Then she noticed what Julie was doing, saw the one opened card on the table. ‘That’s bonny. Did it come today?’
And for the first time Julie looked at the image on the card. No church this time. It was one of those classy handmade things which cost a fortune. A pressed flower on thick cream card. She was going to pick it up to look at the message on the back, but Vera stopped her, physically stopped her by putting her great paw over Julie’s hand.
‘Humour me, pet. This might be important. Was it delivered today?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Julie said. ‘I haven’t been able to face opening them. They’ve been arriving since Friday.’
‘Still got the envelope?’
‘Aye, it’s there on the table.’
She watched, dazed, while Vera took a pen from her pocket and flipped the envelope over so she could see the postmark and the address. She couldn’t think what could be so important, didn’t really care, stared out of the window at a tractor driving round and round a field in the distance.
‘This isn’t addressed to you,’ she heard Vera say. ‘It’s addressed to Luke.’
Then she did look at the envelope, which was white, not cream, and didn’t seem to belong to the card.
The writing was in black ink, in capitals. LUKE ARMSTRONG, 16 LAUREL WAY, SEATON, NORTHUMBERLAND. No postcode.
She looked up at Vera. ‘That’s wrong,’ she said. ‘This isn’t Laurel Way, it’s Laurel Avenue. Laurel Way is round by the school.’ Still she couldn’t understand what the fuss was about.
‘It was sent on Tuesday,’ Vera said. ‘First-class stamp. If they’d got the address right it’d have got here on Wednesday.’
‘If it’d arrived on Wednesday, Luke would have opened it. No way would I have opened a letter addressed to him. I might not have done it today, if I’d realized. I just assumed it was for me.’ She watched Vera sitting there, frowning. ‘It came with the others on Friday. Must have done. Is it important?’
‘Probably not, pet. Let’s just see what they had to say. Don’t suppose you’ve got a pair of tweezers I could borrow?’
Julie went upstairs to fetch them, glad of the action. Her mother was in the bathroom. Julie could hear the sound of water, then the hiss of the spray cleaner. Every day her mother cleaned the bath, bent over it, rubbing away so you’d think the colour would come off on the cloth. It didn’t make any difference. Julie still hadn’t felt she could use it. But the bathroom door was shut so at least she didn’t have to explain what was going on. Back in the kitchen, Vera held the card carefully with the tweezers and turned it over. The back was blank.
‘Maybe some sort of joke,’ Julie said.
‘Aye. Maybe. But I’ll take it away with me, if you don’t mind. Get it checked out.’
Julie had a fleeting moment of curiosity, but it passed. Really, what did it matter what the inspector was up to? She flicked on the kettle to make Vera coffee. When she returned with a mug in her hand, the card and the envelope had disappeared.
‘You said you had some questions?’ She had no interest, just wanted to get this over as quickly as possible. Why? So she could return to her fantasy world of mindless heavy metal and a boy she’d first chased around the playground when she was six? She opened the biscuit tin and pushed it across the table. Vera took a chocolate digestive and dipped it in her coffee, bit it quickly just before it dropped.
‘Did Luke have a social worker?’
‘There was someone who came round when he first started having problems at school. Nosy cow.’ Julie hadn’t thought about her in years. She’d gone in for long cardigans and flat shoes, thick tights in strange colours. She’d had a mole on the side of her nose. In her head, Julie had called her
‘Anyone more recently?’
‘I didn’t need a social worker. I managed fine.’ She looked at Vera suspiciously. ‘And I don’t need anyone sticking their oar in now. It’s bad enough having my mother around the place.’
‘I know you’re managing,’ Vera said, in a way that Julie knew she meant it. ‘But we’re looking for connections between Luke and the lass that was killed. It might help us find out what happened. Did you talk to one of the hospital social workers?’
‘I don’t think so. But it’s possible. I mean, it’s not like a real hospital where the nurses wear uniform and you can tell who everyone is. They all looked the same. Doctors, nurses, psychologists. All so young you’d think they were just out of school. They had name badges, but I never bothered looking at them. My head was so full of crap I knew I’d never remember. And every time I went, there was someone new.’
‘This was a young man,’ Vera said. ‘Not long out of university. Name of Ben Craven. Does that mean anything?’
Julie wanted to help. She wanted to make Vera smile, to please her, but when she thought about those visits to the hospital everything was a blur. All she could remember was the smell – stale cigarette smoke and old food – and Luke’s huge haunted eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘He could have been there. I don’t know.’
‘But he never came to the house?’
‘Oh no.’ Julie was quite sure about that. ‘He never came to the house. Not while I was here.’
‘If someone came while you were at work, Luke would have mentioned it?’
Julie considered that. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t keep thoughts for very long in his head. He couldn’t pin them down. He wouldn’t mean to keep it a secret, but it just might not occur to him.’
‘Might Laura know?’
‘Luke was less likely to talk to her than to me.’
There was a silence. She could tell the inspector wanted to get off, but after resenting Vera turning up, now she was reluctant to let her go. ‘If you have any news,’ she said, ‘you will come and tell me? Straight away?’
Vera stood up and took her mug to the sink to rinse it.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Straight away.’ But she had her back to Julie while she was speaking and Julie wasn’t sure she could believe her.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Felicity saw James onto the school bus and walked slowly down the lane towards Fox Mill. Since Peter’s birthday nothing concrete had changed. She still washed and shopped and cooked every night. She made sure James did his homework and over dinner she asked Peter if he’d had a good day at work. She lay beside him in bed.
She’d tried the night before to talk to him about the dead girl. Through the open window came the smell of the garden, but underneath cut grass and honeysuckle was an imagined hint of the sea. In her head she was taken back to the watch tower, to the clean salt air, the seaweed and the flowers floating on water.
‘Do you think they know yet who killed her?’ she asked.
She was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She knew he was still awake, but he took so long to answer that she wondered if he was pretending to be asleep.
‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I don’t think they have a clue. They came to talk to me today. That woman inspector and a younger man.’
‘What did they say?’ She turned so she was facing him, could just make out the shape of his face. At one time she would have reached out and stroked his forehead, his eyelids, his neck. His lips and inside his mouth. She’d loved the intimacy of his skin on her fingertips. Now, not even their feet were touching.
‘They asked if I could identify the flowers. I’m not sure… That could have been an excuse.’
‘They can’t think that one of us had anything to do with it.’
‘No,’ he said easily. ‘Of course not.’ And he’d gathered her into his arms as he might have done when they were first married. A father comforting his child. She’d lain quite still, pretending to be comforted.
Walking down the lane, in and out of the shadow thrown by the elders, she thought that while on the surface everything seemed the same, in fact it never would be. Immediately after the idea came into her head she dismissed it as melodramatic nonsense. The trouble was that she had nobody to talk to about it. Of course she’d
