Free The Disappearance of Emily Marr by Louise Candlish

for I could tell that I was not the only one eavesdropping: several customers had let their own conversations lapse in order to listen in. Even for this place, Sylvie and Nina were being indiscreet, something I put down to pure arrogance. At parties or when among their own kind, they were probably more vigilant, but somewhere like this, where it was mainly mothers with younger children, or people who’d travelled from other, lesser postcodes, or staff who were by definition below consideration (so far below as to be underground, I thought wryly), there was no need for caution. Everybody counts, Arthur had said to me, but for women like these two that was not true. No one else mattered, except for those in their own lofty sphere.

That wasn’t to say that once in a while someone or something outside it would not catch their eye, as I did now when I shifted my position on the floor and rolled back my tensed-up shoulders to ease the beginnings of an ache, sliding the half-full box closer to the storage unit.

‘I know you, don’t I?’ Nina called out, regarding me with interest. As Sylvie reached the front of the queue and handed over the plate for wrapping, she took a step towards me, evidently enjoying this test of her memory. ‘Where would it be from…?’

‘You might have seen me here before?’ I suggested timidly. Under her direct beam, my skin reacted, stinging with sudden high colour.

‘That’s not it, I never come here. Weren’t you at Marcus and Sarah’s party at Christmas?’

‘I was,’ I said, swallowing. ‘I live next door to them. But I don’t think we met, did we?’

She looked amused by the idea that I might not be sure, might be able to consider her in any way forgettable. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Emily Marr.’

‘Emily Marr,’ she repeated, not exactly with distaste but with a certain precision, as if sensing it would benefit her to remember it. ‘Nina Meeks,’ she offered in return, and her name caused a noticeable catch in the atmosphere. If anyone had been in any doubt as to who this droll, charismatic woman was, they knew now.

‘I’m at the other end of the Grove from Sarah,’ she told me. ‘I won’t say which number out loud, though. You never know where your enemies might be hiding.’

I thought it interesting that she should withhold her address when she’d been so happy to air her private thoughts about her husband – and Sylvie’s.

‘And this is another neighbour, Sylvie Woodhall. Have you met before?’

As Sylvie turned at the sound of her name, I rose, unwilling to remain on my knees, subservient and reduced. ‘No, we haven’t. It’s nice to meet you. I think I might have met your husband,’ I added, but regretted it at once because it was clear from her glower that, whatever her similarities with Nina, she did not possess the other’s self-assurance. The idea that I knew her husband (and had stood to announce the fact) was not received as the casual claim I’d intended it to be. She was an anxious, suspicious spouse, evidently, and I knew better than to show I’d recognised this by blurting some unnecessary detail.

The exchange ended as Aislene handed Sylvie her wrapped package. ‘There we go. I hope your sister likes the design. It’s come out really well, hasn’t it?’

Sylvie just nodded, evidently too preoccupied to respond to the pleasantry, while Nina turned dismissively from me, from this port of call and back to her friend. ‘Right, Sylv, I think we deserve some lunch, don’t you?’

As they left I heard her say, ‘You hope what?’ There came more of that distinctive, lupine laughter. ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, darling. No chance, he wouldn’t dare, not after last time.’

My shelves restocked, I began collapsing the cardboard boxes, wondering what fear of Sylvie’s Nina had pre-empted, wondering when ‘last time’ had been and whether it was anything to do with the achievement of ‘almost two years’ that she had earlier