Eleanor tried to hear the admonition in Pearl’s words, but it wasn’t there. She was beginning to feel infected by Nancy’s secret, as if she’d been the one betraying them all.
“Did Mary know?” asked Pearl.
“No.” Eleanor wound her silver ring against her finger. She had bought it for herself in Jaipur, many years before, and the movement was comforting. “She was trying to end it, you know.”
“They think that’s why he did it, don’t they?” Pearl said. “A fit of jealousy or something.”
“Are they saying that now—that it was definitely him?” There were lots of questions Eleanor wanted to ask, but she knew she had to save them for the police.
“Well, they’re not saying anything definite, but it seems obvious to me.”
“She did say he wasn’t taking the idea of it ending very well.” The police had called Eleanor that morning saying they needed to interview her properly. She had to get the story straight in her head.
“I just can’t believe she’d do any of this. Poor Robert.”
“How is he this morning?”
“Awful. He’s in with the police now. And of course Zara’s inconsolable. They seem desolate.”
Eleanor thought of all the people she’d seen desolated by loss over the years. Places where the earth had moved from under them or seas had risen up and devoured them. Women and men who had lost everything and everyone. She realized she’d always been rather sniffy about Western grief, as she thought of it. How she’d read stories about a murder or a teenager dying of an overdose and wonder at the extent of the reaction, wanting to take the writers of these articles to the places she knew, where you could legitimately use the word devastation. But she hadn’t known what it was like to inhabit moments like this, how no word seemed enough, how it really did feel like the end of the world.
“I’m so glad Hank died before all this,” Pearl said. “If she could have waited a few more years, I could have been gone as well.”
Eleanor looked at Pearl and heard the odd tenuousness of her words, which she barely understood. She thought of her own mother, unencumbered by sanity in her care home in Devon, and wondered if she’d even understand if one of her children died.
It was strange the times she thought of her mother, and the shock of realizing that she wasn’t still the mother Eleanor had always known struck her as a fresh blow. She imagined ringing her now to talk about Nancy and thought of the comfort she would give. It had been such a talent her mother possessed, the giving of comfort, and the absoluteness of Eleanor’s grief spun her back through time to her childhood home and her mother’s exuberant, fizzing presence. She heard her mother’s deep laugh as it echoed up the winding stairs of their drafty house, past her father’s study, through their messy rooms, over unwashed dishes and dusty surfaces. There are always better things to do than clean, her mother would say as she rushed from one charity appointment to the other, pulling Eleanor and her sister along with her when they were too young to be left alone. Her mother had always liked Nancy, Eleanor thought, but she would have disapproved of the opulence of her life, something that would have influenced how Nancy thought.
“We tried to have a baby for ten years before Nancy came,” Pearl said, and Eleanor wished she’d stop. “And then she came, and she really was the most perfect little thing we could have wished for. Except there’s always been this side of her that I’ve never understood, this urge to push things further than they should go, don’t you find?”
“I suppose.”
“Even going to university. I can’t remember why she went even. Why did you go, Eleanor?”
“Because I…” She looked again at her hands, but they seemed smaller than she remembered. “Because I wanted to go on with my studies … I don’t know.”
“Sometimes I think it was easier when women just didn’t—” But Pearl stopped herself, and Eleanor thought she’d learned to put away the age she’d been born into and wear the present like an itchy jumper. She swiped at her eyes, batting the tears into submission. “And actually, I do know where she got it from. Hank was just like that, always locking himself in his study and falling into what we used to call his moods. Except he was allowed to behave like that. We all thought it was part of his genius. I would make sure he had everything he needed and life was ready for him when he wanted to open the door. But of course, Nancy was a woman, so she didn’t have that option.”
Eleanor felt slightly stunned by Pearl’s outburst, so she said something totally benign that sounded irritating even to her own ears. “Why don’t we go downstairs, get some tea or something.”
Pearl rose with a sigh. “I don’t want any bloody tea ever again.”
Zara was in the kitchen, sitting cross-legged on the floor, hunched over herself as she wept. Her hair was matted on her head, her body encased in what Eleanor supposed to be Robert’s dressing gown. She howled when they walked in, propelling herself off the floor and throwing herself against Eleanor, making her stagger backward. She smoothed Zara’s hair and muttered something ineffectual and bland.
“I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it,” Zara said over and over, like a bloody incantation. Eleanor maneuvered her to a chair and sat her at the table, where the girl collapsed, her head banging against the wood. Pearl sat next to her, but didn’t seem able to make anything better. Eleanor boiled the kettle. It was like being in hell.
Pearl and Eleanor had drunk their tea by the time Robert came back, but Zara’s was cold in front of her. Her weeping had become a backdrop to Eleanor’s thoughts, which whizzed and spun down endless memories. She had stood in a hole in the ground and watched a digger dump countless broken bodies into its center—people who had to be buried to avoid disease, whose loved ones would never know where they’d ended up. She’d been fresh out of university then and was unhardened by tragedy. It is amazing what the mind can process. She’d written to her parents that evening, a letter that probably didn’t reach them until after her father had died.
“They want to see you next,” Robert said to Eleanor as he walked in, his mouth turned down and his eyes deep in his head.
“Me?” She stood up, not completely ready yet.
“They appear to have set up some sort of interview room in the drawing room. They’re going to want to talk to all of us today.”
“Whatever for?” Pearl asked.
“To get a complete picture.” Robert said the words as if they were enclosed in quotation marks, his anger and frustration bubbling so close to the surface that Eleanor fancied she could see it rippling through him. “And while they do that, the bastard who did it is probably getting on a plane to Acapulco.”
“I’m sure they know what they’re doing—” Eleanor tried.
At least Zara had stopped crying for a moment. Her head was even lifted to look at her father.
He waved toward the stairs. “They’re waiting for you.” She left with the feeling that he was angry with her. Maybe he had been too quick to relieve her of responsibility last night.
Detective Sergeant Daniels was waiting in the drawing room, and beside him sat another, much sterner man, who was dressed in a smart uniform instead of a suit.