Holly nodded. She seemed happy enough. Vera thought she was getting the hang of working with the woman. It didn’t take more than a little bit of praise and recognition to keep her sweet. Vera didn’t usually have the time or the energy to massage egos, but perhaps with Holly Jackman it was worth the effort.
‘Joe, you’re off to talk to that midwife, Olivia. I have high hopes of that interview.’
She waved them away then, and sat alone in the empty room, thinking again of Thomas, no mother and no father as far as the rest of the world was concerned. It seemed to her then that the child, present at Lorna’s abduction, their only real witness, was at the centre of the case. The adults wheeled around him like planets round the sun.
Chapter Twenty-Five
JOE HAD ARRANGED TO TALK TO the midwife Olivia Best after she’d come off shift in the morning. ‘I can’t sleep as soon as I get home anyway,’ she’d said when he’d phoned the day before. ‘I need to wind down a bit. If you get to the house about eight-forty-five, my daughter will have left for school and we’ll be able to talk.’
That meant he was around to see his kids off to school too and to give Sal a bit of a lie-in and a cup of tea in bed. Build up all the Brownie points he’d need if this case dragged on into the Christmas school holidays. Or if he had to miss the middle lad’s nativity play.
Olivia had changed out of her uniform and was sitting at the kitchen table, looking as knackered as you would if you’d been pulling out babies all night. The house was on the same executive estate as the one where he and Sal lived and the interior felt much the same too. The furniture could have come from the same online company, though Sal would have cleared all the mucky plates into the dishwasher if she was expecting company. He thought he’d seen the midwife a few times in the school playground. She nodded as if she recognized him too. ‘You’re Sal’s bloke.’ No answer needed.
She pushed the pot and a mug towards him. ‘Milk’s in the fridge.’
He helped himself. He could tell how much effort it would take for her to get to her feet.
‘Lorna Falstone,’ he said.
‘I hadn’t heard about it. It’s been a crazy few weeks. I couldn’t believe it when you told me.’
‘You saw her the day before she died?’
‘Aye. Poor, poor lass.’
‘How did you know her?’
She didn’t answer.
‘I know confidentiality’s important,’ he said. ‘I won’t ask for the names of the other group members, unless there’s someone she was especially close to, someone she might have confided in.’
Still it seemed she couldn’t bring herself to speak.
‘Have you suffered from an eating disorder yourself?’ He realized how difficult this was for her. It wasn’t just exhaustion that was preventing her from speaking. ‘You know I won’t tell anyone. Not Sal or any of the other mams.’
‘I have,’ she said. ‘So has everyone in the group.’ A pause. She stared at him over the rim of her mug. ‘Some of us had been close to death but we found our way out of it. And after Lorna had done so well – she was strong enough to give birth to a child and not everyone who’s recovered from anorexia manages to get pregnant. Then to be killed like that. It’s heartbreaking.’ She was almost in tears.
‘Lorna phoned you the Thursday before she died.’
‘Yes. Early in the morning. I’d been working nights then too and I’d only just come off shift. She was in such a state I couldn’t work out what the problem was over the phone. She said she’d tried to phone Joanne, the psychologist at Halstead House, but there’d been no answer. She sounded so desperate that I offered to go to Kirkhill, but she didn’t want to meet there. She said she needed to get away from the place for a bit, so she’d get the bus into Kimmerston and come here.’
‘She didn’t say she’d borrow her friend’s car and drive over?’ Joe thought that was strange. The bus to Kimmerston might be quicker than the one into Newcastle but it would still take longer than the car.
‘No. She said then she’d have to explain where she was going and anyway, she didn’t want to trouble Connie with any more of her problems. She’d bothered the poor woman enough. This was a decision she’d have to make on her own.’
‘So, she had a decision to make?’ This was useful, Joe thought. If Lorna was close enough to Olivia to have explained that she was friendly with Miss Browne, perhaps she’d confided the name of her child’s father to her too. It seemed that Connie had known more about Lorna and Thomas than she’d let on to Vera.
‘Yes.’ Still there was no real explanation. Joe sat quietly. Let the midwife tell the story in her own time. ‘It was mid-morning before Lorna got here. She’d had to drop Thomas with Connie and then wait for the bus. I was shattered. It had been a hard night – on the ward we’d come close to losing a baby – and all I wanted was
