Rania Algafari never asked to be different, and when she escaped the war in Syria and moved to the UK, her only goal was to live her life in peace. Get up, go to work, avoid talking to the dead - that sort of thing.
But not everyone dies quietly, an...
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"So, Miss Albaferrari, you say you didn't come near Daylesford Hall between Friday evening and Monday afternoon?" the older of the two policemen interviewing me asked.
I didn't bother to correct him on my name. I'd already spelled it out for him twice, so I'd come to the conclusion it was a lost cause.
"That's right. I finished at around ten p.m. on Friday, and when I came in on Monday, your people were just carrying Helene's body out."
"And what were you doing on Sunday evening between the hours of seven and eleven?"
"I was on a date."
He raised an eyebrow. "A date?"
Was it really that hard to believe? "Yes, a double date with my friend Shannon."
Of course, she'd arranged it. The closest I got to chatting up a guy was smiling at the boy behind the supermarket deli counter in the hope he'd be generous with the portions.
At least the younger policeman didn't share his colleague's surprise. No, he fixed me with a hard stare and tapped a blue biro on his notepad. I noticed he'd chewed the cap.
"We'll need the details of your date. A man?"
Martha's question about the cop's sexual orientation popped into my head. Why did she suspect he might be gay? I mentally catalogued the details—light-brown hair, cropped short; matching eyes with flecks of grey; a thin nose with a little bump at the end; a jaw slightly too angular to be attractive. To me, anyway. It obviously hadn't bothered Martha. And from what I could see as his shirt stretched across his chest when he leaned towards me, he probably spent some time in the gym.
"The details of your date, Miss Algafari?"
"What? Oh, yes. It was with a man."
"Can you give us his name?"
His name... His name... Joe? John? Jim? "It began with J. I think. Try Jason?"
"Are you asking me or telling me?"
Okay, now I sounded like a complete ditz, although perhaps that wasn't so bad under the circumstances. Better for them to think I was stupid than figure out the truth.
"Uh, I can't quite remember. My friend arranged it through one of those dating websites."
In truth, after he'd leered down my top before we'd even spoken, I'd mentally filed him in the "nope" pile. Then when his hand landed on my thigh halfway through the starter, I'd peeled his fingers away and moved him from "nope" to "not even if the survival of the human race depended on it." And when he'd tried it a second time, I'd been forced to sit on my hands so I didn't pin his fingers to the table with my fork.
Shannon's companion hadn't been much better. They rarely were. Aisling's father had been a rat of the first order, a wealthy businessman named Richard Albernarle III who'd abandoned her when she discovered she was expecting Aisling and hid behind his lawyers to avoid paying child support, mainly in case the wife he'd conveniently forgotten to mention to Shannon found out. I'd christened him Slick Dick. Worse, Shannon had confided in him that she'd run from her ex in Ireland, and gentleman that he was, Dick had threatened to tell the ex where Shannon was if she breathed a word about Aisling's parentage.
