As they let themselves through the front gate Elspeth is still wittering on but Kathryn isn’t listening. Instead she’s focused on the two plain-clothed police officers getting out of the car – a young man and an older woman. Her heart speeds up as they come towards them, the woman officer holding up a badge. Despite the cold, sweat breaks out under her armpits.
‘Are you Elspeth McKenzie?’ asks the woman, ignoring Kathryn and directing her question to her mother.
Elspeth, who has been completely oblivious to their presence until now, stops with her gloved hand on the gate. ‘Yes. Can I help you?’
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Christine Holdsworth and this is Detective Constable Joe Phillips,’ says the woman, tucking her badge back inside her coat. She has red curly hair that is as short as a boy’s and getting frizzy in the rain. ‘May we come in and ask you a few questions?’
‘What is this about?’ Kathryn asks, fear making her sound more clipped than she intends.
‘We just want to ask you a few questions about a girl you employed here at the end of last year.’
Elspeth frowns. ‘Do you mean Jemima Freeman?’
‘Yes,’ says DS Holdsworth.
Elspeth stands up straighter. ‘What about her?’
Two teenage girls are walking down the street, laughing and talking over each other. They look so carefree, thinks Kathryn, with nothing to worry about apart from boys and shopping. Right now, she wishes she was one of them.
‘We’d rather not say standing here in the street, if you don’t mind,’ says the other officer, DC Phillips. He doesn’t look much older than Jacob. He’s tall and skinny with a mop of fair floppy hair and a large Adam’s apple.
Elspeth pushes open the gate. Kathryn and the police follow. Her mother has suddenly forgotten she needs to walk slowly and is racing along the path to the front door. Nobody speaks until Elspeth has unlocked it and they troop through the hall and down the stairs into the kitchen.
Aggie is at the sink, up to her elbows in water, soaking vegetables. She opens her mouth to speak when she sees Kathryn and Elspeth, but closes it again when she notices they aren’t alone. She moves away from the sink, wiping her wet hands on her apron, one eyebrow arched.
‘This is Aggie,’ says Elspeth. ‘And these are the police.’ Kathryn notices that the younger detective raises his eyebrows when her mother describes Aggie as her cook.
‘The police,’ says Aggie, wringing her hands. ‘What are they doing here?’
‘It’s about Jemima,’ whispers Elspeth, as if the police aren’t standing there.
‘Please take a seat,’ offers Kathryn, and they sit side by side at the oak table. They look awkward and out of place in her mother’s beautiful kitchen. ‘Aggie, would you mind making some tea?’
The woman detective gets out her notebook and starts flicking through it. Kathryn is desperate for a glass of wine. She’s been expecting this visit for some time. ‘Mother, you’d better sit down too.’ She pulls out a chair at the head of the table and her mother sinks into it.
Kathryn slumps into a seat next to her. Her legs feel weak. What do the police know?
‘What’s going on, Officer?’ asks Elspeth, peeling off her fur gloves slowly.
‘When was the last time you saw Jemima Freeman?’ asks DS Holdsworth.
Elspeth frowns, placing the gloves on the table in front of her. They look like two dead animals. ‘December. A week or so before Christmas. She used to work here and then she just upped and left one night, taking her stuff with her. Why?’
DS Holdsworth looks grim, her mouth pressed in a firm line. ‘Didn’t you ever wonder what’d happened to her?’
Elspeth shakes her head. Her hair doesn’t move. ‘Of course. She was a good girl. She’d only been with us a few months. She loved travelling, was a bit of a free spirit. I assumed she got bored with just an old lady like myself for company all day.’
‘And you never heard from her again?’ asks DS Holdsworth.
Her mother’s drawn-on eyebrows knit together. ‘No. Nothing.’
DS Holdsworth sits up straighter. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this,’ she says, glancing at them all in turn, even Aggie, who is hovering by the Aga waiting for the kettle to boil and pretending not to be listening, ‘but Jemima Freeman has been found dead.’
There is a stunned silence until Elspeth pipes up, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that. I liked her. Very much. But, what does that have to do with us? Surely she has family. She left her employment here over a month ago. I don’t know what she would have been doing in the meantime.’