The Peridale Cafe Cozy Box Set 4

by Agatha Frost

  “God doesn’t judge those who have yet to find him.” He offered a kind and sympathetic smile. “What’s troubling you, my child?”

  Julia looked down at the picture of Leah, unsure where to start.

  “I was friends with Leah a long time ago.”

  “I remember.”

  “I always thought Leah was a kind person, but it seems others don’t share that opinion. I’m beginning to wonder if I ever knew her at all. She did some terrible things before she left the village. Unforgivable things, judging by the reactions of the people she wronged. I’m struggling to come to terms with the idea that I could have been so wrong about someone I thought I knew.”

  Father David appeared to consider Julia’s words for a moment. He then nodded and exhaled.

  “People are complicated, Julia.” He smiled again, his lined face filled with wisdom. “Nobody is free of sin. Not even Jesus Christ himself could have navigated life without making a mistake—we just didn’t hear about them in the Bible because it wouldn’t have made for good reading. Just because others share a different opinion of a person than you do, it doesn’t mean your perception is wrong. People can have many sides, and good people can do bad things, but God is a forgiving being. If there was no chance for repentance, then what would be the point of life? If someone is truly sorry in their heart for their misdoings and they ask for forgiveness, God will pardon them. It’s as simple as that. Individual acts don’t define our paths for the rest of our lives. Our journeys are made up of our choices, good and bad. These choices may define us in the moment, but that doesn’t mean they have to define our future.” He pulled off his glasses and rubbed them on the edge of his black robes. “I don’t know what Leah did, and I don’t think it’s my place to ask, but she has had to live with her decisions in the years since she left. Am I right in assuming you think her disappearance is somehow linked to the events of the past?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then I will pray for her safe return.” He rested his hands on hers. “And I will pray that your own struggle will reach some resolution. You’re a kind and charitable woman, and whether you realise it or not, you are a child of God. He will look after you and guide you if you’re willing to let him in.”

  “Thank you, Father.”

  Julia stood up handed him a chunk of the posters. She turned to leave, but a distant light through the darkness of the window caught her attention.

  “Is that the school?” Julia asked, pointing to the light. “It’s the summer holidays.”

  Father David looked over his glasses and squinted. He seemed as puzzled as Julia felt.

  “I haven’t noticed that light on before.” He tapped his finger on his chin. “Perhaps they’re preparing the school for the new term?”

  “Maybe.”

  Julia left the church and squinted at the soft, glowing light. She almost ignored it, but a niggle in the back of her mind forced her to investigate. Crossing the church grounds, she hopped over the encircling stone wall, and made her way down the lane that led to St. Peter’s Primary School. When she reached the end of the lane and pushed open the front gate, she realised that the light was coming from one room—the classroom Roxy taught in.

  Julia hurried across the playground, peered through the window’s blinds, and saw Roxy, pacing back and forth in front of a clean whiteboard. Julia wanted to let out a triumphant cheer, but she held back. Instead, she gently knocked on the window, startling Roxy. The redhead squinted in Julia’s direction. When she realised who had knocked on the window, her expression resembled that of a child who had been caught doing something naughty. A side door that led directly into the classroom opened, and Roxy appeared, her cheeks as red as her hair.

  “I don’t know whether I want to hug you or slap you right now,” Julia said, her jaw tightening. “Damn you, Roxy Carter!”

  “I wouldn’t be angry if you did both.” Roxy stepped to the side and swung open the door. “I suppose I should invite you in.”

  Julia marched into the brightly lit classroom. A whiteboard hung where the blackboard used to be, and the colourful displays on the walls were different, but everything else was as Julia remembered from her youth. The wooden tables looked as tatty as they had when she had been a student, although, from her taller viewpoint, everything seemed to have shrunk. The teacher’s desk—Roxy’s desk—was cluttered with chocolate bar wrappers and two empty bottles of wine.

  “I forgot to hand in my keys for the side door before summer,” Roxy explained, walking back to her desk. “Each classroom is on a separate alarm system.”

