Norah hadn’t thought of that afternoon for ages; she and Valerie had shared so many happy moments. If some people attracted good luck and others bad, some strange situations and others cats and weirdos, Valerie—so it had seemed to Norah—attracted these almost magical moments.

Now, though, it came back to her as she hovered by the phone, trying to muster the courage to ring Valerie’s mother Monika. She had always liked Monika, often finding her easier to get on with than her own mother. She was a real mumsy type who cooked and baked and loved and scolded, always worrying when Valerie didn’t get home on time, while Norah’s young mum, with her wacky hairdo and laid-back nature, was more like a big sister—something that Norah didn’t find nearly as cool as she pretended to her admiring friends. Now her mum had been dead for years and she hadn’t seen Monika for half an eternity. Monika. It was at Valerie’s funeral that she’d told Norah to call her that. Norah had suddenly felt very grown up—and immediately realised that it wasn’t a good feeling.

Her gaze fell on the dining table and she couldn’t keep from shuddering at the thought of those big brown-black beetles scuttling over the wood on their sturdy legs. No mere insects, those beetles; they’d been living warnings. Norah thought of Baroque vanitas, still lifes where the fine things of life—fruit and bread, wealth and pomp—are displayed in all their glory, but invariably subverted by symbols of death, decay and transience: moths, rats, snails, hourglasses, skulls. And—a particularly popular motif—stag beetles.

She had caught the beetles and set them free on a patch of grass outside the house. Then she’d thrown away the fruit. But the feeling of menace had remained.

Norah took a deep breath and reached for the phone. She had to know. Had to hear it from someone who was around at the time. Was it absolutely certain that Valerie had taken her life? Absolutely, indisputably, definitively certain? Because if not, she thought, maybe I know what’s going on here. Maybe someone’s trying to tell me something. Trying to tell me that Valerie didn’t commit suicide, but was murdered. Maybe someone out there knows the murderer and is trying to put me on his trail, hoping I’ll find him and punish him. Maybe they don’t have the courage to do it themselves. Maybe they know that I’m one of the people who loved Valerie the most.

Maybe they know that I’m the only person who loved Valerie who is capable of killing her murderer.

37

Norah couldn’t have said how she’d expected Monika to react, but she hadn’t reckoned with such a frenzy of joy.

‘How are you?’ Monika asked, when she’d calmed down a little.

Norah smiled. Her mother had always annoyed her by speaking rather contemptuously of Monika as the hen, but now, listening to Monika’s clucking laughter, it struck Norah that there really was something henlike about her.

‘Tell me what you’re up to.’