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She hears the door, his cough, even hears the stream of pee, the flush, the tap, the door again. The sounds comfort her. They are his sounds. His footsteps don’t return but go instead into the kitchen. The chink of glasses, the roll of the runners on the cutlery drawer. She checks her watch and sees that it’s almost midnight. It is so late to be pouring a drink. She doesn’t know if his dependency should worry her. And what has happened is so utterly traumatic, the idea of their evening ritual, performed as if life were normal, almost offends her.
She waits, and then there he is, a glass of red in each hand.
‘Here.’ He hands one to her and goes over to the fire to stoke it. Throws on a couple more logs before coming to sit beside her and the baby again.
‘It’s so late,’ she says. She wonders if she should lift Emily from the sofa, but for the moment, she cannot bear for her to be out of sight.
‘Traffic was hideous.’ He drinks, a long slug, sets his glass down. ‘So, start from the beginning. Tell me everything.’
She tells him, though not everything. She didn’t plan to be sparse with the facts, but in the moment, it is what she does. It is his brand of the truth, she thinks. She has learnt it from him. She is glad that he is here, she is. But trust will have to be built by degrees.
She tells him that two students came home with her and the policewoman, that they stayed a while. She does not mention their names, nor does she tell him about the photograph of Suzanne. At a certain point, it occurs to her that she is leading up to the revelation of Suzanne’s full name, and that when she tells him, she will be watching his face.
And so the moment comes.
‘They’ve taken her in for questioning,’ she says. ‘They said she’d been cooperative from the outset. Christine said it looked like a rash act of madness. An episode, she said. But I haven’t heard anything yet.’
He takes a long, slow slug of wine. ‘Her name was Suzanne, you said? And she’d come all the way from Ormskirk?’
‘Ormskirk, yes.’ Samantha says. ‘It’s in Lancashire. Not that far from Edge Hill.’ She glances at him. Nothing.
‘And did you get a surname?’
‘Lewis. Suzanne is actually her middle name. Her full name is Charlotte Suzanne Lewis.’
He frowns, appears to chew his cheek. He takes another sip of wine, coughs, as if it has gone down the wrong way.
‘Charlotte Lewis,’ Samantha says. ‘My guess is she used her middle name on the course in case I talked about her at home.’
Peter coughs again into his fist. ‘What do you mean?’ He is no longer looking at her.
‘I mean, I think she intended a kind of slow-drip effect: to unsettle first, then unnerve, then full-on freak us out. Well, you.’
Their eyes meet. In his, something flickers.
‘You knew her,’ she says. ‘Didn’t you?’
His mouth presses tight, his forehead creases. ‘Knew her? What gives you that impression?’
‘Well, let’s see. The details in the poems? The fact that the last one was a spoof of your favourite poet. That would suggest she knew you reasonably well. Possibly even knew that it was the poem you read at your father’s funeral and chose it for that reason, to really get under your skin. So I’m guessing she knew you around the time of your father’s death, when you were teaching in a secondary school. St Catherine’s.’
‘Sam, what are you talking about? You’re being cryptic and it’s actually really irritating. If you’ve got something you want to accuse me of, then come out and say it. I’ve had a long day and I’m not in the mood for riddles, frankly.’
‘Riddles? Have you any idea how pompous you sound? This isn’t a riddle, Peter. Not to you. I’m the one trying to figure out riddles here. You know exactly who I’m talking about. I don’t believe for one second you don’t recognise her name. Charlotte Lewis. Charlotte, Charlie, Lottie, whatever she called herself. Your former pupil. St Catherine’s School. Peter, it’s almost midnight, I’ve been to hell and back and I’m very, very tired. So can we just lay our cards on the table for once? All of them.’
‘All right.’ It is the first time she has heard him raise his voice. His arms fly up; the palms of his hands flash like wings. But no sooner has he done this than he regains that immutable control once again. ‘All right,’ he repeats, more quietly, picking an imaginary speck from his navy chinos. ‘It’s not an episode I’m particularly proud of.’
‘Well it’s an episode that has had some pretty serious repercussions for your partner and your daughter, so I think you owe me an explanation, don’t you?’
‘All right. It was a long time ago. A very long time ago. I was very young and I behaved … irresponsibly. My father was dying. I was stressed. Lottie was … she was so full of life. She was an antidote to the death I could feel all around me. I’d lost my mother, I don’t have any siblings and Lottie was … she was silly and funny and she adored me. I didn’t seduce her. If anything, she seduced me.’
‘How old was she, Peter?’
He stretches his neck, opens his mouth wide, as if to realign his jaw. ‘She was sixteen when I left.’
‘Peter.’
‘All right. But she was.’
