“And Abigail was more worldly-wise?”
“In every way, but that wouldn’t have been difficult. I thought of her as sophisticated. She knew so much more about everything.”
“Like what?”
“Music. I’d never heard of half the bands everyone was talking about at school. We didn’t have a television. Do you know what a handicap that is? I went to her house to watch Tbp of the Pops, and they had satellite even then… Make-up. I didn’t even know how to use cleanser and moisturizer. It wasn’t that I wasn’t allowed any of that stuff. Just that it would have been considered frivolous, a waste of time and money… Fashion… The names of film stars… She made me realize I was ignorant about everything.”
Ashworth smiled. “You must have known things that she didn’t.”
“Yeah, right. Latin verbs. Equations. The Bible. Just the stuff you want to boast about in front of your mates when you’re fifteen.” She paused. “Look, mostly it was her talking and me listening. I didn’t realize at the time, but that was what I was there for. To show her how clever she was in comparison.”
“Sounds like she was insecure, maybe? Always needing to be right.”
“You think so? I never saw it like that.”
There was a moment of silence. From the baby monitor on the dresser they could hear Matthew snuffling in his sleep. He began to whimper.
“Did she talk to you about sex at all?”
“All the time in general terms. At that age you don’t think about much else. But it was stuff like who we fancied. Which pop stars, which teachers, which of the lads at school. She certainly didn’t tell me she was sleeping with anyone.”
“Why do you think that was? Was she worried about shocking you?”
Again there was a silence. At last Emma said, “It’s so hard after all this time to know what she was thinking. I had one memory of her and then Christopher gave me another. I’m not sure any more what was going on in her head. I don’t think she’d worry about shocking me. She enjoyed making me out to be stuffy and old-fashioned. Perhaps her boyfriend wasn’t as impressive or cool as she’d want him to be. A bit of a loser. She’d keep that to herself. Otherwise I can’t see why she’d want it to be a secret.”
“Not even from her father?”
“No. I always thought she and Keith got on really well. I mean they never rowed. He never shouted. She could do what she liked. I thought he trusted her. But he can’t actually have spent much time with her. He had Jeanie to keep sweet and work took up most of his time. Abigail could have anything she wanted but I’m not sure he listened to her. His mind was on other things.”
“Poor little rich girl?”
“Yeah, something like that. I suppose she was lonely and that was why she took up with me.”
“Can you give me the names of her other friends?”
“It’s odd but there really wasn’t anyone else. Not once I turned up. Not girls, at least. It was as if she didn’t consider anyone else worth making an effort for. I found that flattering at the time.”
“Lads then?”
“There was one boy. Nick Lineham. His father was deputy head of our school. He was a couple of years older than us and she fancied him like crazy.”
“Could he have been the lover?”
“I can’t see why she wouldn’t have told me.”
“Does he still live round here?”
“He teaches English at the FE college in town. We kept in touch after school. The odd phone call, you know. He never bothered with me when Abigail was alive, but perhaps he felt sorry for me. Or felt we had something in common. He got me a job at the college. Adult education. I taught languages.”
Vera caught something wistful in the voice and wondered what had caused it. The man or the work? She poured water onto instant coffee, took it to them. She’d restrained herself for long enough. “Last night your husband said Christopher was drunk when he was here. Drunk and upset. Going through some sort of crisis. What do you think that was all about?” She pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. It was one of those bent wood affairs, old and stripped down. It creaked when she moved.
“I think Christopher was being over dramatic blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Maybe he did have a crush on Abigail when he was fourteen. So what? He told me the other night that he followed her around like a juvenile stalker but I can’t see it was the big deal he made it out to be. We’d have noticed if he’d been lurking in the bean fields every day. Like you said, it’s pretty flat round here. There’s nowhere much to hide. And I don’t remember him changing that summer. He was still into the things he’d always been passionate about natural history, astronomy. If he was pining away he was discreet about it.”
“What had upset Christopher so much now, then?” Vera demanded. “Could it have been Jeanie Long’s suicide?”
“Perhaps. Though I don’t think he ever knew her. How could he?” Emma hesitated. “I think the publicity around the anniversary of Abigail’s death provided him with a convenient excuse. He was miserable. Perhaps some woman had dumped him. Perhaps things hadn’t been going well at work. So he resurrected his adolescent fantasies about Abigail and convinced himself that she was the cause of his depression.”
The baby’s whimper had turned into a high-pitched whine which shredded Vera’s nerves. “Look,” Emma said. “He’ll need changing. I’ll have to fetch him. Is there anything else?”
“Not for the present, pet.” Vera was glad of the excuse to leave.
“Do you think the brother was mad?” They were sitting in the car, cut off from the rest of the village by the horizontal slashes of rain. Ashworth was in the driver’s seat, waiting for instructions. The question seemed to come from nowhere. There was no thought behind it. He opened his mouth and it came out.
“I don’t know,” Vera said. “Depressed maybe.”
“You don’t suppose…” he hesitated.
“Go on, pet. Spit it out.”
“He couldn’t have killed the girl? If he was obsessed with her, despite what the sister says. Obsessed and keeping it to himself like a guilty secret. Perhaps she teased him, taunted him, like, and he snapped.”
“Then went home and pretended that nothing had happened?”
When they’d first started working together Ashworth would have left it at that. But he had more confidence these days. “Pretended so well that he convinced himself too. Hid it away somewhere at the back of his mind, told himself when Jeanie was found guilty that it was all a bad dream. Until she committed suicide and the case was reopened. That would explain why he was behaving so oddly. Imagine waking up one morning and remembering you strangled a lass. You’d need a few drinks to come to terms with that.”
“You’ve been watching too much day-time telly,” Vera said. “Tame psychologists spouting off. I don’t believe in that sort of amnesia. Too convenient. Besides, he didn’t leave the house the Sunday Abigail died. Everyone said so.”
“Would they remember? After ten years? Would they know? He could have gone out while they thought he was in his bedroom.”
She pictured the layout of Springhead House. There was one door into the kitchen from the yard which the Winters usually used, but another at the foot of the stairs leading out into a small walled garden. It was an old house and the walls were thick. They wouldn’t have heard his leaving.
i She saw the boy, slight and skinny, as he’d been in the photo there’dbeen of him in the hall at Springhead, running against the wind along the path between the fields towards the Mantel house. Had he been hoping to spy on Abigail? See her in her bedroom through an uncurtained window, trying on new clothes, brushing her hair? But perhaps the girl had been bored, left alone again by her father. Perhaps she’d set out for the Winters in search of an audience. And they’d met on the path.
He’d been a strange boy. They’d all said that. Self-contained. Obsessed. Vera pictured him blocking the girl’s way, insistent.