‘There are things I don’t know. But I know people are dead, I know I killed them and I know it all started the day I realised I was invisible.’
‘Mrs Edwards.’ Her chair creaks. She must have shifted position. ‘Do you think you could take us back to that? To realising you were invisible?’
‘I can.’
Of course I can. Like most people, if my Mastermind specialist subject was myself, I’d win hands down. I look about me, try to settle. They’ve done their best to make this room look like an ordinary lounge in an ordinary house – impressionist landscape in a frame on the wall, me on a sofa, her in the armchair opposite. Neutral shades. But there’s a recording device on the coffee table next to the box of tissues and the jug and two glasses of water, so I’m not fooled.
‘When you’re ready,’ she says. ‘Take your time.’
Her eyes are blue. The colour of sea on white sand. I want to run in but I’m not sure I won’t drown in the cold water. I’ve forgotten her name. I know she’s telling me to take my time so I’ll give them what they want, but I’m here to give them what they want. It was me that made the call after all.
I glance up from fists clenched around a screwed-up tissue on my lap. ‘No one wants to be invisible, do they?’
Blue Eyes doesn’t answer. I obviously didn’t say that out loud. So much is unclear. Words spoken, words thought. What we hear, what we pick up by instinct. How we achieve affinity with another human being.
‘It was a Saturday night,’ I say. ‘I know that because it was our Katie’s party. We usually get a takeaway on Saturdays. Chinese, normally…’
I tell her how I got home from work that day: sore-eyed, heavy-boned, dog tired; how I put the plates and dishes from the side of the sink into the dishwasher, switched it on and put a cloth round. How I emptied the washing machine and put the clothes over the drying rack. There’s precious little chance of Mark spotting a load waiting to be hung out. Frankly, if he ever needed to find a saucepan, which is unlikely, you’d have to draw him a map.
‘We had quarter crispy duck.’ I look up at Blue Eyes, but only for a second. ‘Sweet and sour pork, Szechuan king prawn, egg-fried rice and a bag of prawn crackers. We have the same every other week. Mark usually goes for it in the car. We didn’t have crispy beef that week because Katie wasn’t eating, what with it being her party.’
Blue Eyes jots something down. Maybe I’ve put her in the mood for chicken chow mein. Why these thoughts come to me at inappropriate moments, I don’t know. Stress, I should imagine.
She looks up, tips her head back a bit. She has what I’d call natural authority. Regal, if you know what I mean. She did tell me her name, she did, but no, it’s gone. ‘Can you tell me when this was, Mrs Edwards?’ That hushed, patient voice you hear them use in police dramas. She scans the report on her knee but I’ve got nothing to hide anymore. I’ve already told it all to the other two, in the other room. The ones in uniform.
‘This is going back to June,’ I say.
‘That’s Saturday the twenty-second?’ She glances up from my statement and suddenly I’m not as sure as I was.
‘Or was it the week before?’ I say. ‘Hang on, no. Sorry. Let me just… It was the week before… before the girl… Jo. Joanna. I know that because… Hang on, sorry. Sorry, just let me…’
The trickle of water. I look up. Blue Eyes is holding out a glass.
‘Here.’
‘Thank you.’ I take the glass and drink. The water is cool in my throat.
‘So, your daughter had a party?’
‘Yes. We’d been banished from the kitchen, so we ate on trays while we watched a film.’
‘And then?’
‘And then the ad break came on.’
‘And?’
‘And Mark said, do you fancy a coffee? Which means, can you make us a cup of coffee? Twenty-seven years into a marriage, you get used to what your other half means when he says something, and it must be a year since Mark’s made me a coffee. Or a tea, for that matter. So anyway, I said I’d make it and he said, you sure? And I said, course. The dance we do, like, you know.’