  “What are you doing here?” Julia cried, looming over Roxy. “I’ve been trying to call you!”

  “I know.” Roxy glanced at her phone, which was charging on the floor. “My phone must have died at some point yesterday, and I was too busy drinking wine and feeling sorry for myself to notice. I couldn’t bring myself to listen to all your messages. You sounded so angry.”

  “I am angry!”

  “I’m sorry,” Roxy whined, her teeth biting into her bottom lip. “You know I’m a mess, Julia. I’ve always found it hard to face my problems head on. I went to see Leah yesterday to attempt it, but it all went belly up. As usual.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  “Violet told me.” Julia sat at the tiny desk nearest the front, her behind barely fitting on the chair. “She’s just as worried as I am.”

  “I’ve seen her messages.” Roxy huffed. “English might not be her first language, but she can certainly get creative with her swear words when she needs to.”

  Roxy’s attempt at laughter curdled at whatever she saw on Julia’s face.

  “I can’t believe you’re being so trivial about this!”

  “About what?”

  “Everything!”

  “So, I shouldn’t be here,” Roxy replied, her brows dropping defiantly. “It’s not like I’ve killed someone. It’s not a crime to drink wine and eat chocolate. Well, maybe the trespassing part is a crime, but I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “You have no idea what’s going on, do you?”

  Roxy frowned and shook her head.

  “Leah is missing,” Julia said, for what felt like the hundredth time that day. She pulled a poster out of her bag and tossed it onto Roxy’s desk. “I went to speak to her last night, her cottage was a mess, and there was blood on her carpet. Nobody has seen her since, and her bloody clothes have turned up in a field.”

  Roxy looked over the poster, her lips trembling as she read what Barker had written. She leaned back in her chair and stared through the poster to the back of the room.

  “I-I-I—”

  “Did you kill her, Roxy?”

  “What?”

  “Did you kill Leah?”

  “And again—what?” Roxy gazed at Julia as though she had just grown an extra head. “I can’t believe you even need to ask me that!”

  “I found one of your hairs at the cottage.” Julia reached into her pocket and pulled out the crinkled plastic bag. “I took it before the police could find it. I’ve circled this village trying to look for you.”

  “I don’t deny that I went to Leah’s cottage,” Roxy replied, barely looking at the hair. “In fact, I brought it up before you did. I thought you were angry because I’d disappeared, not because you thought I’d killed someone!”

  Julia felt apprehensive about suspecting Roxy of murder for a second time. Roxy had never learned to lie. She was too brash and honest to fib convincingly, especially to Julia. They had always been able to see right through each other.

  “When I went to see her, she was very much alive, and her cottage was intact.” Roxy sat up straight and put the poster on the table. “After spending a day upset that she was back, I wanted to try and sort things out for the sake of my relationship with Violet. I didn’t want what Leah did to me hanging over us for however long she was planning on sticking around. I went to confront her about what she was doing back here
, and in true Leah fashion, she didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted to pretend like the past didn’t happen. I was angry, but even if you’d put a knife in my hand, I wasn’t angry enough to kill her.”

  “And what did she do to you?” Julia asked. “I know what she did to Johnny, but he seems to think that had nothing to do with you.”

  “Then he thought wrong.” Roxy’s voice lowered. She rustled a piece of a foil chocolate wrapper between her fingers. “Heidi wasn’t the only one who had her heart broken by what Leah did.” Roxy inhaled deeply, and Julia could tell that whatever her friend was about to share was difficult to talk about. “Do you remember my seventeenth birthday party?”

  “Vaguely.” Julia nodded. “I seem to remember I ended up looking after you because you were blind drunk.”

  “That’s because you’re a good friend.” Roxy smiled softly. “And you deserve better than a mess like me.”

  “Just get on with the story, eh, Roxy?” Julia injected some frivolity into her voice to relax her friend. “Your party?”

