Chapter Twenty-three
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After her friends had gone, Thelma found herself weighed down by that peculiar lethargy that comes after any intense meeting; a sense of a task accomplished coupled at the same time with a total lack of energy or motivation to do anything else.
She should, she knew, go through the conversation with Bun Widdup, jotting down salient points in the green mark book.
Failing that she really should make a start on those Highway Code facts – but somehow, she ended up doing neither.
Instead, she found herself sitting in her favourite wing chair in the front room, thoughts buzzing feebly round her head like so many weary, trapped bluebottles.
The fact that no one from Pity Me school could conceivably have been at Hollinby Quernhow for around seven o’clock, when Judy Bestall heard that shouting, lay heavy and dull across her thought processes, like a wrong word in a crossword puzzle.
All her thinking had been thrown by this one, fundamental fact.
Surely it might be better to let the whole thing drop?
And yet someone had been shouting at Neville Hilton. But who? And why?
From a patch of sunlight by the window Snaffles stretched and drowsed, regarding her sleepily. She felt her own eyes growing heavier, her thought processes as heavy and dull as the afternoon outside.
A stir of movement, a clatter of claws, a frenzy of rapping feet jerked her awake.
Snaffles. Her eyes sprung open, just in time to see a panicky blur of black as the cat exited the room.
What had disturbed him? That was her first thought.
The second, with a judder of fright, was Someone’s looking in the front window …
A figure was standing at the window, perfectly still, staring into the room at her.
The Reverend Caro Miranda.
‘I did ring but your bell didn’t seem to be working.
’ The Irish voice was soft but authoritative as she followed Thelma into the kitchen.
‘Oh my!’ She stopped at the threshold, eye sliding appraisingly over across the Aga, the dresser with its sky-blue plates, the ceramic sink with the lovingly polished brass taps. ‘Oh my, what a wonderful kitchen.’
Unbidden she began scampering curiously around the room, looking at the fixtures, studying the Eric Ravilious calendar, running a finger over surfaces, eyeing cupboards and drawers, almost as if she wanted to open them and ferret around inside.
‘Of course—’ She stopped abruptly and faced Thelma.
‘Of course I could never afford anything like this.’ There was a queer tone to her voice, one that Thelma couldn’t quite identify but instinctively disliked.
It made her want to say that what Caro was seeing was the result of years of hard work and doing without, cheap margarine, jumpers instead of heating, holidays in Brummie Maureen’s static near Withernsea.
Of course, she said none of these things, merely offered her tea – or a cold drink.
‘Thank you, no.’ Caro didn’t sit down but stood with her back to the Aga. ‘I was going to say something along the lines of “I was just passing” – but I think we’d both know that was a total lie.’
Seated at the table, feeling somewhat at a disadvantage, Thelma regarded her visitor.
‘I understand from Chloe Lord that you’ve been to see Annie Golightly.’
Thelma nodded. ‘She asked me to.’
‘So I understand.’ Caro broke restlessly into passing movement, crossing to the countertop where she regarded Thelma’s knife block. ‘Goodness me,’ she said, half pulling out the largest knife. Almost reverently she pushed it back, before swinging round to face Thelma again.
‘I know she asked you,’ she said. ‘And I know I invited you to come to the school. But’ – she fixed her with muddy grey-brown eyes – ‘I want you – I need you – to let this drop, Thelma.’
‘Let what drop?’ asked Thelma mildly.
‘Whatever it is you’re on with investigating – you and your friends.
’ She held a stubby hand up, as if warding off any denial Thelma should choose to make.
‘I’ve spoken to Mare,’ she said. ‘She told me how you and your friends are gifted at – well, finding things out.’ Her muddy stare became intense.
‘But in this case, I’m telling you there’s nothing to find out. ’
‘Someone did confront Neville Hilton the night he died,’ said Thelma.
‘Yes, that’s as may be.’ Caro shook her head impatiently. ‘But it wasn’t one of us. Thelma, Annie Golightly is a very sick woman. Chloe’s a young lass at the very start of her teaching career. They don’t need this aggravation.’
‘Annie – and Chloe, for that matter – approached me,’ interjected Thelma.
‘Because they wondered what it was you and your friends were doing.’ Caro’s voice was fraught.
She paused, a trickle of sweat running unbecomingly down that pointy nose.
‘And as I say, Mare believes you have certain gifts: of observation, of deduction. “God given” was how she described them. But Thelma’ – she clasped her hands – ‘Jesus didn’t use his gifts all the time.
He picked and chose the times he acted.’
Thelma was about to say that any gifts she possessed couldn’t begin to compare with those of the Almighty – and besides there was no way Annie, or Chloe – or even Caro for that matter could possibly have been in Hollinby Quernhow.
But Caro was on something of a roll. ‘Chloe Lord,’ she carried on, ‘is an exceptional teacher. And yes, okay, she can be a little hot-tempered – but only about things that matter to her.’
‘Jesus himself turned over the tables in the temple,’ pointed out Thelma.
‘Exactly!’ Caro seized on her words. ‘One hundred per cent! But you need to know’ – she took a deep breath – ‘that night – after the ceremony – she drove straight home. If you’re asking me how I know that – well, I followed her.
I was a bit concerned about her, so I drove after her to make sure she got home safely.
I saw her pull up outside her house. Anyway, I had a PCC meeting over at church, so I went on there after – and when I was driving back that way an hour later her car was still there.
’ She took a deep breath and abruptly all the energy seemed to go out of her.
With her hands clasped at the waist and her head bowed, Thelma wondered if she was praying.
‘Caro.’ Her voice was gentle yet authoritative.
‘Caro.’ The face looked up and the grey-brown eyes met hers.
Thelma was shocked by the unhappy misery ravaging those pointy features.
