Chapter Seventeen
Hambleton Council: Hot tips for hot weather:
If you have to go out during the day, try and walk in the shade and ALWAYS wear a wide-brimmed hat.
Cooling the inside of the white Fiat by a combination of door wafting and waving her handbag, Liz was aware that her earlier excitement had evaporated like water in the sun.
What if Ffion Hunter were to come out and confront her?
What if Derek had noticed her prolonged absence and was even now scouring the baking streets of Thirsk looking for her?
And what if her thumping headache wasn’t just due to the pollen but was in fact the precursor to full-blown heatstroke?
Taking a mouthful of water she checked her phone: no panicky texts from Derek, thank goodness. She cast an uneasy glance back up Chapel Lane – no signs of a vengeful Ffion Hilton. But the headache still remained, defiantly pounding.
Get a grip, Liz! Drive home now, and everything will be fine. She could pick up some frozen spinach, lie down in the cool and then update her food diary all ready for pre-diabetes awareness.
But looking at the postcard cottages drowsing by the village green, she became aware of a growing sense of something left undone, some question unasked …
She scanned the baking street, the deserted, grass-fringed pavements.
What question? Asked of who?
The place looked the stuff of calendars and tea towels and Yorkshire Living magazines – but the sad reality was that, despite all the rural loveliness, there was hardly any community here to ask anything.
Driving off, she passed the scaffolded structure of the pub, being converted (according to an excited billboard) into four luxury apartments.
Beyond that: ‘The Old Post Office’, then what had obviously been the village school – somewhere in the place was the deconsecrated parish church.
All now expensive holiday accommodation for people who came and went but knew nothing of the actual soul and life of the village.
On the outskirts of Hollinby Quernhow were two pairs of semis, obviously one-time council houses.
These did at least have some signs of real life – a washing line, a rabbit hutch, a cluster of garden furniture.
This must be where Zippy Doodah lived, one of the last fragments of the village community.
And that was what she needed – community. People who had known Neville.
It was then she saw the cherry-red hatchback parked on the verge opposite in front of a Sixties semi, which declared itself to be the Old Police House.
Jax? Liz frowned. What was she doing here? Wednesday wasn’t a changeover day as far as she knew… but even so. She braked as she was seized by one of those flashes of inspiration particularly common to lady primary school teachers.
Liz’s lips tightened; she was still angry about the incursion into the Old Barn to find those keys … and yet—
She braked as she was seized by one of those flashes of inspiration particularly common to lady primary school teachers where various events and elements coalesce into one shining course of action.
Someone who knew Neville. Jax … They’d spent so much time and mental energy being annoyed with the woman, blocking her calls and generally fending her off – yet here she was, one person who arguably knew Neville better than anybody and to whom he might well have talked.
‘What are you doing here?’ Chloe Lord repeated the words in a voice heavy with aggression.
She stood on the verge directly between them and the mussel-blue Corsair, hands on her hips, her white-blonde hair gleaming, body a study of anger and accusation.
Discreetly Thelma nudged Teddy who equally discreetly nudged her back and retired to the nearby bus stop where he appeared to become instantly absorbed in reading the timetable.
‘Good afternoon, Chloe,’ said Thelma. ‘I presume you’re here to see Annie.’
‘I asked you the question,’ said Chloe angrily. This afternoon she was wearing a sheath of a silver-blue dress. It did not take too much imagination for Thelma to see in her mind’s eye it armoured with steel-plated shoulders, silver wings sprouting from the back.
‘I’m here,’ Thelma said. ‘We’re here – my husband, Teddy, and I – at the direct request of Annie.’
‘You’re trying to tell me she asked you here?’ The words throbbed with scorn.
Thelma nodded.
‘What for?’ Chloe almost spat the words into the thick, warm air, two angry barks.
‘She’d heard about our visit to your school,’ said Thelma. ‘And emailed me. I imagine Caro Miranda gave her my email address.’
Chloe half closed her eyes and threw back her head. ‘And you thought you’d come here and bother her an’ all?’ she said. ‘You do know I suppose she’s a very sick lady?’
‘I do,’ said Thelma. ‘And I’m very sorry. But as I say – she called me and asked to see me face to face.’
‘Hasn’t that woman been through enough?’ blazed Chloe. ‘What with being ill, and Davey and that inspection and now you and your friends nosying around?’
