by Agatha Frost
“Just tell her what you know, Mrs Hargreaves,” Roxy pleaded. “She’s going to figure this out one way or another, but wouldn’t you rather be the person who helped, rather than the person who stood in her way? She was your best student, after all.”
Jill turned to Roxy, her smile growing even more.
“You haven’t changed either,” she said with a small shrug. “I’m not surprised you became a teacher, Miss Carter. You were always a natural leader. I’ll tell you what I know, but I can’t promise it’s going to mean anything, or help you in any way.”
“Thank you,” Julia said, edging forward even more. “Any little detail helps.”
Jill exhaled heavily, pushing her glasses up her nose as she glanced up at the ceiling. For a moment, Julia thought the teacher was going to clam up, until she looked down, her eyes connecting with Julia’s.
“It was in November 1996,” Jill started, resting her hands together on the table. “I remember because there was snow on the ground and we had a particularly bad winter that year. I was on break time duty in the yard behind the science block. I usually got out of doing that job, but they always put more of us out there when it’s snowing because you know what the kids are like. You’d think they had never seen snow before. I’d just finished telling some Year Eleven boys to stop throwing snow at the Year Seven girls outside the music classroom. Astrid was coming out, and I could tell she had been crying. I thought it had something to do with her clarinet lesson, but she told me she didn’t go. I told her that her mother wouldn’t be happy because she had paid for the term up front, and Astrid was such a gifted clarinet player. She asked if she could speak to me in private. You can usually tell when there is something seriously wrong with a student, or when they’re just upset because they’ve fallen out with their friends, I could tell there was something seriously wrong. I knew she was in a relationship with the head boy at the time. I can’t remember his name, but he was a nice enough kid.”
“Aiden Black,” Roxy jumped in.
“Ah, that’s right,” Jill mumbled with a nod of her head. “I remember Astrid telling me they had got close during their music lessons. I think he was into his guitar at the time. I abandoned my post and took her into this classroom. There was a group of Year Ten students working on their coursework, right where we are sitting, so I took her to the storeroom. With all of the cans and bags of food in there, it is quite soundproof, but she still barely spoke above a whisper. She started asking me about if I had children, so I told her I had four girls. She was crying the whole time, and I could barely tell what she was saying, but she started asking about the actual pregnancy and if it hurt. At that point, I straight out asked her if she was pregnant, and she denied it. She told me she was asking for a friend, but I didn’t believe her.”
“Astrid was pregnant?” Roxy mumbled. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“If she was, she didn’t carry the baby full term,” Jill added quickly. “I kept looking out for her stomach to start growing, and it never did, so I just assumed she either got rid of it, miscarried, or she really was asking for a friend.”
“Grace told me she was pregnant during school,” Julia thought aloud. “Her eldest son, Mark, has just turned twenty, and she can’t be any older than thirty-six.”
“Grace Gambaccini was pregnant?” Jill asked, a brow arching. “She was never in my classes, but I don’t recall her being pregnant either.”
“She was,” Roxy said. “I remember seeing her just after she gave birth on the high street with a pram.”
“I’m not surprised she hid it,” Jill said, leaning in and lowering her voice. “Her mother was quite strict with her. I once remember Grace’s English teacher saying her mother grounded her because she got an A on her coursework and not an A*. I think she was a doctor and wanted Grace to follow in her footsteps.”
“She was,” Julia said. “And Grace did follow in her footsteps.”
“I guess the tough parenting does work sometimes,” Jill said with a casual shrug. “Although in my experience, it’s the kids who are pushed the hardest who fall the most.”
The conversation soon turned to trivial matters such as Julia’s café and the recent bad weather, so the two women finished their tea and excused themselves, leaving Mrs Hargreaves to mark some coursework.
Once again, they walked through the corridors as though they were still students, and out of the front door. Julia almost took the path across the grass in front of the school to the bus stop where they would catch the bus every day after school with Johnny, but she quickly remembered they had come in Roxy’s car.
