by Alice Castle
While Jeff had been fixing the IT glitch, Babs had also had a legitimate reason for being in the school, trying to land the marketing job. But what about Tim?
One thing was for sure. He was not, and never could have been, a prospective Year 7 parent. For, unless the centuries-old policy of Wyatt’s had changed in the short time that Beth had stepped out to play hooky in Romeo Jones with Richard the lame lawyer, Wyatt’s was boys only from Year 7 to Year 13. And Tim’s child was a ten-year-old girl. He was there to spy on Babs, knowing about her interview, but he hadn’t realised how thorough the Wyatt’s tour guides were. He’d been no use at all, spending the afternoon being dragged round the boys’ changing rooms at the distant playing fields, while Babs did her worst.
It was the first time that Beth had been a little bit out in her suspicions. She’d been close, zeroing in on Tim, realising how peculiar his appearance on the parents’ list was. But not close enough. It had actually been Babs who’d rampaged through her office.
Now that Beth thought about it, the vicious attack on her tampons should have shown her it had been a woman at work. A man would either have shied away in terror from women’s doings, or simply not known what the little cache was. Only a woman would have trashed sanitary products with such malicious glee.
***
Beth shook her head slightly, wincing as the gash over her forehead ached. She’d have another reason to keep her long fringe now. After five stitches performed in double-quick time in A&E with York sitting over the emergency team, she’d be left with a permanent reminder of a night she’d rather forget.
That brought her back to Babs’s first attack. ‘You thought it must have been a man who’d hit me, that time?’
‘I did,’ said York. ‘But at that point, I hadn’t seen Babs’s biceps. She’s got some pretty impressive guns there. I’d be willing to bet she was rounders champion at school.’
Beth nodded, thinking grimly of the time when she and Babs had sat round her kitchen table, and Babs had calmly displayed the muscles that she’d used to clout her only a couple of days before. She couldn’t believe the nerve of the woman. That definitely should be a point of Dulwich etiquette, that you weren’t allowed to attack someone you’d been formally introduced to in the playground, and you definitely then weren’t allowed to mooch cups of Earl Grey tea off them.
But then, Babs had been a desperate woman by that stage. Jen’s death had been a horrible accident, but failing to get her medical attention, not reporting the death, and then covering everything up, had pitched her into a different, deliberate category – that of murderer by default. Stressed by the constant war of attrition with Jess, and knowing that she’d shot herself catastrophically in the foot by killing her only other reliable childcare alternative, Babs had been forced to go to any lengths to cover up her crime.
Beth had been in the wrong place, looking in the wrong direction, at the wrong time. She was very lucky to be alive. If Babs had decided to cart her across the lawn to the pit where Jen already lay, or succeeded in dragging her down the passageway to her car, or if Jen’s neighbour hadn’t been putting his bins out, then two children might have been left motherless, instead of one. Thank goodness the woman had lost a bit of muscle tone when her gym trips were suddenly curtailed by killing Jen.
Lucky escapes made Beth remember something from her last stay in hospital. ‘There was a doctor who was kind of lurking around before, in the dead of night, when I got knocked out. Who on earth was that?’
‘Probably just a lost medical student. You know what that place is like,’ smiled York.
Beth thought back to the little flock of baby medics who’d followed their mother goose consultant on ward rounds. If one of those had got lost, she could well imagine them drifting aimlessly round the hospital, until they caught up with her twelve hours later.
That reminded her of another puzzle. ‘What happened to Jeff? Did you ever find him?’
‘We’ve just run him to ground. In Corfu, of all places. Seems his ex-wife is there.’
Beth frowned painfully. ‘But wasn’t he at Wyatt’s the other day? He was fixing the computers, Janice said. Why would he go straight to Corfu? From what I heard, he hated his ex.’
‘He’s been in Corfu a little while, still freelancing. I suppose he did the Wyatt’s job remotely. Easy enough, if you know the system. From what his ex-wife has told us, Jen had thrown him out. Maybe he had nowhere else to go.’
‘Wait, what? Jen threw him out? Seriously? She never said a thing to me. And they’d only just got married.’
‘Well, we’ve had a long chat with the ex, who isn’t pleased that he’s lurking around her again. She said it was all over between him and Jen. Something about Tinder?’
Oh, thought Beth. ‘I saw that Jeff was active on Tinder. Erm, the girls at the office were showing it to me,’ she said, scampering quickly over her own interest. ‘I meant to tell Jen about it but, well, I could never find the moment. Maybe she found out for herself. I wonder why she didn’t say.’
