---

‘I’m here to see Sam,’ I say to the receptionist at the Travellers’ Rest.

She raises one eyebrow at me. ‘Last name?’

My brain is blank. ‘Erm…’

‘You a relative?’ she says, peering over the counter at the pram.

‘Just a friend,’ I say, and I can see her jumping to conclusions, a small smirk appearing on her lips. She twists her mouth, thinks, then taps at the computer keys with the ends of her talon-like nails.

‘Room eight. You’ll have to go and knock,’ she says, before turning her attention back to the screen.

I’m surprised she’s let me through so easily. I’d expected her to ring him in the room rather than let me go straight down there. People are never threatened when you have a pram. I don’t wait around for her to change her mind, though, and I head through the fire doors and along the dingy corridor, door after identical door. I notice that they open with old-fashioned keys rather than the cards you get in almost all hotels now.

Scared I’ll lose my nerve, I knock on the door without pausing.

I hear some music or the TV go off, so I knock again. Someone comes close to the door then there’s a lull. Some scrabbling around with the lock and the door opens.

Sam looks surprised to see me. It’s hard to tell if he’s putting that on, since I’m almost certain he looked through the spyhole before opening the door. He certainly isn’t dressed to see anyone. He’s wearing grey jogging bottoms, a scruffy-looking T-shirt and stubble. He looks as if he may have just woken up.

‘I wanted to come and see you after you turned up at the house the other day and… to see whether I can be any help with Victoria’s documentary.’

It takes him a moment of recognition to twig what I’m referring to, but part of me suspects that’s an act too.

‘Can I come in then?’ I say, already pushing the pram forwards so that he has to move out of the way. The inside of the room is no improvement on the corridor.

Sam overtakes me, grabbing underwear off the floor and sweeping a crisp packet and Coke can into the bin. He slams the lid of his laptop shut and pulls a jumper on over his T-shirt.

‘Thanks for coming over,’ he says. ‘I’d have come to the house again. You should have given me a ring.’

‘No problem,’ I say. ‘It does us good to get out and about.’ The truth is I wanted to catch him on my terms, not wait for him to come back to the house. And, if he hadn’t already, I didn’t want him filming Mum’s place either. I don’t want her life displayed like goldfish in a bowl.

On the inside of the wardrobe door, I catch a glimpse of Post-it notes dotted around – I see Peter’s name and mine, before Sam sees me looking and swings it shut. Neither of us mentions it.

‘I’m surprised you came,’ Sam says. He scrapes the curtains open, lifting the room from its gloom.

‘Oh, no. I’ve just been busy with the baby and Mum’s place, that’s all. Of course I want to do everything I can to help.’

‘Great.’

I knew I couldn’t keep Judith at bay much longer either.

I sit on the bed and feel like I’m sinking into it, being swallowed up. ‘So… the other day you said there was something you wanted to talk to me about?’

Recognition falls across Sam’s face. ‘Ah right, yeah.’ He springs into action and starts preparing his camera. ‘So, it was just really to check some basic details with you.’

‘Oh, OK. It was just that it seemed like it was urgent?’

‘Well not urgent urgent, but you know,’ he says, turning the camera on me. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

I’d expected that and have put some make-up on. I tidy my hair with my hands. ‘Shoot. I mean, I don’t think there’s much I can add. I’ve told the police everything I know. But if it helps to go over the facts.’

Sam clips a small microphone onto my collar. Then he turns one of the hotel’s cheap chairs backwards, straddling it.

‘So, what I want to do is bring Victoria to life, and find out a little bit more about the last few weeks and days of her life, to see if it offers any clues about what might have happened to her, or perhaps jog people’s memories. It seems like you’re one of the key people to ask.’

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘We were best friends. But like I said, I don’t think there’s anything new I can tell you.’

Sam is looking at the camera viewfinder, not me, and that makes me feel a little less uncomfortable, but then he stands up and comes and sits next to me on the bed. I’m surprised to see that he’s wearing a microphone, too.

He looks once at the camera, clears his throat then turns to me.

‘Well, everyone thinks that, but I believe there may be things. You’d be surprised. How people remember things differently. Or how what they say can set off a chain reaction in someone else’s memory.’

‘OK, fine.’

Sam gestures for me to look at him not the camera but my attention keeps drifting over. It feels like an extra person in the room.