Thelma tried hard not to resent being seen as the equivalent of a terminal illness, a bereavement or an unfair Ofsted inspection. ‘I know how much she’s been through,’ she said.
‘Do you? Do you?’ Chloe seized on the words and fired them right back at Thelma. ‘You know our school – her school – closed today because of that bastard Ofsted inspector? You should’ve seen everyone today – staff, parents, kids, everyone was in bits.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Thelma. ‘I can imagine how upsetting that was.’
‘No, you can’t!’ Chloe’s eyes brimmed with tears and she abruptly turned away.
Thelma wondered about offering her a tissue but before she could, Chloe had rounded back on her again.
‘So let me see if I’m getting this right,’ she said in a low voice.
‘You think someone from our staff drove over to this inspector’s house and told him where to go? ’
‘Possibly,’ said Thelma gently. ‘But Annie’s just told me that the day Neville died was the day you held your memorial service for Davey Fletcher.’
At the mention of his name Chloe’s eyes filled once more.
When she spoke her words were hoarse. ‘And what? You think one of us ran off from the ceremony to go and tell the bastard what we thought of him? Well, let me tell you, Mrs Whoever You Are, that we were too busy thinking about our friend who died in a car crash caused by that evil git of an inspector.’
By now she was breathing as though she’d just completed a sprint, her words short and spiky.
She scrabbled for her handbag and produced her phone, stabbing at the screen, eyes screwed against the sun.
Thelma moved near and likewise screwed her eyes up as she focused on the small rectangle.
Dimly she could just make out a striking woman with a buttercup yellow scarf twined round her hair, wearing a yellow paper flower, sitting against a backdrop of red and orange drapes.
Chloe pressed play and the image came to life.
‘Golden lads and girls all must,’ the woman spoke in a soft, sad contralto voice. ‘As chimneysweepers, come to dust.’ As she spoke the sun blazed in from the left of the picture, making her amber earrings wink madly.
Thelma looked at Chloe. Now the tears were running down her face, unchecked.
‘That’s how we were all feeling,’ said the girl, her voice breaking.
Thelma nodded. ‘Was that from the service?’ she asked gently.
Chloe nodded, wiping her eyes. ‘It’s from some poem,’ she said. ‘That’s Bun reading it out on the Zoom.’
Thelma nodded, remembering Caro Miranda quoting the same words in the staffroom at Pity Me School.
‘Poor Davey,’ the girl said, brushing tears from her face.
‘I’m so sorry the school has closed,’ said Thelma quietly, finally passing her a tissue.
Chloe took it and looked squarely at her, pale blue eyes firm and clear. ‘If it weren’t for that school,’ she said. ‘That school, Davey and Annie – especially Annie – God knows where I’d be.’
‘Annie helped you?’ asked Thelma.
Chloe nodded. ‘She gave me a chance. She believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.
I started going in see, when I dropped our Mirrel off, when she started in Reception.
I used to help out and Annie encouraged me to go for a TA’s job.
And I used to catch her watching me, and I was worried I was doing something wrong, till she called me in her office and said, “Chloe, you are a born teacher and I want you to train.” She got me doing this in-service training at the school – and she give me a job.
’ Her voice was quietly proud as she gazed over to Roseberry Topping drowsing in the late afternoon sun.
‘I loved that job,’ she said simply. ‘And I love her and I loved Davey Fletcher – so yeah, if anyone were going to drive over to that Hollinby place and give that man what he had coming to him – it was me.’ There was a trace of defiance in her voice.
‘But you didn’t?’ prompted Thelma.
Chloe didn’t answer for a moment. ‘What that man said about us – in that report – it were pure crap,’ she said.
‘Safeguarding is important,’ pointed out Thelma mildly.
Whatever it was she said, it was the wrong thing.
The body tensed; the head snapped up. ‘Just what do you know about anything?’ she said angrily and stalked off down the path to the front door of Bretton Hall.
‘I can’t stop to talk,’ said Jax, retreating to the bathroom.
‘I shouldn’t even be here, only the people left early leaving the place a right old mess.
I’ve had to dash here from Helmsley.’ Her voice was brusque, annoyed – in keeping with the cool ‘Hello, Stranger’ with which she’d greeted Liz.
Had Jax cottoned on to the fact her number had been blocked?
And if she had, Liz wondered, would she be able to tell it had only been unblocked five minutes previously?
‘I’m guessing,’ said Liz following her, ‘that Chelsey is still off?’