I laid a hand on her shoulder, gave her a little squeeze beneath her Hello Kitty sweater, and said, ‘Why don’t we go for a drink?’
*
The Grandstand was almost empty; all the sports fixtures set for that afternoon had been cancelled. One solitary guy was throwing dart after dart, alternating between sips of his whisky and Coke. The roaring fire was crackling and spitting in the grate like a feral thing.
Hafsah was nursing a Fentimans Victorian lemonade. Her skin had taken on a clammy pallor as she spoke.
‘Poppy is – god, fuck,was– on the fine art programme. She’d shown me some of her A-level portfolio one night in the Foxglove common room. Her stuff was good, but trying a bit too hard to be angsty. Tracey Emin lite, you know?’ I nodded, but I knew nothing about artists. ‘Anyway, at the time I was nice enough about it. But then last night, we were in the library and she said something flippant about philosophy students. How pointless a degree it is. I think she’d forgotten that’s what I study, but somehow her forgetting pissed me off even more, when she’d made me sit through all those derivative paintings. So I just . . . I snapped. I said, “At least I’m good enough to be here in the first place.” I’m like that a lot. Too blunt. Too direct. It gets me in trouble.’
‘Wow,’ I said, not quite knowing what to say. Telling her it wasn’t her fault didn’t seem entirely genuine. If Poppy had committed suicide, the timing of Hafsah’s cutting remark was pretty terrible.
There was a moment of silence between us, in which it seemed like she expected me to comfort or absolve her, but I didn’t. It seemed prudent to remain neutral. Instead I asked, ‘Did you tell the police about this?’
She shook her head vehemently, a lock of hair shaking loose of its space bun.
‘I think you should,’ I said carefully. ‘Nasty comments aren’t a crime. It’ll just give them helpful context.’
Hafsah laid down her drink, stared at the flames leaping in the fireplace and said nothing.
I decided to try to mine further into the seam of Poppy’s mental health, and how it might have related to my own haunting experiences with the tower. As softly as I could, I asked, ‘I know the police already asked you this, but did she seem like herself in the days leading up to her death?’
At this, Hafsah’s attention snapped back to me, her features hardening. Her fingers started snapping seemingly of their own accord. ‘I already told you I barely knew her. How am I supposed to know what “like herself” meant?’
She stood up from the Chesterfield and stormed out without a backward glance.
I leaned back in my armchair and mulled over what had just happened. Maybe Hafsah was just a prickly person, but then again, maybe she was hiding something.
What was with all the spiky girls around here?