Nine Perfect Strangers - Liane Moriarty Page 0,108

denying her loss.

“I’m so sorry, darling.” She wanted to envelop the child in a big, probably unwelcome hug but she settled for placing a hand on her shoulder.

Zoe looked over at her mother. “I’ve been so angry with him. It felt like he did it on purpose just to make me feel bad forever, and I couldn’t forgive him for that. It just felt like the meanest, cruelest thing he’d ever done to me. But last night … this sounds stupid, but last night, it felt like we talked again.”

“I know,” said Frances. “I talked to my friend Gillian, who died last year. And my dad. It felt different from a dream. It felt so vivid. It felt realer than real life, to be honest.”

“Do you think maybe we really did see them?” There was so much tremulous hope in Zoe’s face.

“Maybe,” lied Frances.

“It’s just, I was thinking how Masha said that after her near-death experience she realized there was this other reality, and I just thought … maybe we sort of accessed it.”

“Maybe,” said Frances again. She didn’t believe in alternate realities. She believed in the transcendent power of love, memory, and imagination. “Anything is possible.”

Zoe lowered her voice so much that Frances had to lean in close to hear. “I feel like I’ve got him back now, in a weird sort of way. Like I could text him if I wanted.”

“Ah,” said Frances.

“I don’t mean I will text him,” said Zoe.

“No,” said Frances. “Of course not. I understand what you’re saying. You feel like you’re not fighting anymore.”

“Yeah,” said Zoe. “We made up. I used to always be so relieved when we made up.”

They sat in silence for a few comfortable minutes and watched the lock pickers crouched down next to the door.

“By the way, I forgot to tell you: I read your book during the silence,” said Zoe. “I loved it.”

“You loved it?” said Frances. “Really? It’s fine if it wasn’t your cup of tea.”

“Frances,” said Zoe firmly, “it was my cup of tea. I loved it.”

“Oh,” said Frances. Her eyes stung, because she could see that Zoe was telling the truth. “Thank you.”

48

Zoe

She lied. The book was so, so sappy.

She had finished it yesterday morning (there was nothing else to do here), and it was fine, she kept turning the pages, but you knew from the very beginning that the girl would end up with the guy, even though they hated each other at first, and that there would be trials and tribulations but it would all work out fine in the end, so what was the actual point in reading it? At one stage the girl fainted into the guy’s arms, which, like, was romantic or whatever, but did anyone ever really faint in real life? And if they did, was anyone ever really there to conveniently catch them?

Also, where was the sex? It took, like, three hundred pages to get to the first kiss, and the book was called Nathaniel’s Kiss.

Zoe preferred books about international espionage.

“I thought it was a fantastic book,” she told Frances, perfectly poker-faced. Your country is depending on you, Zoe.

“Maybe you’re still high,” said Frances.

Zoe laughed. Maybe she was. “I don’t think so.”

She couldn’t believe she’d got high with her parents. That had been the freakiest part of the whole experience. The fact that her mum and dad were there with her. Whoa, she kept thinking. There’s Mum. Whoa. There’s Dad. Worlds collided with volcanic sparks and supersonic booms.

She felt like she could spend the rest of her life remembering everything that happened last night. Or it could all disappear. Either way was possible.

But one thing that wouldn’t change when she left here was her mother’s revelation.

She and her mother had barely spoken to each other this morning. Right now she was doing sit-ups, although Zoe noticed that she was doing them with less … aggression … than usual. In fact, as Zoe watched, she stopped and lay flat on her back with her hands on her stomach, staring at the ceiling.

All these years Zoe had longed for someone to blame other than herself. After Zach died, she’d been through all of his technology: his phone, his email accounts, his social media. She wanted to find evidence that he’d been bullied, that there was something going on in his life which was nothing to do with her that could explain his decision. But there was nothing. Her dad had done it too. He’d met up with every single one of