Chapter Twenty-nine
Voice of the Vale, Thirsk FM Radio: Today’s beat-the-heat tip!
Hot in the office? Ditch the darkness! Dark clothes absorb the heat, so go for loose, light garments! Better still – strip off! (If you have your own office or work from home, that is!)
‘Come on, Noah. Frame thissen’, lad!’ The hearty Yorkshire voice vibrated through the speaker on Thelma’s laptop.
‘Tell me one reason you might be caught speeding the old brum-brum? We’ve had been late; we’ve had having an urgent appointment.
’ Thelma was glad it wasn’t her being asked the question because the only answer she could think of was something along the lines of ‘driving from Pity Me to Hollinby Quernhow in half an hour flat’.
She stole a glance at the open page of the green mark book.
Now Ffion was removed from the equation it seemed that Neville’s visitor had to be someone from Pity Me school.
‘Come on, Noah, we’re waiting, lad!’ The owner of the voice – Jim Whitlaw, their course leader – was one of those people who made a virtue of their Yorkshire accent, implying through its blunt, colloquial nature a quality of down-to-earth common sense.
Yawning, the young man wrapped in a duvet looked out, a sleepy face amongst the other panels of faces.
‘How about there being a totally unnecessary speed camera in a place no one can see it,’ interjected another voice, crisp and decidedly tetchy.
‘Now then, Cheryl love, let Noah speak,’ said Jim Whitlaw easily. ‘We’re all here to muck in and learn, remember.’
‘If you drive when you’re upset’ – Noah spoke up suddenly and clearly – ‘you can lose concentration and end up going fast without thinking about it.’
‘Nice one, Noah lad!’ said Jim Whitlaw approvingly. ‘Remember, chaps and chappesses, when you’re upset avoid getting behind the wheel if at all possible. There’s being over the limit alcohol wise, and there’s being over the limit emotionally.’
In an instant Thelma’s mind once again slid away from speed awareness, this time to a newspaper picture of a wrecked car on a snowy moorland road. Davey Fletcher, very definitely driving unsafely, very definitely over the emotional limit, thanks to Neville Hilton’s damning Ofsted Report.
She forced her mind back to the screen. She was finding Teddy’s John Lennon glasses a shade too weak and consequently was having to squint rather ferociously at the other ten faces of the course attendees.
She peered at the clock in the bottom corner of the screen and with a slight jolt of surprise realised they were not too far from the end of the two-and-a-half-hour session.
The realisation fuelled the sense of relief that had been growing inside her since the start of the session, which had been nowhere near as bad as she feared.
For a start, Jim Whitlaw had been at great pains to emphasise how the course wasn’t about judgement.
The glossy website of the course providers gave much the same message.
You are not being judged! it said, more than once.
This in itself hadn’t quietened Thelma’s fears because of course she had been judged.
She knew it in a very private and primal part of her soul – just as, she guessed, all the other attendees did – and just as the staff of Pity Me school must have known it, following Neville’s report.
But five minutes of listening to Jim Whitlaw’s cheery common sense had quietened her upset and when he’d said it was all about moving forward safely, and maybe learning a thing or two on the way, she’d believed him.
And there’d been a number of things she’d learned – how lamp posts in a street automatically meant a thirty or even twenty-mile-an-hour zone.
And how adding even an extra mile an hour to your speed had a massive impact on your ability to brake.
Jim was, Thelma recognised, a good teacher.
He had a lively way of speaking and she felt sure some of the more complex aspects of the course would have been decidedly dry without his cries of ‘nay, chaps’ and his habit of marking any significant point regarding motoring by hitting a fist in his palm with a solemn bark of ‘doof’.
Then there were the people on the course, with their fascinating square glimpses of their various lives – the bookshelf, the wallpaper, the curtains.
‘No virtual backdrops allowed,’ Jim had said cheerfully when they logged on.
‘We need to know you’re at home and not in a TV studio!
So, hide them drying pants, chaps and chapesses! ’
And then there was Noah. The first sight of him had been a mounded duvet, a bleary face and a glimpse of a Jurassic Park T-shirt.
‘Hey up there, Noah,’ Jim had said. ‘Good of thee to join us!’
The screen had briefly tipped crazily before the image resolved on Noah, obviously sitting cross-legged on his bed, duvet wrapped round him.
His background – the background to his be-duvet-ed form – was by far the most interesting aspect of the course.
The space behind him looked to be some sort of attic, sloping ceiling painted a vibrant shade of blue, on the walls and ceiling were modern art posters – Tracey Emin, Davey Hockney, on the table beside him were a stack of what looked to be books on art and philosophy; his handwriting when the course held up their answer pads was clear and well formed. A young person’s room.
Golden lads and lasses … Why did that sonnet from Davey’s memorial service suddenly pop into her mind? She thought again about the extensive text Pat had sent just before the course began, about the conversation with Son Masters … How Bun had resembled an angel with the light around her …
She looked at the figure swathed in a duvet.
Noah could hardly be described as an angel, and certainly no sort of golden lad – he looked way too bleary that …
Who was he? An artist perhaps? A student?
And why, given the culture of his surroundings, was he sporting Jurassic Park pyjamas?
