‘Did your father ask you to light the fire, Rowena?’ Mohsin asks, still matter-of-fact.
‘Of course he didn’t,’ Maisie says, her voice too high. A vein is flickering in her temple.
‘What about Silas Hyman?’ Mohsin says to Rowena, his voice sterner. ‘I asked you before-’
‘No, I told you,’ Rowena says, distressed. ‘He didn’t ask me to do anything.’
‘An hour ago someone tried to kill Jennifer Covey,’ Baker says. ‘We don’t have the time or patience for you to protect the man who did it.’
I hear a sharp intake of breath. Maisie has gone white. She looks clammy as if she might vomit.
Rowena is silent, struggling. She turns to her mother.
‘I think it’s best if you left.’
‘But I have to be with you.’
‘We can find another competent adult to be with Rowena,’ Baker says.
‘Is that what you’d like?’ Mohsin asks Rowena.
She nods.
Maisie leaves the room. I don’t see her face. But I see her stumble as she’s rejected.
The door closes behind her.
‘If you just give me a little while,’ Penny says to Rowena.
‘We need to find someone-’
‘I have to tell you the truth now. Because of Jenny. I have to. It wasn’t Dad. It wasn’t anything to do with him.’
I think of Silas Hyman flirting with Jenny then moving onto Rowena. I think of him swearing and raging at the prize-giving. I think of the flowers he gave to the nurse and the door to ICU opening.
‘It was Mummy,’ Rowena says.
Maisie?
I see her loving face and feel her encompassing hugs.
I think of her that day at the sports field, handing me a little something for Adam, beautifully wrapped, a spot-on present inside.
She’d known it was his birthday.
Of course she had! She’d known him since he was born. And three hundred other people knew it was his birthday.
She went to the school just before the fire.
To find Rowena. To give her a lift. Because the tubes were up the spout. ‘Chauffeur-Mum to the fore!’
The spool of our friendship stretches back through the years we’ve known one another and won’t unravel.
‘Mummy’s afraid of being poor,’ Rowena quietly continues. ‘She’s always had lots of money. My grandparents were rich and she’s never had to work.’
But Maisie said it wouldn’t matter to her being poor and she didn’t mind working. ‘I’ve always rather wanted a job, actually.’
‘She went into Sidley House to read,’ Rowena continues, ‘so that she could keep a check on what was happening after I’d left. Sally Healey didn’t tell anyone that there were no new admissions. Even Dad. Well, not for ages. But Mum found out from Elizabeth Fisher that no one was phoning any more.’
But she didn’t go in to spy! She went in to read because she loves being around young children.
I feel our friendship. So heavily substantial and Aga-warm; so many years invested in it, each one adding to its weight.
‘Did she ever leave your room?’ Mohsin asks.
‘Well, yes, she goes and gets things to eat. She went home to get me a clean nightie and my washbag. She goes out to use the phone, too. You’re not allowed a mobile in here.’
‘An hour or so ago, when we left you with your mother,’ Mohsin says, ‘did she leave your room again then?’
Rowena’s voice is so quiet that I have to strain to hear it.
‘Yes. Almost right away.’
There is no way, no way, that Maisie tried to kill Jenny. Everyone’s got this wrong.
‘Thank you, Rowena. We need to interview you again, formally, with what’s known as a competent adult present with you.’
Outside the office, Baker turns to the young policeman. ‘Chase up that social worker. I’m not going to give a defence lawyer any rope on this one.’
‘Maisie White must have seen Jenny being taken out of ICU and followed her,’ Mohsin says. ‘Got lucky with the MRI suite. Security’s not as tight.’
Sarah nods. ‘When Jenny’s ventilator was tampered with the first time, it was in the burns unit. Maisie was staying in Rowena’s room just down the corridor. No one would have questioned her being there.’
‘So you think it was Maisie, not Natalia Hyman?’ Mohsin asks.
‘Yes.’
I’d only seen a back view and hadn’t got close – but it couldn’t have been Maisie. It couldn’t have been.
‘Jenny must have seen her at the school,’ Sarah says.
‘And she had Jenny’s mobile,’ Mohsin says. ‘If there was anything incriminating on it, she’d have had plenty of time to delete it.’
As they speak it’s as if a painting-by-numbers portrait is being filled in, one colour at a time.
But I won’t look at their vicious portrait of my friend.
Because Maisie’s known Jenny since she was a little girl of four. She’s heard me talk about her and Adam, all the time. All the time. She knows how much I love them.
She’s my friend and I trust her.
I can’t add this to what has happened.
I can’t.
So I turn away from their picture of Maisie.
‘What about the domestic abuse?’ Mohsin asks.
‘God knows what’s been going on in that family,’ Sarah says.
‘Find Maisie White,’ DI Baker says to Penny. ‘And arrest her for the arson attack and attempted murder of Jennifer Covey.’
‘She’s in Rowena’s room,’ Sarah says. ‘I saw her there a few minutes ago.’
Sarah’s been keeping tabs on her, I realise.
Penny goes to arrest Maisie. I don’t go to watch, but instead follow Sarah back into the stifling office.
‘OK, Rowena, we’re waiting for a social worker. In the meantime-’
‘Will Mummy be taken away?’ Rowena asks.
‘I’m sorry, yes.’
Rowena says nothing, staring at the floor. Sarah waits.
‘She didn’t think I’d tell anyone,’ Rowena says, and she looks ashamed.
‘But she told you?’ Sarah says.
Rowena is silent.
‘You don’t have to say anything. This isn’t an interview. Just a chat. If you’d like it.’
I don’t think Sarah is seizing an opportunity. I think she’s just being kind to Rowena. Or perhaps she just needs to know right now, unable to wait.
‘Mummy feels terrible. Really guilty. It’s been awful for her,’ Rowena says. ‘She needed to tell someone. And maybe because I got hurt… maybe she felt she owed me something.’ She starts to weep. ‘She’ll hate me now.’
Sarah sits down next to her.
‘This is awful, but I was glad that she told me,’ Rowena continues. ‘I mean, that she confided in me. She doesn’t do that. Never has. Everyone thinks we’re close, but we’re not. I’m her “little disappointment”.’
But Maisie adores her.
‘When I was little I was pretty, you see,’ Rowena continues. ‘She was proud of me then. But as I got older, well, I stopped being pretty. And she stopped loving me.’
Argue with her, I urge Sarah. Tell her that mothers don’t do that. They don’t stop loving their children.
‘I know this sounds silly, but it was my teeth to begin with,’ Rowena says. ‘She made me go to an orthodontist because they were so crooked, but they were yellow too. Something to do with an antibiotic I’d had as a baby. Mummy tried everything, had me bleaching them at home every night, even though the dentist said it wouldn’t work with that kind of staining. And then it was the usual, you know, blonde hair goes mousey brown and my eyebrows got all big and my face got larger but my eyes didn’t. So I turned ugly. Cinderella in reverse, I suppose. I wasn’t the kind of daughter she wanted any more.’
And still Sarah says nothing. But surely to God, if there is one thing about Maisie that I am absolutely convinced of, it’s that she loves Rowena.