Someone Else's Friday

The police officer who came to the Lantern Rooms had a canvas bag full of leaflets and a small piece of tissue stuck to the heel of her shoe.

I noticed the tissue because I didn't want to look at the photograph on the table.

It was the same picture from the group chat, printed in colour on the centre's unreliable machine. Rowan's face had come out slightly orange. In real life he had been pale enough to burn through cloud, something he'd complained about as if the weather had deliberately failed to take him into account.

“Beatrice Carter?” the officer asked.

“Bea.”

“I'm Helen Adebayo.”

She showed me identification. I read the word Inspector, then realised I was staring at it and looked up.

“Is my mum supposed to be here?”

“You're not in trouble. At this point I'm asking people what they saw last night. You're welcome to have someone with you. We can wait.”

“She’s at work.”

“Would you like to call her?”

I imagined Mum stepping away from the pharmacy counter, one hand over her other ear, while the queue grew and the pharmacist made the face she described at dinner. Then I imagined telling her why I wanted her there.

“No. It's okay.”

The inspector put a chair beside mine rather than opposite it. Through the glass door, I could see Finn helping Judith move a trestle table. He wore the same navy jumper he'd worn the night before, or an identical one. Some people had enough clothes for that to be a possibility.

Adebayo followed my glance but didn't comment.

“What did you do at the event?”

“Video. A bit of sound. Mostly video.”

“Working for the centre?”

“Volunteering.”

“And you're a student?”

I told her where, which year, what subjects. All the things I could say without thinking. Media studies, English language, art. I didn't add that the art teacher considered my refusal to draw actual objects a personal challenge. It seemed unlikely to help find Rowan.

“Did you know him well?”

“We're at the same college.”

“That's not quite what I asked.”

I picked a fleck of dried paint from the table edge.

“We used to be friends.”

“And now?”

“We still talk.”

That wasn't a lie in the same sense that saying it was raining would have been a lie. We did still talk. We said sorry when we bumped into each other at the printers. Once he'd asked me to move my bag off a chair.

“Was there an argument?”

“Not last night.”

“Before last night?”

I could hear Judith through the door, explaining that they mustn't put missing-person posters over the emergency-exit signs. Her voice had the briskness adults used when being busy was the only thing they could offer.

“We disagreed about a film,” I said. “In November. It was nothing to do with him going away.”

“Tell me about it anyway.”

So I told her the smallest version that was still recognisable. I'd made a short documentary for a regional young filmmakers' event. Rowan had let me film him working at his mother's market stall, drawing behind the counter, talking about wanting to leave Alderwick. He had asked me to remove a section where he talked about his dad. I thought he meant one sentence. He meant the whole section.

“Did you remove it?”

“Not before the first screening.”

“And afterwards?”

“Yes.”

Adebayo wrote something. Her handwriting was small and quick. I tried not to read it.

“I thought it mattered,” I added. “The thing he'd said. It made the rest of the film make sense.”

“To you?”

There was no accusation in the question, which made it harder to answer.

“Yes.”

She let that sit between us for a moment. Then she asked when I'd last seen him.

“Around half eight. Near the donation desk.”

“What was he doing?”

“Sorting envelopes. Talking to Finn.”

“Finn Sayer?”

“Yes.”

“What were they talking about?”

“I don't know.”

“Did they seem upset?”

I tried to reconstruct it without improving it. Rowan had been standing behind the desk, one hand on a blue folder. Finn had leaned towards him. There had been a woman trying to get past with a tray of glasses, and I remembered stepping aside because one of the glasses was full to the rim.

“They weren't smiling,” I said. “But I only saw them for a second.”

“Good. Tell me what you remember, not what you think you ought to remember.”

I nodded too quickly.

She asked about the balcony, the camera, the times I'd gone downstairs. I described changing a microphone battery and finding an extension cable that turned out not to belong to us. I described the band starting late. I mentioned the case of equipment Finn had returned at the end of the evening.

“Do you have the recordings?”

“The edited film. And a viewing copy of the full camera shot. It’s silent. The original card is in the equipment crate.”

“Why is the viewing copy silent?”

“I exported it without the sound. Just to choose pictures. The sound was supposed to come from the desk.”

“Can you keep everything as it is, please? Don't delete or overwrite anything. Someone will arrange to collect copies.”

“Of course.”

I wanted to tell her I wasn't an idiot. Then I remembered the film on my desktop, eleven minutes shorter than the night had been, and kept quiet.

“Your brother was working here too?”

My fingers stopped worrying the paint.

“In the kitchen.”

“Samuel Carter?”

“Sam.”

“He spoke to Mr Dacre about moving some equipment. Mr Dacre couldn't find him later. Do you know when he left?”

“No.”

“Did you see him during the break between the speeches and the music?”

I could have said yes, briefly. I could have said he asked me to cover for him and I didn't know what he meant. Neither answer would have made Sam a murderer. Rowan wasn't even dead, as far as any of us knew.

But I had the label in my pocket. I had found it under the parking notice, folded it twice and put it there. The paper seemed to have acquired its own pulse.

“He was upstairs with me,” I said.

“In the balcony?”

“Yes.”

“The whole break?”

I watched her pen wait.

“Pretty much.”

“What does pretty much mean?”

A person who wanted to help you might have accepted the uncertainty. Adebayo was trying to help Rowan.

