‘That’s great.’ I could see him trying to look as pleased as I did. ‘You going to speak to her face-to-face?’
‘On Saturday. I hope you don’t mind, but when she mentioned a date so soon, I couldn’t help jumping at it. It shouldn’t take long, she only lives in Bournemouth. I’ll probably be home by two or so.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it.’ The fake-pleased look had faded, leaving the doubt more visible than ever. ‘You know, I can’t help thinking you might be pinning too much hope on this woman. What makes you think she’s going to be any more help than that headmistress was?’
Because she had to be, because she was the only lead I had, but luckily there was more to it than that. Judith Davies’ very voice should have alerted me to her impatience with the nuances of child psychology, but Miss Watson’s had been entirely different; she sounded like the kind of woman who listened. ‘I just think she will,’ I said unwillingly. ‘From what she said, she knew Rebecca pretty well. It sounds as though the case was quite important to her.’
‘Probably not as important as it is to you.’ I could tell he was joking, and that he wasn’t. ‘I think it’s becoming a bigger deal to you than it was to Rebecca herself. It all happened more than thirty years ago, Annie. Why go digging it all up again now?’
‘To write the novel. Why else?’ I gathered self-interest around myself like a protective, concealing cloak—the dark corners of fascination didn’t exist, just clean, bright, open research. ‘Honestly, Carl, you don’t have to worry. I just need to get some kind of handle on her character. I’m obsessed with this new novel, not with her.’
He looked at me for long and searching seconds; what he saw appeared to reassure him, and I sensed an unpleasant suspicion backing rapidly away in his mind. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘if you say so. Anyway, 24’s about to start—shall we go and watch it?’
The rest of the evening was spent in the calm, shallow waters of neutral territory, and we didn’t talk again about anything that mattered much to either of us. But after he’d gone to sleep that night, I felt the currents deepening and strengthening around me. Rebecca Fisher and Eleanor Corbett crept out from where they’d been hiding, along with my imagined picture of Miss Watson, and the three of them seemed to blur together, expanding till they filled my mind. The night was as it always was here, a kind of darkness you simply didn’t get in towns or cities—no streetlights outside or car headlights passing, or even the tiny hint of light filtering in from the porch of a distant house. This was power-cut darkness, thick as Indian ink.
It was then that the cry came, out of nowhere—a sharp, shrill, inhuman cry, a sound of pain. I couldn’t tell whether it had come from next door or outside, and sat bolt upright, heartbeat pounding in my ears. For some minutes, I listened intently, but there was no other sound; the dead, black emptiness had closed over the cry like deep water over a dropped weight, and might never have been disturbed at all.
Finally, I lay back down. It was probably an owl or something, I imagined Carl saying to me. Just sleep, Annie. Sleep.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I got up shortly after Carl did, limbs heavy with the kind of exhaustion that felt more like a whole-body migraine than simple lack of sleep; that horrible banshee-like noise had had much the same effect on my nervous system as a jug of industrial-strength filter coffee, and I hadn’t drifted off till past two a.m. Still, I didn’t feel remotely like sleeping now. Sweet, fresh summer pulled at me through the window, the kind of picture-postcard morning you could only quite believe in when you saw it for yourself. Not a day to try and chase elusive dreams in a heavily-curtained bedroom, a day to be outside and to be part of.
Before Carl left for work, I wanted to tell him about that noise, but something stopped me. I remembered his concern of yesterday evening, which I’d only been able to get rid of with a direct lie. Instinct told me he’d be less than thrilled to hear I’d lain up half the night, building morbid fears around a cry that could quite easily have come from a mating fox. After the front door had closed behind him, I tried to forget about it myself, and thought about driving into Poole town centre later in the day, the few small things I had to buy becoming convenient excuses for a long, refreshing drive and an afternoon’s cheerful activity.
I got my newspaper library print-outs down from the spare room. Sitting down at the kitchen table, I lit a cigarette and started reading through them as if for the first time.
