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‘Thank you,’ Molly says, stepping aside.
She leads us through to the first door on the left of a long corridor that feels too dark. Too claustrophobic. It doesn’t help that there’s no natural light, and the walls are deep red.
Thankfully the living room is far brighter, and light floods in from the large bay window. The room is warm and filled with ornaments and photos, but grief and emptiness loom over it, seeping into every corner.
Taylor sits on the floral sofa, and I follow his lead.
‘Horrible thing,’ Molly says, pointing a long, delicate finger towards the sofa. ‘Ugly. I’ve never liked it. But it was my mum’s so I’ve kept it. She loved the awful thing.’ She sighs. ‘I’m just glad she’s not around to know about all of this.’ She sits in the armchair across from us. ‘It would have destroyed her. She and Alice were so close. They were like two peas in a pod. Mischievous twins we all used to call them when Alice was little. Both of them as cheeky as each other.’ A tear meanders down her cheek as she turns to me. ‘So you were one of Alice’s clients?’
I nod. ‘For the last six months. She was really helping me to get my fitness back. It was difficult after I had my daughter – my abdominal muscles split and I really suffered.’ This much, at least, is true.
Molly’s eyes narrow and my face burns. It feels as if my lie is scrawled across my forehead.
‘Yes, childbirth destroys our bodies. But I’d do it all over a million times to have Alice back.’ She wipes her eyes with her crumpled tissue. ‘She really helped you, then?’
‘Yes, definitely. She was good at what she did.’ I glance at Taylor, who gives me an almost imperceptible nod.
‘I wouldn’t know. She hardly spoke to me about anything these last couple of years. Not since…’ She looks at Taylor. ‘Well, I don’t want to go into all of that. Not when Alice isn’t here to speak for herself.’
‘It’s okay, Molly,’ Taylor says. ‘She was very open with Hannah. They talked about the difficulties Alice was having.’
Molly turns back to me, looks me up and down. ‘She had problems with her…you know…mental health as a teenager. An eating disorder. Anxiety. Before that she’d been the happiest child you could ever meet. Always smiling. Playing. She had a ton of friends. Then it was like a switch turned off and all of that stopped almost overnight.’ She reaches for a fresh tissue from the box on the coffee table and dabs her eyes. ‘Why do children have to change so quickly? Lose their innocence? There was no reason we could see for such a change in her personality. We put it down to growing older. Becoming a teenager. Life’s not easy at that age, is it? Anyway, after school everything seemed to smooth out for her and she really got her life together. Until a couple of years ago. It was like the old troubled Alice was back again. But there was a reason this time. Her dad died suddenly and Alice just seemed to spiral. It’s like she had no coping mechanisms.’ She pauses, once again dabbing her eyes. ‘She just fell apart.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. And I mean every word.
‘Did she tell you she went off the rails?’ She turns to Taylor. ‘I’m sureyouknew. You were very close, weren’t you?’
He nods, and stares at his trainers. ‘I just tried to keep her thinking positive.’
‘I’m not even sure Alice ever realised what was happening to her during these dark times. She just became reckless. It was like she was searching for something she could never seem to find.’
Happiness, probably. Isn’t that what we all want?
‘She did tell me she felt a bit directionless,’ Taylor says.
‘Like I said, life’s hard for young people,’ Molly says, shaking her head. She studies me again. ‘You don’t look much older than her.’
‘I’m thirty-five. Only five years’ difference.’
‘And you have a daughter?’
‘Yes, her name’s Poppy.’ As soon as I’ve said this I wonder if I’m telling her too much. If it will come back to haunt me when the truth emerges about Max and Alice.
‘How lovely.’ Molly pushes her used tissues into her pocket and pulls a new one from the box. ‘Alice will never get the chance to have kids now. That would have been the making of her.’
‘I’m not sure Alice wanted kids,’ Taylor says. ‘She told me she had too much living to do and it would be selfish of her to have them. I think she felt she wasn’t in a place to devote herself one hundred per cent to parenting. She had the cats – I think that was enough for her.’
‘Still, things change,’ Molly says. ‘One day she might have changed her mind. I’ll never be a grandmother. Never be a mother again.’ She erupts into a flood of tears, her bony body shaking.
I rush over to her and throw my arms around her.
‘Sorry,’ she says, between sobs.
‘It’s okay. Let yourself cry.’
She clings to me for a moment until her tears dry. ‘You’re kind,’ she says. ‘Alice was lucky to have someone like you in her life.’ She looks at Taylor. ‘And you, of course. I don’t know what she would have done without you.’
‘She would have been fine,’ Taylor says, his eyes welling.