‘Can you tell me about the friendship you two had? Can you tell me about Victoria? How you met, what she was like, that kind of thing.’

‘Well, let’s see where to start. It’s been a while, you know. You kind of block things out after a bit.’ I feel like I am trying to get an old oil can going, pressing at the handle but nothing coming out.

Sam waits, looks at me impassive, patient. He isn’t in a hurry. He’s got me for his film now. He isn’t about to let me get away.

So I start. ‘Victoria… she was always just fun, you know. Like not in a generic way that you’d say about anybody. She was different, she had something special about her. Really special.’ The words start to come easier. They’re the truth, after all.

‘You couldn’t have a boring time with her – something would always happen, or she would just make you laugh. Or you’d be hanging around doing nothing much at all, but you’d go home feeling like you’d had a brilliant time.’

‘So how long had you two been friends? Best friends?’

‘You know, it’s funny,’ I say, ‘because I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, being back here and everything, because of my mum. Victoria and I, we would go round kind of boasting about how we were the best friends ever. And it’s true, we were. I mean, we were like sisters in a way. We were both only children, so we sort of played that role for each other. But we had this thing where we would tell everyone that we met one another on the very first day of primary school. We would tell people that Victoria had marched up to me at primary school and asked me if I liked Madonna, and that I did a little dance to “Lucky Star”, and after that we never left each other’s sides.’

‘That’s pretty cute,’ Sam says, nodding along. ‘You said you would tell people that? It wasn’t true?’

‘We definitely did do a lot of dancing around to Madonna around that time, but I am not sure that’s quite the way it went. Even our parents will tell you that’s how we met. I like the sound of it anyway, though, don’t you?’

The story comes out sounding much more sinister than the playful rendition I had intended.

I carry straight on as Sam digests it. ‘So, we met because our parents were friends and we went to the same school.’

‘That’s nice,’ Sam says. ‘And what was your friendship like?’

‘Like I say, we really were like family. We used to go on holidays together and we even spent some Christmases with the Prestons. We’d always be staying over and in and out of each other’s houses.’

‘That must have been nice to have had a sister-like figure,’ Sam says. ‘I’m an only child too. I wish I’d had that.’

‘Yeah, it was.’

Outside the wind is blowing the trees from side to side. They look as if they’re trying to get my attention through the window, friends trying to distract me from a detention at school.

Sam clears his throat. ‘So, Michelle said you were flashed at, you and Victoria. Not long before she died?’

‘I don’t really know why she mentioned that. It wasn’t all that big a deal and she wasn’t there.’

‘Did you know that around the time before and after Victoria’s death there were reports of a number of women being flashed at? Indecent exposure?’

My head snaps round. ‘There were other reports too?’

Sam nods. ‘A number of them, yes. I understand that you saw something that summer, too. You and Victoria?’

‘Yes, but like I said, it was nothing really.’ The image of it comes back into my head, grubby skin.

‘So, did you tell the police about it?’

‘Erm, no, we didn’t… I didn’t… I don’t think Victoria did. We were daft teenagers. I think we just thought it was kind of funny at the time.’

‘You didn’t tell them after Victoria died?’

I think back and feel stupid and exposed then, feel my face reddening. ‘I don’t think I did. But there wasn’t any reason. I honestly didn’t think of it. Do you think it’s connected?’

Sam shrugs. ‘It’s worth looking at everything again now, isn’t it?’

Victoria starts to stir. ‘Do you mind if I quickly…?’ I start to get up and go to her.

‘No worries. I need to answer a call of nature anyway.’ Sam goes into the bathroom. The walls are so thin, I can hear the water splashing loudly in the bowl.

I rub Victoria’s tummy and she seems to settle again.

On the side, near the kettle, there’s a pack of photos, still in the envelope from where they’ve been developed. I check the bathroom door; I haven’t heard the toilet flush yet, so I slide the pictures out. They’re of our house, the day of the party at our house. One is taken from outside – must have been before the party started. The living room is empty, except for the decorations. There are pictures of the food, too – fleshy-looking hotdogs, anaemic crisps. Quickly, I flip deeper into the pack. Maybe Sam planned to show me them anyway, but no harm being prepared.

There’s one of Mum, dancing with Peter, a huge glass of wine in one hand. She looks happy in the pictures, happier than I remember her looking the whole summer before. A glimpse of the old Mum. There’s a few of Dad, too, posing with people I don’t recognise, slightly stiff and stilted. How pale he looks is startling now. In one photo, he is sitting on a chair in the middle of the grass. He looks completely still, while everyone else around him is moving.