  “Right.” Roxy inhaled again as her eyes glazed over. “It was the weekend after my birthday. My mum had gone to visit an old friend in Scotland, so, naturally, I invited everyone I knew for a party. Rachel bought us those cans of cider, which was a mistake on her part, but she only did it because I begged her to. I started drinking, and I felt my whole teenaged existence crash down around me. I was sick of pretending.”

  “Pretending what?”

  “That I wasn’t a complete lesbian,” Roxy said with a sparkle in her eyes. “It was a different time back then, wasn’t it? I’d known that I liked girls for as long as I could remember, but the idea of coming out in 1995 terrified me. It’s such a bizarre concept. ‘Oh, by the way, not that it’s any of your business, but I’m attracted to the same sex.’ That night, for whatever reason, I felt like I was carrying a secret bigger than I could handle. We’d just got our exam results, and we were about to start college. My entire world was shifting around me. Being a teenager is hard enough without all that extra sexuality confusion.” Roxy checked the bottles of wine, but they were both empty. “One can of cider got me drunk back then, and I think I drank four in the space of an hour. I needed to tell someone, and it would have been you if you’d walked into my bedroom at that moment, but I ended up telling Leah instead.” She paused and ran her hands down her face. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this. The only person I’ve told in twenty years is Violet, and that was only because I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t upset that Leah was back.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was crying in my bedroom,” Roxy continued, her finger circling the mouth of the bottle. “What’s more dramatic than a teenager crying in their bedroom during their birthday party? Have you ever second-guessed your sexuality?”

  “I’ve never put much thought into it.”

  “Most people never do, but if you’re not the norm, you’re conditioned to look at it like it’s a problem. In an ideal world, it would be a non-issue, but we’re not there yet. I spent my entire childhood trying to fit in. I had more boyfriends in my teens than anyone, remember? I buried my sexuality down so deep that usually I could convince myself it wasn’t there. That night, though, it burst out of me. Leah heard me crying, and she came in. She made me tell her what was on my mind. I barely put up a fight. I just blurted it out before I could stop myself. I don’t know what I expected to happen. I’d built it up so much in my mind, I was surprised when the ground didn’t start shaking. Do you know how Leah reacted?”

  Julia shook her head.

  “She kissed me.” Roxy’s eyes darted to Julia’s. “She didn’t say a word, she just kissed me. My first kiss was with a girl I’d been friends with for as long as I could remember. I’d never even looked at her like that, but, at that moment, I felt like I wasn’t alone. When she pulled away, I was so confused. She had a smile on her face that I’ve never forgotten. It was like she’d just won a prize, and she was trying to figure out what to do with it.”

  “And what did she do with you?” Julia asked, shocked at where their conversation had gone.

  “She tortured me. For the next two years, she dangled it over me. She convinced me not to tell anyone about my sexuality or the kiss. She made all these vague promises about us being together one day, and I fell for them hook, line, and sinker. We never kissed again. We never so much as held hands. At first, I didn’t realise what was going on. I was just a kid. I thought I’d fallen in love. It felt like love. But it wasn’t—it was manipulation. She dragged it out until the end of college, and she made me swear to keep it secret. It was like a game to her, even though she was the only one playing it. We were both going to the same university to study teaching. And then she ran off with Johnny’s sister’s fiancé three weeks before we were due to move. No goodbye, no explanation. One day she was here, and then she wasn’t. I didn’t understand. I felt like my future had been ripped away from me. I was numb. It took me years to realise she’d never been in love with me. Do you have any idea why someone would do that to another person?”

  Julia shook her head.

  “Me neither,” Roxy continued. “That’s what upset me so much. I couldn’t figure out what she gained from treating me like that. She scarred me so much, I vowed never to tell another person again. Can you imagine that? I denied myself love until I was thirty-six. Thirty-six, Julia. I spent almost two decades hiding something that huge about myself because Leah screwed me up.”

  “You could have told me,” Julia said, wanting to reach out and grab Roxy.

