Free A Room Swept White by Sophie Hannah Page B

up,’ he tells me.
    ‘Can I speak to her?’
    ‘Well . . .’ He sounds doubtful. ‘You can listen to her spraying the toilet bowl with gin if you want.’
    ‘I’m
fine
!’ Tamsin shouts in the background. I hear a scuffle; more specifically, I hear Joe losing. ‘Ignore Joseph. He likes to make heavy weather of things,’ says Tamsin, with the crisp enunciation of someone determined to sound sober. ‘Well? How did it go? What did she say?’
    ‘She’s not here yet.’
    ‘Oh. Sorry, I’ve slightly lost time . . .
track
of time,’ she corrects herself. ‘I thought it was really late.’
    ‘It is – too late to turn up on the doorstep of a complete stranger. Maybe she’s seen sense and decided not to come.’
    ‘Have you – gonna say this carefully, right? –
checked
your phone for texts?’ It sounds like ‘shrek-ed your phone for sex’, but I know what she means.
    ‘Yeah. Nothing.’
    ‘Then she’s coming.’
    My watch says twenty past eleven. ‘Even from Twickenham, she should be here by now.’
    ‘Twickenham? That’s virtually in Dorset. She could be hours. What’s she doing in Twickenham?’
    ‘Doesn’t she live there?’
    ‘No. Last I heard she was in a rented flat in Notting Hill, five minutes from her ex-husband and the former family home.’
    All I know about Rachel Hines is that she was convicted, and later unconvicted, of killing her two children.
Good one, Fliss. Nothing like going into a situation well prepared
.
    ‘Why did I agree to this?’ I wail. ‘It’s your fault – you were nodding at me like a maniac as if yes was the only possible answer.’ Even as I’m saying it, I know it’s not true. I said yes because I’d just heard that the film might be about to fall apart. Once that’s happened and Laurie’s at Hammerhead, he’ll have no leverage with Maya or Raffi. They’ll be able to make me redundant: punish me for daring to think I was Creative Director material, even though I never did, and save themselves a hundred and forty grand a year. I agreed to see Rachel Hines in the absurd hope that somehow it might lead to my becoming indispensable at Binary Star, which is pretty embarrassing, even when I’m the only person I’m admitting it to.
    Does that mean I want to make Laurie’s film? No. No, no, no.
    ‘I won’t let her in,’ I say, certain this is the best idea I’ve ever had.
    ‘There’s nothing to be scared of,’ says Tamsin unhelpfully.
    ‘Easy for you to say. When was the last time you were visited by a murderer in the middle of the night?’ I’m not sure Rachel Hines killed her babies – how can I be? – but it makes me feel better to pretend that I am.
    ‘She isn’t a murderer any more,’ says Tamsin. Automatically, I think of the woman I overheard on the tube:
I can believe Helen Yardley was innocent all along
. ‘Even before she appealed and won, Justice Geilow made a point of saying she didn’t think Ray Hines would ever pose a threat to anyone in the future. She as good as said in her sentencing remarks that,though murder carries a mandatory life sentence, she didn’t feel it was appropriate, and implied that cases of this sort shouldn’t be a matter for the criminal courts at all. It caused an uproar in legal circles. God, I feel sober. It’s your fault.’
    ‘Justice who?’
    Tamsin sighs. ‘Don’t you ever read anything apart from
heat
? If you’re making the film, you’re going to need to familiarise yourself with—’
    ‘I’m not making the film. I’m bolting my door and going to bed. First thing tomorrow morning I’m handing in my resignation.’
    ‘Fine, do that. You’ll never know what Ray Hines wanted to talk to you about.’
    Good
.
    ‘One of her objections to the film was sharing it with the other two women,’ says Tamsin. ‘Now that Helen’s dead and Sarah’s pulled out, Ray could be the main focus. Her case. It’s the most interesting of the three by far, though I once said that to Laurie and he almost