We find Daria in the second room, a dining room–cum kitchen, where we’re surrounded by scummy, food-encrusted appliances and posters from all of Mama’s movies, adorning the soot-stained, mold-fringed walls in lacquered golden frames. I hear what’s playing on the television in another room now: Mama and a man. An old interview, her voice so carefree and young. It’s true; it’s true; I promise you, she says, with that sparkling shot of a laugh, the one that makes me think of Tai’s life now. I try to swallow that dry knot of resentment, tasting stale smoke.

Daria sits at a small square table, one of its legs propped up by a book titled The Prince, and motions for us to sit across from her. A black notebook, wrinkled around the edges, sits on her edge of the table beside an overflowing ashtray, where she’s perched a lit cigarette, sizzling down to its filter.

“I was surprised that you emailed,” she says, picking the cigarette up for a drag. “I thought you two fell off the face of the earth after Mireille’s…” Her gloved hands draw lazy circles in space.

“Almost,” Tai says, grinning big and fake. “America. Land of the free.”

The same slow smile stretches across Daria’s face, and the very fine tips of her incisors stick out, catlike. “Right.”

“Anyway, we’re back on Viloxin for the retrospective, and we thought it might be nice to drop in on Mama’s old colleagues,” Tai says. “It’s so terrific you still live here.” I shoot her a look, and she flips her hair over her shoulder, like she’s forgotten she’s sitting in a hovel in sticky slippers.

“Terrific? This mildewed rock? Why?” Daria asks, amused. “Everyone thought me insane to come here. But it was the eighties, you understand.”

I stiffen and see Tai opening her mouth to snap back with a pointless performative comeback—

“You’re not the first to try to pump me for all I know,” Daria continues, before either of us can reply. She sighs and taps the spent cigarette on the ashtray. “They’ve died out now, but for a time, I had strangers ringing me and asking me to confirm or deny theories they had about her new whereabouts. I had to change my mobile number. Move houses.” She clicks her tongue. “All because of that bloody script, and the fact your mother and I collaborated, once upon a time.”

“The script you leaked,” I snap.

Daria blinks at me, guilelessly, continuing her thread. “Imagine if someone had leaked the gray-haired woman’s portion?”

I fight a twitch. So it is her. She’s read it, and she knows.

“They never would have left me alone. They might’ve suspected I killed her, for God’s sake.” She shivers with a practiced falseness, as if she finds the idea delicious. Icy needles shoot up my spine.