‘Mum, please.’
‘Forgiveness. That’s what we’re talking about. But I can’t expect Samantha to forgive herself if we can’t demonstrate the same. So we’ll start with you. We’ll start with the night you pushed me down the stairs.’
The silence is as thick and heavy as velvet. I want to scream but the inside of my mouth is rustling sandpaper.
‘Mimi. Please, can I have some of that water?’ I manage.
‘I’ll do it,’ Alex says automatically. He lifts the jug with a shaking hand, making the ice cubes chatter against the glass. Mimi watches him, smiling that tight, mean little smile. He brings it over to me, using his other hand to steady it, which is trembling so violently now I’m worried the water will spill into my lap. I open my mouth, feeling as vulnerable and helpless as a baby bird. As he pours a dribble on to my tongue I can smell the outside on him; the warmth of the sun like baked clay, green shoots, damp earth like a hole dug deep. His gaze is as cold and dark as Neptune.
‘You think I don’t know these things, Alex, but I do,’ Mimi is continuing. ‘I felt your hands in the small of my back in the empty house. I heard your breath behind me on the stairs. In the dark.’
Alex says nothing. He stands, water jug in one hand, the other hanging limply by his side. He’s cowed, like a scolded dog. Mimi switches her attention suddenly back to me, a sea change so abrupt I feel the room sway.
‘What did you use, Samantha? Did you use the knife? Did you push her down the stairs, like Alex here, so you could tell yourself it was a misstep in the dark?’
‘No, no—’
‘Was it about her boyfriends? Her behaviour? Her outbursts? What was it that finally tipped you over the edge, Samantha?’
I stare at a mark on the floor, say nothing. No comment, I think, and that voice again, unsure now, almost whispering, speaks up in my head. Are you sure you didn’t do it, Sam? Are you positive?
‘Memory is a funny thing,’ Mimi says calmly, ‘because we create it ourselves. We can bend it to our whims, sometimes without even realising. Your memory can trick you.’
‘I would remember hurting Edie. I know I would.’
‘Would you? Are you sure? Are you remembering right?’
‘Yes!’
‘So what’s your memory of the last time you saw her?’
A single bright light like a flashbulb in my head. I can almost taste the electricity, the hum of the static.
‘You had an argument, didn’t you?’ she prompts. ‘Said some terrible things to each other, maybe?’
‘Yes. It was just – it was just a stupid necklace.’
‘That’s right. The one with the dragonfly. Did you shout at her? Did you hit her, Sam?’
‘No, no,’ I say, shaking my head despite the bright pops of pain it causes. People talk about the ‘glimmer of doubt’ but it isn’t like that, it’s not a fleck of gold on a riverbed. Doubt, real doubt, has teeth, long and needle-sharp, and they sink into the soft matter of your brain slowly, inch by delicious inch. Did you hit her, Sam?
‘I loved her,’ I say, simply. I look up at Mimi, who has tears in her eyes. I’m just trying to help you, she is saying; you’ve suffered for so long.
‘I know you did. We love our children despite seeing the worst of them sometimes.’ Her eyes slide over to Alex, who stiffens. ‘When she left that morning, did you say goodbye to her?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say miserably. Doubt, the predator. The carnivore. I feel my stomach rise and fall like seasickness. ‘I must have done, I suppose.’
‘She never made it to school, did she, Sam?’
I shake my head.
‘Did she even leave the house?’
I stare at the carpet. There are drag marks in the deep pile from the doorway, clots of mud from my shoes. I wonder what I did to my little girl. The cellar below our house was old and damp and out of bounds since before we moved in, a dirt floor prone to flooding. Some nights I would hear rats scratching at the walls. There was no light. The bulb had blown and I never replaced it.
Why?
I don’t know.
What have you been keeping down there in the dark?
Shut up. Shut up.
‘You need a hobby, Mum,’ Edie said to me that morning, the last time I ever saw her. ‘You’ve started to imagine things.’
‘Is it possible that you just wanted her to sleep?’ Mimi asks. ‘Just wanted some peace and quiet? Just wished for a break from it all?’
‘Yes,’ I sniff. ‘I did want a break.’
‘And how did you get one?’
I look up at her with round, glassy eyes. ‘Did I do it?’ I ask her, the pain in my head a cleaver. ‘Did I? I don’t remember any more.’
I keep seeing her, the last morning. Edie, dashing her face against the plaster, the look in her eyes mean and hungry. I didn’t know she was pregnant then. She’d hidden it from me.
‘I think this is going to be painful for you, Samantha, but I hope you can forgive yourself,’ Mimi tells me sweetly. Her eyes shimmer with tears held back.
Edie and I on the landing, her shrieking at me, the trickle of blood from her nose, me shouting back, angry and hurt and frightened, our voices intertwined like climbing vines, up and up and up. I wish I could take it back. It was only a necklace. It was only a—
‘How do you know?’
‘What’s that?’ Mimi says.
I grit my teeth against a fresh wave of agony. ‘The dragonfly on the necklace. The one my mother gave me. You mentioned Edie had it. How did you know?’
She watches me a long time. It’s a thoughtful, considered gaze and it makes my skin crawl. Finally, she unwinds the scarf she is wearing and hands it to Alex. He approaches me and I shrink away as far as I am able but the ropes have pulled so tight around me that I can barely move at all. I’m shaking my head, no, no, no.
‘Those are constrictor knots,’ Mimi tells me, settling back against the pillows. ‘They get tighter the more you struggle. Alex was in the Scouts. He won awards for his knot-tying.’
Alex’s blank, distant face is terrifying. He doesn’t even flinch when I kick him in the shin, spitting at him, pulling the ropes into my arms so deep it burns.
‘Get away from me!’ I scream. ‘I didn’t kill her! I didn’t kill her! I didn’t kill her!’
My head seems to split like an overripe peach; a fresh gout of blood in the newly opened wound spatters on to Mimi’s fancy carpet, coin-sized drops of scarlet. The bells ring, clamour, a flock of crows lifting off from the base of my skull, circling the little bone dome; I close my eyes, breathe. In. Out. I want a memory, a real memory, fleshy and true, not fed to me piece by poisoned piece by this woman.
Something is nagging at me. I can feel it, as insistent as a flickering neon sign. Nosebleed. The phone calls in the night, the breathing. That one word, in a voice so familiar I can almost grasp it. Nosebleed.
Alex shoves the scarf into my mouth and I gag against it, tasting the bitterness of Mimi’s perfume on the fabric.
I hear Mimi, to Alex. ‘Pass me the phone. Sadly, I think it’s time for Plan B.’
I open my eyes, making a concerted effort to see. My vision is blurred and seems to be skipping, as if on a time delay. Breathe in. Mimi has a handset pressed to her ear. Breathe out. Now she is talking calmly into it. In. She looks across the room at me. Out. Alex turns to her and says, ‘I’ll make you that cup of tea now, Mum.’