Page 65 of Clever Little Thing

“Of course,” she says. “Back home, we use both sides of road,both directions, no traffic lights. If you do not get out of way, crash.” She takes her hands off the steering wheel to clap her hands dramatically for emphasis, and I reach out to steady it, but she slaps me away and takes control again. “Though we are not driving cars, only donkeys and carts.” A muscle in her cheek twitches, and I realize she’s made a joke, which I don’t remember her doing before. “My car, my rules. You don’t like, you walk.”

“I feel a little stressed, that’s all,” I say.

“I do not do stress,” Irina says. “Now, eat. Open tin at feet.” I open an old cracker tin in the passenger footwell. It contains brown, cookie-like rectangles. “Ter khalvasy,” she says. “Good for energy.”

I eat one; it is intensely sweet and tastes like cinnamon and something floral, perfumed. I feel the sugar ignite my brain. She doesn’t “do” stress. Is this the key to who she is? This could explain how she survived so much, how she keeps moving forward, embracing whatever comes.

You can care about your child and not be destroyed by their loss. You can love your child and destroy them too. Still, although Irina’s love might have warped Blanka, it wasn’t enough to make Blanka take her own life.

I pull up the photo of the diary on my phone. I can’t read the Armenian alphabet, but I’ve memorized the words. “Yes atum yem ayd mardun.I think it means ‘I hate that person’?”

Irina snorts as I mangle her language. Then she glances down at my phone and abruptly pulls over, without signaling. She stops on the hard shoulder and grabs the phone. She studies the picture. “This is Blanka’s handwriting. Where did you get this?”

“I found it in Stella’s room,” I hedge. “It just has this one Armenian phrase, I hate that person, over and over again.”

“That is one translation,” Irina says. “Can also translate like this: I hate thatman.”

I stare at her. That narrows it down a lot.

“Why is Blanka’s book in Stella’s room?” Irina demands. “Why does she leave it there?”

I think of the little house in the forest, the husband shut in the oven, the journey over the mountains. If anyone can handle a difficult, fantastical truth, it is Irina. “It’s Stella’s book,” I say. “But she writes like Blanka now. In Armenian.”

I wait for Irina to draw the obvious conclusion, that Blanka has possessed Stella. “She maybe see Blanka writing and copy,” Irina says, and my heart sinks. “And she is very smart girl, sharp like knife. She can find Armenian online. Why, I don’t know.”

It’s just like with Dr. Beaufort. I thought I had unassailable evidence that Blanka was possessing Stella. But of course not. No evidence can ever prove that, not even an eight-year-old learning to crochet almost overnight, not even keeping a diary in someone else’s handwriting. The only person who can ever trulyknowthat Stella is possessed is me.

The car shakes as a lorry drives by. I hastily put the hazard lights on. Irina stares into the winter darkness as we listen to them clicking. Then she says, “Who is this man she hates so much?”

“Exactly,” I say, feeling better. Even if she can’t grasp the truth, Irina can still help me. “What man?” The horrible thought occurs to me: If he harmed Blanka, will he harm Stella too? Maybe Blanka has been trying to warn me.

As Irina pulls back onto the road, I decide I must go and see Stella and ask her or, rather, ask Blanka-in-Stella. She’s not a fan of giving direct answers to direct questions, but maybe she’ll give me another clue.

“Where to?” Irina said. “Home?”

“I can’t have Pete see me,” I say.

“What is matter?”

“Pete thinks I’m not well.” How can I explain this to her? When she showed me the hot tub where Blanka died, she said Blanka “has sickness here” and thumped her chest. “He thinks I’ve got a sickness here,” I say, tapping my head. “If he sees me, he might try to send me back to—to where I was. But I don’t have that kind of problem. I’m fine.”

“Hm,” says Irina, not the woman to offer false comfort as Cherie would have done. She doesn’t tell me I’m fine, and she doesn’t tell me I’ll feel better soon. She doesn’t live in that privileged world where “no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” Cataclysm is possible, and she isn’t about to tell me anything different.

35.

Irina makes up a bed on the sofa, but throws me a towel. “Shower first. You smell like old cheese.” She nods at my hand. “Then I fix that mess.”

I forgot about my cut. The bandage is filthy. After my shower, Irina unwinds it and throws it away. She replaces the dressing and covers it with a fresh bandage. Then I doze for a few hours on her velour sofa. At half past six, I’m up and she makes tea. The staff at the Cottage still think I’m asleep in my bed. They won’t notice my absence until I don’t show up for breakfast. I zip the pub lady’s fleece to my neck and walk from Irina’s house back to our neighborhood. I turn onto the defunct railway lane that runs along the bottom of our garden and is now used by joggers and dog walkers.

There’s a gate in our back fence, and if you reach over the top, you can undo the bolt, something I always meant to fix. I slip on the muddy path leading up to the gate, but dust myself off and letmyself in. It’s a dull, drizzly morning, and at this time of year, it’s not even fully light until half past eight at the earliest, but I crouch behind a bush anyway. Because Pete insisted that the back wall of the main living area be glass, with no blinds to spoil the look, I can see straight into the house.

Kia is sitting on the kitchen island, clad in a vest and running shorts. She’s bundled her grey-blond locks on top of her head in a messy bun. How nice of her to interrupt her morning workout to check on Pete and Stella. But the thought is gone almost as soon as it comes, because suddenly I know the truth. What other explanation can there be for her sitting on our counter—her sweaty thighs unhygienic on our food-preparation surface?

Pete, my Pete—this can’t be happening.

I feel unable to move, drained of all the energy that had driven me to escape from the Cottage and get myself here. I don’t have proof that anything has happened between them. At the same time, I know that everything has happened. You don’t sit on your coworker’s food-preparation surface in shorts otherwise. That messy bun, those little shorts—that isn’t postworkout. That is postcoital. She is more than the woman he confides in. She stayed the night.

Pete smiles as Kia offers him a piece of kale. He’s probably making one of his tofu scrambles with “secret sauce.” This is a random blend of various things in the fridge door—soy, chili, sesame oil, whatever—which always ends up being delicious. Pete will take a plate to Stella in her room, and he and Kia will have breakfast à deux: they will talk about how protein is good for muscle building, how tofu is good for the planet. Pete won’t worry about why Stella likes to gobble her meals alone.

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