‘Did you find it okay?’ Rosemary must have come into the house without Vera noticing.
‘Yeah, fine, thanks.’ Vera paused. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t help nebbing. It goes with the job, I’m afraid.’
‘You do know Josh would never harm a fly,’ Rosemary said. ‘We’re a close family.’
‘I can see that, pet.’ Vera looked again at the photos and let herself out.
Back in her cottage, Vera lit the fire and sat for a while at the table. She took a large sheet of paper and began drawing a chart, all circles and lines. A way of making sense of the complex relationships. There were three families all linked. The Falstones: Robert and Jill and baby Thomas, tied by blood to Lorna, but tied, it seemed, by little else. The Heslops, the happy family: parents Rosemary and Neil and the kids, Josh, Nettie and Cath. They were linked to Lorna in more ways than Vera had first supposed. Neil had found the body, the girls had been in Brockburn when Lorna had died, and Josh had become a recent friend. Then there were the Stanhopes at the big house. Because Mark had become a Stanhope by marrying Juliet, whatever name he called himself. Mark had a girlfriend, according to rumour, and Lorna took the bus occasionally to Newcastle to meet up with a wealthy man. Also linked to the Stanhopes were Dorothy Felling and Karan Pabla, and Paul and Sophie Blackstock. Too many people.
At the centre of the circle sat Lorna Falstone, the lost little girl who seemed to be growing in confidence, taking tentative steps out into the world, exploring her feelings through art. Making new friends. But just as life was getting better, as she was getting stronger, she was killed. Vera wondered if there was any significance in that. Had the shrinking, cowed Lorna been allowed to live, while the more confident Lorna posed a danger and had to die? But why then, in a blizzard in the grounds of Brockburn? Could it be so the Stanhopes would be implicated? Were they implicated? Surely, that was a ridiculous idea.
Vera got to her feet and tipped more coal onto the fire. She poured herself a glass of whisky and raised a silent toast to the young woman she’d never known, but with whom she felt an unlikely affinity, the woman who would haunt her thoughts and dreams until the investigation was over.
Chapter Nineteen
MONDAY MORNING AND JOE WAS ON his way to the private hospital where Lorna had been treated as an inpatient for anorexia. The website said Halstead House was the only place specifically treating inpatient adolescents with eating disorders in the UK. The medics specialized in the physical and psychiatric effects of the illness and there were counsellors and complementary therapists. Joe supposed Sophie Blackstock had been involved with that group. As far as he could tell, the place wasn’t part of a large private health organization, but had been founded by a psychiatrist whose daughter had died from anorexia and the bereaved doctor had made treatment and research into the disease her life’s work.
The website showed a beautiful country house bathed in sunshine. Joe found this suspicious: the place was just over the border in Cumbria and whenever he’d been to the county it had been raining. The photos showed smiling staff, but few patients. The fees listed made his eyes water. A month’s stay would cost almost as much as the deposit on his house.
His phone call the day before had been answered by a Scottish woman, who had been polite and professional, even friendly, but had managed to give him no information at all about Lorna. She’d said that there was nobody else he could talk to: ‘Many of our patients have family visits on Sunday, or they’re out on a day’s home leave. Because of that, there are routinely few clinical staff on site. No, I’m sorry, I really can’t pass on our colleagues’ home phone numbers.’
Joe had supposed she must be used to dealing with tense and anxious parents. He’d fumed gently and made an appointment to visit the following day.
He’d set out early. The weather had changed again; the wind was back from the north, but the sky was cloudless. He’d woken to a frost, ice on the windscreen. When he’d checked his phone before setting off, there’d been an email from Vera, with details about her trip to the Heslops’ farm. We need to check out the arty boy. The royal ‘we’. Still giving her orders, even at a distance and in the middle of the night. Vera having Wi-Fi installed at the cottage had been a very mixed blessing. He’d messaged her back to remind her that he’d be at the clinic for most of the day and received no reply. The sun came up behind him just as he crossed the Northumberland border.
There was a discreet sign by the gate: Halstead House Private Hospital. The building was hidden from the road by a line of poplars and came into view as he drove round a curve in the drive. The place was built of weathered red brick, large but not grand or imposing like Brockburn, more domestic in scale. Joe thought it might have been built by a Victorian mine owner who’d wanted an escape from the grime of the Northumberland coalfields. A veranda ran around the front of the house, looking down over the