“He came up just before the speeches finished,” I said. “He stayed until the band started.”

She wrote that down.

I was surprised by how little happened. The door didn't open. A light didn't flicker. Finn and Judith continued to manoeuvre the table in the hall, and someone outside laughed at something, then seemed to remember where they were.

Adebayo asked three more questions. I answered all of them honestly, which already felt like a kind of compensation.

When she finished, she gave me a card and asked me to call if I remembered anything else.

“Even something you think isn't important.”

“Okay.”

“People often remember an event differently once they realise it matters. Try not to work out a shared version with your friends. Just write down your own memories.”

I put the card in the pocket that didn't contain the label.

Outside the room, Finn was trying to fix the leg of the table. He had turned it on its side and was crouching beside it, testing a bolt with his thumb.

“All right?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“They do ask a lot, don't they?”

“It's their job.”

“I know. I just kept thinking I'd get something wrong.”

His hair fell into his eyes. He pushed it back with the heel of his hand, leaving a faint line of dust across his forehead.

I had known Finn in the era when his mum labelled his socks. I had seen him cry because a dog he'd been afraid of turned out to be old and ill. He was one of very few people whose face still contained all its earlier versions when I looked at it.

“Have you heard anything?” I asked.

“Someone thinks they saw him at the coach stop.”

“Who?”

“Don't know yet. Judith's passing things on.”

He stood and wiped his palms on his trousers.

“Are you okay?” he asked again.

I wanted, suddenly, to tell him about Sam. Not because Finn could solve it, but because he would begin by assuming there was an explanation. He had always been good at that. When Mum missed a parents' evening, he said her shift must have run late. When I couldn't afford the end-of-year trip, he said it sounded boring anyway, despite having already paid his deposit.

Before I could speak, Judith came out of the office carrying a stapler.

“Finn, darling, can you find the other box of drawing pins? And Bea, the film—”

“The police have asked me to keep all the files.”

“Yes, of course, absolutely. But the little highlights one. We ought to put something on the website. A message. Not cheerful, obviously.”

I looked at her.

“Judith.”

“I know. I'm not suggesting we carry on as if nothing's happened. I simply think people need to see that we're doing everything we can.”

“What would that look like?”

She blinked. “Sorry?”

“In the film. What does doing everything we can look like?”

Finn put a hand on the table between us, not touching either of us.

“Maybe leave it for now,” he said.

Judith rubbed her forehead with the stapler still in her hand. For the first time I saw how tired she was. There was a dark patch on the collar of her blouse where she'd spilled tea and tried to wipe it away.

“Yes. You're right. I'm sorry.”

She went back to the office.

I should have felt pleased with myself for saying the right thing. Instead I felt mean.

Finn lowered his voice. “She's been here since half six.”

“I know.”

“She's just trying to do something.”

“So is everyone.”

He looked at me more closely then, and I looked away first.

Across the hall, Imani Holt stood beside a noticeboard, examining a row of photographs clipped to a wire. They were from the centre's old swimming days: children in enormous goggles, men in narrow trunks, a woman who looked as if she regretted being photographed in a swimming cap.

Imani had a camera strap wrapped around her wrist. Her hair was tied up with a red scarf, and there was a tiny white scar at the corner of her left eyebrow. I'd noticed the scar in art class months earlier and then spent an unreasonable amount of time trying not to notice it again.

She turned when Finn called her name.

“Did you bring the pictures?” he asked.

“My card. They asked for originals.”

“Anything useful?”

“I haven't decided what useful looks like.”

It was almost exactly what I'd said to Judith, except Imani made it sound less like a rebuke and more like a fact.

Finn nodded towards the interview room. “They're in there.”

“I know. I'm waiting.”

He glanced at his phone, then at the office. “I've got to find those pins.”

When he left, Imani and I were left standing close enough that silence required a decision.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.”

“Did you get any sleep?”

“Some.”

“Everyone keeps asking me that.”

“Did you?”

“Some.”

She smiled a little. It made me wish I'd said something that deserved it.

For a minute we looked at the swimming photographs together. In one, a boy stood on the diving board with his knees bent, apparently still deciding whether to jump. The date written beneath it was twenty years old. He had either jumped or climbed down by now. I found myself wanting to know which.

“Were you upstairs all night?” Imani asked.

“Mostly.”

“I saw you in the passage just before the band. You looked like you were looking for someone.”

My mouth went dry.

“I needed a cable.”

“Oh. I thought you said Sam.”

The inspector's card seemed to press against my leg through the fabric of my jeans.

“I probably did.”

Imani looked at me, not suspiciously. That was worse. She was simply checking whether we were having a conversation.

“I have a picture of you,” she said. “It's quite good. You don't look like you're posing.”

“I never know where to put my hands.”

“In this one you're holding a cable.”

“That would solve it.”

She unwound the strap from her wrist.

“I can send it later.”

“Thanks.”

The interview-room door opened. Adebayo called Imani's name, and she went in without looking back.

I stood beside the noticeboard with my phone in my hand.

Then I called Sam.

He answered on the fifth ring, breathing hard.

“What?”

“Where are you?”

“Out.”

“The police are asking about last night.”

There was a pause.

“What did you tell them?”

It wasn't Are you okay? It wasn't Is Rowan home?

I shut my eyes.

“Something you need to make true,” I said.