“It came with the shop. Used to be just for storage before I bought it. It’s a pit, but it’sourpit.”
“I think it’s great. Cozy.”
“Huh.” She passes me a mug of coffee and sits opposite. “I bet you’ve got one of those houses with fitted carpets and double glazing, haven’t you? A double garage for both your cars.”
“One car,” I correct her. “I don’t drive.”
“I’m right about the house, though?”
I nod.Oscar’s house,the voice says primly.Not yours. Nothing in it belongs to you and now it never will.I swallow my coffee. It’s so hot it burns but it dissolves the lump in my throat.
“Is that what I look like to you? The sort of woman with a big posh house?”
Fern looks me up and down.
“To level with you, Mina, what you look like is shit. That’s why I asked if you werereallyall right.”
I put down my cup and point to her cigarettes.
“Can I get one of those?”
“God, yes. Help yourself. Misery loves company.”
I take one and light it, blowing a long stream of smoke up toward the open window. I haven’t smoked since university and almost never since I met Oscar. He used to take great delight in telling me the grave effects each inhalation had on my lungs.
“How is it?” Fern asks.
“Making my head swim.”
“Ooh, that’s the best part.”
We smile at each other and just in that moment it’s as if all the horror is bleached and faded away. We are just two women in a messy room full of rugs and plants on a bright sunny morning, talking the way I’ve seen friends do. It’s nice. I wish it could be like this always. But it’s a bubble, and like all bubbles, it has to burst.
“Fern, I’ve got to ask you something. About Bert.”
“Uh-huh.” She tips her head to indicate that she is listening. “I thought this was coming.”
I stare at her in confusion and surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“This is about the basement, right? At Bert’s house?”
I’m so confused I can only shake my head. I was going to ask her about Mary, about their relationship. I planned to tell her about the tapping on the wall but now, my interest piqued, I lean forward in my chair as she continues mildly, “Only Sam came by early this morning and asked me the same thing. ‘What does Bert keep in the basement?’ Tamsin said something in her interview and he said it’s been worrying at him ever since.”
I think of the video camera hooked up to the television. It’s too easy to picture Sam, a man who appears to be coming undone at the seams, cigarette burning between his fingers, watching the taped interviews over and over all night, face lined with concentration.
“Go on.”
Fern shifts uncomfortably. In the golden light her hair shines a dark, polished auburn.
“Well, it-it’s just that. He came and asked me and I told him what I know.”
“Which is?” I roll my hand to encourage her to keep talking.
She sighs. “I’ll tell you exactly what I told him which is that I don’t remember ever going down there. That’s the truth. It was a long time ago, Mina, and you have to remember I wasn’t in a good place. I was a teenager and I wasangry.I was taking a lot of speed, a lot of pills. So much of that time is just darkness in here, you know?”
She taps the side of her temple with a polished nail.