‘She suffocated?’ said Zoë.
‘I expect that’s what my report will say.’ He clicked off the torch and turned to face them. ‘So? You want to know how it happened? He hit her like this – here across the zygomatic arch.’ The pathologist raised a hand and, in slow motion, mimed hitting his own face with a fist. ‘Just once. Her cheekbone’s broken, her nose is broken – she falls backwards. Then, probably when she’s on the floor, completely dazed, he forces the tennis ball and the duct tape over her mouth. The blood in her nose is starting to clot at this point and, before you know it, both airways are obstructed.’ Using the back of his wrist, he pushed his glasses up his nose. ‘Fairly horrible.’
‘You’re not saying it was an accident she died?’ asked Ben.
The pathologist frowned. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s important – the guy could say he didn’t mean to kill her. That he was just trying to keep her quiet. I’m picturing defence briefs and manslaughter pleas is all.’
‘He could have removed the tape. Even when she was unconscious her breathing response would have kicked in automatically if he’d taken the tape off and shaken her. He could have saved her.’
Zoë stood in silence, gazing down at Lorne. Now that the tape had been removed her jaw hung open in a slack grin. Her tongue was a swollen grey piece of gristle lodged among the white enamel of teeth. Earlier, walking along the canal path, Zoë had been excited, motivated and full of energy. Not any more. She glanced up, found Ben watching her and turned away quickly, fishing out her phone and pretending to be looking at something important there. She didn’t want anyone to think she wasn’t holding it together. Particularly not Ben.
Peppercorn Cottage was so remote. So completely isolated. It was one of the things Sally loved about it – that she didn’t have any neighbours overlooking, no one to stare and judge her, no one to say, ‘Look there. Look how that Sally Cassidy’s gone to rack and ruin. Look how she’s letting the place fall in around her ears.’ A little stone-built place set down quite alone amid miles of practical, unfussy farmland less than a mile from Isabelle’s house. It had a rambling garden and a view that went on for ever and it was called Peppercorn because, years ago, it had attracted a peppercorn rent. It was the most higgledy-piggledy cottage Sally had ever seen: everything went in steps – the floors, the roof, even the bricks were askew. Not a straight line in sight. In the last year and a half she and Millie had crammed it full of the craft they did in their spare time. The kitchen was stacked with things – the eggcups glazed and studded with paste gems, the little portraits of the pets they’d owned over the years pinned crazily to the walls, the boiled-sweet Christmas stars still hanging in the windows like stained glass, filtering the sunlight in coloured topaz dots. So unlike the house in Sion Road that they’d lived in with Julian.
The living room was at the back, looking out over flat fields, not another building as far as the eye could see. That night Sally left the curtains open to the night and sat curled on the sofa with Steve, sipping wine and staring in disbelief at the TV. Lorne Wood’s death was on the national news and the top story on the local news.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Sally murmured, her lips on the rim of her glass. ‘Lorne. Look at her – she can’t be dead. She was so pretty.’
‘Nice-looking girl,’ Steve said. ‘It’ll get more coverage than if she wasn’t.’
‘All the boys were crazy about her. Crazy. And on the towpath of all places. Millie and I used to go there all the time.’
‘It’s still a towpath. You still can.’
Sally shivered. She ran her hands up and down the goosebumps on her arms and inched closer to Steve, trying to steal some of his body warmth. She and Steve had been together for four months now. On nights like tonight, when Millie was at Julian’s, Sally would go to Steve’s or he would come over to the cottage, bringing armfuls of treats, cases of wine and nice cheeses from the delis in the town centre. Tonight, though, she wished Millie was with them and not down at Sion Road. After a while, when she couldn’t relax, couldn’t stop the shivering, she swung her legs off the sofa, found her phone and dialled Millie’s mobile. It was answered after just two rings. ‘Mum.’ She sounded half scared, half excited. ‘Have you seen it? On the news? They murdered her.’
‘That’s why I’m calling. Are you OK?’
‘It’s Lorne they murdered. Not me.’
Sally paused, a little thrown off by Millie’s dismissiveness. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just I thought with the way you used to be so close to Lorne you’d—’
‘We weren’t close, Mum.’
‘She seemed to be with you all the time.’
‘No – you just think she was. But really she preferred her mates at Faulkener’s and, anyway, I like Sophie better.’
‘Even so, it must be upsetting.’
‘No – really, I mean I’m shocked but I’m not crying my eyes out. It was ages ago. I haven’t seen her for ages.’
Sally looked up at the window, at the lonely moon lifting itself from the horizon. Bloated and red. Millie was a proper teenager now. To her a year really was an age. ‘OK,’ she said, after a while. ‘Just one thing – if you want to go out tonight will you speak to me first? Let me know where you’re going?’
‘I’m not going out. I’m staying in. With them.’ She meant Julian and his new wife, Melissa. ‘Worse luck. And it’s the Glasto meeting tonight.’
‘The Glasto meeting?’
‘I told you about this, Mum. Peter and Nial are going to pick up their camper-vans the day after tomorrow. They’re going to meet tonight to talk about it. Didn’t Isabelle tell you?’
Sally nibbled at the side of her thumbnail. She’d forgotten it was all so close. The boys were going to Glastonbury with Peter’s older brother and his friends. Peter and Nial had passed their driving tests and had been working like slaves for months, saving up money to buy two beaten-up old VW camper-vans they’d discovered rotting on a farm in Yate. Their parents, impressed by their determination, had chipped in to make up the shortfall and the insurance premiums. Millie hadn’t stopped talking about going with them to the festival, but the tickets were nearly two hundred pounds. There was no way. Absolutely no way.
‘Mum? Didn’t Isabelle say?’
‘No. And, anyway, I don’t suppose there’ll be any meetings tonight. Not with this news.’
‘There is. They’re going ahead – I asked Nial.’
‘Well, there’s no point in you going to a meeting if you’re not going to Glastonbury, is there? I’m sorry – but we’ve talked about this already.’
There was a long silence at the end of the phone.
‘Millie? Is there any point in you going?’
She gave a long-suffering sigh. ‘I suppose not.’
‘OK. Now, you get an early night. School in the morning.’
‘All right.’ Sally hung up and sat for a while with the phone face down on her lap.
Steve leaned across the sofa and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘You OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘Said something you didn’t like?’
She didn’t answer. On screen the stuff about Lorne had stopped and the newscaster was talking about more spending cuts. Factories closing. The country going down the drain. Jobs disappearing every second.
‘Sally? It’s natural to be upset. It’s so close to home.’
She looked up at the moon again, a longing tugging at her. It would be nice to be able to tell him the truth – that it wasn’t just Lorne, that it wasn’t just Millie. That it was everything. That it was David Goldrab saying, I promise not to call you a cunt, and the thatch falling in, and the stain on the kitchen ceiling, and Isabelle’s look of dismay when Sally had said she was planning to sell the tarot. That it was having no one to turn to. Basically it was because of reality. She wished she could tell him that.