The thought of her childhood filled her with nostalgia, and sadness that her parents were no longer alive. Life hadn’t been bad for them. Her mother had busied herself around the house, ensuring her man was fed and Wendy was looked after. Neither of her parents had ever travelled, apart from the occasional bus trip into Sheffield, a one-week honeymoon in Scarborough on the North Yorkshire coast, the photos on the sideboard in the farmhouse. And then her mother, still relatively young, a cheery red-faced woman in her early fifties, had keeled over in the kitchen and died. Her father had laboured on at the farm, and then he was gone, and Wendy was perilously edging towards the age when they had died.
‘You’re here about Christine,’ Hislop, a man who clearly enjoyed beer and calorie-rich, oily food, his paunch testament to one, his greasy complexion the other, said.
‘I understand that you and she were friendly some years ago.’
The two were sitting in Hislop’s office. Down below, the sound of panel beaters at work. To Wendy, the late-model Toyota they were labouring on looked like a write-off.
‘Business good?’ Wendy asked.
‘It’s a living. Not as good as it used to be, not so many accidents. I’d do something else, but I’ve been fixing cars for most of my life.’
‘They’re better built, not so prone to damage.’
‘Nowadays, a lot of plastic, swapping body panels, not a lot of working the metal with the tools. We get the occasional classic in here, and they take our time. But that’s not why you’re here. You’ve got a few questions.’
‘Christine Mason, what can you tell me about her?’
‘Beautiful woman in her day, not that I was looking that closely.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was seventeen, hormones going crazy, attempting to grab every stray female I could. I assume you don’t want the version that comes with maturity and getting older.’
‘You’re telling it fine. You’re a rampant testosterone-fuelled young man who’s trying to get it off with every female.’
‘Christine was a looker, probably still is.’
‘You’ve not seen her for some time?’
‘Not since I split with her sister.’
‘Over twenty years, then.’
‘If you say so. I’ve not been counting, too busy for that.’
‘Busy with what?’
‘Life. I worked with the tools, and then I bought this business; a couple of wives, a few live-ins.’
‘Children?’
‘Never been blessed,’ Hislop said matter-of-factly.
Wendy wasn’t sure whether the words were glib or whether the recollection of what Christine had done still hurt.
‘Let’s go back to when you were with Christine. What do you know of our interest in her?’
‘Only what you told me on the phone, that she had known the man found in the lake.’
‘Christine was conducting a clandestine affair with this man.’
‘That’d be Christine.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I was seventeen, but still, I had a sense of the future. Sure, I wanted to have a few too many drinks, brag to my mates about which woman I’d slept with, which one was begging for it. We all did then. Silly and childish, but when you’re young…’
‘At least you remember the reality, not that it helped the women, just teenagers struggling to come to terms with growing up, their bodies changing, the confusion that they wanted to be with a man, the knowledge that they’d be called a slag afterwards, the banter of drunken humour.’
‘Sorry,’ Hislop said. ‘I touched a raw nerve.’
‘You didn’t,’ Wendy said. ‘I needed to know if you were a decent man; if I could trust you.’
‘Can you?’
‘Let’s proceed. Christine’s easy, I know that. Not only back then.’
‘I was seventeen, silly and stupid as I said, but I’d known the sisters all my life, even when we were toddlers. It was always Gwen for me, but she’s not the same as her sister. She’s the ring on the finger type, and I was hot, and there’s Christine. That’s how it was. It was only a couple of times, and Gwen never knew, married me at nineteen. Happy as could be, I was.’
‘You seemed to resent my coming here when I phoned you from London.’
‘Just suspicious as to your motives. As I said, it’s been a long time since Gwen and Christine.’
‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’
Hislop called out through the office door. ‘Mavis, a couple of teas if you don’t mind. Two sugars and milk for me.’
‘The same for me,’ Wendy said. Looking at the state of the office, the general decay, the dirt on the floor, it was clear to her that the business wasn’t prospering and that money was tight.
Mavis came in, left the teas on Hislop’s desk, smiled at Wendy, winked at Hislop. Wendy could see that the man’s taste in women was suburban. Mavis was no Christine, not even a Wendy Gladstone, but a woman in her forties, her arms covered in tattoos, even the knuckles of the fingers. She also smelt of mothballs, and her taste in clothing was eclectic. All in all, Wendy had to admit to not being impressed with the man’s assistant.
Wendy took a drink from her mug. ‘I know about the child,’ she said.
‘It was only later that we found out that I was at fault. I blamed Gwen, thought that she was not getting pregnant to spite me.’
‘But I thought you two were in love, destined for each other.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘The marriage soured?’
‘No violence, no harsh words, but the love that I felt for her didn’t last, the same for her. We divorced, and that was that. I’ve not seen her for a very long time. How is she?’
‘Both women are fine,’ Wendy said. She wasn’t in Liverpool to reunite old friends, to natter about past loves, lost
