Frances had three hours to decide what she'd seen.
At noon, the police would return to the care home for written statements. At three, she had a job interview across town. The new employer required a reference from her current manager, and her current manager was sitting opposite her with two sheets of paper.
One was a statement about Mr. Price's death. The other was the reference.
"Read them both," Gwen said.
Frances read the reference first. Reliable. Patient. Excellent judgment under pressure. She had never received such praise in person.
The statement said Vik had been alone with Mr. Price when he fell. It said Frances arrived afterward and found Vik beside him.
She read it twice, hoping there was a way for the words to become true through repetition.
"I saw you on the stairs."
Gwen folded her hands.
"You saw me trying to help him."
"You had his arm."
"He was confused."
Mr. Price had been asking to call his daughter. Gwen told him the phone was broken. He took his own phone from his cardigan pocket. She reached for it, and he pulled away.
Frances remembered the sound of his slippers on the first stair. Then the rest of him falling faster than the slippers could follow.
Vik had come running from the kitchen. He'd knelt beside Mr. Price and told Frances to call an ambulance. Gwen had taken the phone from her hand.
"There will be an investigation," Frances said.
"There should be. That's why they need accurate statements."
Gwen pushed a folder across the desk. Inside were photographs of Frances taking food from the storeroom after her shift. The bread had been marked for disposal. The milk hadn't.
Frances lived in the room behind the staff laundry. Her employment agreement included it. At night she heard the dryers through one wall and the call bells through the other. When someone was short, they knocked. Everyone knew she was home.
Gwen put a copy of that agreement beside the photographs.
"I haven't reported any of this."
In the corridor, someone called for help getting to the bathroom. Gwen waited until another worker answered.
"You've been good to me," Frances said, and hated herself for trying that sentence.
"I can continue to be."
Before breakfast, Frances had written down what she'd seen on the back of a supply sheet. Gwen had pulled Mr. Price's arm. Vik had arrived after the fall. She'd included where each of them stood, the words she remembered, the time on the corridor clock. The paper was folded in her pocket.
It had seemed important to get the order right before the shifts changed and people began discussing it.
Gwen didn't know about the paper.
Frances could take it to the police. She could explain about the milk, the room and the reference. The new employer might believe her. There might be somewhere else to live while she waited. She found herself counting how many times she needed might.
"I need to think."
Gwen checked the clock.
"Of course."
Vik was waiting outside the laundry room. He had been suspended while the police investigated. Someone had already covered his name on the staff schedule with a strip of white tape.
"They're saying I was alone with him," he told Frances.
"I know."
"You saw."
He didn't ask it as a question.
He'd helped her move a wardrobe into the little room. When she'd been ill, he'd brought meals down from the kitchen and told the night staff to let her sleep. She remembered these things with increasing irritation, as though he'd arranged them to make this moment difficult.
"I'll tell them what happened," she said.
His shoulders lowered. He thanked her.
Frances went into the laundry room and shut the door. She unfolded the supply sheet. Beneath the list of gloves and disposable cups, in the small space on the reverse, she'd written that Mr. Price kept asking to speak to his daughter.
Her handwriting grew larger where she described the fall.
She sat beside the dryers until a worker knocked and said the police were back. Then she put the sheet through the confidential-waste shredder beside the laundry desk. She waited until the last corner disappeared.
At noon, Frances signed Gwen's statement. When the officer asked whether she'd seen anyone else with Mr. Price, she said no.
Gwen handed her the reference in a sealed envelope.
At three, Frances sat in a clean reception area across town. The job included a small apartment above the offices, with a separate entrance. She'd looked up the building before coming. There was a mailbox on the outside wall, room for a name beneath the number.
The interviewer opened Gwen's letter and smiled.
"This is very positive."
Frances's phone vibrated. A message from Vik: They want me to come with them. Did you get to speak to anyone?
She typed, I told them what I saw, and sent it before putting the phone away.
The interviewer asked how she handled difficult situations. Frances described calming a frightened resident during a power cut. She remembered his breathing slowing, how he'd held her sleeve after the lights came back. She had done that well.
"And your manager would agree?"
Frances looked at the open reference on the desk.
"You can call her," she said.
