Siobhan stays outside the window for a long moment, watching, and then pulls out her phone. Her scar is throbbing – she should sit, she should go home – but instead, she fires off a text to Owen.
Did you have your tutorial with Sylvie?
He replies after a couple of minutes.Hey. Yeah. It was quite useful for her actually – she’s got some great ideas. Cheers for suggesting it. Still on for dinner tomorrow night?
It’s strange, the feeling that spreads out in the bottom of her stomach. She feels caught out, punished, but at thesame time, it’s intoxicating. She feels like a wife who’s caught her husband watching porn – there’s a betrayal to it, but a fascination, too.
She types,Good. I’m at Melody Blossom on George Street. Come and meet me?
Wouldn’t have thought that was your kind of place?She waits until he texts again.Okay, sure. On my way.
Hurry up.
Siobhan calculates that it’ll take him about fifteen minutes to walk from his flat to the bar, but he turns up in a taxi barely five minutes later. She has to duck behind a phone box so that he doesn’t see her. She watches as he shuts the taxi door and makes his way inside. Only when she’s confident he won’t see her does she look back through the window. Owen is standing at the bar, scanning the room for her. Sylvie stands on the opposite side of the room with her friend.
Her phone pings.Here. Where are you?
She doesn’t answer. She feels heady, unpredictable, light on her feet. After a minute, she texts back,I’m not there, but Sylvie is.
She watches as he opens the message. He frowns. She wants him to look around, but he doesn’t, he just keeps looking down at his phone.How do you know that? Why aren’t you here?
Siobhan watches as Sylvie’s friend leaves the bar in the direction of the toilet.
Go and talk to her, she types quickly, fingers shaking on the keys.Go and say hi.
Owen looks up from his phone again, searches the bar. There’s something more desperate about him now. Heseems upset. She sees him notice Sylvie, her perfect skin, the red sheen of her expensive dress, the careful way she’s done her make-up. What kind of man is he, if he doesn’t want that for himself? He looks down again at his phone. His text is a simple word.
Why?
Siobhan’s fingers hover over the keys.Because I want you to. Then, she adds,Because you told me I was in control.
Owen rubs a weary hand over his face. What will he do? Will he come out here and find her? He sends her one last text,This isn’t fun, Siobhan, and then heads down the bar in Sylvie’s direction. He touches a hand to the small of her back, and Sylvie turns. She’s holding a martini glass. Siobhan squints to better see her reaction. Is she pleased? Is she creeped out? Owen leans in close to whisper something in her ear and she doesn’t pull away. She looks up at him, laughing, one hand half-covering her mouth. Siobhan turns away from the window and sets off down the street, trying to understand why she feels so electric, why she feels like her every nerve ending is burning.
THEN
Elly wakes in the morning to find another body in her bed. Margot must have crawled in with her during the night and is now curled up tightly against her back. Her dark hair is almost completely covering her face.
“Margot,” she whispers. “Time to wake up.”
Margot squints against the shafts of sun filtering in from the window. Her eye is puffy and swollen, as if she’s been crying.
“What is it? What’s happened?”
“Lakshmi.” Margot sniffs, pulling down the sleeve of her jumper to wipe her nose. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” Elly blinks at her, still waking up, unable to process the words.
“She died,” Margot whispers, voice breaking. The words are so stark they make Elly’s stomach lurch.
“No, she was okay last night. She looked…better.”
Margot shakes her head, propping herself up to sit.“No, Little Mouse. Haina said. Haina was with her. She just… she just slipped away. No more pain now.”
Elly bites down on her lip, feeling sick. She thinks of Lakshmi, the way she’d gazed up at Haina from the sofa as if she were looking up at an angel. The dorm is bathed in morning light the colour of egg yolks. The other women are just beginning to stir. Everything feels too normal, too wholesome. A woman can’t possibly be dead downstairs.
Haina tells the rest of the guests about Lakshmi over breakfast. She stands at the head of the table as she addresses them, and Elly thinks distantly that she looks healthier and more vital than she has ever seen her, her hair shining and eyes sparkling, as she delivers this news about death.
“Lakshmi has already been laid to rest, my angels, to spare you the torment,” she tells them, and Elly feels as if her whole body is numb, like the nerves have simply given up, fizzled out. Beside Haina, both Siobhan and Theo sit white-faced, barely looking at each other. “She’s in the garden now, where you can of course visit her, if you wish to.”