I’d left the back door open to let the breeze in and the smoke out, and a flicker in the corner of my eye announced that Socks was padding through. I turned, smiling, then felt the smile dissolve on my lips. His right eye was filmed over with a blood-red glaze and heavily crusted round the edges, horribly sore looking, painful even to look at.
‘What have you been up to, puss?’ Jumping up from my seat, I reached out impulsively to stroke him but he backed away slightly. ‘Looks like you’ve been in the wars a bit—come on, I’ll get you some milk.’
I did, then remembered what Liz had said about letting her know if he came round. Her car was outside, so I walked out of the back door, and saw her own was slightly ajar. ‘Liz,’ I called. ‘Liz.’
She stepped out. ‘Hello, dear—what is it?’
‘I just thought I’d let you know Socks is round here,’ I said. ‘In case you wondered where he was.’ She came into our kitchen a few minutes later, politely accepting my offer of a cup of tea. ‘By the way,’ I said as she sat down, ‘what’s the matter with his eye?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ She frowned. ‘I put him out for the night as right as rain, and when I came down this morning—well, you can see for yourself. I suppose he must have been fighting.’
The agonised cry I’d heard in bed came back to me. Now I came to think of it, it could very easily have been made by a cat, but hadn’t sounded at all like two of them fighting. Still, I didn’t want to alarm her over nothing, and forced myself to speak with brisk, pragmatic sympathy. ‘That’s probably it. Looks like he lost, poor old Socks.’
‘It’s not like him at all. I’ve never known him get into a fight all the time I’ve had him.’ Her expression was thoughtful and preoccupied—she spoke almost to herself. ‘I do hope it’s going to clear up on its own. But if it hasn’t got better in a few days or so, I’ll really have to take him to the vet.’
A momentary image of Mr Wheeler flashed in the back of my mind. I remembered what he’d said about Rebecca’s dog being killed, and couldn’t quite understand the nature of my sudden unease.
I realised Liz was looking at me strangely. ‘What’s the matter, dear? You’ve gone quite pale.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing. It doesn’t matter.’ I noticed the kettle had boiled. ‘Anyway, do you want milk and sugar?’
At the kitchen table, we made perfunctory small talk over our mugs, but I could tell that Liz was very distracted; her eyes kept straying over to the sunny corner where Socks lay, curled up hedgehog-like as though in self-defence. We discussed a recent letter from her elder daughter and my imminent dinner party, until the tea was finished, and there wasn’t anything much left to say.
‘Can I leave him with you for a while, Anna?’ she asked, as she rose from her seat. ‘He’s been awfully jumpy all morning, poor little thing, and he looks so comfortable there. I’m sure he’ll come home when he’s ready.’
‘That’s fine.’ Her obvious worry made her seem somehow more human than her habitual smiling composure, and I felt a kind of empathy with her that I’d never felt before. ‘Don’t worry about him. Cats are tough as old boots.’
When she’d gone, my gaze travelled restlessly around the room before settling on Socks. He was, I realised, sleeping in front of the cupboard where I’d found that studded leather collar. The malaise came drifting back: Rebecca’s dog had been killed to make her leave, Socks had been injured while I was looking after him on a regular basis—the merest hint of a parallel between Rebecca’s life here and my own�
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But that was ridiculous, I told myself sharply. Socks wasn’t badly hurt, and wasn’t even my cat. He’d simply disturbed a sleeping badger or something last night; there was no mystery or menace about the situation. Pulling out the library photocopies I’d tucked away before Liz came in, I hurried gratefully back to something I could understand. Tomorrow morning, I thought, I’d be interviewing Miss Watson, but behind that comforting idea came something else—barely audible in my head, as if filtering thinly through glass—a desperate shriek of pain in a summer night.
Driving into Bournemouth the following day was like driving into the heart of summer—all space and greenery, fresh air and bright colours—and I could understand why so many people chose to retire here. I eventually found Miss Watson’s apartment block down a quiet, tree-lined street; a large, modern, surprisingly soulless building that didn’t seem to go with its surroundings. At the intricate intercom system by the double doors, I pressed the button marked with her name.
