Anna got as far as the corner before calling Miriam.
She didn't go back to the room. She didn't stop to decide which part would be easiest to say.
The solicitor answered after several rings.
“Anna?”
“Rachel lied.”
Miriam was quiet for a moment.
“What has happened?”
“She told me. About the original thing. She saw Martin Hale leaving the house. She knew it was him and said it was me.”
“Where are you?”
“Outside the shop.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Start with when she told you.”
Anna looked toward the end of the road. A woman was opening a cafe umbrella, pulling the pole down, testing that it wouldn't spring back.
“This morning. Eight. We met because she told Dad something I hadn't said.”
“About what?”
“Tess. A van. That's the new thing. She invented a threat. Then she admitted the old one.”
Miriam asked her to separate the two. Anna did, gripping the paper bag so tightly the fold began to tear.
“Martin was her boyfriend,” she said. “Then her husband. He killed Celia. He was having an affair with her.”
Miriam didn't interrupt until Anna stopped.
“How does Rachel say she knows?”
“He wrote to her. In 2018. When he was ill. I read it.”
“You've seen the letter?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it now?”
“With her. She brought it from upstairs. Three pages. His name at the bottom. I sent you pictures of all three. Did they come?”
“Let me check. Stay on the line.”
Anna waited until Miriam said she could see them.
Anna wanted to describe the handwriting, the little shrinking words, darling at the top. She said them all too quickly. Miriam asked what the letter actually described.
“The brass doorstop. Hitting her while she was down. Something about moving her phone under a tea towel. Red checks. On the windowsill.”
Miriam made a sound as she wrote.
“I didn't take the original,” Anna said.
“Keep those photographs. Don't delete or alter anything. We need to secure the original as well.”
“She could burn it.”
“I'll make that contact now. You've given us something we can act on, but I won't tell you the original doesn't matter.”
“He's dead.”
“I know.”
“I'm not asking you to make that useful. I'm saying he's dead and she still kept it.”
Miriam waited. The umbrella across the road opened. The woman stepped back, pleased with the shade she'd made.
“She knew before Tess stopped coming,” Anna said.
Her voice broke unexpectedly. She turned away from the cafe so no one would see the thing happening on her face.
“I need you to tell somebody. Now.”
“I will make the necessary contact. We'll record your account properly as well.”
“Every part.”
“Yes.”
“She said she knew it wasn't me. It wasn't a mistake. Please put that.”
“I've put that.”
Anna heard the calmness, the same kind of calmness which had helped her through years when nobody else seemed willing to receive a difficult sentence. She wanted to stay on the line and let Miriam keep being the person who wrote it down.
The solicitor said, “Do you have somewhere to go?”
“The room.”
“Go there. Write what you remember of the conversation while it's fresh. I'll ring you again.”
Anna looked at the bag.
“I don't want Tess kept out of it.”
“Does she know yet?”
“No.”
“Are you speaking to her?”
“Rachel will tomorrow. I will as well. She gets to ask me. I told her that.”
“All right.”
Anna waited. Miriam didn't add that she ought to be careful with Tess, that anger made a mother frightening, that someone else might know a better way to deliver what had happened.
“I'll make the contact,” she said again.
“Thank you.”
Anna ended the call and stood holding the phone.
A man walking a dog gave her space. The dog smelled the empty paper bag and pulled toward it. Anna lifted it automatically. There was no blouse inside. She'd brought the bag to carry something if Rachel wanted it back, though she hadn't admitted that to herself before now.
The dress, perhaps. The shirt. The morning in which someone helped her look like a woman who could be liked.
At the guesthouse Paula was cleaning the front window.
“You've been out early.”
Anna looked at her.
“Yes.”
“Tea?”
“No.”
Paula lowered the cloth. Anna went upstairs.
In the room, the trousers were dry on the rack. Her cardigan lay across the end of the bed. She had a lipstick, a phone, a job on Tuesday, a friend expected Sunday. Things happened after the day on which Rachel sent her away, whether Rachel admitted them or not.
Anna found paper in the bag Miriam gave her in London. A notebook, still mostly empty.
She wrote the date. Then Rachel's name.
The first words were the ones about the van. She almost crossed them out because they seemed too small beside the rest. They had brought her into the shop. She left them.
She said she wanted to slow everything down.
Anna wrote slowly after that. She repeated the questions she'd asked and the answers Rachel gave. Martin's name. The gate. Knowing it was him. Under oath. The letter written in 2018 and kept for eight years.
She got to Tess being eleven and couldn't keep writing.
In the visits room the child was looking at Leonard for permission to speak. Anna had hated it, wanted the glance for herself, said something which made the child look again. Maggie was already dead. Lee was dead. Tess had learned to live with adults disappearing and one of the adults still there made her explain why she wanted to leave.
Anna put the pen down.
Rachel had made that visit possible by keeping the truth away. Anna had done things inside it she couldn't place in Rachel's hands.
She wanted to.
She picked up the pen and wrote the remaining conversation.
By the time Miriam rang again there were six pages. Anna had underlined nothing. She needed the account to be taken as words someone spoke, not words improved by the size of her fury.
Miriam had made contact. There would be further questions and a proper statement. Anna asked about the original letter.
“Your photographs are saved here. I've given the location of the original and made the urgency clear.”
“She'll give it?”
“We'll pursue it. I can't promise her conduct.”
Anna heard the difference between a woman telling her she would receive something and a woman beginning the work which might make it happen.
“I want people to know,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Not just a correction somewhere nobody sees. I want them to know she did it on purpose.”
“That can be part of what you choose to say. Let's make sure your account is properly recorded first.”
Anna didn't feel censored. She felt impatient with the fact that one important thing could happen before another and still leave her with the same room.
She sent photographs of the notebook pages when Miriam asked, keeping the original beside the phone. She had learned to make the camera focus properly. There was pleasure even now in doing a thing without somebody taking it from her hands.
Then she opened Tess's messages.
The last one concerned the rooms yesterday, an address Anna already knew. She called.
Tess answered with a little breath.
“Hi.”
“Are you busy?”
“Eli's got a break. We're getting something.”
Anna looked at the pages beside her.
“I spoke to Rachel. She admits I didn't threaten the van.”
Tess breathed out.
“Good. Will she tell Granddad?”
“She said she will.”
“I'm going in tomorrow morning. I want to hear her say it.”
“All right.”
“Properly. Not something about you being upset.”
“Yes.”
Anna could hear someone asking Tess whether she wanted another drink. She thought of putting the entire notebook between them now, the written account arriving while Tess stood in a cafe with somebody she liked.
“I'll be here if you want to talk afterwards,” she said.
“I'll ring.”
“You don't have to fit it round me.”
“I know.”
They ended the call. Anna held the phone, wanting to call back before a whole evening could pass. Rachel had until tomorrow to give Tess the full account. Anna would tell her herself if Rachel tried to make it smaller. She had said that in the shop and meant it now, without another private arrangement between the women.
She set the phone on the chest.
She knew what had happened. Miriam knew. The shop above which the letter had been kept was still a shop.
Anna took off the blouse, folded it, then unfolded it because hanging it would keep the shape better. She put it on the wardrobe peg. It remained something she'd chosen.
At midday she went out to buy food.
She chose a sandwich, then another kind of drink because blackcurrant belonged to a conversation she wasn't ready to have again. The woman at the till asked if she wanted a bag.
“No,” Anna said.
She carried the food to the sea and found a bench where she could eat without looking toward the shop.