bulbs firing, a TV camera crew outside. The day’s grace we’ve been granted by the press is up. Now, we’re under siege. Would we like to get our story out there, let the public know the real Edie, quash rumours that the family were involved, she ran off with an older man, was mixed up in drugs. The first time round I was spared this by being packed off to stay with Aunt Lola in London, while Dad had to cope with the intrusions and insinuations.
DS Craven, I can’t think of him as Tony, tries to deal with them. Dad looks grey, ill and so thin he could disappear into his armchair, where he sits smoking, tapping, missing the ashtray and finally crushing the butt before reaching for another cigarette. We can’t open the windows to lift the fug for fear of being filmed. Not by the journalists but the thrill seekers, real crime enthusiasts, men obsessed with teenage girls and their deaths. Craven says it’s normal.
‘How the hell is that normal?’ Dad says.
The whisky’s finished and I’ve started on the cooking sherry. I don’t know what normal is any more, either. It’s still light but I’ve no idea what time it is. Edie’s scrawled note on the newspaper clipping, ‘suicide’, plays on my mind. I can’t see how it’s linked to her murder and yet I can’t shake the feeling that it is. I don’t want to cause Dad any more pain right now by asking him. If Edie didn’t speak to me about it, did she tell her friends, did she tell Michaela? Would she really speak to them before me?
I must have fallen asleep, because I wake up with the sherry still in my hand, calling for Edie.
Voices are coming from the kitchen. I go in to find Max standing next to Dad, who looks apologetic, a cigarette smouldering in his hand. Max is blinking rapidly. He hates smoke.
‘You wouldn’t answer your phone,’ Max says before I can speak.
Dad looks at us.
‘I’ll go to the lounge,’ he says.
‘No need, Vince,’ Max says. ‘We can go into the garden.’
He leaves by the side door. I turn to Dad.
‘You shouldn’t have let him in. You know he finished with me.’
‘I couldn’t just leave him sitting on the step, could I?’ Dad says.
‘Why not?’ I say.
‘There’s a photographer still out there.’
I sigh, take a cigarette and follow Max. When I reach him, he stares at the cigarette and looks as if he’s going to object, then decides against it.
‘Why haven’t you been answering my calls? I had to find out from Vince that it was Edie, that’s she’s dead.’ He stops. Pain flashes across his face. ‘That she was murdered. One phone call, one, that’s all it would have taken.’
‘Do you know what it’s been like here? Police, press, I don’t even know what day of the week it is. You’ve absolutely no idea.’
‘Because you’ve not been speaking to me,’ he yells. ‘I’ve had to keep ringing Cassie.’
I check the kitchen door and hope Dad can’t hear.
‘I can’t deal with this right now, Max.’
He takes a deep breath.
‘Look, I didn’t come to argue,’ he says. ‘I came here because I’m worried about you. You shouldn’t go through this on your own.’
‘I’ve got Dad.’
‘How is he?’
I shrug. In truth, I am on my own.
‘He looks ill. Have the police interviewed him again?’
‘Not yet.’
‘What about you?’ Max asks.
‘Not properly. I have to go in sometime, go over my original statement.’
Max shifts his weight to his other foot.
‘I’ve got to speak to them tomorrow.’
‘You?’
‘They’re talking to everyone from Joseph Amberley who knew Edie, the boys’ and the girls’ schools. I’m only going to tell them what I told them before, that I knew her from the odd party. It’s just, you know…’ He shifts his weight again. ‘Going out with you, they might make a big deal about it.’
‘Why would they?’
‘I don’t know. But make sure they don’t twist it, to make our relationship seem odd. And tell them I had no reason to harm Edie. And me seeing you, it was just a chance meeting. I mean, it’s the truth.’
It’s the truth, the sort of expression people use when they’re lying, along with honestly and swear on my mother’s life, which wouldn’t count for much with Max, given that he hates his mother. I’ve never thought of our relationship as odd, imbalanced and dysfunctional, but not odd. I like that Max remembers Edie and understands when I say, ‘Edie would like this’, ‘Edie would hate that’. It’s always been something positive and held us together. Why would it be odd and why did Max just tell a lie, which I’m sure he did?
I think of another woman’s scent, lingering in his hair the night before I left.
‘Who’s the girl you’re seeing?’ I ask.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I smelt her on you, that last night I spent in London.’
‘She’s no one. And you’d just dumped me…’
‘You dumped me,’ I say. ‘You told me it was over.’
‘That’s not true. I still want to be with you.’
‘If I move back here and have seventeen babies.’
‘Two would be fine.’
His face sets into its habitual sulk.
‘Now isn’t the time, Max,’ I say.
‘It’s never the time with you, is it, Tess?’
‘Not when I’ve just found out my sister’s been murdered, no.’
‘Why do you push everyone away? I came here to be with you. I’m upset about Edie because of the pain it’s causing you and you turn it into something else. I don’t know what I can do right for you, Tess, I never have. You think you don’t need anyone, then you end up in a mess and expect me or your dad to sort you out. Well, neither of us are going to be here forever,’ he says and stamps back into the house.
*
‘Do you mind me asking who that was?’ Craven asks when I come back inside. Max has disappeared and Dad must have gone upstairs. ‘We’re supposed to keep tabs on who comes to the house. Just procedure, you understand.’
‘That
