‘The students aren’t allowed on the top floor,’ I say, ‘and the GCSE results were good this year. One of the best in the county.’
‘Georgia needs to work hard for her GCSEs,’ says Simon, ‘and stop spending her time going out with twenty-one-year-old layabouts.’
Although I agree with the sentiment, I find the fact that he has to say it annoying. Also, layabouts? Has Simon become a seventies sitcom character? I snatch away his cup and start washing it up.
‘Isn’t it time you were heading back?’ I say.
Later, when Georgie and I are watching a DVD of Grey’s Anatomy (our most intimate moments these days come to the accompaniment of cranial surgery and heart bypasses), I say, ‘Do you fancy going to Cambridge on Friday?’
Georgie doesn’t take her eyes from the screen where Meredith and Derek are emoting over a teenage leukaemia sufferer.
‘Why?’
‘I’ve got to see someone about my book, but we could have lunch and look around the town. It’s a beautiful place.’
‘Who do you have to see?’
‘Someone who has some letters from R.M. Holland.’ Georgie knows about Holland, all the students do, but she’s never shown the slightest interest in him.
She stares at the screen for another minute before saying, ‘You won’t go on at me about applying to Oxbridge?’
‘Have I ever done that?’
‘Subtly,’ says Georgie, typing into her phone without looking at it. ‘All about how so-and-so’s daughter went there and what a good time they’re having. May Balls and all that crap.’
I didn’t realise I did this although all my London friends do seem to have children at Oxford or Cambridge. Sometimes I wonder if the move to Sussex blighted both our futures.
‘I won’t mention it once,’ I say.
‘OK then. Can Ty come?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘This is mother and daughter time.’
‘Yuk,’ says Georgie but she doesn’t say no.
Clare’s diary
Wednesday 25th October 2017
I plucked up my courage to ring Ella’s parents this morning. I didn’t think I’d get through. Was rehearsing in my head, ‘Well, I tried. They’re probably not taking calls at the moment. Bit intrusive to ring, really. I think I’ll just send a card.’ But the phone was answered on the second ring. Ella’s mother, Sarah. As soon as I introduced myself, ‘Clare from school’, she started to cry. ‘Oh, Clare. How could this happen?’ It was awful. I tried to say the right thing, but what is the right thing in these circumstances? There’s no right thing. Ella is dead and her parents are left childless. Any hopes they might have had — of grandchildren, of growing old as a family — have been shattered. I just said how sorry I was and asked about the funeral. Sarah said she wanted to have it in the chapel at Talgarth, which threw me a bit. Of course I said I’d be there and asked if there was anything I could do, etc. But there’s nothing I can do. That’s the thing.
Had coffee in the village with Debra earlier. She’s very upset about Ella but also strangely fascinated, asking me about the autopsy and the criminal investigation, as if the whole thing is a TV series. I keep thinking about the two detectives who came here, Kaur and Winston. They weren’t hostile exactly, but they weren’t friendly either. ‘Most murder victims are killed by people they know,’ said Kaur, ‘and we have reason to believe that this is the case here.’
Who do they suspect?
‘Nothing in the world is hidden forever’ — Wilkie Collins, No Name.
Chapter 5
We drop Herbert at Doggy Day Care and set off early for the drive to Cambridge. It’s a beautiful day, crisp and sunny, the fields outlined by fiery autumnal trees. Even the M25 isn’t too bad. Georgie is plugged into her headphones, I listen to Radio 4. There’s a feature about sexual harassment. I try to remember how many times I’ve had inappropriate comments made to me, at school, university and work. I give up when I get to double figures. Georgie unplugs herself and asks if we’re there yet.
‘Soonish,’ I say, squinting at the satnav with its ever-hopeful estimated time of arrival. ‘About an hour.’
Georgie slumps. We stop at a service station for drinks, sweets and the loo, then set off again. We take the M11, then the wonderfully named Fen Causeway. The land falls away from us; there is only sky and the road ahead. I remember something I once heard from an American writer: ‘In Kansas you can see someone running away for days.’ It might not be days here but it would be several hours before the running figure disappeared over the horizon. My grandmother lives in the highlands of Scotland but her house is in a fishing village, with shops and a proper community. My dad got away as quickly as he could, escaping to Edinburgh for university and then to London for work. Yet I love Scotland; some of my happiest memories are of being in the Ullapool house. This is something else. A strange, sullen landscape, even on a day like this. A place that rightly belongs at the bottom of the sea.
My problems start in Cambridge itself. I can’t find St Jude’s and the satnav gives up, muttering ‘turn around where possible’ to itself. Eventually I have to stop and ask the way, causing Georgie to slump even lower in her seat. Once more round the one-way system, passing ancient portals and gateways, glimpses of another world.
St Jude’s appears with supernatural suddenness. I brake, the cars behind me hoot and I nearly hit a cyclist as I swerve through the low archway. An alarmingly large figure emerges from the porter’s lodge but it appears that I’m on a list somewhere so I’m allowed to drive on, past an emerald green quad and into a small car park.
‘Professor Hamilton will meet you by the library staircase,’ I’m told, so I park nearby, next to the recycling bins, and we get out of the car.
Georgie looks around. There are low Tudor buildings on three sides of us, leaded light windows twinkling in the October sun.
‘It’s creepy,’ says Georgie.
‘In a good way,’ I say. That’s as far as I’m prepared to go.
The library is on the opposite side of the quad. We circle the grass, and arrive at another low door. I have to duck slightly. Perhaps it’s just as well that I didn’t come here. I’d have permanent concussion. A stone staircase is in front of us, dark and curiously forbidding, but on the left there’s a sign saying ‘library’ in a comfortingly twenty-first century typeface. I’m just about to push open the door when a voice says, ‘Ms Cassidy?’
I turn round. If I had to duck, this man must have had to bend almost double to get under the door. I’m five-ten but I have to squint to look up at him, his head almost lost in the gloom of the hallway.
‘Henry Hamilton.’ A hand is extended.