Chapter 57
FIFTY-SEVEN
She took the children to a café to break the gruesome news about the pond.
Both were upset before she even started.
Will was being teased at school, he told her miserably – other boys were making a gun shape with their fingers, putting it into their mouths and pretending to pull the trigger – while Tilly reported that girls in her class were saying she had nasty parents.
Kate spent a bit of time unpicking those developments first – people didn’t necessarily mean to be cruel, they were just insensitive and trying to get a reaction, and so on – but inwardly she was seething.
If it got any worse, she’d definitely be marching into both schools to demand the heads did something.
They made such a big deal of having counsellors and pastoral care on tap for tragedies these days; how could they let their pupils be so brutal to two children who’d been traumatised by suicide?
The news about the body in the pond, therefore, fell on already poisoned ground. Will said immediately, ‘It’s like Trade Cottage is cursed,’ and Tilly started crying.
‘It would have been a very long time ago,’ Kate said, trying to reassure them. ‘Before you were even born.’
‘That makes it worse,’ Will said. ‘Think how long it’s been lying there, with no one even knowing.’ He shuddered. ‘I fell in that pond once. I could have stood on it.’
‘I want to go back to London,’ Tilly said wistfully. ‘Nothing bad ever happened there.’
Strictly speaking, that wasn’t true, but right now Kate didn’t feel like disagreeing.
By the time they got home, most of the police vehicles had gone.
That was something, at least. There was just one left – occupied, Kate saw as they passed it, by Sergeant Dickinson.
On guard duty, presumably, to make sure no one interfered with the scene.
Kate waved as she passed, and made a mental note to go out later, to see if there was anything she needed.
It might be the pond the sergeant was officially guarding, but Kate couldn’t help feeling safer for having a police presence at Trade Cottage.
As the three of them went towards the front door, she glanced back and saw Liv Hoggart from the book club, carrying a bunch of flowers.
Assuming she was coming to the house, Kate waited for her.
Then she realised Liv was heading for the police barrier tape round the pond.
Crouching down, she placed the flowers on the ground next to it.
As she stood up, she saw Kate. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said, indicating the flowers.
‘Of course not,’ Kate said. ‘That’s a lovely thing to do. She might be a stranger, but we can still treat her with respect.’
To her surprise, Liv started to cry.
‘What is it?’ Kate asked.
Liv gulped. ‘I don’t think she was. A stranger, I mean. People are saying it’s Martina.’ She saw Kate’s puzzled look and explained, ‘Our au pair.’
Kate took her inside. She knew Liv had been in the area a long time, but she hadn’t realised that she grew up in Roley, just a few miles away.
‘Lots of people had au pairs, in those days,’ Liv said, as Kate made a pot of tea.
‘Even if you didn’t work, like my mum, having four kids was exhausting and an extra pair of hands really helped.
They didn’t get paid much – around fifty pounds a week, I think – but they got bed and board and the chance to travel.
Mostly they came through agencies, but Martina had been in the local paper, so Mum contacted her through that. ’
‘And when she went missing, it was completely out of the blue?’ Kate asked, bringing the tea over to the island. ‘There was nothing that led up to it?’
Liv wiped away a tear with her finger. ‘I didn’t think there was, at the time.
I mean, I was only eleven. I really liked her.
She was quite glamorous – she wore a lot of make-up, and she had all these miniskirts and tight tops.
Guy Pelham used to come by in his sports car sometimes, to take her to the pub. ’
‘She knew Guy?’
Liv nodded. ‘There was this whole group of young people, seventeen-, eighteen-, nineteen-year-olds knocking about, a bit bored and getting up to mischief. I mean, it’s not like there’s that much to do in the country, so people made their own entertainment.’
‘What kind of entertainment?’ Kate asked, thinking of the party venue in the cellar.
Liv shrugged. ‘So, for example, Guy’s car was low enough that he could come up alongside a pheasant and then Jamie could quickly whack the passenger door open to kill it. Or they’d drive round shooting at the road signs with air rifles. Classic young farmers’ stuff.’
‘Sounds lovely,’ Kate said. ‘But they were neither of them farmers, surely?’
‘Oh – no, I meant the Young Farmers’ Club. It was them who organised most of the social stuff round here. It had a pretty rowdy reputation.’
‘And Martina was part of that scene?’
Liv pulled a face. ‘Kind of. She certainly went out a lot. My parents weren’t very happy about it, but the arrangement was she had to stay in two nights a week to babysit, and the other evenings were her own.
Once, Mum made a comment about her burning the candle at both ends, and she just shrugged and said, ‘I’ve only got two years to find myself a husband. ’
‘She actually said that?’ Kate asked, surprised.
Liv nodded. ‘It was half a joke. But that was the thing with Martina – you couldn’t always tell when she was joking.
And she also talked about applying for refugee status, or about this friend of hers who’d moved to London and was waitressing without papers – no one ever checked, apparently.
But, when she vanished, we were sure it wasn’t that – she’d left most of her stuff behind, for one thing.
And she’d told Mum she’d only be gone a couple of days.
That was something she did sometimes – went away for a night or two.
They assumed it was with a boyfriend, but she was quite cagey about it – she never gave them a name. ’
Liv was silent a moment. ‘I used to ask her about boys. I mean, I was just at the age where I’d have loved to hear her go on about her Prince Charming or whatever. But she’d just laugh and say, “Oh, I don’t have time for boyfriends.” Like that would have been soppy.’
‘Could she have been seeing Jamie Finch?’ Kate asked.
Liv looked startled. ‘It’s possible, I suppose.
But if so, it was very under-the-radar. All the girls were after Jamie – you should have seen the way they flocked round him at the tennis courts or in the pub.
He never had a girlfriend for more than a week or two.
He and Guy and their friends from private school were like this herd of young gods, all headed for Oxford or Cirencester or wherever.
They didn’t want to tie themselves down before they got there. ’
A thought occurred to Kate. ‘What if she was pregnant?’
Liv’s eyes widened. ‘Martina?’
Kate nodded. ‘This is pure speculation, obviously, but what if she was? And then told the father she was going to keep it . . . I’m pretty sure the authorities wouldn’t be able to send her back to a war zone then. And she’d be entitled to child support from the father, too.’
Liv looked shocked. ‘You can’t know that’s what happened.’
‘No,’ Kate admitted. ‘But it could explain a lot, couldn’t it? Why she died – maybe even why she was here, in Trade Cottage’s pond—’
‘You’re saying Jamie might have killed her?’ Liv said, appalled. ‘I know you and he haven’t been getting on since he came back, but that’s a wicked thing to suggest. Particularly with no evidence whatsoever.’
Oh dear, Kate thought. Liv was right, of course – she might dislike Jamie, but she had absolutely no grounds for pinning a decades-old death on him.
And, caught up in following her own, undoubtedly biased, train of thought, she’d voiced out loud suspicions that were probably better kept to herself, given the febrile atmosphere in Pelham just then.
She said quickly, ‘I shouldn’t have said that – you’re right, it’s just idle speculation and I’m probably letting everything that’s been going on colour my judgement.’
But she couldn’t help adding, ‘The police have taken away an old sofa from the cellar, for forensic examination. Whatever happened, I’m sure they’ll get to the bottom of it.’
Liv nodded, mollified. ‘Will you be coming to the next book club? It’s at Sally’s house.’
‘Oh . . .’ Kate was tempted to snap that of course she wasn’t going to book club, not when Sally seemed to be one of those who thought she was responsible for Paul’s death, but she decided, this time, to keep her own counsel.
‘I’d love to,’ she lied, ‘but I’m just a bit busy with everything that’s going on.’