early afternoon and far too hot to do anything much at all.

I’m restless, unsettled. I change into a summer dress and decide I’ll sit in the garden. I go to the fridge to get a lemonade, but when I open the door I see the bottle of wine Hugh opened last night. Desire swells again, just as it had after the dinner party. I get the lemonade, then close the door, but there’s no point in pretending I’m not feeling it.

Rachel used to tell me that. ‘Take a step back and hold it up to the light,’ she said. ‘Consider it.’

I do just that. First, I’d like a glass. Second, I’m alone, Hugh’s away, Connor at school. There’s no logical reason I shouldn’t.

Except there is. There’s every reason.

This time the desire builds. I acknowledge it, feel it, yet it doesn’t go away. It’s growing, it starts to feel more powerful than me, it’s an animal, a ruthless predator, something with teeth, something that wants to destroy.

I won’t let it win. Not this time. I tell myself I’m strong, I’m bigger than this thing that wants to claim me. I ride it out, stare it down and eventually it begins to retreat. I put ice in my drink and find the novel I’m reading, pick up my laptop and go outside. I sit at the table on the patio. My heart beats hard, as if the fight had been physical, but once again I’m pleased with my vigilance.

I sip my lemonade, listening to the sounds of summer, the traffic, the planes overhead, a conversation in a distant garden. My book is in front of me but I ignore it. I know I won’t be able to concentrate; I’ll read the same page, over and over. It’s futile.

I open my laptop. I wonder whether the guy from yesterday – Harenglish – replied to Anna, or whether Eastdude, the one I’d been chatting to, has messaged me again.

I navigate to the messages page. He has. I open it. ‘What happened? I hope you’re all right.’

Anxiety courses through me. It’s electric. Anxiety, and also excitement; even though he thinks he’s talking to Kate, part of me is flattered at his disappointment.

I try to focus on what’s important. I have to be more methodical. I tell myself it’s unlikely he had anything to do with Kate’s death: assuming what he told me is true, the police have interviewed him as a suspect and eliminated him from their investigation. Plus, he lives in New York.

There’s no point in answering his message. I click delete. Part of me feels bad, but he’s a stranger, someone I’ll never meet. I don’t care what he thinks. I have more important things to do.

I navigate to Kate’s Friends and Favourites page and go down the list. I’m careful this time, I check each one, finding out where they live. They’re scattered all over. Not counting Eastdude, there are eleven people she used to chat with. Of those, only three live in France, and only one, the guy from yesterday – Harenglish, the one Anna messaged – is in Paris.

I hesitate. I open Skype but Anna isn’t online. I send her a note asking if she’s had a reply, yet at the same time know that she’d have told me if she had.

I remind myself that his silence doesn’t mean that Harenglish is the guy who killed Kate. Not at all. Maybe they hardly chatted, barely knew each other. Maybe he rarely logs on to his messages, or doesn’t respond to things straight away. There are a million reasons for his silence. It doesn’t have to be because he knows exactly where she ended up.

But I need to be sure. I sit, for a moment. I sip my drink. I think about my sister, and what I can do to help her. As I do, the idea that’s been forming all night is finally birthed.

I call Anna. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she says.

‘Yes?’

‘About your suggestion. You know, chatting to that guy. It might not be such a bad idea.’

I tell her.

‘I’m thinking of setting up a profile of my own. I thought, if I can chat to people… if they think I’m someone new… they’re more likely to tell me things.’

She talks me through it. I work quickly, and it doesn’t take long. I hesitate when it asks me to select a username, but then settle on JayneB. It’s close enough to my own name, but not too close. The photo I choose is one that Hugh took a few years ago on holiday. In it, bright sun behind my head is throwing my face into partial shadow. I haven’t chosen randomly; Kate and I don’t look that similar generally, but in this photo we do. If someone had known Kate, they might mention a resemblance; it might give me a way in. I enter my details – date of birth, height, weight. Finally I press save.

‘I’m done,’ I say.

She tells me to be careful. I go back online. I’m excited, at last I’m doing something. The guy from yesterday – Harenglish – might talk to me, thinking I’m someone new. Maybe then I can find out who he is and how well he might’ve known my sister.

I message him. ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘How you doing?’ I know he won’t reply straight away, if he replies at all, and so I go inside to refill my glass. I grab myself an apple from the bowl. I wonder what this guy might do when he sees my message. Whether he gets lots, or just a few. Whether he answers them all, or just the ones that take his fancy. I wonder what normally happens, if there’s such a thing as normally.

I go back outside. There’s a breeze, it’s getting cooler now. I have another sip of my drink then sit back down. I bite into my apple; it’s crisp but slightly sour. I put it on the table and, as I do, my computer pings.

I have another message, but it’s not from him. This one is from someone new. As I open it I get the strangest feeling. A plunging, a descent. A door has been nudged open. Something is coming.