The Memory of Water

⁵² BACKWATER BEAUTY

“Oh, for God’s sake, you’re fucking unbelievable. You know who I mean. Susannah. Susannah Fox, or whatever the hell her name really is.”

“Er…” says Eve, “I really don’t know who you mean.”

“Your sister. Or, at least, she said she was your sister. At the funeral.”

“We hired actors for the funeral, no one was told to play the part of my sister. I never had a sister.”

“I know!” I say.

“Susannah Fox,” she says, “was a made-up name for my fake will. It was a red herring.”

“No,” I say, “Denise was real. She lived with me. We were together after you died. She helped me through it.”

Frank is shaking his head and I want to punch him again.

“No one entered or left your house for the whole week after Eve’s funeral,” he says.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “I’m mind-fucked enough now, stop playing around. I thought I’d fucking killed her. Do you know what that does to someone?”

The room stares at me. Silence. Frank clears his throat.

“Did anyone else see her, speak to her?” Eve asks, looking around. Everyone stares blank-faced.

I rack my brain. She never seemed to be around for introductions. She wasn’t around for much. She never ate anything. She had no ID.

Frank steps forward. “She doesn’t exist, man. I have been following you every second and you haven’t killed anyone.”

“Have you checked your apartment?” I ask Eve. “Her body is there.”

“We checked it,” she says, “full of thinners and turpentine. No body. Certainly no dead body.”

“If I’m so deranged, then how do I know this is happening? How do I know I’m not lying somewhere, catatonic, dreaming all this up?”

“This is happening,” says Eve, touching my arm, looking into my eyes. “This is happening.”

I look around the room.

“What about Francina?” I say, “Was she in on this too?”

Eve shakes her head.

“I tried everything to get her to co-operate but she refused. Said it wasn’t right. She wouldn’t even give us your house key.” She pulls silver out of her pocket and jingles my spare keys at me. “Luckily I had my own.”

“What did you do with her?”

“Don’t say it like that,” she says, “don’t say it like I am some kind of Godfather who makes people disappear.”

“What did you do with her?”

“I sent her on a paid holiday. I told her she could choose her destination. She flew back from Mauritius yesterday.”

I take a deep breath.

“It was never meant to get so complicated,” she says.

“Famous last words.”

“I’m sorry. It spun out of control. It was a risk I took. I just thought, like you have often told me, that if you don’t risk anything, you risk everything.”

“Yes,” I say. “Although I didn’t quite mean for you to risk my life.”

She touches me again, I flinch. She bites a nail.

“I went too far.”

I take a breath, and look long and hard at Eve. Magic woman, witch, porcelain doll, back-from-the-dead. Stolen mantle of Master Puppeteer.

The real Backwater Beauty.

“Thank you for saving my life,” I say, “but I never want to see you again.”