The voice I’d heard on the phone crackled through the speaker at once. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, Miss Watson? It’s Anna Jeffreys.’
‘Come on up, Miss Jeffreys. I’m on the first floor, flat twelve.’
Inside, the apartment block had an institutional feel, neat and spotless as only anonymous places can be—there was nothing in the hallways that could be broken, or stolen, or enjoyed. I got the lift up to the first floor and knocked on Miss Watson’s door.
‘Oh, hello, Miss Jeffreys. Do come in.’
I followed her into a small flat that was as untidily personal as the rest of the block wasn’t. Its owner suited it perfectly: a small, birdlike woman in her late sixties, with a lot of floury face powder and wispy grey hair. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘call me Anna.’
‘And you can call me Annette.’ We stepped into a tiny, sunny living room crowded with furniture and photographs. An archway led to the kitchen. ‘Would you like some tea?’
‘I’d love some. White with no sugar, please.’
She went into the kitchen and put the kettle on while I sat down on a cushion-strewn chair, fumbling for small talk. ‘It looks a lovely place to live, Bournemouth. I’m quite new to the area—only moved to Abbots Newton a few months ago.’
‘Oh, Dorset is lovely. I’ve lived here nearly three years, ever since I retired from St Anthony’s.’
‘You stayed there all that time?’
‘That’s right. A lot of the teachers there do. It’s a nice place to work, if you like a quiet life. Next to nothing ever happened in all the years I was there—except for Rebecca, of course.’ She gave a small, rueful laugh. ‘It came as an awful shock to all of us, what she did. It was so unexpected.’
‘I can imagine.’ She came back over with two cups of tea on a tray and I took mine, thanked her. ‘How long did you know her for?’
‘Ever since she came to school at the age of six. Well, of course, I didn’t really know her to start with, she was just another face in the crowd. But then I was her class teacher in Junior Three. She must have been nine years old, at the time.’
All possible questions suddenly dovetailed into a single one, simple and complex beyond belief. ‘What did you think of her?’
Annette sighed. ‘It’s a terrible thing to say, now she’s so notorious; it makes me seem an awfully bad judge of character. But I liked her very much, and felt sorry for her. She seemed such a sweet, gentle sort of child, not particularly clever but very hardworking, very conscientious, as though she was frightened of getting things wrong. And terribly lonely. When I’d been teaching her for a month, I thought she was one of the loneliest little girls I’d ever seen.’
It wasn’t just a different angle on what I’d learned already, it was a completely different picture. I sat bolt upright, intent. ‘In what way?’
‘Well, you’d have needed to know Teasford at the time to understand, I suppose. It’s very different these days, but back then it was such an enclosed little world—nearly all the other children at St Anthony’s had grown up in the same streets, knew each other’s parents. Rebecca didn’t have any of that. She was a stranger to all of them when she joined.’
‘And she didn’t blend in later?’
‘Not at all. It wasn’t the way you might think—a stuck-up little madam not wanting to mix with the others, thinking she was better than them because her parents were rich. She was just very shy. She must have felt like an outsider there, coming from a totally different background. I couldn’t help wondering why she wasn’t at a private school instead. Her parents could certainly have afforded the fees.’
I remembered Judith saying much the same thing; the huge difference between the two women implied that the question had occurred to every teacher who’d worked there.
Annette sipped at her tea before speaking again. ‘I suppose, in a way, Rebecca was my favourite pupil in that class. But not as the papers might have thought, if they’d known. I can imagine only too well how they’d have described it: that she manipulated me with her sinister charisma, some awful nonsense like that.’ She sighed deeply. ‘Goodness, if she’d been anything like the little girl they described, I’d have been scared to go anywhere near her.’
‘So she never showed any signs of, well, what she was capable of, before?’