‘Maybe it was too humiliating? Or maybe she didn’t have time. From the state of the house, Jen and Jeff had had one almighty row just before she died, or maybe he just messed things up out of spite when she made him take his stuff. Either that or Babs trashed it. We’ll be talking to her about it.’
Beth thought silently. Babs was certainly efficient at turning places over, if her own office was anything to go by. She still felt guilty about not having locked up that day. But Harry was still talking.
‘If Babs hadn’t admitted to the whole thing, Jeff would be in a pretty difficult position. We’ll never know what went down with Jen, but it certainly seems that he used to hit his ex. She’s got a strapping new partner who looks like he’d knock Jeff’s block off himself if he got too close. The Greek police are keeping an eye on the situation.’
‘I’m glad Jen kicked him out,’ said Beth. ‘That must have taken a lot of courage.’
‘Yes. If she threatened him with the police, maybe he decided it was easier to leave the country. The Camberwell house was in Jen’s name, and she left it to her daughter, so there was nothing for him to hang around for.’ York paused, and looked at Beth. ‘When we searched the house, Jen’s phone was still plugged into the charger. All your messages were there. And, in case you were worrying, the neighbour’s looking after the cat.’
Beth closed her eyes. She’d never even given little Meow, Jen’s beloved moggy, a second’s thought. Her friend’s ghastly fate blotted out everything else. ‘I don’t want to think of all the time that passed, with Jen lying down that awful hole, before I finally got my act together.’
‘Look, though she didn’t die instantly, it wouldn’t have taken long, and she never regained consciousness. She didn’t suffer,’ said York, seeing the quick glitter of tears.
She sighed, and turned her mind from her friend’s terrible death, to the disturbing thought that Jen’s last months had been plagued with unhappiness, too.
‘I can’t believe that Jen wouldn’t have told me if things had gone wrong with Jeff, if he was violent.’
‘Can’t you? It’s difficult to admit you’ve made a bad choice,’ said York thoughtfully.
Beth pondered. That had been the trouble, for both Jen and Babs, then. One had worked for years to get her hands on a man who’d turned out to be a terrible disappointment, and a liar as well; the other had thought she was making a fresh start, only, it seemed, to face a whole new set of problems. York was right. It would have been hard, after the lovely wedding at the Horniman, and all the promise of happiness that seemed to be rolling out in front of Jen, for her to admit she’d picked another wrong’un.
Beth thought back to the last times she’d seen Jen and Jeff together. There had been a tension there, it was true. The odd thing about Jen wanting to distance herself from Dr Grover’s all-encompassing Dulwich fan club. Jeff’s jibe of ‘butterfingers’. Even the whole doomed idea of the garden makeover. Had she misinterpreted all
those scenes as the jokey interplay of a happy couple when the truth had been horribly different?
This dating game. Why was it never as easy as it seemed? Jen and Jeff had seemed to be genuinely mad about each other. Maybe mad was the right word, but only for Jeff. And now, as a result, her lovely friend Jen was dead and gone. Beth still couldn’t quite believe she’d never see that freckled face again, hear Jen’s clear voice, see her bright Breton tops across the playground and know there was a kindred spirit there to chat with.
And Jessica. Without a mother now, and without a stepmother, either. Beth was willing to bet that it wouldn’t be long before Tim was auditioning new candidates for that role, though. She had no idea what his appeal was, aside from being a single man in possession of a reasonable income. At least she wouldn’t be standing around at the Village Primary for much longer, watching that spectacle and aching for Jen. Ben would soon be moving on, to secondary school, and Beth was finally glad of it.
She still had Jen’s wedding present tucked away somewhere in her car. That would have to go straight into the rubbish. Should all her own hopes of a happy-ever-after be shoved in there, too? And if they were, there was instantly a very Dulwich dilemma to solve. Should they go in the brown bin, to rot away as compost; were they destined for the slightly more hopeful recycling bin; or should they simply be consigned to landfill in a black plastic shroud?
She raised her fingers, shaking very slightly, to brush the heavy fringe away from her stitches, then laid her hand down on the cover again. York’s came down instantly on top of it to squeeze gently. It was warm, steady, comforting. Beth looked up at him with a faltering smile. She really must delete that Tinder app from her phone again. As soon as she had the strength. And a free hand.
In the midst of this bleakness, there had to be hope, didn’t there, that someone, somewhere, really would have a happy ending?
And this time, why shouldn’t it be her?
THE END
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