Death of a Teacher (28 page)

Ro smiled. She often wondered if Suzy had picked up any vibes about the way she felt about Phil, but her friend was rattling on.

‘We’re sort of having the honeymoon in advance. We’re taking the kids to Canada in August. Robert’s found some second cousins over there who have 
a cottage on Sharbot Lake; it sounds wonderful. It’ll be our last holiday with Jake I suppose. He’s taking his exams next year and then he wants a gap year before going to university. Time really flies – they grow up so soon.’

‘Gosh. I expect that will happen with Ben one of these days. When he’s had his eye operation.’ Ro looked worried for a minute. ‘It’s confirmed for the end of this month.’

‘Oh, Ro! Fingers crossed. But at least when he sees you properly, he’ll see you looking good. You’re a changed woman now from when I met you at St Mungo’s.’

Ro’s smile faded and she fingered the scar on the side of her face. Suzy had never asked her about it but this time she leant forward. ‘The scar isn’t bad, Ro. Not when you get used to it.’

‘But Ben hasn’t really seen it. I’ll have to tell him how it happened.’

‘Did someone do it to you?’

Ro sipped her coffee. ‘Yes. Someone did it.’

‘Who?’

‘Ben did it.’

‘What?’

‘After I split up with Ben’s father I had a disastrous affair. There’s no need for me to go into details, but it wasn’t good. We ricocheted from row to row. He wasn’t violent, but he was manipulative. Some people enjoy the
vulnerability
that goes with disability. He’s miles away from here, thank God, and he doesn’t know where we are.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Ben heard us fighting one night. He was much feebler then. He must have been really disturbed to get himself out of his cot. Either that or I was too stressed to put the bars up properly. He tumbled down the stairs and I went to catch him. It was probably that fall which started off the cataracts. They can be caused by trauma in children, you know.’

‘I wondered about that. I thought cataracts just happened to old people.’

‘No. A bad fall and bang to the head can do it. And, of course, Ben couldn’t balance properly. I tried to catch him but I had a wine glass in my hand. I always did in those days. The glass smashed into my face. After they bandaged me up I didn’t go back to the flat. We ran away and went to my mother’s. I swore after that that I would forget about relationships with men, and look after my son.’ Ro felt herself squirm with embarrassment, but for the first time in years the idea of having a good friend – a friend who knew everything – appealed to her.
We mustn’t outstay our welcome. We mustn’t get dependent on people
. The things she had said to Ben. All that had to change now.

‘What a terrible thing to happen,’ Suzy said. ‘But you know, the scar is much less noticeable now. And it rather fits your image as a cop. Which 
reminds me, there’s another thing I don’t understand about that awful murder business. I still think something more was bugging Molly and Becky.’

‘That weird poltergeist idea?’

‘Well, I never got my potato peeler back. But no, not that. The girls still seem to have a secret. It worries me.

Ro nodded. In the last few weeks she had gone over and over Kevin’s death. He had murdered Richard Rudder and Brenda Hodgson in order to retain John Rudder’s money and prevent either Becky or John’s sons
inheriting
. That much seemed certain. But, like Suzy, Ro was niggled by something too. ‘I agree. It isn’t all explained. However I look at it, I can’t see that Kevin did this by himself, yet I can’t see why Liz would help him. She wanted John to die, but Kevin wanted him to stay alive. They wanted opposite things.’

‘So if it wasn’t Liz, who was it?’

‘I don’t know. And anyway, it’s not my job to find out. I’m quite happy with angry market-traders and rows over dog mess in the park now. I’m a PCSO and I like it that way.’

But even as she said it, Ro knew that she would always wonder who had also been there at the deaths of Richard Rudder and Brenda Hodgson. However she looked at it, she couldn’t imagine Kevin with a cat-skinner knife.

B
ecky and Molly were at St Mungo’s school putting the finishing touches to the mural, when Becky’s face whitened and she grabbed her stomach.

‘Yow. That really hurt,’ she said.

‘Too many chips?’ Molly asked solicitously. She had recently given up eating fatty food with remarkable ease, but she knew how tempting it could be.

