The Mystery of Mercy Close Read Free

interest in the lower-side, left-hand corner of the jigsaw, that’s what. At the best of times he had a touch of the Strong Silents about him, but whenever Vonnie and I started our alpha-female jostling, he had learned – on my instructions – to absent himself entirely.
    In the beginning he’d tried to protect me from her but I was mortally offended. ‘It’s as if,’ I’d said, ‘you’re saying that she’s scarier than me.’
    Actually, it was thirteen-year-old Bruno who was the realproblem. He was bitchier than the most spiteful girl, and yes, I knew he had good reason – his parents had split up when he was at the tender age of nine and now he was an adolescent in the grip of anger hormones, which he expressed by dressing in fascist chic, in form-fitting black shirts, narrow-cut black pants tucked into shiny black knee boots, and with very, very blond hair, tightly cut, except for a big sweeping eighties fringe. Also he wore mascara and it looked like he’d started on the blusher.
    ‘Well!’ I smiled, somewhat tensely, at the assembled faces.
    Artie looked up from the jigsaw and gave me an intense, blue-eyed stare. God. I swallowed hard. Instantly I wanted Vonnie to go home and the kids to go to bed so I could have some alone time with Artie. Would it be impolite to ask them to hop it?
    ‘Something to drink?’ he asked, holding my gaze. I nodded mutely.
    I was expecting he’d get to his feet and I could follow him down to the kitchen and cop a quick sneaky smell of him.
    ‘I’ll get it,’ Iona said dreamily.
    Biting back a howl of frustration, I watched her waft down the floating stairs to the kitchen, to where the drink lived. She was fifteen. I found it amazing that she could be trusted to carry a glass of wine from one room to the next without guzzling the lot. When I was fifteen I drank anything that wasn’t nailed down. It was just what you did, what everyone did. Maybe it was shortage of pocket money, I didn’t really know; I just knew that I didn’t understand Iona and her trustworthy, abstemious ilk.
    ‘Some food, Helen?’ Vonnie asked. ‘There’s a fennel and Vacherin salad in the fridge.’
    My stomach clenched tight: no way was it letting anything in. ‘I’ve eaten.’ I hadn’t. I hadn’t even been able to force down a slice of Mum and Dad’s dinner-time cake.
    ‘You sure?’ Vonnie gave me a shrewd once-over. ‘You’relooking a little skinny. Don’t want you getting skinnier than me!’
    ‘No fear of that.’ But maybe there was. I hadn’t eaten a proper meal since … well, a while – I couldn’t actually remember; it was a week or so ago, perhaps a bit longer. My body seemed to have stopped notifying my mind that it wanted food. Or maybe my mind was so full of worry that it couldn’t handle the information. The odd time that the message had actually got through I was unable to do anything remotely complicated, like pouring milk on to Cheerios, to quell the hunger. Even eating popcorn, which I’d tried last night, had struck me as the strangest thing – why would anyone eat those rough little balls of styrofoam, which cut the inside of your mouth and then rubbed salt into the wounds?
    ‘Helen!’ Bella said. ‘It’s time to play!’ She produced a pink plastic comb and a pink Tupperware box filled with pink hairclips and pink furry elastic bands. ‘Take a seat.’
    Oh God. Hairdressers. At least it wasn’t Motor Vehicle Registration Lady, I supposed. That was the very worst of our games – I had to queue for hours and she sat at an imaginary glass hatch. I kept telling her we could do it online, but she protested that then it wouldn’t be a game.
    ‘Here’s your drink,’ she said, then hissed at Iona, ‘Quick, give it to her – can’t you see she’s stressed?’
    Iona presented me with a goblet of red wine and a tall, chilled glass clinking with ice cubes. ‘Shiraz or home-made valerian iced tea. I wasn’t sure which you’d prefer so I brought