Two minutes down the road, Suzie reaches the turning space that Danny mentioned and pulls up to the last house on the row. She is in front of a small gray house built much like all the other small gray houses. It has a neat front garden and a poster in the window which readsBOLLOCKS TO BREXIT!Outside it are two wheelie bins, one black, one green. Both are full.
As she walks up the front path, Suzie is thinking about the way those letters had surfaced on the paper, tarry brown, the color of nicotine. Just two words in block capitals, taking up most of the available space.
BELLE VUE.
Cathy must see her coming, because she is opening the door before Suzie is even halfway up the path. She gives Suzie a weak smile, pushing her hair out of her face. She looks tired, Suzie thinks, but that’s unfair. She has two children, one of them still in nappies. If what Suzie hears around town is right—and it usually is, if there’s one thing Idless knows how to do properly, it’s to talk and bitch about each other—Cathy has also been working multiple jobs. On top of that, her sister has gone missing, so Suzie can forgive a little tiredness.
But it isn’t just tiredness, is it? It’s strain. Deep lines are carved into her skin, her eyes pouched and bruised looking. Suzie almost feels sorry for her, but not quite. She hasn’t forgotten the way Cathy had spoken to her at their last meeting.
“Any news?” Suzie asks, digging her hands into her pockets. You can taste the snow on the air, sharp and bright as polished coins.
Cathy shakes her head. “Nothing. It’s been four days now. I dreamed about her last night. I called her name, and when she turned round, she had no face. Isn’t that horrible?”
“Yes.” Suzie nods. Behind Cathy, Scout’s round, cheerful face appears, cheeks ruddy with cold.
“I saw the weather report this morning. They say snow is coming in overnight.” Cathy’s voice abruptly cracks, taking Suzie by surprise. “What if she’s lost out there, Suzie? She might have survived this long, but she’ll freeze to death if she doesn’t find shelter!”
Suzie watches as Cathy’s mouth draws down in agony and she begins to cry, black rivulets of mascara streaking her face. Scout cries out in alarm and reaches up to his mother, who lifts him into her arms and kisses the side of his head tenderly. “I’m okay, Mummy’s okay,” she tells him, over and over again.
“I don’t think Hazel’s outside,” Suzie tells her when she can trust her voice again. The sight of Cathy crying is shocking to her. The vulnerability is so raw and unexpected, it’s like catching her in her underwear. “You’d better let me in. I’ve got something you need to see.”
Inside Cathy’s kitchen, there is a stack of laundry on the counter and a radio playing loudly on the shelf above. Cathy apologizes for the mess, sniffing and wiping her nose on the back of her hand. She sits Scout in the lounge in front of the television and offers Suzie a cup of tea, but Suzie shakes her head, explaining she has to get back to the pharmacy.
“I came straight here,” she tells Cathy, putting her bag on the dining table and unzipping it. “I thought I’d better show you right away.”
Suzie recounts the story of Hazel visiting the pharmacy and buying the items listed on the receipt. Then she tells Cathy about the tall man who had come in that morning and how he’d left the same receipt on the counter, only this one, Suzie points out, had the little smiley face drawn in the corner.
She explains about the secret messages passed between her and Hazel and Abigail back in school, but she doesn’t mention that Hazel had stolen one of Cathy’s letters to demonstrate the process. Despite the tears and this feeling of a shared secret, delicate as a cat’s cradle spun between the two of them, there is still a part of her that is afraid of Cathy. She remembers how it feels to be on the bad side of her.
By the time she is telling Cathy about heating it over the radiator, Cathy has moved to the window and opened it. She lights a cigarette and holds out her hand for the receipt, studying it under the overhead light for so long that Suzie starts to fidget in the draft.
“Belle Vue is a hospital, isn’t it? Down by Falmouth.”
Cathy nods, sucking in the smoke. “It’s not really a hospital. It’s a private treatment center.”
“What’s the difference?”
“About twenty-five grand.” She looks up at Suzie and laughs hollowly. “Joe put Hazel in Belle Vue late last year. She was receiving treatment for what he called ‘violent delusions.’ There were lots of women in there like her, my mum said. Not mad enough to go into psychiatric wards but not quite sane enough to be anywhere else. I thought it sounded like one of those wanky health spas on steroids, but Mum said it did her a lot of good. Hazel got some pills and got some counseling, and everyone thought she’d got better.”
“Maybe she’s gone back in there and this is how she’s telling us.”
Cathy frowns. “But she’d just pick up a phone, wouldn’t she? Why all this secrecy?”
“Because she’s having violent delusions?”
The two women look at each other across the table. Distantly, the Idless church bell tolls off the hour. The open window lets in cold air; the brisk scent of pine and deadfall rolling in from the hills.
“It’s two o’clock. I should head back.” Suzie picks up her bag.
“This man that came into the chemist, what did he look like?”
“Hard to say.” Suzie shrugs. “I felt like I knew him from around town, but I couldn’t tell you who he was. He was older, maybe in his fifties. Had a cap on, and kept his hood up, like he was wary of being recognized. He was a bit twitchy, couldn’t meet my eye. I remember thinking at first that he was after the methadone clinic. He smelled bad too. Like old clothes pulled out of a trunk.”
Cathy nods.
“Oh! He disappeared.” Suzie looks up, suddenly animated. “I forgot that. He was asking me about the half-life of Leprazine, said they were for his fiancée who was waiting out in the car. He went to speak to her and never came back.”
“His fiancée? Do you think he meant Hazel?”