  “I know that now.” Roxy smiled her appreciation. “But until you’ve kept a secret that long, you can’t know what it’s like. It gets harder to reveal every year. It became taboo. Things didn’t change until I met Violet.” Roxy’s frown turned into a heart-warming smile. “We had a spark instantly. I’d spent so long denying that part of myself, I didn’t notice Violet was even flirting with me until she told me afterwards how hard she’d been trying to get my attention. We ended up kissing at the Christmas party, and that’s when I gave in and decided I wasn’t going to hide anymore.”

  Roxy pushed her hands through her already-messy hair. “Then, you know, all that mess with Gertrude happened, and it reminded me what Leah did. I felt like I was being forced into keeping a secret again, so I ran away, and my sister murdered people. Fast forward to now. You tell me Leah is back like I’m supposed to be glad about it—and then I see her, and I’m that confused teenager who doesn’t understand why her friend is treating her the way Leah did.”

  “If I’d had any idea, I would—”

  “Don’t, Julia. You’ve done nothing wrong. I freaked out. I should have just told you, woman to woman, what happened, so you could understand my reaction. When I saw her last night, she refused to acknowledge anything had happened between us. She was convincing, too. I wondered if I’d just imagined the whole sorry affair. Except the feelings were as raw as ever, and I knew she was just continuing her same old game. I left in a huff, bought copious amounts of wine and chocolate from the shop, and then I came here. I stayed up drinking and crying until sunrise, and then I passed out at my desk. I only woke up a couple of hours ago. I admit, when I saw Violet’s messages and heard some of your voicemails, I panicked and didn’t want to face anything, so I just … stayed here. I had no idea anything else was happening.” Roxy looked down at the poster. “What time did you go to see Leah?”

  “About nine.”

  “I was there at seven.” Roxy glanced at the clock. “We went around in circles for ten minutes at the most, and then I left.”

  “And nothing seemed strange to you?”

  Roxy thought about it for a moment, her eyes suddenly widening.

  “There was one thing.” She nodded, her finger tapping on the desk. “She kept looking at the ceiling. It was like she was trying to get back to something more important, which made me feel even angrier, and I was sure I could hear someone snoring, too.”
>
  “Snoring?”

  “It could have been a tractor driving down the lane.”

  “Do you think someone could have been up there?”

  “Maybe. I don’t have any reason to believe there wasn’t.” Roxy’s eyes widened even further. “I thought maybe she had a boyfriend or a husband, or maybe even a kid.”

  “She came back alone.”

  “Oh.” Roxy sat up straight. “Do you think whoever killed her was up there when I was downstairs?”

  “We don’t know if she’s dead yet.” Julia stood and grabbed the poster from the desk. “Hence me handing these out.”

  “Well, just don’t expect me to help you. I care about you, and it’s clear you care about finding Leah, but that’s not my journey. I’m done with her. If she’s dead, I’ll be sorry it came to that, but I won’t shed another tear over her.” Roxy’s phone vibrated against the floor, and Roxy glanced down at it. “Violet’s calling me. I really should go home, shouldn’t I?”

  “You should.”

  “I’m sorry, Julia.”

  “You don’t have to apologise. I’ve decided that I’d rather hug you than slap you.”

  They hugged it out in front of the whiteboard. Julia absorbed Roxy’s angst and pain, and it made her wish she had noticed what was going on all those years ago, so she could have helped when it mattered. To find out that she had missed something so crucial in Roxy’s life made her feel like she had failed her friend.

  After helping Roxy hide the evidence of her out-of-hours school lock-in, Julia delivered her to the pink-doored flat on Mulberry Lane. Leaving Roxy to face Violet alone—some things didn’t need an audience—Julia made her way home. Barker hadn’t returned from his drive, and she was glad she could have some time with her thoughts. After stapling one last poster to a tree on the lane outside her cottage, Julia unlocked the door and retreated into the dark hallway.

  Under her feet, something rustled on the doormat. Turning on the hallway lamp illuminated a manila envelope. Julia picked it up and turned it over. A message made from neat, cut-out newspaper headline letters greeted her: