The Memory Game by Nicci French

and see if we can recognise them. You've come to me, Jane, saying that you want to talk about your divorce, and that's important and we will deal with it, but one of the crucial problems is to decide what it is that you are asking for and I would like to suggest something. What I'm going to suggest is that it is no coincidence that your best friend, almost your twin, has been discovered buried in the ground, disinterred, dug up, and you have, for the first time in your life, decided to look for help, to dig up your own past, to disinter your own secret. Does that make sense to you, Jane?'
    I was startled and a little disconcerted at first.
    'I don't know. It was obviously a terrible shock to us all. But that's just a tragic external event. I don't see what there is to talk about there.'
    Alex was calm and unwavering. 'I'm interested by the words you use. It was a shock to " us all". Yet it was an "external" event. Was it really external? You know, I sometimes think that the areas that people don't want to talk about are often the best places to start. Your divorce is a matter of opinion, emotion, attitude. Natalie's death was a fact. Her discovery and disinterment are facts. I think that is where we should begin.'
    I had always distrusted the therapeutic talk about emotion, its distrust for the reality of events and I was very impressed by Alex's practicality. I was won over by it.
    'Yes, I agree. I think you're right.'
    'Good, Jane. Talk to me about when Natalie disappeared.'
    I settled myself back down on the couch. I pondered where to begin. 'It's awful but even though it was a terrible tragedy and every detail should be unforgettable, so much of it seems vague and long-ago. It was a quarter of a century ago, after all, in the summer of 1969. Natalie disappeared just after a big party out at the Stead - the Martello house in Shropshire. The party was to celebrate Alan's and his wife Martha's twentieth anniversary. Perhaps it was that there was nothing like a sudden event, the discovery of a body or something, which would have crystallised it all in my mind. What I vividly remember is that the last time Natalie was seen was on the day after the party, by a man from the village.' I paused. 'The odd thing is that I was there.'
    'How do you mean?'
    'Well, I wasn't exactly there , of course, but I was just near. I must have been the closest person to her, apart from the man who saw her, and then, maybe, the person who... well, you know.'
    'The person who killed Natalie.'
    'Yes. Maybe I should describe the place to you. Is that all right?'
    'Of course.'
    'Natalie was last seen by the Col, which is a small river or a large stream that runs along one boundary of the Martellos' land. There's a little path from Westbury, the local village, that crosses the Col and then goes through Alan's and Martha's land, and passes by the house. The man was walking along the path to deliver something to the Stead, or collect something, I can't remember, and he saw Natalie standing on the track by the water at the bottom of the slope of Cree's Top. He even waved at her, but she didn't notice him. That was the last time anybody saw Natalie alive.'
    'Where were you?'
    'On the other side of Cree's Top. It sounds like the summit of a mountain, or something, but really it's just a bit of raised ground that the stream winds around.'
    I closed my eyes.
    'I haven't been back there since that day, I could never bear the idea of it, I never even walk in that part of the grounds, but I can picture every detail. If Natalie had walked away from the bridge, along the track that goes beside the south side of the Col, Alan's and Martha's side, it would have taken her up the pebbly path through a few trees on the top and then she would have been able to look down at me. We were no more than two or three minutes' walk away from each other.'
    'What were you doing there?'
    'That is the one thing I do remember clearly. Every detail. I was a moody sixteen-year-old girl.