“She seemed worn down, that night. Unhappy like I’d never seen her before. She said Roy hadn’t been talking to her for ten days when she ran into Satchwell. They’d had a row about his mother walking in and out of the house like she owned it. Margot wanted to redecorate, but Roy said it’d break his mother’s heart if they got rid of any of the things his father loved. So there was Margot, an outsider in her own home, not even allowed to change the ornaments.
“Margot said she’d had a line from Court and Spark running through her head, all day long. Joni Mitchell’s album, Court and Spark,” she said, seeing Robin’s puzzlement. “That was Margot’s religion. Joni Mitchell. She raved about that album. It was a line from the song ‘The Same Situation.’ ‘Caught in my struggle for higher achievements, And my search for love that don’t seem to cease.’ I can’t listen to that album to this day. It’s too painful.
“She told me she went straight home after havin’ the drink with Paul and told Roy what had just happened. I think partly she felt guilty about going for the drink, but partly she wanted to jolt him awake. She was tired and miserable and she was saying someone else wanted me, once. Human nature, isn’t it? ‘Wake up,’ she was saying. ‘You can’t just ignore me and cut me off and refuse all compromises. I can’t live like this.’
“Well, being Roy, he wasn’t the type to fire up and start throwing things. I t’ink she’d have found it easier if he had. He was furious, all right, but he showed it by gettin’ colder and more silent.
“I don’t t’ink he said another word to her until the day she disappeared. She told me on the phone when we arranged the drink for the eleventh, ‘I’m still living in a silent order.’ She sounded hopeless. I remember thinking then, ‘She’s going to leave him.’
“When we met in the pub that last time, I said to her, ‘Satchwell’s not the answer to whatever’s wrong with you and Roy.’
‘We talked about Anna, too. Margot would’ve given anything to take a year or two out and concentrate on Anna, and that’s exactly what Roy and his mother had wanted her to do, stay home with Anna and forget working.
“But she couldn’t. She was still supporting her parents. Her mammy was ill now, and Margot didn’t want her out cleaning houses any more. While she was working, she could look Roy in the face and justify all the money she was giving them, but his mother wasn’t going to let her precious, delicate son work for the benefit of a pair o’ chain-smokin’ Eastenders.”
“Can you remember anything else you talked about?”
“We talked about the Playboy Club, because I was leaving. I’d got my flat and I was thinking of going and studying. Margot was all for it. What I didn’t tell her was, I was thinking of a t’eology degree, what with her attitude to religion.
“We talked about politics, a bit. We both wanted Wilson to win the election. And I told her I was worried I still hadn’t found The One. Over t’irty, I was. That was old, then, for finding a husband.
“Before we said goodbye that night, I said, ‘Don’t forget, there’s always a spare room at my place. Room for a bassinet, as well.’”
Tears welled again in Oonagh’s eyes and trickled down her cheeks. She picked up her napkin and pressed it to her face.
“I’m sorry. Forty years ago, but it feels like yesterday. They don’t disappear, the dead. It’d be easier if they did. I can see her so clearly. If she walked up those steps now, part of me wouldn’t be surprised. She was such a vivid person. For her to disappear like that, just thin air where she was…”
Robin said nothing until Oonagh had wiped her face dry, then asked,
“What can you remember about arranging to meet on the eleventh?”
“She called me, asked to meet same place, same time. I said yes, o’ course. There was something funny in the way she said it. I said, ‘Everything all right?’ She said, ‘I need to ask your advice about something. I might be going mad. I shouldn’t really talk about it, but I t’ink you’re the only one I can trust.’”
Strike and Robin looked at each other.
“Was that not written down anywhere?”
“No,” said Strike.
“No,” said Oonagh, and for the first time she looked angry. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Why not?” asked Robin.
“Talbot was away with the fairies,” said Oonagh. “I could see it in the first five minutes of my interview. I called Roy, I said, ‘That man isn’t right. Complain, tell them you want someone else on the case.’ He didn’t, or if he did, nothing was done.
“And Lawson t’ought I was some silly little Bunny Girl,” said Oonagh. “Probably t’ought I was tellin’ fibs, trying to make myself interesting off the back of my best friend disappearing. Margot Bamborough was more like a sister than a friend to me,” said Oonagh fiercely, “and the on’y person I’ve ever really talked to about her is my husband. I cried all over him, two days before we got married, because she should’ve been there. She should’ve been my matron of honor.”
“Have you got any idea what she was going to ask your advice about?” asked Robin.
“No,” said Oonagh. “I’ve t’ought about it often since, whether it could have had anything to do with what happened. Something about Roy, perhaps, but then why would she say she shouldn’t talk about it? We’d already talked about Roy. I’d told her as plain as I could, the last time we met, she could come and live with me if she left, Anna as well.
“Then I t’ought, maybe it’s something a patient has told her, because like I said, she was scrupulous about confidentiality.
“Anyway, I walked up that hill