Annette bit her lip, and there was a long silence. ‘Perhaps she did,’ she said at last. ‘To be honest, I like to think she didn’t do that, even now. I really don’t want to think how unfair I might have been—it’s horrible to remember.’
My attention was focused on her completely. ‘What happened?’
‘Well, it started in the summer term, about a year before they found Eleanor’s body—almost exactly a year, come to think of it. It was the last day of term. The class pet was a hamster called Toffee, and I asked who’d like to look after him in the holidays. Nearly all the girls put their hands up, but I knew most of them couldn’t be trusted to take proper care of him—they never volunteered to feed him or clean his cage out during term time. Rebecca always did. She treated him like her own pet even in the classroom, so I told her she could take him for the summer.
‘At the start of the autumn term, she brought him back as right as rain. I remember thanking her for it, telling the rest of the class that we’d all have to start looking after him again, now. I didn’t think anything much of it at the time.
‘A couple of weeks later, I was walking back to the classroom at lunchtime to finish off some marking, when a classmate of Rebecca’s called Peggy Jones came racing up to me. I couldn’t get any sense from her at first, she was so out of breath. She finally said she’d just been going back to the classroom to get something, when she’d seen Rebecca through the glass door panel. She said that Rebecca’d been at Toffee’s cage, and she’d looked like she was wringing his neck.
‘Well, I hurried in with Peggy following behind, and Rebecca was still standing at the cage, crying as if her heart would break. She was nearly hysterical. She said she’d come in to feed Toffee and someone had killed him. It looked like they’d broken his neck.’ Annette took a long, deep breath. ‘I still can’t quite believe she did it. If you’d seen her, I’m sure you’d feel the same way. I’d never seen her so upset about anything, and I knew how fond she’d been of the little thing.
‘Anyway, I was absolutely convinced that it had been a spiteful trick of Peggy’s. I’d never warmed to that girl. She was part of a nasty little group who’d often been in trouble for bullying other children—Rebecca was one of their victims; I knew they called her a goody-goody and a snob and things like that. I knew she’d been keen to look after Toffee in the summer holidays, too. It looked like the meanest kind of jealousy, and the cruellest kind of trick. To try and put the blame on Rebecca. I was absolutely furious with her. I took her to the headmistress’s office then and there.
‘Well, the headmistress called Peggy’s parents in, and she was suspended for two weeks. She kept on saying it hadn’t been anything to do with
her, but you can imagine how plausible that sounded—she’d lied about all sorts of things before, whenever she’d been in trouble. Which was often.’ She broke off for a second or two, looking troubled. ‘I’d have blamed anyone in that class, before Rebecca. I still can’t think she’d have done anything to hurt Toffee. At lunchtimes and things, when the other children were all playing outside, I’d often come into the classroom and find her fussing round his cage. It was sweet, but…it was sad, as well. As if that hamster was her only friend.’
‘What about Eleanor Corbett?’ I asked.
‘It was that autumn term I started noticing the two of them together, come to think of it. After Toffee was dead. Rebecca never helped out with the new class pet, a white mouse it was—it was as if she was scared of coming too close to it.’ Her expression was thoughtful. ‘I saw her and Eleanor in the playground a lot. At the time—God help me—I thought it was a good thing for Rebecca, that it might bring her out of herself a little.’
‘Did you know Eleanor at all?’
Annette nodded. ‘She was in the year below Rebecca’s. I taught her in the spring term and summer term of nineteen sixty-nine. The last terms she ever lived through, come to think of it.’ A brief and awkward silence. ‘I can’t say she was one of the more memorable children in the class. If it hadn’t been for her friendship with Rebecca, I’m not sure I’d remember her at all.’
‘But as it is?’
‘Well, she wasn’t anywhere near as pretty as Rebecca, but she was a sweet-looking little thing. Tiny for her age. I don’t think she was terribly bright, but she seemed a nice enough girl.’ Annette paused, obviously remembering. ‘Very shabby. There were a lot of large, poor families in Teasford then, but even so, the Corbetts stood out. I think there were six daughters, or something like that.’
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