The 3rd Woman. Jonathan Freedland

does it make a sound? If you are the last living soul to remember an event, did it even happen?

      She considered the elevator but took the stairs, emerging onto the third floor to see the familiar yellow-and-black tape, barring her path to Abigail’s front door. There was no one around to enforce it, but Madison halted all the same. The door was ajar and there were voices coming from inside. Madison stared at the door frame, noticing some scarring close to the lock. Leaning in, she could see that a very small part of the surround had splintered, so that two or three painted wood shards jutted forward. Was that fresh damage or had it been done weeks earlier? She could not be sure. An initial, brief search of the apartment could not confirm any forced entry.

      ‘Hello?’ she called out, still on the wrong side of the police tape. The voices inside stopped. A few moments later, the door opened wider to reveal a young, fair-haired police officer bulked out by his uniform. Over his shoulder, four paces back, stood Abigail’s room-mate, Jessica. When she had first met her, whenever that was, Madison had marvelled at her bouncing hair and California Girl energy; she and Abigail looked as if they’d walked out of an orange juice commercial. But now Jessica’s shoulders were rounded and her hair was limp.

      ‘I’m Abigail Webb’s sister,’ Madison said, replying to the man’s unspoken question. ‘I won’t touch anything,’ she added as she lifted the tape and walked through the front door. By way of confirmation, Jessica stepped forward and opened her arms. Madison let herself be hugged, unsure whether she was receiving solace or administering it.

      ‘I’m so sorry,’ Jessica whispered, her cheeks wet against Maddy’s hair.

      ‘I’m sorry it was … I’m sorry you had to be here when …’

      Once they had parted, Madison stepped back and looked at Jessica. She seemed crushed, as if the weight that had fallen on her had been physical. The police officer hovered nearby. They were still no more than a yard from the front door.

      Maddy didn’t want to ask her sister’s friend to say it all over again, to make her re-live the moment of horror from several hours earlier. But she did, all the same.

      Jessica started talking. ‘I walked in, put on the light and there she was. Lying on her back. She was still and she looked … so strange.’ Jessica’s voice faltered. ‘Her lips were blue. And her hair was real clammy.’

      ‘Did you know straight away that she was dead?’ Maddy said.

      ‘I wasn’t sure. At first I thought maybe she was breathing. Like tiny, faint breaths. I put my face by her mouth, to see if I could feel anything. And maybe I did. But it was just once. I waited and I didn’t feel it again. And she was so cold …’ Jessica’s chin began to tremble.

      Maddy pressed on. ‘And you called the police right away?’

      ‘Not right away. I tried talking to her. You know, “Abigail, wake up. It’s me.” I might have slapped her, I can’t remember for sure. Her cheek was so cold.’

      They talked for a moment or two longer when the police officer interrupted them. ‘Miss?’ He was looking at Jessica. ‘Do you know this gentleman?’

      They both turned around to see an older man, his face covered by a smog mask, filling the door frame.

      ‘Daddy,’ Jessica said, moving towards him. Only then did Madison notice the overnight bag packed by the front door.

      Jessica turned around and said, ‘I’m sorry, Madison. But my parents say it’ll be best for me if I leave town for a few days. They think I need to be home.’

      ‘Of course,’ Maddy said, attempting to smile. ‘Thanks, Jess.’ She had heard Abigail refer to her that way, but it sounded wrong coming from her. As Jessica followed her father out of the door – explaining to him that he didn’t need to wear the mask indoors – Madison called out to her once more. ‘I’m sorry it had to be you.’ Maddy knew as she said it that it could hardly have been anyone else. Certainly not her: she hadn’t been inside this apartment for months. It might even have been a year.

      Once Jessica and her father had gone, the police officer turned to Madison and murmured a quiet ‘OK’, as if to say this visit had no doubt been tough but her time was nearly up.

      ‘I want to go into my sister’s room.’

      ‘I got very strict instructions, Miss. I’m not—’

      ‘I know about your instructions and I know the rules. I’m allowed in, so long as you’re present at all times to make sure I don’t remove anything. The place has been photographed and dusted for prints already, right?’

      ‘Yes, but have you checked this with—’

      ‘If you have any problems at all, call the Chief of Police. Tell him this is what Madison Webb has requested.’

      It was a gamble, but a low-risk one. She had met Doug Jarrett a few times, though he was hardly a contact: he’d been appointed to the top job just as she was leaving the crime beat. For all that, she reckoned her name was well-enough known around the LAPD that had this officer called her bluff and telephoned headquarters – which he wouldn’t – she’d be OK.

      He dipped his head in assent and she led the way, passing the living area and kitchen until she pushed open the door to the room that belonged to Abigail.

      She stepped inside and was hit instantly by a wave of love and nostalgia that almost floored her. In just a few seconds, she was flooded by all things Abigail. On the bed were a couple of ethnic-style cushions Abigail had picked up on a trip to Santa Fe during her sophomore year. In the corner, the guitar she had taken up as a wannabe hippie in the eighth grade: Maddy only had to glance at it to hear again the sound of her sister strumming, out of time, to ‘Nowhere Man’. On the wall, the familiar collage of postcards of recent art exhibitions. On the night table, a copy of the latest novel by the young Nigerian literary sensation whom Maddy had heard interviewed on NPR in the middle of the night. The book was opened and face down, suggesting that Abigail – unlike all the journalist bullshitters Maddy knew – was actually reading it. The bed was rumpled, each crease a reminder that not long ago a living, breathing person had slept in it.

      The room too was messy, a pile of exercise clothes and underwear in one corner. On the desk was a pile of children’s exercise books: all yellow, each one methodically laminated by hand. She opened one to see an infant’s scrawl.

       E is for England. England has a Queen. It rains a lot. They call soccer football.

      And below it, Abigail’s unmistakable hand in bright red.

       Good job, Oscar! You’ve made E Week really fun.

      Next to it, she had drawn a smiley face.

      How strange that those children saw Abigail as their teacher; to Madison she was barely more than a child herself. She could see her younger sister in the tiny bathroom of their house in Beverlywood, an eleven-year-old girl styling her long fair hair with a pink hairbrush, trying, she said, to look like Maddy.

      With effort, she could picture Abigail as a student, sweeping her hair back before heading out for a run round Circle Park: Abigail had gone through a phase of running barefoot, her hair trailing behind her. And Maddy remembered Abigail chewing on a plastic pen top, moving the hair away from her temple in concentration.

      But the image that bobbed up again and again was the one she tried to push deep below the surface.

      Madison looked at the framed mirror above the desk. She ignored her own reflection and looked instead at everything tucked into the edges, all the way around the border. More arty postcards – a Klimt and a Sargent – the odd note and several photographs. One in particular pulled her up short.

      It was a picture of a man Maddy had not seen in years. So long, in fact, that she had almost forgotten his face. But there he was, broad-faced, his hair dark brown with only the odd strand of grey, his jaw strong, coming forward just enough to suggest a fighter: her father, a man so patriotic he had named