“Astrid must have known about Grace’s pregnancy,” Roxy said as she fastened her seatbelt across her chest. “They were best friends.”
“Grace spoke so fondly of her mother today, but the way Mrs Hargreaves spoke about her, you’d think she was the Wicked Witch of the West.”
“Which makes it all the more plausible that Grace confided in her friend, and why she kept the pregnancy so secret,” Roxy said, twisting her key in the ignition. “That’s why Mrs Hargreaves didn’t know. I doubt anyone did until she gave birth.”
After a short drive, they were soon in Peridale and pulling up outside of Julia’s cottage. She took her bike out of the backseat and promised to see Roxy soon. After waving off her friend, she pushed her bike around to her back garden and let herself in the back door.
“Barker?” she called out. “Jessie?”
When nobody replied, and only Mowgli popped his head out of the sitting room, Julia collapsed on the couch, put her feet on the coffee table and closed her eyes to enjoy her silent cottage. She loved having people around her, but a small part of her missed the days when the cat had been her only company.
Chapter Eight
Julia’s phone vibrated on her bedside cabinet, waking her from her slumber. She squinted into the dark, the LED display of her alarm clock blinding her. It was only a little after six.
Sitting up immediately, Julia snatched up her phone and pressed the green answer button before cramming it against her ear.
“Julia South?” the familiar voice whispered down the phone. “I know it’s early, so I’m sorry if I woke you, but I thought you would like to know that forensics have released your café. You’re free to reopen.”
“Today?” Julia croaked, as she rubbed her eyes.
“That’s why I called so early,” the desk sergeant chuckled. “I knew you would need some time to prepare those delicious cakes.”
“Thank you,” Julia croaked, the grin spreading across her face. “Thank you so much.”
Julia hung up and tossed her phone onto the bed. She looked down at Barker in the dark, his mouth wide open as he snored softly. Mowgli crawled from underneath the bed and jumped up into her lap, purring as he nudged her chin with his head.
“Let’s get baking, boy.”
Barker was the first to wake after Julia. He stumbled into the kitchen, yawning wildly as he attempted to flatten down his dark hair.
“Nervously baking again?” he asked as he squinted down at the line of finished cakes on Julia’s counter.
“Even better,” Julia said, unable to contain her excitement. “I’m allowed to reopen.”
“Reopen the café?” Jessie mumbled as she too stumbled out of her bedroom, also attempting to flatten down her hair. “Today?”
“Yes!” Julia beamed. “I’ve baked a lemon drizzle, another of my mother’s fruit cakes, a red velvet, two dozen cupcakes, and I’m working on Barker’s favourite double chocolate fudge cake.”
“You’re nuts, cake lady,” Jessie mumbled as she turned and headed to the bathroom. “Absolutely nuts.”
Julia whipped up the chocolate buttercream with the electric mixer as excited butterflies circled her stomach. She paused to let Barker scoop his finger along the edge, which he gratefully plopped into his mouth.
“It’s different.”
“I added some orange zest,” she said as she continued
with the mixing. “I was feeling experimental.”
“It’s good,” Barker said with a nod as he sucked on his finger. “Really good. You never disappoint. I should probably have a shower before –”
The sound of rushing water cut Barker off mid-sentence. He turned to the bathroom and let out a heavy sigh as he shook his head.
“She knows I have a job to get to, doesn’t she?” Barker mumbled as he snatched up the kettle. “I should get to go first. I jump in and out. She spends half the morning in there, wailing like a cat.”
As if on cue, Jessie’s off-pitch singing drifted under the door with the steam. Julia smiled to herself. She never recognised the songs Jessie was singing, but they had become the soundtracks to her mornings.
“She likes to wake up in there,” Julia said with a shrug. “Let her do her own thing.”
“Maybe she should drink coffee like everyone else,” Barker said as he checked the cupboards. “Where is the coffee? Do I need to buy some more?”
