Soul Fire

clasping a half pint of lager in her hands. I notice her fingernails are bitten, the skin around them raw.
    Zoe’s not exactly dressed for a party in loose black jeans and a grey hooded fleece zipped to the chin. Her eyes dart about, not settling on anything or anyone, until Sahara calls her name
again. She jumps, like someone’s sneaked up behind her. When she notices me, she looks away.
    ‘She’s funny with strangers. Better if I introduce you,’ Sahara says, and grabs my hand.
    ‘Hi, sweetheart.’ Sahara gives Zoe a quick kiss. ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’
    Zoe gawps at her. Her eyes are huge and grey, the same colour as the shadows underneath them.
    ‘Alice really wanted to meet you,’ Sahara lies, ‘and I thought it might be good for both of you.’
    She pulls out a chair for me to sit down. But now what?
    Sahara smiles nervously. ‘Shall I get you both a top up?’ she says, and scuttles away without waiting for a reply. If Zoe was anyone else, I’d walk away too, but perhaps Sahara has done me a favour. Zoe found my sister’s body. It’s the one part of the story I’ve never heard direct.
    Zoe says nothing and my mind’s completely blank. Eventually I say, ‘So Sahara tells me you’re working in Spain?’
    She nods.
    ‘You speak Spanish?’
    A shrug. ‘I can do hello, goodbye and thank you.’ Her voice is lower pitched than I expected.
    ‘That’ll be quite a short conversation, then.’
    She gives me a sharp look. ‘I hate chit-chat. I went to Barcelona with my parents, once, realised it was a place where I could lose myself. This time, when I went over to find a flat, no
one asked me anything about me. Or, more to the point, about your sister. No one knows who I am there. It’s what I wanted.’
    I stare at her.
    ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘That sounded really harsh. I didn’t mean it to. Like I say, I don’t do chit-chat anymore. But none of this is your fault.’
    ‘Or Meggie’s.’
    Zoe frowns. ‘No.’
    ‘But it’s OK, Zoe. I know what it’s like to feel like everyone’s looking at you because of her.’
    She nods. ‘I guess you would. You look like her.’
    ‘No, I don’t. But my picture was in the paper. And so was yours.’
    I see a half-smile, a look of recognition. She clinks her empty glass against mine. ‘The last thing I wanted was to be famous. Not like your sister, eh?’
    It’s all I can do not to slap her. Sahara puts two drinks down and hurries away.
    Zoe picks up her beer and downs half of it in one go. She looks up at me. ‘Yeah, I know, I shouldn’t drink so fast. But life’s marginally less horrible when I’m drunk
than when I’m sober.’
    Perhaps I’ve been too quick to judge her. ‘Are you OK, Zoe? Not now but . . . generally?’
    She seems to be having trouble focusing. ‘I’m a no-hoper college drop-out. I’ve come face to face with one dead body, and one of my best mates is six feet under now too. Apart
from that, I’m . . . fine , thanks.’
    Best mates? ‘ You were friends with Tim?’
    She downs the other half-pint and then stares into her glass, as though she doesn’t know where her beer’s gone. ‘Not a good enough friend. Poor bastard. I was in Spain. I
wasn’t even there for him. If I had been, maybe . . .’
    ‘You think he killed himself?’
    This time when she looks at me, she’s not cross-eyed. ‘Why? Don’t you?’
    ‘I know it’s what the police think, but I can’t quite believe it.’
    ‘Denial. It’s part of the grief process, apparently,’ her voice is softer now. ‘My parents made me go to counselling after . . . Well, you know.’
    ‘It’s more than denial. I liked Tim. A lot. I can’t see him giving up on life. Plus, he never left a note.’
    I see the hurt in her face. If they were that close, perhaps she’d have expected a last message from him herself. ‘He was a deep thinker, Alice. Serious-minded. No offence, but I
never quite understood why he and your sister were together.’
    I wince at her bluntness. Though I suppose she has a point. ‘You didn’t like Meggie much, then.’
    ‘I didn’t know her very well. We shared the same fridge. That was as far as it went.’
    ‘But the way you talk about her—’
    ‘Look, she used to nick my bread. I knew it was her. Sahara has a wheat allergy.’
    I think it’s meant to be a joke, but she doesn’t smile.
    Could Zoe have killed my sister? The police ruled her out . . . but then maybe the police were so convinced Tim did it that