‘No, ouch. I’d better get to the loo. Tell Miss MacDonald I’ll be back in a minute.’

Molly went on, carefully colouring in the blue sky above the chapel. Becky had been back at school for only a few weeks, but already it seemed as if the horrible mess of the spring was a long time ago. Becky was much better now, and though she went to most places with Judith in the car, she was nearly back to normal. Miss MacDonald had spent a lot of time with the two girls and they’d discussed everything that had happened. It had helped them both a lot to talk about it all.

With the exception of one thing …

‘Molly, that’s lovely,’ Miss MacDonald said, coming back into the art room. Her eyes flickered towards the window. Molly wondered if her new boyfriend Jed, the good-looking policeman, would be picking her up that evening.

‘Oh!’ Miss MacDonald said. ‘There’s Jed’s car. I’ll just pop out and tell him we’ll be another few minutes. Just carry on.’

Molly concentrated hard on the two types of blue she wanted for the sky – clear bright blue, and a sort of grey blue for round the edges. You never got just one colour in a west coast sky. The mural was nearly finished and the concert was to be the next week. Molly was proud of it. When she looked up, Becky was there. Her eyes were as big as Molly had ever seen and she clutched her stomach.

‘Moll, I think I’ve started!’ 

‘Have you? Crikey!’

‘Yes. It’s just a little bit of blood. But I feel really faint and my tummy was agony in there.’

‘Have you got a pad thing in your shoe bag just in case?’

‘Yes and I’ve applied it according to the instructions. It feels like a nappy.’

‘Better get used to it. What a bugger. I thought I’d be first because I’m so big.’

‘You never can tell.’ Becky slid down and Molly slithered over to join her on the art-room floor.

‘I’ll have to tell Gran,’ Becky sighed. ‘And she’ll make a huge fuss.’

‘It had to happen some time. So now you’re grown up.’

‘I feel just the same, except for the tummy ache. It’s not what it’s cracked up to be. But I thought it might be coming on. The power’s been lessening a lot lately.’

Molly nodded. Becky had told her about the bell ringing at the chapel, which she remembered through a haze, and the way other metal objects had disappeared. In return Molly had confided that Jake thought Becky had a poltergeist.

‘But it’s not so strong now,’ Becky said.

‘So what will you do if Jonty comes after you again? It saved you twice.’

‘I don’t know.’ Becky frowned. ‘You know, me and Jonty could have the same dad. Grandad wanted to tell me, but Grandma was dead against it. She hates talking about my mum these days. It’s funny, ’cos before she was always the one who was banging on about my mum getting in with a bad crowd, etcetera, etcetera. Now she doesn’t want to talk about it to me, and they’re always discussing it. Sometimes they act as if I can’t hear what they’re saying, when I’m just in the next room.’

‘Mine are like that too. Whispering about getting married, as if it’s going to be a surprise, like, duh. But do you ever think that we should have told the police we saw Jonty at the Marshes when Miss Hodgson was killed?’

‘He’d have killed us, too. Or got Kevin to kill us.’

‘So how did Jonty get to know mad bad Kevin?’

‘I think he knew Kevin through Mrs Rudder, or through other boys’
activities
. Kevin had two sons, you know, in all sorts of clubs. I think Jonty was Kevin’s accomplice. Miss Hodgson was cut up, remember? Why would Kevin do that to her? But Jonty would have enjoyed doing it. He’d have done it to us.’

‘And what about that night, you-know-when? Should you tell about that?’

‘No.’ Becky shook her head. ‘I’m never going to tell them how he got me into that car. He could still come back. He’s evil. We might have the same dad, but he’s got Callie for a mum.’ 

‘And now Mrs Rudder is in a hospital somewhere screaming mad.’ Molly grimaced. ‘Remember Jonty’s song.’ She chanted softly,

‘It all came true, didn’t it?’ Becky whispered. ‘But Callie’s moving away and Jonty’s going with her. With luck we’ll never see him again. And next term we’ll be at Norbridge High. It’s going to be all right. No one will ever know about Jonty if we don’t tell them. And now I’m maturing. All that funny
business
will be over. It’s all right, Molly.’

