The whole car bounced along. Rocking and rolling, almost taking off. I’d once attended an inquest where a seventeen-year-old had gone so fast along the uneven surface that the car had flown off the road. Maybe that would happen to me, if I were lucky.
A thought. I slammed my foot on the brake. The tyres squealed, my body was flung forward, seat belt straining across my chest. I rocked back into the seat suddenly, as the car came to a standstill.
Talking to James Harvey again would probably result in me being arrested, and he was such a slippery bastard that he’d say anything that popped into his head to keep me off track. But there was another way of exposing his lies: by speaking to Alison Daughtrey-Drew.
She knew the truth. Had she really had a one-night stand with him? Or did he have something on her, and was blackmailing her into covering for him?
Hang on…
That Saturday when you had bumped into her flashed into my mind again. I remembered how I had watched you from your bedroom window because I was worried you were late. I’d seen you send her handbag flying, the contents spilling.
That clear plastic bag of pastel sweeties.
Oh, how stupid was I? They weren’t sweets. The Picky Person’s Pop In didn’t sell things in clear bags; everything was branded. They must have been drugs. But what kind? I pulled out my phone, googled images of MDMA pills. They looked pretty similar to what I’d seen, but then again, I had been a long way off. Too far to be even remotely certain.
But you had been in such a strange mood when you first got home. Had Alison threatened you? Had she offered you drugs in exchange for silence? Were she and James working together?
Perhaps James knew about the drugs – if there were any drugs, if it wasn’t my imagination, I told myself – and had blackmailed Alison into giving him a false alibi. If I could just get her to admit it.
Unable to do a three-point turn on such a thin strip of road, I carried on until I reached a turn-off and made my way to Alison’s home.
Fifty
The Daughtrey-Drews are the closest thing to posh that we have in Fenmere. Their family, like many in the area, went back generations. But rather than farmers and farmhands in their ancestry, they could trace their lineage back to Norman nobility. In fact, their great-great, however many greats, had helped to fund the building of the village’s square-towered church about a century after the 1066 conquest.
The family may not have that kind of cash to throw around any more, but they still live in the biggest house in the village. An old manor, with windows peeping through trimmed ivy, a thatched roof – something rare for the area – and a huge walled garden behind the sweeping drive. They used to host a summer garden party that was open to the whole village, back in the day when I was growing up, but that stopped about twenty or so years ago.
My dusty Ford Focus looked slightly out of place on the drive beside two sparkling champagne-coloured Mercedes, a brand-spanking-new silver Range Rover and a black Audi I could have seen my face in. With slight trepidation in case the police were also called here, and I wound up arrested, I made my way towards the front porch. A round, heavy metal knocker matched the huge black brackets that stretched across the ancient dark wood door.
I was reaching for it when the portal opened and Alison slipped out.
‘Thought I’d save you the job,’ she smiled apologetically. ‘I guess you’ve come to talk to me?’
‘That’s right,’ I replied, aware of my local twang sounding harsh against her more plummy tones. Alison didn’t have a local accent. Instead she spoke like someone from Made in Chelsea, which I put down to her private education. While locals said ‘grass’ to rhyme with ‘ass’, she rhymed it with ‘arse’. When she said ‘hour’ it sounded exactly the same as ‘our’, unlike Fenmere people who pronounced it ‘ow-wer’. Instead of ‘yes’, she said ‘yah’. She and her parents were the only people in the entire world, surely, who actually said ‘yah’; it seemed such a cliché.
She was thin to the point of almost-but-not-quite bony, and her legs were slightly bowed from hours spent riding a horse from an early age. Her clothes were expensive, but then, she had always been spoiled rotten. I remembered again about how her parents had made her speeding ticket disappear, thanks to a few words in the right ear. I couldn’t even get my daughter’s attack investigated properly.
Still, I tried to appeal to her good nature.
‘I won’t beat about the bush. Alison. Please, I’m begging you, if you weren’t with James Harvey, you have to tell the truth. He’s got to be punished for what he did.’
Alison’s eye contact was strong and steady. She didn’t seem in the least bit nervous.
‘I’m just a mother trying to get to the truth,’ I added desperately.
One hand rested on her hip, the other beneath her chin, as if considering.
‘Mrs Oak, I’m so terribly sorry to hear what happened to Beth. But, truly, this is nothing to do with me. I have no clue who hurt her – they hit her head, is that correct?’
I nodded, helpless in the face of her composure. A long finger lightly caressed her bottom lip, a thick silver ring glinting in the weak sunlight. I could make out the words ‘Tiffany & Co’ running around its base.
‘You insist you were with James?’
‘I was with him. Mrs Oak, it’s bad enough I’ve had to make a statement about my sex life. Why on earth would I lie?’
That was true. I had no idea why she would pretend to be with James Harvey if she wasn’t. It wasn’t as if they were in a relationship, and she might be tempted to cover for him.
‘All I know is that he is the only person who had a reason to attack Beth. Nothing else makes sense. Maybe he sneaked out while you slept, then sneaked back again for an alibi?’
She shook her head. ‘I wish I could help you. But I can’t.’
Despite the natural drawl that could make her sound insincere, she looked genuinely sorry about that, and I appreciated it. Her glossy caramel hair, with perfect highlights, hung around her long face, and she tucked one side behind her ear.
‘Look, I didn’t know Beth well. You know, with her being so much younger than I, different friends and my only returning to Fenmere recently…’ A crazy decision of hers to drop out of university, in my opinion, but I had little doubt Alison’s parents would sort out a good job for her, with their connections. ‘But she seemed a lovely girl. She was growing up into a beautiful young lady.’
‘She is growing into a beautiful young lady.’
‘Is. Yes, is, of course. She’s, er, shooting up, too, is as tall as me in her heels. She truly is a beautiful girl…’ She cleared her throat awkwardly. ‘I suppose what I’m trying to say is that if I could help you, I would. But I can’t, Mrs Oak.’
‘Can’t? Or won’t? James Harvey was grooming my daughter. The police may not be able to find proof of that, but I will. And then it’s only a matter of time before his alibi is proved to be lies.’
She looked away, bored. Stood up straight, no longer leaning against the porch frame.