So much, Thelma thought, could be gleaned from the background of someone’s Zoom.
She found herself thinking about Bun Widdup – those African drapes, gloriously red and orange against the visible sliver of buttermilk wall.
Kenya, wasn’t that where she’d said she’d worked?
And then that image of the staffroom at Pity Me, that time-stamped image freezing those people into that precise moment.
Caro, Annie, Chloe – sporting those yellow flowers. And Son … Son was wrong …
What had Annie meant when she said those words? Wrong about what?
‘Okay, chaps and chappesses, that’s about a wrap!
’ Jim’s cheerful tones broke into her different trains of thought.
‘I hope tha’s learned a thing or two. And I have to say, because the company tell me to, but I do happen to think it’s a fact worth sharing, that some eighty per cent of people who take this course do not go on and reoffend.
So, let’s hope tha’s not one of the twenty per cent that presumably do! ’
It was with a huge feeling of lightening relief that Thelma shut down the laptop and replaced Teddy’s glasses with her own.
She unwound the green and purple scarf from round her head and changed the garish lemon-yellow blouse for her own white one.
Both scarf and blouse were ones she had ‘borrowed’ from the charity shop where she worked.
Both were going straight back there at the first opportunity.
With any luck even if she came face to face with Noah, Jim or any of the course members they would not equate her with the gaudily dressed woman she’d been five minutes before.
She picked up the hairbrush to restore some order to her greying bob, and frowned, brush poised in her hand.
Quite unconsciously something had flitted across her mind, something she knew to be of importance.
What? Brushing her hair she reviewed her recent thoughts: judgement, Davey’s crash, golden lads and lasses, Noah’s room … What was it?
With a sigh she opened the door and Snaffles shot in and took a bold leap onto the dressing table, sniffing the laptop before walking firmly and territorially across the keyboard, realising it had been turned off and turning away in disgust. Thelma turned her phone on; whatever the thought had been it had gone, for now.
Her phone buzzed. Three missed calls from Caro Miranda.
With a dropping feeling of sad anticipation, she dialled.
‘Hello? Thelma?’ Caro’s voice sounded different … broken.
‘Caro, you called me?’
‘Yes …’ It sounded as if Caro was having trouble putting her words together. ‘Yes, thank you for calling me back. I thought you’d want to know, Annie Golightly died early this morning.’
‘I see.’ Although the news wasn’t totally surprising Thelma found herself sinking down on the bed, hands trembling. ‘I’m so very sorry,’ she said. There was a pause. ‘Hello?’
‘Yes, I’m still here.’ Caro’s voice was cracked and congested. ‘You must forgive me.’
‘Not at all,’ said Thelma. ‘There’s absolutely nothing to apologise for.’
‘Of everyone I’ve ever known, Annie had so much life—’
‘I only knew her at the end,’ she said. ‘But I know exactly what you mean.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Caro, ‘as a person of God, I find there’s what I know in my heart and what I know in my head. And sometimes the two don’t connect.’
‘I completely understand,’ said Thelma.
‘I believe you do.’ There was a pause, a muffled sob. ‘It’s just … I’ve known so many people, so many people who have died in all sorts of ways – but with Annie, she had so much life … there’s a real sense of loss … of a light gone out before its time.’
‘Yes,’ said Thelma.
Again, that image came before her, a wrecked car at the side of a moorland road.
Golden lads and lasses.
There was a sigh down the end of the phone. ‘There’s something I need to say,’ said Caro. ‘I lied to you. I mean I could try and dress it up because I know there’s no way Chloe Lord went to confront Neville. I just know, but—’
‘But you didn’t actually follow her home, did you?’ supplied Thelma. ‘Yes, I rather thought so.’
‘Am I such a bad liar?’ There was an ironic tone in Caro’s voice. ‘Maybe that’s something to be thankful for.’
‘It was what you said to me,’ said Thelma. ‘How you went on to a PCC meeting after the ceremony. I know PCC meetings – and I don’t know of any that start any later than seven thirty. People are so prone to ramble on. And I’ve certainly never heard of any that last just an hour.’
‘I see,’ said Caro. ‘Well, I’m sorry anyway, but you have to trust me – there is no way Chloe confronted Neville.’
‘I wonder, Caro,’ said Thelma. ‘Could I ask you something? It may seem unconnected but believe me it’s important.’
‘Of course.’ The voice sounded slightly sharpened by curiosity.
‘The memorial service. That sonnet Bun Widdup read out.’
‘Yes? What about it?’
‘Did you happen to film it?’
There was a pause. Then: ‘Yes, I did.’
‘I’m wondering, could you send me a copy? I can’t say why, but it’s important.’
‘I can’t, I’m sorry,’ said Caro. ‘I deleted it.’
‘I see,’ said Thelma.
‘I’m telling you the truth,’ said Caro. ‘Annie asked me to.’
‘Annie did?’
‘It was the last time I saw her – a couple of days ago – she asked if I had it on my phone. She said how Son didn’t want any recordings of the service and asked me to delete it. So, it’s gone. But I can remember the poem. I could send you a link if you want to read it.’
After the call had ended, Thelma stayed sitting on the bed, hands no longer trembling but folded.
Son didn’t want any recordings of the memorial? Why?