That night Suzy found the potato peeler at the back of the drawer.

How could I possibly have missed it? she thought. How silly we’ve all been.

Ro arrived at the Cumbria Coast Hospital at eight in the morning on the day after Ben’s operation. He had had a general anaesthetic the afternoon before, as was usual with young people having this operation, and had been dopey when she visited that evening. Though there was no reason to think he would be any more vulnerable than any other twelve year old, she had had another sleepless night. She walked through the ward and saw him sitting up already in his chair.

‘Mum!’

‘How are you, Ben?’

‘I’m great! They’ve just put my drops in but I can see. It’s amazing.’

Ro bent down to kiss him.

‘Can you get me a mirror, Mum?’

‘OK – what for?’

Ben laughed. ‘I’ll show you.’

Ro went to the nurses’ station where they had an old-fashioned hand-held mirror for patients to use when they brushed their hair in bed. She took it over to her son. He held it in front of his eyes and she saw his face grow pink. She had never realized it, but Ben had never seen his own face without his thick glasses. He stared at it.

‘So that’s me,’ he said softly.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Not so ugly, really.’

‘Rather cool in fact.’ 

She said nothing more, but she had the strangest sensation on the side of her face. It was as if the scar was somehow shrinking. Guilt, and responsibility, the fear that one day Ben would blame her for everything, seemed to recede. It had been an accident, that was all. And Ben hadn’t even noticed her own damaged skin. Maybe I haven’t seen my own face properly either, she thought.

‘I need my mobile,’ Ben said. ‘I want to call Becky. I know she was rooting for me.’

Ro felt a slight shiver of uncertainty. She was aware that Ben had been a lot less worried about the operation in the end. ‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘But you didn’t expect Becky to – well – bring you good luck or anything like that? Or have a special influence?’ She could still remember the way Becky seemed somehow to have brought them all together at her cottage. And the way the bell had rung at the chapel.

Ben guffawed. ‘Come off it, Mum. Becky’s great, but she’s not weird. She’s just smart. She got a load of stuff off the web about this op. It sounded like there was nothing to it. She’s clever. And quite pretty.’ He went pink again.

Ro felt herself smiling, a huge big grin – a smile she hadn’t used much for years, embedding itself in her face. The scar crinkled to nothing when she really smiled. Everything was resettling. The world was shifting back on to its axis. Maybe ordinary family life was finally on its way.

That year there was an Indian summer in Norbridge. After a wet August, and a stormy start to September, suddenly there were clear skies. Every morning started with a fresh mist from the sea, which cleared to become a halcyon day. Ben Watson’s eye operation had been a great success – and he also got a quad bike, courtesy of Phil Dixon, much to his mother’s
embarrassment
, but she could hardly give it back once it arrived. She suspected her colleague PC Jackson of tipping off his uncle that a quad bike would transform Ben’s mobility. But Jed maintained he’d had far too much to think about, walking hand in hand along the shore with Alison MacDonald, talking about art, history, and of course, religion. And sometimes soft furnishings!

The SATs test results for Year Six at St Mungo’s had been good. Molly had done better than anyone expected. She and Becky both started at Norbridge High in September.

‘You must be pleased,’ Jed said to Alison, as they strolled along, eating the last of Briggs’ ice cream one particularly warm Monday evening a week into the autumn term. ‘How’s it going with this new Year Six?’

‘It’s much calmer. No more special scholarships, though nearly every child last year who wanted to get into Dodsworth got in. I don’t think they’ll be 
doing last-minute discounts again. Even Toby Armistead got a place, but for some reason he made a huge fuss about it. He didn’t want to go to Dodsworth, and he’s gone to Norbridge High instead.’

‘And Callie McFadden and Jonty have definitely left Pelliter?’ Jed asked.

‘Yes, though they must be somewhere local. Norbridge, maybe? Jonty was a really nasty piece of work, you know. I think he was one of those people you sometimes meet who are just evil.’

‘But he and Becky had the same father. And there were times when she seemed like a saint.’

