I abruptly stand up. The newspaper clings to my wet palms and I frustratedly shake it free.
‘What’s going on, Chloe? Why are you nosing around into these things?’ I’m affronted by what feels like her invasion into my inner world. Has she been watching me? How could anyone know I was so taken by this? How could she?
‘Who asked for your help?’ I blurt out.
Chloe’s face drops out of banter mode. It’s not a facade she often abandons.
‘You sure you’re feeling okay, Amber?’ Her voice is once again more Oakland than fake Floridian, and she looks genuinely confused. When I nod my head but say nothing, her eyes go a little wider. ‘Because, I mean, what kind of question is that? You asked me, obviously. Who else would have?’
I suddenly feel dizzy on my feet. I want to snap back at her, but I can’t find any words.
Liar. Cow. I haven’t talked to you about this. I haven’t talked to … But the reactions stay firmly in my head. If I could see my face, I’m certain I would see it going white.
‘We, we talked about this? You and me?’ I try to make the question sound calm, rational, but inwardly I’m imploring her to say no, to announce some joking Chloe-esque detail that puts an end to this spontaneous charade. Maybe she caught a glance at my computer screen yesterday, or my notepad. Damn that oddly enticing Hello Kitty logo. She’s just goofing around, playing the clairvoyant.
‘I wouldn’t say so much that we talked,’ she answers. I knew it! Cow! But Chloe doesn’t stop there. ‘It was a weird conversation. A few scattered words. But I caught your drift in the end, hon.’
My eyes are back into hers. They must ask the question for themselves.
‘You were just sitting there at the periodicals service desk, muttering,’ she continues, nodding at my cluttered workspace. ‘About three o’clock. Shop was in the afternoon lull, and you’d been lost in your little world a while. Come on, you’re honestly saying you don’t remember?’
I don’t want to admit that, even to myself. ‘Remind me,’ I say instead.
‘Your eyes were glued on your laptop, Amber. Your whole body was rigid, like you’d really been captivated by something. Weren’t saying much, but you were obviously enrapt.’
‘And?’
‘And, well, it isn’t every day you start out a conversation asking for help. So I paid attention.’ She pauses – long, expectant – but I don’t have anything to say.
Asking for help? This makes no sense.
‘After that,’ she continues, ‘you just said a few words, pointing at the screen.’ She indicates my laptop. ‘“My story. The dead woman in the river, her name is Emma. Help me.” You obviously wanted to explore the story, and heck, I’m always up for diving into a bit of snooping around.’
It’s suddenly gone very cold in my corner of the shop. Chloe’s words are not nearly as disturbing as the fact that I have absolutely no memory of saying them.
I finally peer back at her. She’s eyeing me with what feels like too much curiosity. Then, joltingly, the intensity breaks and a devious wink flickers across her eyes.
‘You want my opinion, hon?’ she asks, her voice toying.
‘No.’ But that answer’s never worked with Chloe before, and it doesn’t now.
‘I think you need to get yourself laid.’ She leans forward, her small chest heaving as rapaciously as she can manage. ‘Nothing better for clearing a foggy mind and that pasty looks like a good—’
‘Was I right?’ I suddenly find myself asking, eager in equal measure for an answer and to keep Chloe from finishing that particular sentence. Her face is instantly a question.
‘Right?’
‘When I said … you said I said the girl was called Emma … All those other details, but you haven’t said whether what I said was …’ The sentence is convoluted. I’m not sure how to frame my question in any other way. ‘Was I right?’
Chloe’s eyes are now as wide as I’ve ever seen them. She doesn’t answer immediately, and her silence feels foreign and uncomfortable. Finally she replies, with a tone bridging tenderness and concern, ‘Yeah, hon, you were right. Course you were. Doesn’t take a mystery fan to figure that out. Name’s public record.’
‘She really is called Emma?’
‘Emma Fairfax.’ I can see Chloe trying to normalize her expression, hoping to re-rail a conversation that hadn’t gone at all the way she’d anticipated. But when I keep silent, it becomes clear that Chloe doesn’t know how to continue. She begins the slow departure back towards the front of the shop.
‘Whatever, girl. I’ll shoot you off an email with a few more notes later, see if I can help you make all the nice plot points fit together.’ Her voice retreats to a whisper before it fades away all together. ‘Not like I don’t have my own things to be doin’.’
I wish I could say that I’m able to move on and accept Chloe’s strange words as just her being her. I wish I could just get about my day, but I can’t. I only manage to get myself back into a seated posture by the most extraordinary exertion of will.
Chloe’s words mingle with those already in my head.
Single, never married, no children.
Emma.
Gainfully employed.
Emma.
No relationships. No domestic problems.
Emma.
Foul play. Murdered.
Emma.
Emma.
Emma.
As I whisper the name now, I remember whispering it yesterday. Uncomprehendingly. Innocently.
And again I remember David’s body, rigid beneath my own.
‘Not … by … choice.’
When those words emerged from Emma Fairfax’s lips, as I first met her two and a half years ago, a little more, they opened a door. A door I’d been waiting for my whole life, without even knowing it. She became a revelation, and a revelation only for me.
She’d been admitted to the ward nine days before her first interview with Dr Marcello, and she’d already gone through the usual battery of psych evaluations that accompany every arrival. Even when one is committed by law, rather than choice – when there’s at least the legal assertion that the individual has substantial psychological problems – there’s a routine that has to be gone through in order to arrive at a formal diagnosis. Intake interviews, broad-level diagnostics, then assignment to an appropriate ward for specialist interviews prior to the prescription of treatment. She’d come to Dr Marcello only after the first few rounds of those had already been accomplished, ready for the diagnostic comb to be finer and the focus of treatment more precise. And I sat at his side, as I always did in those days, watching, learning, taking notes, offering thoughts. The pharmacy wing always had a representative at consults like this, to counsel the doctor on options to form part of any treatment, and to receive instructions in turn on the precise drugs a patient’s regime would require.
So there we