Page 66 of The Tapes
‘It’s a bit hard to explain,’ I say.I think my mum might have recorded a tape in which she says who the Earring Killer is, and sent it to someone, but I don’t know who.
I can’t say that to this woman who lost her own child to the same killer. What if I’m wrong? What if this is another dead end?
‘I think I just wanted to ask you about her. I know you and Mum were friends from book club…?’
Vivian doesn’t seem to mind. ‘We were friends long before that. We knew each other at school but then drifted apart, until we ended up arguing over who had the correct opinion about books. We fought over more or less everything!’
There is no malice or ill-feeling. It’s more like a long-married couple bickering over who snores the loudest.
‘People at book club thought we hated each other,’ she adds. ‘But it was all a bit of fun. You only argue hardest with the people you love the most.’
There’s a gentle hint of something as she glances sideways to a photo pinned to the wall above the bricked-up fireplace. It’s a picture of a teenage girl with dyed-black hair and a pair of rings through her nose.
‘Mum talked about you a lot,’ I say – which is true, but only because I’ve been listening through the tapes.
Vivian breaks into a smile, touching a hand to her chest. ‘Did she? Ha! I suppose I talked about her a lot. She kept me sane, I think. I was having quite a few problems at home and I’d be going through a book trying to relax. Except I’d spend the whole time wondering how Angela would be able to read the same paragraph and have such an opposite opinion. I’d sometimes think she was doing it on purpose, just to wind me up.’
I laugh. ‘Mum said theexactsame thing about you. She thought you were coming up with opinions just to windherup.’
Vivian is delighted by this. She claps her hands together and howls an infectious laugh. A few seconds later, I realise the laugh has become a sob. Vivian reaches for the box of tissues on the table and snatches a pair. She blows her nose and dabs her eyes.
‘Gosh, it’s been a long time,’ she says, before slipping another look towards the photo of the teenage girl with the nose rings. ‘You must know about Pamela. Your mother and I drifted apart again after I lost her. I stopped going to book club, because… I don’t know. I suppose it didn’t feel as if it mattered any more. People called, or came round, but I couldn’t face them.’
She blows her nose once more, takes a big breath, then forces a smile. ‘Sorry. I’m not usually like this but I saw your name, and thought of your mum and how things used to be.’
I’m stuck for anything to say, not only because of Vivian and her daughter but because I think I’ve been waiting for someone to tell me that my mother meant something to them.
‘I think it was about a year after Pamela that I heard your mum had disappeared,’ Vivian says after a while. ‘I still hadn’t gone back to book club, but a couple of people asked if I’d seen her, or heard from her. I was wrapped in my own life, my own grief. And it was a strange time – there were the floods.’
I nod along, because she’s right. I’ve not read Vivian’s book but I did find an article that had the timeline of the Earring Killer’s victims. Vivian’s daughter was killed close to a yearbefore Mum disappeared. Then coverage of Sedingham’s floods overwhelmed any search for Mum.
Even without the floods, it had been easy for the police to assume she’d disappeared on purpose.
‘Has there been any word…?’ Vivian lets the question hang.
‘There’s been no sign of her in thirteen years,’ I reply.
‘Oh…’
I don’t tell Vivian about the fingerprints on the gun. That’s a sign of Mum, of course – the surest sign I’ve had. But I don’t know what that really means.
Vivian and I sit in a melancholic reflective quiet for a moment, before I decide to ask the question I came to ask. ‘Did Mum ever give you anything after you stopped going to book club?’ I ask.
It’s a question from nothing and Vivian’s forehead crinkles. ‘Like what?’
‘A cassette. She used to record her thoughts a lot.’
I see the recognition as Vivian’s eyes widen and she starts to nod. ‘Gosh, that’s right. Shedidrecord herself, didn’t she? I remember now. She gave me a tape one time that was her reviewing a book we’d disagreed on. She told me I could listen to it if I ever wanted to know what a serious person thought of things. It was so self-righteous that I laughed my head off. I definitely listened to it.’
It really does sound like Mum.
She stops and rubs her temple. ‘Thing is, we didn’t see each other after what happened with Pamela. That was my fault, not hers. I shut everyone out. We went from seeing each other once or twice a week to never at all. There wasn’t a chance for her to give me anything.’
It feels so deflating, because I’d convinced myself Vivian would have answers. She isn’t only a link to Mum, she’sconnected to the Earring Killer through her daughter. Much more directly and devastatingly than me.
If thereisa second cassette, I can’t think of anyone else Mum would have given it to. But then maybe it’s one more thing I’m wrong about. My mother wasn’t saying she made a second version of the cassette, she was saying she recorded over the first because she messed up.
‘I suppose…’ Vivian tails off as she stares up to a point somewhere on the ceiling. ‘I didn’t even know your mum was missing until one of our old book club friends told me. I remember I’d had a really bad week. It was still only a year or so after Pamela – and then we had all that rain. I lived down on the river then and mine was one of the houses that was evacuated.’
