The body was formally identified as Dominic Rusk. Nora heard the confirmation from Mercer after the recovery, during a call about further questions she would need to answer with her solicitor.
She had known. Knowing did not make the name less difficult to hear.
“Has Hannah been told?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Nora heard Mercer speaking to someone nearby and waited with the phone against her ear. She wanted to ask about Hannah. When the inspector came back, Nora gave the details she'd been asked for.
In the days after the showroom, she gave the full story again, then again with the places clarified and documents supplied. The file she'd written overnight had not been a substitute for questions. It helped her keep what she knew separate from what she'd wanted to believe.
There were records on the interview table now: hospital care, Cal's messages, payments she'd made. Questions about his movements continued alongside the work at the unit and Hannah's account. Cal's words about the kitchen did not finish the scene examination; Mercer asked Nora again what she had seen before leaving the house, and what she knew only from him. Nora looked at the date of the burial message and remembered him bringing the toothbrush.
Her theft, her false accounts and the offer to Iris remained part of the investigation. She heard her own solicitor refer to decisions she had made with the plain language she'd previously reserved for other people's mistakes.
Her arm had been examined again after the struggle. It needed care and rest. For a few days she had someone help her change clothes and get food, accepting paid practical help rather than pretending Cal's absence could be filled by calling Mina every time she couldn't manage.
Cal survived. Nora received that fact as a relief with no accompanying solution. He was being treated, and the criminal process continued around him. She asked for news of him, then was frightened of what she might hear when someone rang back.
She asked her solicitor about what contact was possible. She wanted to know when she could speak to him. She waited for advice before trying.
Updates about Iris concerned the assault and theft. Nora wrote the next date on the kitchen calendar, then stood looking at it with the pen still in her hand.
Once, alone in the apartment, she wrote I'm sorry I asked you to come and saved it without sending. The last thing Iris asked was that Nora stop asking her for contact she wasn't permitted to give. Nora could manage that much, even when waiting felt like another form of cowardice.
Hannah agreed to see her a little over a week after the showroom. She chose the place, a cafe near a station, and said she could stay twenty minutes.
Nora arrived early. She had nearly chosen the clothes she wore to meet prospective clients, then put on something else because she didn't want the meeting to become a presentation of herself. She still checked in the bathroom mirror before leaving. Knowing the vanity didn't cure it.
Hannah came in carrying a flat paper bag. She sat without ordering and put it between them.
“These are yours,” she said.
The London drawings, printed from the files Nora had emailed to help establish recent dates.
“You don't have to give them back.”
“I don't want them.”
Nora took the bag. There were marks on Hannah's wrist, fading now. She saw Nora look and moved the sleeve down.
“I wanted to ask you something,” Hannah said.
“Anything.”
“Don't say that. You might not answer.”
Nora nodded.
“Did you think he deserved it?”
The question brought the storage smell back so sharply Nora had to draw a breath through her mouth.
“I didn't know what Cal did.”
“I know that. I mean the money.”
Nora looked at the paper bag. She could explain Dominic's wealth, the casual delays, his habit of wanting more than he intended to pay for. Hannah knew all those things in ways Nora did not. They were not an answer.
“I thought he could afford it,” she said.
“Did you think about him finding it gone?”
“Not enough.”
“That's a nice way to say no.”
Nora looked up.
“No.”
Hannah sat back. She had not asked in order to shout; Nora could see her working to keep herself present in a conversation she had chosen and disliked.
“He was difficult,” she said. “He could make a kind thing feel like he'd bought the right to say whatever came next. I don't want people turning him into a wonderful father because he's dead.”
Nora waited.
“But he was mine. He knew what I liked on my birthday. Sometimes. He'd remember something I said years before and get me exactly the thing, and then forget to ring. I don't want to have to choose which one was him.”
“You don't.”
Hannah looked at her sharply, and Nora heard the ease of the advice. She hadn't managed it with Cal. She could not give Hannah permission as though it were something she owned.
“I'm sorry,” Nora said.
Hannah nodded once, not accepting or refusing the apology, simply allowing that it had been said.
“The folio was found,” she said. “The police have it with the other things for now. He did take the prints. He hadn't thrown them away.”
Nora didn't say of course he hadn't. She had no knowledge which entitled her to make the father kinder. Hannah had one fact she could keep without Nora improving it.
“I'm glad,” she said.
Hannah glanced at the time. Fifteen minutes, perhaps. Nora did not ask for the other five.
“Thank you for helping me get out,” Hannah said.
“You got the door open.”
“You made him look at you.”
They sat with both things true. Nora wanted that to be the end of the meeting, a moment which might make another one possible. Hannah gathered her bag.
“I don't want you to keep checking on me,” she said. “If I need something from you, I'll ask.”
“All right.”
“And if the police need anything, answer them.”
“I will.”
Hannah left. Nora remained with the drawings, holding them beneath the table because she didn't want to look at the clean lines of a room she'd made for a man she had decided could afford to lose something.
On the way home the corner of a drawing came loose from the bag. Nora stopped to push it back. It was the blue room, the edge of a sofa she'd chosen, the little table where Dominic liked to keep a drink.