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newspapers what she was said to have done. She’d spent ages toiling over this missive, trying to convey sympathy without attaching blame, even though it looked as though Tara was very much to blame. There had been no reply. She didn’t write again, and she didn’t go to the trial. Of that she was deeply ashamed, but when she had tentatively floated the idea of going her husband had been adamant that she should not. It would do no good, Dan had said. Far from being a gesture of solidarity, it would be acting like a voyeur. But at least, when one newspaper dug out the old story of the rescue of the boy, and tracked Claire and the others down, she had stood by Tara, emphasising all her good qualities. There had been some pretty close questioning, though, and she knew she hadn’t come out of it well. Did she keep in touch with Tara Fraser? Oh yes, she certainly did. So when had she last seen her? Claire struggled … Six monthsago, maybe a little longer. Last talk on the phone? She couldn’t be sure. At this point, Dan had arrived home, furious to find she was letting herself be interviewed, and dragged her inside.
    Then there were the prison years. She’d written straight away, when Tara was sentenced, and posted it without reading it through because she knew if she did read it she’d probably tear it up and this would go on and on. There was no reply. In a way, this was a relief. She’d done her bit. But she knew that was a lie. Guilt about how she, as a friend, should have behaved, troubled her for months, at the strangest moments, and then, over the years, she began to forgive herself and forget. Now the guilt returned, the moment she decided to plan a reunion. Tara would have to be invited. It was time to make up for lost opportunities (Claire liked that phrase, ‘lost opportunities’, so soothingly vague, so meaningless). She had no address to write to but she’d read about Tara being transferred to an open prison a few years ago and she sent her letter to the governor there, with a covering note.
    Molly and Liz thought Claire’s letter a waste of time. They were hard on her about it because she was so self-righteous and pleased with herself.
    ‘She’ll never get it,’ Liz said, ‘and if she does, it will annoy her.’
    ‘You don’t know what I said,’ objected Claire.
    ‘I can guess,’ said Liz, with a smirk.
    Claire flushed, and tried not to react.
    ‘I don’t think she’ll want to see us anyway,’ Molly said. ‘We were proved to be broken reeds.’
    ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Liz laughed. ‘Broken reeds? Really, Molly.’
    ‘Well, you know what I mean. She’ll think we let her down, and we did – she won’t want anything to do with us. The very idea of a reunion would probably make her sick.’
    ‘It will be like sticking a message into a bottle and throwing it into the sea,’ said Liz.
    ‘Well,’ said Claire, ‘I’m going to throw it.’
    Slowly, slowly, Tara grew into the house, the street, the job. She began to make small changes which she thought had a significance she couldn’t quite work out. Buying a cup and saucer in a charity shop and bringing it home to put on the shelf she’d emptied of hideous crockery seemed bold and defiant. This was
her
cup and saucer, Sarah Scott’s. It had nothing to do with Tara Fraser, even if Tara too had preferred cups to mugs. She would never have chosen this one, though. Tara liked colour. She wouldn’t have picked a plain cream cup and saucer, large enough for a very generous amount of coffee. Just looking at it pleased Tara. When she used it for the first time her hand trembled slightly with the unexpected pleasure. She bought a cushion (again, in a charity shop) and a cafetière (new). Then she took down both the net half-curtain and the red velour curtains in the bedroom and put up a blind. It thrilled her to be able to manage this herself. Tara would never have tried, but Sarah bought the necessary tools, a screwdriver and a small