AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She looks at me but just lifts her hand from her glass in an unreadable gesture and says nothing.
‘Mina, why were you looking for that necklace?’
She bites her lip, and then I see something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. Her eyes take on a shine. ‘I don’t think it’s Ava’s.’
‘What do you mean?’
She looks at her ring again. ‘It was just a touch too pink. And that sparkle…’
‘It looked like Ava’s necklace to me,’ I say. ‘She didn’t say it wasn’t.’
‘I know my stones these days.’ She laughs and it seems a little apologetic. ‘Same setting, different gem. That necklace you found in Jenna’s room was a ruby, not a garnet, I’d bet my right hand on it.’
I nod slowly, seeing what she means, ice trickling into my veins. Ava’s birthstone is a red garnet. Red garnets for January. But a ruby is for July. Jenna’s birth month. And a ruby costs ten times a garnet.
61
NOW
Neither of us speaks. I stand and try again with the coffee, spooning an extra scoop into the cafetière. I try hard not to think. But I can’t help it.
I remember the twins’ last birthday party. Everyone was outside, even though there was frost on the ground, to coo over the Range Rovers. Theo and I had gone back in to organise hot chocolate. Jenna must have thought she was alone, and as we came in I saw her picking up Ava’s new necklace, holding it in the light.
I had been surprised she liked it. It was such a pretty necklace. All of Jenna’s jewellery was cut from acrylic. She had one I particularly despised: a cat throwing up a rainbow.
‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ I said, as behind me Theo started opening cupboards.
She nodded and put it quickly back in the box. ‘Not really me, though,’ she said.
I smiled. ‘It could be you if you wanted though, couldn’t it?’
She frowned and walked off as I tried to figure out what I’d done to offend her.
If the necklace isn’t Ava’s, then what?
It suddenly occurs to me that Mina might have been sent here by Tristan. Maybe he wants to see if I suspect him, to know where I’ve been.
‘I don’t know, Mina. Without seeing it… And I’m no gemmologist.’
She pretends she has something in her eye. Why would it make her cry, for the necklace to be Jenna’s?
No, let’s not think about that. She’s just feeling emotional. It’s been a difficult day.
I lean forward onto the counter and the pain from my cuts swells again.
‘Tristan just admitted something to me,’ she says, and I go still. ‘He said that afternoon…’ She doesn’t have to say which afternoon. ‘You can’t tell him I told you this.’
I nod as I turn my back to her and press down on the cafetière plunger.
‘He said there was a tape, and you said you destroyed it back then, but now he thinks you didn’t. He thinks you kept it all these years. He thinks Jenna ended up with it, and her friend Rose took it from her.’
I try not to move a single muscle in my face.
‘Is that right?’ she says. ‘Did you keep the tape?’
I pour the coffee. If he’s only just told her this, does it mean he only just found out, and so he can’t have had anything to do with Jenna’s disappearance? What would be the point of sending Mina to ask me this now? The only point would be to find out if the tape really does still exist, so he can’t have known about it before tonight. And if I say it does exist, what then? He finds some way to put an end to the search for Jenna?
Or what if he told Mina but didn’t send her here, and she’s just trying to understand what’s going on?
