Nora's dead. I've buried her. Don't come near us.
The message was in a conversation with Cal. Iris's earlier words were above it: Is she all right? Tell me.
Nora read the two lines and felt nothing she could name. She recognized his number. It was the one she'd given Bell, the one she rang when she needed a job finished, the one she'd learned before most of the other numbers she still knew by heart.
“That's not true,” she said.
“I know.”
“He took me to hospital.”
“I know that now.”
“He was there.”
Iris lowered the phone a little. “When he sent it?”
Nora looked again at the date. She was in hospital then. She remembered the morning light, the clean sheet, a woman telling her something about dressings while she tried to follow. Cal had been there at some point. She couldn't put him beside the sending of the message simply because she'd needed him to be.
“I was under their care,” she said.
Iris sat on the edge of the chair nearest Nora. She kept the phone in her hand.
“I'd switched mine off. I didn't see it until later. I kept switching it off again because I couldn't bear him ringing.”
“Did he ring?”
“There were calls. I didn't answer.”
“Why didn't you tell the police?”
“I did.”
Nora looked at her.
“They have it?”
“They've seen it.”
The room seemed to lose a layer of warmth. Nora had been trying to learn what Iris knew; there were already other people holding some of it, fitting it beside Nora's insistence that Cal saved her.
“What did you think buried meant?” she asked.
Iris's face changed.
“What it says.”
“You didn't ask where?”
“No.”
“You didn't wonder—”
“I wondered about everything.”
Nora stopped.
Iris rubbed her thumb over the edge of the phone.
“I knew I'd left you there. I knew what the floor looked like. I wasn't thinking, that's a man who could be lying to make my life difficult. I was thinking I'd killed someone. And he'd covered it up. If I went back, if I asked anything, I'd make him say it again.”
“So you didn't.”
“No.”
“For nine days.”
“You can keep saying how many.”
Nora looked away. She could not make the time shorter by hurting Iris with it. She also couldn't take back the hours she'd spent expecting contact from a woman who'd been told there was no one to contact.
“He knew I was alive,” she said.
“Yes.”
“He bought me a toothbrush.”
It was an absurd detail. Nora said it because it belonged to the same period as the message. He had stood beside her with ordinary things in a shop bag while telling another woman she'd been put in the ground.
Iris did not laugh.
“Why?” Nora asked.
“To keep me away.”
“He could have told you to stay away.”
“He did.”
Nora wanted there to be another explanation. Something sent in anger and corrected later. Something Iris had failed to read, an answer she had refused because she wanted to blame him. She asked to see the rest. Iris handed her the phone.
There was no correction. There were brief questions from Iris which had gone unanswered, an early one asking whether Cal would give her the part they'd agreed, a later one saying she'd go to the police. Nora read them slowly. The conversation looked embarrassingly small for something which had occupied a woman's life.
“He never said you were alive,” Iris said.
Nora returned the phone.
“He told me you went with the bag.”
“I did.”
“He said he got some of it back.”
“How much?”
Nora told her what she knew: enough for the last work, the amount he'd given, things he had paid himself. She didn't name a total she hadn't seen. Iris listened, her body growing still.
“It's in the showroom?”
“Yes.”
“The place you're opening?”
Nora nodded.
Iris got up and walked to the window. The chair by it had a cushion she had always moved because it pressed her forward. She moved it now without noticing, put it on the floor and stood looking down at the street.
“I thought he'd kept it,” she said.
“He kept enough to—”
“I thought he'd kept it while you were dead.”
Nora did not answer.
“I had some in the bag. I spent some. I was scared to spend it. Every time I did, I thought that's what I left with. That's what I did it for.”
She turned back.
“And you were buying lights.”
The sentence was unfair and entirely fair. Nora had not known what Cal told her. She had known the money was stolen. She had let the rest be enough because she could make things happen again.
“I was recovering,” she said.
“And buying lights.”
“Yes.”
Iris looked at the arm. Nora wished she wouldn't, because the dressing might weaken something that deserved to remain strong.
“You didn't know,” Iris said.
“No.”
“But you knew he'd brought back money.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn't ask enough.”
Nora wanted to ask what Iris had done with all the money she'd carried away, how much she'd kept, why she hadn't shared it afterwards. It would be a way to begin the old argument again, move the attention away from the things Cal had bought.
“No,” she said.
They stayed quiet. The traffic below was louder now that neither was speaking. Nora could hear a bus idling, someone calling across the road, life passing a room in which two women were learning they'd been given different versions of the same night.
“Do you think he went back?” Nora asked.
“He said he got money.”
“After he took me.”
“He must have gone somewhere.”
“Not necessarily then.”
Iris looked at her. “Why does it matter when?”
Nora thought of Hannah. She could not make the absence into a murder simply because her brother had lied. Dominic might be away; he might have lost his phone; he might be treating his daughter's fear as another thing somebody else would fix. All were possible. None were information.
“It matters what he did,” she said.
“Then ask him.”
“He won't answer.”
“You keep saying he saved you.”
“He did.”
“I'm not saying he didn't.”
Iris came back to her chair. She picked up the cold coffee, held it for a moment and put it down again. Nora looked at the hands she'd wanted against her neck, the same hands which had held the bag and pushed her away.
“What have you told them about the money?” she asked.
Iris's eyes narrowed.
“Is that why you asked me here?”
“Partly.”
“And the other part?”
Nora's hand moved toward Iris, then settled on her own knee. Iris watched it. Calling this a search for truth would not improve what she had already asked.
“I missed you,” she said.
Iris looked down at the mug. For a moment her expression softened, and Nora hated the part of herself which noticed the opportunity in it.
“Don't do that now,” Iris said.
“It's true.”
“It can be true another minute.”
Nora nodded. She waited, keeping her hand still on her own knee, while Iris decided whether she would tell her anything else.