Laura gave a sort of snort. “You were a slut,” she said.
Tabitha had a sudden flashback, so vivid that it was like she was there. Just once, Stuart had taken her to his house. He had led her up to the bedroom where he had started to undress her. He did it in a businesslike way, as if she were a parcel whose contents he already knew but which needed to be opened. She didn’t have any say in it and the unwrapping was a little awkward. He had pushed her back onto the bed so that he could pull her shoes and socks off. Then he had lifted her to her feet and started undoing the buttons on her blouse. She had looked round and seen his wife’s dressing table, pots of cream, lipstick, little jewelry boxes.
When she was fully undressed, he had stepped back and looked at her, standing there among his wife’s intimate belongings. Now, all these years later, Tabitha understood that she was an object placed among other objects. Why had she not said no, shouted no? Undressing her there, in his wife’s bedroom, that must have been part of the thrill for Stuart; he was treating both her and Laura with derision, and she—usually so surly and stubborn—had let him. She had had no power, maybe just the novelty of being someone helpless and young and unformed compared with the wife he’d grown tired of. A woman of what? Thirty-five, forty?
“I was a child,” she replied at last. “He was my teacher.”
For a moment something in Laura’s face shifted, like the stony mask was going to crack apart. Then it hardened again.
“Fifteen-year-olds aren’t children,” she said.
“I was.”
“I haven’t come here to listen to you saying you’re a victim.”
“Someone wrote a letter to the police,” said Tabitha. “Telling them about me and Stuart. Was it you?”
“If I wanted to tell the police, do you think I’d need to write an anonymous letter?”
“So why didn’t you tell the police?”
Laura’s expression became even blanker, almost frozen.
“People always blame the wife. They say she must have known. Or they say it was her fault really. I must have been a nag, I must have been frigid, I must have been boring, I must have been a doormat.” She looked at Tabitha contemptuously. “Nobody from the outside can know what a marriage is like. Why would I wash my dirty linen in public? Anyway, I didn’t need to tell them; they had enough evidence without it. Now everyone will have to know.” She leaned forward. There was a fleck of pink lipstick on her front tooth. “My son will know. It makes a mockery.”
“A mockery of what?”
“Of me. A mockery of me.”
Tabitha stared at her. “I’m in prison,” she said. “If I’m found guilty I’ll be here for years and years. And I didn’t do it. That’s a mockery.”
Laura started to speak and then stopped. It seemed to take an effort to say what she wanted to say. Finally she got the words out.
“He said you made the first move. He said you had a crush on him and caught him at a vulnerable time. You . . .” She hesitated again. “You were intimate just the once and then he ended it.”
None of it was true, absolutely none of it.
“Do you believe that?”
“Years ago I decided that it didn’t matter what I believed or didn’t believe.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t suppose you do.” Her face contorted, became briefly ugly. “I’ve watched you walking around the village in your torn jeans and ridiculous jacket and with paint in your hair, in your own little world. But people like me—”
“People like you?”
“Decent people,” said Laura.
“What do people like you do?”
Laura looked away, out of the window at the blank gray sky. “I don’t even know why I’m talking to you.” She turned back to Tabitha. “Have you had other visitors?”
“Shona came, Shona Fry. And the vicar.”
“Did she offer you religious consolation?”
“I don’t believe in God.”
“Then that made two of you. A vicar who doesn’t believe in God. That’s what we’ve come to.”
Tabitha wanted to ask her about the day of the murder, but held her peace.
“It drove Stuart mad,” said Laura. She was suddenly almost chatty, in a fierce way.
Tabitha made a murmuring sound to encourage her.
“He actually made an official complaint.”
“Really?”
“That was one thing about Stuart, he was very good at making complaints. He always knew who to complain to. He used to say you had to go to the top. He once wrote a letter to the CEO of a DIY chain about poor service.”
“Who did he complain to about Mel?”
“The bishop, of course.”
“What happened?”
Laura seemed suddenly aware that she was talking to Tabitha as if she were, if not a friend, at least not an enemy. Her face emptied of expression and she drummed her fingers on the table.
“Could you tell me about the day it happened?” Tabitha asked.
Laura shrugged. “I haven’t anything to say. I wasn’t there.”
“Where were you?”
“I had a job.”
“I don’t even properly know what your job is.”
“I’m an estate agent. I was going to show someone a property, along the coast in Denham. I drove there but the client didn’t turn up, so I drove back to the office.”
Tabitha considered this. “Why didn’t the client turn up?”
“I don’t know. He just didn’t.”
“He.”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“I’ve never seen him.”
“What? Never? He sounds like someone the police should talk to.”
“They haven’t been able to find him. Yet.”
“But isn’t that a really big deal?” said Tabitha. “He rings you . . . What’s his name?”
“He said he was called Mike Wilson.”
“Mike Wilson. That sounds fake.”
“Why?”
“It just does. So someone calls you to get you out of the way. That’s important.”
“That’s what it’s like being an estate agent. People make appointments and break them.”
“I suppose they can trace him through his phone.”
“You’d think so.”
“Does that mean they haven’t?”
“I’m sure they will.”
Tabitha wished she had brought a pen and paper with her. She had
