The Back Road

24

In her mind, Leo had always pictured the High Street of Little Melham as a black and white image, cold and wet with dismal skies and cheerless shop windows. She had associated it with heavy bags that made her young arms ache, people laughing at her or pointing and staring. She was “the bastard”. The child who had appeared from nowhere, and that nobody wanted.

Today, however, she had to admit that it was actually looking quite pretty. The sun was filtering through the branches of the trees that lined either side of the road, creating dappled patterns on the pavement, and the shop fronts looked bright and cheerful.

She knew that Tom had felt uncomfortable with some of her revelations; he had probably expected her problems to be something and nothing, and no doubt wished he had never started the conversation. It had given him an opening to tell his own sad story, though, and Leo was shocked to hear of his brother’s death in a speed boat accident. While evidently this had left him considerably wealthier than he might otherwise have been, it made no difference at all to his sense of loss.

After sharing some of their past sorrows they had moved onto safer ground, and Tom had talked about plans for his career here in the north west. He was fairly certain that a Chief Inspector in the Manchester force was going to be retiring soon, and although it wouldn’t be a promotion, he’d be happy with that as long as he was within driving distance of Lucy.

Leo couldn’t quite fathom Tom. He seemed confident and comfortable with himself, but there was a slight remoteness about him that suggested something in his life had made him wary. Apart from the story about his brother’s death, he had been very quiet about his private life. Although he was happy to talk about Lucy, he didn’t say what had caused him and his wife to divorce, and he didn’t leave her a suitable opening to ask. She got the feeling that still waters ran very deep. He seemed like a man who laid bare about sixty per cent of his soul, but the remainder would be very hard to penetrate.

At the end of lunch, they said their goodbyes and Leo decided to stroll back through the village on the opposite side of the road from the wine bar. She’d noticed earlier that there was a new delicatessen, and thought she would pop in and pick up a few bits and pieces to nibble before dinner that night. At least that way Ellie might not feel the necessity to cook her heart out yet again.

The shop was busy, but nobody appeared to be buying much. The shopkeeper glanced towards Leo.

‘Is it okay if I just have a look around?’ Leo asked. ‘I’ve no idea what I want.’

‘Be my guest. Let me know if you need any help.’

There was an uncomfortable silence for a few moments and Leo couldn’t decide whether to pick something at random and make a hasty exit, or take her time and ignore the atmosphere. The shopkeeper must have recognised Leo’s discomfort, and came to her rescue.

‘Sorry, love. We didn’t mean to be rude. We were just talking about that terrible accident on Friday night. We’re all a bit in shock, you see. Are you from round here?’

‘No - I’m only staying for a few days. But I did hear about it. The waitress in the wine bar mentioned it too,’ Leo responded.

The shopkeeper nodded. ‘It’s dreadful - and they’re saying that the driver has to be from here, because the road doesn’t really go anywhere else. The whole village is talking about it. We can’t believe it, to tell you the truth.’

One of the other women spoke up.

‘Well, they’ve been checking the cameras - you know - those in the village. There’s one at the petrol station, but I don’t know if there are any others. Never thought it mattered much. I do know that they’ve been taking suspects into the station. Two of them are from the High School too. It just goes to show, doesn’t it? Teachers? They’re no better than the rest of us, are they?’

The shopkeeper leaned her elbows on the counter.

‘Do you know which teachers it was, Sally?’

‘All I heard is that one is a deputy head - a man. And then they’ve taken the PE Teacher in as well. How awful if it was one of them, and they’d left that girl to die.’

Leo felt a shock at the mention of a PE Teacher. She was as certain as she could ever be, though, that Max would never have knocked somebody over and abandoned them on the side of the road. She wondered if the deputy head could be Pat. Surely not?

‘It’s not only the teachers who’ve been taken in,’ said another of the customers, a large woman with a too tight perm. ‘Our Philip was at the dentist this morning, and he saw that big-wig banker chap - you know, the one that works in London - him who’s married to the girl who disappeared overnight from the village all those years ago. I can’t remember his name. Well - he was scurrying out of the police station too - looking very shifty according to our Philip. You know what I think? All these sorts from the smart end of the village with their fancy jobs and flash cars to match - they all drink wine like it’s going out of fashion. Then they think nothing of driving home. I just bet when they find out who it was, they’ll discover that he’d been drinking. It’s just criminal is what I think.’

Surely they couldn’t be talking about Charles and Fiona? Disappeared? Leo remembered that Fiona had left the village, but that didn’t mean she’d disappeared. And why were they interviewing Charles? He was in London until Saturday.

‘Have you heard anything, love?’ the shopkeeper asked Leo.

‘I’m afraid not,’ she answered, shaking her head. She wouldn’t bother to mention the connections through Ellie and Max.

‘Well, we’re all saying that if it is somebody from the village, we all need to ask around. Notice if anything isn’t quite right, or if somebody was out on Friday night that shouldn’t have been. We’ve got as much chance as finding this villain as the police do - so if you hear of anything, just let us know.’

Leo was relieved to hear the old fashioned bell on the door tinkle. A memory of Ellie going out on Friday night flashed through her mind, and she desperately wanted to change the subject. However, the new arrival was far from the saviour she had been hoping for.

Fiona.

Even though Leo hadn’t taken an active part in the conversation, she could feel herself flush slightly. The woman called Sally turned to study the wide range of goods on the shelves behind her, and everybody was self-consciously trying to look anywhere but at Fiona.

Clearly having no sense of interrupting anything, Fiona looked surprised to see Leo.

‘Hello, Leo. What brings you into the village on this sunny afternoon?’

Now Leo felt worse. The women in the shop would think she had intentionally misled them.

‘I’ve come for a few bits for Ellie.’

‘Well I’m glad I’ve seen you, because I seem to remember at dinner on Saturday night you offered to buy me lunch. Well, I’ve been thinking about it and that would be very nice. Shall we say the wine bar at twelve thirty tomorrow?’

In the eyes of everybody else in the shop, Fiona had now moved from being nothing more than a casual acquaintance of Leo’s to being a very good friend.

The shopkeeper offered to serve them, and Fiona politely indicated the other women in the shop.

‘They’re browsing, don’t worry about them,’ was the response. The hard stare was reserved for Leo, who ended up buying rather more than she came for. Fiona only wanted some Parma ham, so they were soon served and left the deli together.

With the exception of the words necessary to complete their purchases, nobody had spoken since Fiona had arrived, but Leo had the strong feeling that she had once again become the person for whom shops fell silent as she walked through the door.

Immediately the village morphed back into its former shades of black, white and grey. The colour seemed to have drained out of the day as she realised that if the village gossips were to be believed, several of the people closest to Ellie could be implicated in Friday’s accident. And she had yet to find out where Ellie had been on the night in question.