“I hid it in Mowgli’s food cupboard,” Julia said, tucking the bowl under her arm and grabbing the jar of coffee. “There’s such a thing as too much caffeine, you know.”
Barker took the coffee with pursed lips before getting to work making his own coffee. He also placed peppermint and liquorice teabags into two cups. After the kettle boiled, he filled the cups to the brim, and took his coffee and one of the cups of tea, dropping it off outside the bathroom on his way to the sitting room. Barker’s silent gesture put a smile on Julia’s face.
An hour later when they were all ready, Barker drove them and the half a dozen cakes into the village. When they pulled up outside the café, the blue and white police tape still cordoning it off, Julia suddenly felt nervous. Since she had first opened, the café had never been closed for so long; Julia fervently hoped the villagers had not forgotten about her.
After ripping off the tape, unlocking the door, turning on the lights, and placing her fresh cakes in the display case, Julia was relieved when her regulars began to pour through the door.
“Good to see you back open,” Shilpa said as her eyes drifted over the cakes. “I’m trying to watch my figure. My sister, Diya, is getting married next month, and I have a beautiful sari in the back of my wardrobe that I fit into ten pounds ago, but, life is short.”
“A slice of the red velvet?”
“You know me so well, Julia.”
After serving Shilpa, Julia was not surprised to see her gran bursting through the door, with a copy of The Peridale Post tucked under her arm. Not seeming to remember that the café had even been closed all week, Dot sat at the table nearest the counter and began flicking through the newspaper.
“A pot of tea when you’re ready, love,” Dot called out without looking up from the newspaper. “And a slice of whatever is freshest. Johnny’s article about Astrid’s life has just come out. I’ve been dying to read it.”
“Maybe not the most appropriate word to use,” Jessie said as she got to work making the pot of tea. “Anything interesting in there?”
“It’s the usual stuff,” Dot said as she flicked to the next page. “The same information and the same pictures we all saw twenty years ago. There’s a quote from Aiden here. He said, ‘there hasn’t been a day since Astrid went missing that I haven’t thought about her, and that’s not about to change. I want to see her laid to rest so she can find peace’. I still think he did it.”
“Gran!” Julia exclaimed.
“What?” she replied through pursed lips. “It’s always the boyfriend. He might not have chopped her up into tiny pieces and stuffed her in the walls, but he did lock her under this shop, which, might I remind you, belonged to his uncle.”
Silence fell on the café as the rest of Julia’s customers busied themselves with their drinks and cakes, nobody quite able to look in Dot’s direction. Julia knew it was because everyone, including herself, knew she was making a valid point, even if she did not mince her words.
Barker came in a little after noon for his usual Americano and slice of chocolate cake, and even he seemed to notice the stuffy silence in the café after Dot had decided to read aloud large chunks of the article, adding in her unique brand of commentary.
“Happy to be back open?” Barker asked as he peered through the cake display case, his eyes landing on the finished chocolate cake.
“Ecstatic,” Julia snapped back with a strained smile as she glanced at her gran over his shoulder. “It’s like I’ve never been away.”
“Can we talk?” Barker asked, leaning in slightly. “In private.”
Julia nodded and instructed Jessie to take over behind the counter. They walked through the kitchen and out to the yard, where the wall was still half-destroyed, and the stone slabs were still missing. The only sign that the police had even been there was the large clamp locking the basement door in place, which resembled a car wheel clamp.
“Because it’s not my case, I don’t feel like I’m breaking any rules telling you this,” Barker said as he pulled the heavy back door shut. “I don’t even know if it’s true myself yet, so I’m only passing on a rumour one of the boys at the station overhead from one of the cleaners when they were cleaning next door to the investigation room the cold case team is working in.”
“A rumour?” Julia replied, crossing her arms and leaning in. “About Astrid?”
