Now
The lift intercom buzzes, but the buttery newsreader voice is distorted by static, so I have to push my ear against the speaker to hear what he’s saying.
Marianne is not going to be happy.
‘What did he say? Have they fixed it?’ Marianne demands, while I’m still rubbing at my ear and wondering whether squirting hand sanitiser directly into the ear canal is a no-no.
Is the lift moving? is what I want to say. Are the doors opening? But I opt for diplomacy and speak to her the way I might to a lost kid in the supermarket. ‘They’re waiting on someone to come out. It’s probably going to be twenty minutes or so.’
‘Twenty minutes? Is there even enough air in here to last us that long?’
‘The man on the intercom says it’s perfectly safe. There’s more than enough air in here.’
Marianne runs a hand through her hair, and it swishes perfectly back into place. I only need to touch mine to look like I’ve been struck by lightning.
‘Can’t they force the doors to get us out?’
‘We’re between floors.’
Marianne looks at her watch. ‘Twenty minutes,’ she says, mostly to herself. ‘I can do this.’
I don’t say anything. It would be too weird to give her a pep talk – she’s old enough to be my mother.
‘The one day I forget to pack a book and leave my beta-blockers behind,’ Marianne says.
I still don’t say anything.
‘What’s the rest of the story, then?’ she asks finally.
‘You want to hear it?’ I study her face.
History shows I’m not the best at reading people (more on that later), but I think Marianne is genuinely interested.
She might not want to hear it as much as she wants to get out of this lift or as much as she’d like a coffee, but she’s curious.
Or maybe she just wants a distraction from thinking about what her body might look like if the lift plunged all the way down to the ground.
‘Sure,’ she says. ‘You were about to go to your brother’s funeral? Who are Lila and Ben, by the way?’
‘Lilia was my best friend,’ I say. ‘And Ben was my boyfriend.’
She gets it right away. ‘Rough. Also, how do you know the murderer was at the funeral if you don’t know who did it?’
She’s hooked. I knew it.
‘I’ll get to that,’ I say.