I quickly skim through the rest of the photos, but one of them snags in my mind and makes me go back again.

Right on the edge of the picture; it’s those coloured jeans we all used to wear, that same striped T-shirt we all had. But it isn’t me or Victoria… I pull the picture up closer to my eyes. It’s Michelle. She’s half cut off, standing off the lawn away from everyone else, and she’s looking up at the house.

I think back to the day again, the party. And I’m certain Michelle wasn’t there. There’s no way she would have been invited. The toilet flushes and the tap runs, then stops. I shove the pictures back in as best I can and flip the envelope lid shut.

Sam is wiping his hands on his jogging bottoms, sitting back down on the bed.

‘There was just one more quick thing I wanted to ask you about.’ It’s clear he’s waiting for me to sit back down too.

‘OK, but I’ll have to be getting away soon.’

‘No worries,’ Sam says. ‘Little one will want feeding, eh? So, I just wanted to get a bit more background on what happened after the party.’

It’s getting windier outside and the trees remind me of those inflatable things you get outside car showrooms, blowing in all directions.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘What do you mean, after the party?’ I have to manage my breath, thinking about what happened to her after, where she ended up.

‘So, people started to leave, go home. What did you and Victoria do?’

‘Well… we cleared up a little bit. Mum was picking all the stuff up from the garden. Then I think Mum went up to bed. Dad was already asleep. Victoria said she was tired and she wanted to go home.’

‘She didn’t want to stay over.’

I shrug. ‘Not that night, no. Sometimes you just want your own bed, don’t you?’

‘Absolutely,’ Sam says, gesturing around the hotel room. ‘And had you been drinking, you and Victoria?’

‘A bit, not a lot.’

‘Did your parents often let you drink? When you were underage?’

I feel my face twist, but I remember the camera and I recompose myself.

‘Sometimes they let us have half a glass of wine topped up with lemonade. We might have had a bit extra at the party – when they weren’t looking. They wouldn’t have let us get drunk, though.’

‘The post-mortem suggested Victoria had been drinking, didn’t it?’ Sam doesn’t take his eyes off me. The mental flash of the procedure, scalpel into flesh, makes me squeeze my eyes shut for a second.

‘I don’t really know about that. I didn’t dig into it, funnily enough. Maybe she had been drinking after… after the party. At the lake.’

‘I guess so,’ Sam says. ‘So, you’re saying she wanted to go home, sleep in her own bed. What happened then?’

A sigh escapes from me. ‘You know all this. I walked her halfway home, like always.’

‘Can you tell me more about that?’

‘Well, there isn’t anything to tell really. I would walk her halfway home or she would for me if I was at her house. Then when we got in we’d do three rings so we knew the other was home safe.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ Sam says. ‘And that’s what you always did? And what you did that night?’

‘I’ve said so, haven’t I?’

‘Are you telling me the truth, Sylvie?’ Sam asks. ‘I think there might be things you’re not telling me about that night.’

My breath catches in my throat. The camera is at point-blank range. I try to get myself together.

‘Someone saw Victoria that night.’ Sam is looking right at me and I feel my eyes expand and contract. ‘And you weren’t there.’

‘Sorry, Sam. You’ve really lost me now.’

‘I spoke to someone…’

‘What someone?’

‘Well, that doesn’t matter for now. But, I spoke to someone who said they’d seen you and Victoria before. Walking up near the park. Parting halfway, like you said.’

‘Yeah, like I said.’

‘But they said that night, they didn’t see you.’

‘You’re talking in riddles. Can you please just get to the point?’

‘OK. You didn’t both walk halfway that night, did you? You didn’t go with Victoria, did you? Did you have a row? Did something happen?’

‘No, that isn’t it. Victoria didn’t walk on her own; I wouldn’t have let her.’ I look Sam straight in the eye, then I get up and start gathering my things. ‘So whoever you’ve been speaking to is wrong; they’ve made a mistake.’

---

On the way out of the hotel, the receptionist eyes me with that smirk again. I think she thinks something entirely different has been going on in the room. When we get home, I dive into bed for comfort like I used to do when I was a teenager. I pull the covers over my head. It brings back a memory. Victoria is everywhere again now.