‘At six thirty,’ she said gently, ‘you were all in the ceremony for Davey Fletcher; I know that for a fact. There’s no conceivable way any of you could have been in Hollinby Quernhow for seven o’clock. ’
She fully expected the woman to take some comfort, reassurance from her words, but Caro’s face remained stricken. She took a deep shuddering breath, her hand straying abstractedly to the knife block.
‘People think,’ she said in a low voice, ‘that being clergy confers one with an automatic goodness.’
‘I don’t,’ said Thelma calmly. ‘My husband has worked for the church in some shape or form for decades, and I’ve seen for myself clergy have struggles just as much as anyone else.’
Caro nodded. ‘This has all shaken me to the core of my being,’ she said. Her fingers, Thelma noted with disquiet, had begun to caress the handle of the largest knife. ‘To find oneself struggling with such … anger.’
‘Scripture is populated by people who struggled,’ said Thelma, eyes warily on those stubby fingers. ‘Adam, Eve, King David. Saint Peter, betraying Jesus.’
‘I worked in a prison once,’ said Caro, gazing mesmerised at the knife.
She seemed almost to be speaking to herself.
‘It was a very …’ she paused as she selected the right word ‘… rich experience. And the men there – all of them – they owned whatever it was they had done. Whatever their attitude to their crime, they knew it was a crime.’ Her eyes met Thelma’s.
‘Neville Hilton. I wonder if he really ever knew the pain he caused?’ Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the knife.
‘I need to know,’ she said. ‘I need to know that on some level that man understood the havoc he wrought.’
Suddenly she looked down at her hand. An expression of horrified surprise flashed across her face as she snatched her hand back as if the knife were burningly hot. The moment seemed to shock her back to some semblance of normalcy.
‘Thelma,’ she said in a normal if rather shaky voice. ‘Thelma, thank you for your time, but I need to be going.’
At the front door she paused, eyes pleading. ‘Please, Thelma,’ she said. ‘Please – leave us alone.’
Thelma watched the retreating figure walking down College Gardens until she was out of sight. A thought crossed her mind, and she reached round the lintel and pressed the doorbell. Instantly the hall was flooded with a pealing double chime. And yet Caro said the bell wasn’t working …
With shaking hands, Liz opened up the food diary on her laptop.
Shocked – almost tearful even – she typed ‘TWO BAGS VEGAN MOMENTS’ into the entry for the day before.
A low rumble from the direction of the dining room told her that the online meeting of the Boroughbridge Climate Change Direct Action Group was still in progress.
There’d be no point in even trying to talk to Jacob until it had finished.
He’d been so angry! Liz had thought as he’d become older, he would grow out of those volcanic episodes the family termed ‘Jacob’s meltdowns’ – but no … On learning what she’d done he’d stared at her, eyes wide with a bewildered outrage that had taken both of them by surprise.
‘Grandma! Don’t you know how much sugar there is in one single little Vegan Moment?’
Liz hadn’t, but he had and had proceeded to tell her in an outraged squawk.
He’d also know how much sugar there was in one hundred grams of them, and how much therefore there was in the two bags Liz had scoffed down the night before.
‘Gazillions, Grandma! And your beta cells have to hoover all that up out if your bloodstream!’
Had she been silly to own up? But then – he had asked her directly, a suspicious gleam in his eye, and lying to her grandson’s face was something she found she simply couldn’t do.
Liz sighed, staring unseeingly at the grids of the food diary.
She was shaking and upset in a way she hadn’t been after either of her run-ins with Ffion Hilton.
Throughout Jacob’s many childhood meltdowns Liz had always found herself a step back, hardly ever the target and always, always the rock of security and stability to which he’d eventually turn and cling to.
This almost savage anger towards her was something new and frightening; now she was the one who wanted someone to cling to.
Why had he been so angry? Was it maybe some worry about being in year 6?
Or some fallout with the Boroughbridge Climate Change Direct Action Group?
Or was it something else? Something to do with his parents perhaps?
Of one thing she was sure – behind these meltdowns there was always some underlying reason responsible for triggering his violent operas of rage.
And for him to lose it with her like that … it must be something significant.
How much longer would this meeting go on for?
The rumbling from the conservatory had grown slightly higher in pitch, telling Liz that now Anna-Marie Lister-Brooks, self-appointed leader of BCCDAG was having her say about something and Anna-Marie was someone who liked to make her points long and loud.
Ms Lister-Brooks was a person obviously destined for a life of confrontation; only a few months ago she’d had to be forcibly removed from a pelican crossing in Boroughbridge where she’d been lying down in a protest against proposals for fracking.
Liz sighed in frustration. She needed to talk to Jacob, see if he’d calmed down.
Derek always said where Jacob’s meltdowns were concerned the trick was to ride out the storm and wait for calmer waters, but how could she tell if this storm had abated if she couldn’t talk to him?
At the thought of her husband, she glanced upwards listening for the noise of his post-run shower.
When he was done, she’d need to talk to him and tell him the sad story of what had happened, see if he knew of anything bothering him.
The noise of her phone ringing was such a welcome diversion from these unhappy thoughts, that she only vaguely registered it was an unknown number as she answered.
‘Is that Liz? Plant lady Liz?’ The voice was familiar. ‘It’s Sidrah, from Hollinby Quernhow – you came by the other day.’
‘Yes of course! You sent me the CCTV film – thank you so much! Is everything okay?’
‘To be truthful I’m not sure, Liz.’ The voice was troubled and urgent. ‘I’m a bit bothered about Ffion Hilton and couldn’t think who else to ring. But you know her—’
Liz thought of those two fraught encounters. ‘I wouldn’t say know her as such,’ she said.
But Sidrah was talking again, her voice even more troubled. ‘The thing is, Liz – I think something’s happened to her.’