No, it had never crossed Hannah’s mind. Her mother had taught in the state sector and Hannah went to the local comprehensive. Hannah didn’t begrudge others the right to educate their kids privately, but she couldn’t imagine doing it herself. Combing through rival prospectuses, weighing up which school might offer the best prospect of glittering prizes, treating education as one more luxury purchase, along with the Scandinavian hi-fi and designer kitchen?
‘What do you believe happened to Emma, Mrs Erskine?’
Karen must have anticipated the question, but its bluntness threw her off balance. As if to cover her discomfort, she mimicked her husband’s truculence.
‘Well … don’t you think that if I knew that, I’d have mentioned it sooner?’
‘I’m not asking for hard evidence. Supposition is fine. You must have a theory?’
‘Emma was an unhappy person,’ Jeremy said before his wife could answer. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I deplore homophobia as much as the next man, but it’s a sad fact that many gay men and women lead unfulfilled lives. My impression is that she’d never found love. Above all, she was jealous of Karen.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Karen had a baby, Karen had a nice house, Karen was married to someone who adored her. She was younger and prettier and slimmer than Emma. My wife’s too kindhearted to say so, but the jealousy had been there since they were kids. As the years passed, it became a festering sore.’
‘You didn’t get on?’
‘I hardly knew her. There was no ill will, we did our best, we invited her to our wedding. She was in Liverpool at the time, but she made an excuse and the best she could do by way of a present for her only close living relative was to send a few Marks amp; Spencer gift vouchers. When our daughter Sophie was christened, we even invited her to be godmother, but it was the same old story. She said she didn’t believe in organised religion. As if that mattered.’
‘Was there ever a row between the two of you, Mrs Erskine?’
A shake of the blonde head. ‘We were always civil to each other. Emma always kept her feelings buttoned up.’
‘You were sure she envied you?’
Karen shrugged. ‘Emma never quite fitted in anywhere. Sad, really. I thought she might go abroad when she tired of Merseyside. Instead, she came back to the Lakes. She told me she felt homesick, but it was city living that she was sick of. There was nothing for her here.’
‘You met her at the museum, I believe?’
‘When she returned, Jeremy and I were determined to make an effort.’
‘Blood’s thicker than water, don’t forget,’ Jeremy sounded as though he wanted to make Hannah write it out one hundred times after school.
‘Was there any suggestion that she live with you?’
‘Good Heavens, no.’ Jeremy looked as startled as if she’d asked him to open up his home to an asylum seeker. ‘At the time we had a tiny semi in Ambleside, near Rothay Park. Very different from this place, I can assure you. I’d started teaching history at Grizedale College, but this was long before I was promoted to head of year. To have taken in Emma would have been impossible, even if she’d suggested it. Which, of course, she did not. She rented a bed-sit for a while and then moved in with the Goddards.’
‘Yes, I was going to ask you about that.’ Hannah made a show of scratching her head. ‘I know it’s a small world, but … it does seem amazing, that, of all the places where she might have found a roof over her head, she finished up with your ex-wife and her new husband?’
‘The Lakes is a small world, Chief Inspector, haven’t you noticed? Thirty miles across, and a population less than Bolton.’
‘Even so.’
Jeremy sucked in a breath. ‘Vanessa and I met and married not long after I qualified as a teacher. She was a librarian, full of ideals about educating the disadvantaged, people who had never opened a book in their lives. I taught at a comprehensive on the Furness Peninsula. Plenty of deprivation in that neck of the woods, since the steelworks closed and shipbuilding went out of fashion. When you meet Vanessa, Chief Inspector, you see a middle-aged woman with an unsightly birthmark on her face, so you may find this difficult to understand — but I found her passion thrilling.’
‘No, I don’t find that so difficult to understand,’ Hannah said softly and for a moment, despite everything, she warmed to him.
‘Within weeks, we were walking down the aisle. Looking back, it was a mistake. I was young, naive. Vanessa and I could have been such good friends, but … when I met Karen, I realised she was the woman for me.’
‘Love at first sight,’ Karen said with a complacent smile. ‘It knocked the breath out of both of us.’
‘Vanessa took our break-up very hard. She blamed Karen for seducing me, but that was unfair. It was my fault, if you like. My decision, I take full responsibility.’
He gave a defiant nod and then lifted his head, so Hannah could see that the nobility of his profile matched his character. The admiration in Karen’s eyes depressed her. It wasn’t his adultery that made her cringe, it was his conceit.
Jeremy cleared his throat. ‘I was thrilled for Vanessa when she met Francis. He sounds a decent chap and he’s certainly made her happy. Even given her a child, the one thing I could never achieve.’
You patronising sod. But Hannah could do hypocrisy too and she coated her smile with sugar.
‘I gather their boy is a pupil at Grizedale.’
‘We call them students.’ He corrected her with a little laugh. Hannah would have found it less offensive if he’d rapped her on the knuckles with a steel rule. ‘At present he’s a year off senior school, so our paths don’t yet cross. When they do, it won’t be a problem. Vanessa is a decent woman, I’m sure he’s a fine lad.’
Hannah gritted her teeth, and Jeremy sailed on.
‘Unfortunately, I suspect Vanessa resents poor Karen to this day. As for taking in Emma as a lodger, well, I don’t wish to be unkind …’
‘But?’
‘I suspect that it suited her to make friends with Emma.’
‘Why?’
‘Evidently she found out that Emma and Karen were far from close.’
‘Are you suggesting there was an attraction between her and Emma?’
‘Good grief, no.’ He was genuinely amused. ‘Vanessa is voraciously heterosexual in her appetites, I can assure you of that.’
Hannah cast a glance at Karen. Could a smirk be coy? If so, hers was.
‘What, then?’
‘You wish me to be frank?’
‘Please.’
‘Very well, if I must. I have no wish to be unkind to Vanessa, but in my opinion, she wanted to hear bad things about Karen, to make her feel better about losing me.’
Hannah noticed that, while her husband was talking about his first wife, Karen yawned and stretched out her legs. A woman at ease with herself, confident that she’d got her man exactly where she wanted him.
‘Darling, this is old news. None of it matters any more.’
‘Don’t forget,’ her husband said with an unexpected stab at humour, ‘my subject is history.’
‘And cold case work involves exploring the past,’ Hannah said. ‘After she left the Goddards, Emma bought her bungalow. How could she afford it?’
‘She told us she’d had a big win on the lottery. It was only after she disappeared that we found out from your people she’d lied about that. Goodness knows why.’
‘So where did the money really come from?’
Jeremy coughed. ‘As it happens, I have an idea.’
He sounded so proud that Hannah had to force herself not to mime applause. She could tell that Maggie was close to bursting with suppressed laughter.
‘I’d love to hear it.’
‘Well, once Emma’s relationship with Alexandra Clough ended, she fell ill. Depression, stress, one of those ailments fashionable among people who don’t want to go into work. The Cloughs are wealthy, perhaps she threatened to sue them.’