“They’re saying she might have died of natural causes,” he said, his eyes narrowing slightly. “It’s hard to determine a cause of death when you’re dealing with a skeleton, but most unnatural causes of death tend to show up in broken bones.”
“Natural causes?” Julia echoed, recoiling her head slightly. “What kind of natural cause?”
“That’s all I know. Maybe she starved to death, or just died?”
“Sixteen-year-old girls don’t just die,” Julia replied with a huff. “And if it was natural, who went to the trouble of making sure nobody ever found the basement door?”
“Maybe the two events weren’t linked?” Barker suggested. “Although that doesn’t make much sense.”
“None of it does. Alistair claims not to have known who paved the yard. He thinks it might have been the businesses that took over the shop after he closed up.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I have no reason not to,” Julia said with a shrug. “He’s a nice old man. He came to see me, remember. I didn’t even seek him out.”
“The police have,” Barker said with a dry smile. “I don’t know what they wanted to talk to him about, but I doubt he told them anything more than he told you because he wasn’t arrested or charged with anything.”
Julia soaked in the new information. She glanced at the door, the image of Astrid still burned in her memory, where she knew it was likely to stay for the rest of her life.
“I need to speak to Alistair again,” Julia thought aloud. “Maybe he’ll remember something he doesn’t think is significant, but it might lead me to the truth.”
“I’m not even going to tell you to stay out of things,” Barker said with a smirk. “The cold case team thinks they know everything, so it might be nice if you wipe the smiles off their faces by figuring it out first.”
“A little old baker like me?” Julia replied, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Barker Brown.”
Barker and Julia walked back through the kitchen, giggling like school children, but that stopped the second they pushed through the beaded curtain and saw Evelyn standing in the middle of the café. Julia’s smile quickly dropped, the tense atmosphere as thick as the storm clouds that started this chain of events.
“Evelyn,” Julia said, pushing forward a smile. “It’s good to see you.”
Evelyn looked through her grey hair at Julia, and then around the room, but nobody dared meet her watery gaze. Even Dot sunk into her chair as she carefully closed the newspaper and flipped it over to the back sports page.
“What?” Evelyn croaked, the do
zen crystals around her neck clanging together. “Why are you all suddenly acting different? She’s been dead for twenty years. None of you cared last week.”
There was an uncomfortable shuffle in the café, all heads bowing even lower, including Julia’s. It had been so long since she had thought about Astrid’s disappearance that she had almost disconnected it from the eccentric B&B owner she had grown to love.
“Why don’t you sit down and I’ll plate you up some cake?” Julia suggested, attempting to look into Evelyn’s red raw eyes. “Does that sound nice?”
Evelyn opened her mouth to speak as she met Julia’s stare, but no words came out. She looked around the café, all heads bobbing down again, before turning around, her black kaftan swishing behind her.
“I don’t know why I came,” she mumbled before storming out of the café.
The stilted silence remained for what felt like a lifetime. Julia looked down at the floor, remembering what she was standing on. Just like Astrid with Evelyn, she had somehow mentally disconnected the discovery in the basement from her café above it.
“Well that was awkward,” Dot exclaimed, breaking the silence with a loud cough. “I must dash. I rather enjoyed my first ramble, so some of the girls and I are venturing out and taking on the Chipping Camden trail.”
Dot scurried out of the café, leaving behind the newspaper. Julia stepped around the corner and picked up the latest edition of the paper. The headline ‘ASTRID WOOD REMEMBERED’ jumped out, along with a picture of a younger Astrid grinning at the camera with a birthday cake in front of her.
Julia flicked through the pages, landing on a double page spread of photographs detailing the story of what had happened. An old photograph of her café caught her eye, even though it looked completely different. The pale blue exterior and ‘Julia’s Café’ sign were gone, replaced with an exposed wood front, a window filled with hand-carved toys, and a ‘The Toy Box’ sign above the door.
“It’s quiet in here,” Roxy exclaimed with a stilted laugh as she walked into the café. “Have I come at a bad time?”