‘That’s funny, isn’t it? Jonty was evil, Toby was a sort of everyman, and Becky had some sort of spiritual force, or so Ro believes. The three of them represent everyone. Saint, sinner and Devil. Very Middle Ages. Gets us back to all that medieval art which was behind all this. I gather Richard Rudder’s posthumous thesis was an academic triumph.’

‘Well, we both like art, don’t we?’ Jed said comfortably. ‘We do have a lot in common, Alison. My mum was saying so only the other day.’ Recently Jed had introduced Alison to his parents and vice-versa.

She nodded. ‘How are your mum and dad tonight, after yesterday’s Sunday lunch reunion with Phil and Judith?’

‘OK. They’re beginning to talk about asking them over at Christmas, that sort of thing. It would be good if there was some big sort of family occasion to bring us all together. A wedding, or something like that.’

‘Yes, maybe that would be nice. Well, one step at a time,’ Alison said, and watched her footprints sink into the sand of the Solway shore.

That autumn, Phil Dixon sat a lot on the bench overlooking the sea, and sometimes Ro joined him. Ben’s quad bike was kept permanently at St Trallen’s farm, in an outbuilding. It was easier for him to ride over the dunes and the headland than down the tracks near Burnside.

Phil said, ‘I’m not going to let it drop, Ro. When we finally get over all of this, I’m going to find out what really happened to Samantha. I still don’t believe she took her own life just like that. I know Judith was involved. Something happened between them.’

‘And you really want to know? Wouldn’t it be better just to try and forget it?’ Like me, she thought, living in fear of the past catching up with me.

‘No, not now. I know why Judith dissuaded me from trying to find out. I want to know the whole truth, however painful. You know what I mean, don’t you? I’m running into a crisis, and you’re running away from one. But we have running in common.’

‘Yes, that’s true.’ She shivered.

‘And you’re scared? You don’t seem the scared type.’ 

‘I’m not scared any more. It’s different here. The job, the house and the uniform help. And the new friends.’

‘But you have unfinished business too, don’t you? Don’t you want to revisit the past?’

‘I’m more terrified of the past revisiting me.’

‘Oh, Ro, you’re safe now. I’ll be there for you. I’ll do whatever I can to help. And you know I’d like it to be more….’

‘But it’s fine, Phil. Really. This is perfect for me, now.’

She squeezed his lean brown hand and then withdrew her own. They sat in silence, both frightened of saying more. She knew that the Dixons had settled into an unhappy, undiscussed truce. Phil had chosen for the time being not to ask Judith whether she had ever gone to confront Samantha. And as always where Judith was concerned, it was easier to deal with
practicalities
.

‘We need to get Becky tested for retinitis pigmentosa,’ Judith had said. ‘But at least we’ll know the worst.’ She had jumped at the chance of getting immersed again in dealing with hospitals and authorities and societies. Retinitis pigmentosa wasn’t the end of the world; there was so much that could be done.

No will of John Rudder’s was ever found. Sometimes at night, Becky thought she remembered something about hidden papers, but the memory fluttered away before she could get hold of it. Anyway, life was exciting and busy. Becky spent the long warm autumn weekends with Molly, getting excited about Suzy and Robert’s wedding, or going round on her bike alongside Ben’s quad.

By the autumn things were changing elsewhere in Pelliter. Father Peter Hodgson had a crisis of faith which coincided with a major leak in the roof of his decrepit house. To the relief of Neil Clifford he sold the place, and his sister’s house, and bought a flat in Oxford, where he decided to take a cookery course.

At Norbridge Abbey, the dean had the
Book of St Trallen
re-examined by art experts from London who confirmed that it was one of the oldest and most interesting examples of Fraktur Art, a piece from Ontario painted in the early eighteenth century. It seemed the Victorian family who had owned the land around the ruin of St Trallen’s Chapel had acquired the picture on a trip to Canada, rather than on a Grand Tour of the Continent. They had assumed at once that the weeping woman was St Trallen, with the text from Lamentations and the misleading gothic-style script in Latin, very rare for a Fraktur piece, and a sure sign of its vintage. The big illuminated ‘Trallen’ in Fraktur style could have stood just as easily for the name of a village or family, or even the word for a warbler or weeper.