‘And now those youngsters have turned up.’
‘I hear they’ve been given the cottage for free. Inheritance apparently.’
‘It’s all right for some.’
I could feel my cheeks burning. I put the tin of baked beans back on the shelf and left the shop before they noticed me.
Now I grab my cardigan from the back of the chair. It’s cooler today, the sun struggling to poke through clouds, and I bend over Snowy’s bed to kiss him on the top of his fluffy head. ‘See you later, mister.’
I’m knocking off work early today, like I do every Thursday, to visit Gran. I feel a lurch of guilt when I think of how I ended up missing my visit to her last week because of the swarm of press outside our house. Yet today won’t be like all the other Thursdays. Today, when I sit opposite my grandmother I’ll be wondering what happened all those years ago. How did two people end up dead and buried in her garden?
My battered yellow Converse trainers crunch over the gravelled driveway as I dart to my Mini. I’m wearing denim dungarees with the bottoms turned up. They feel so much more comfortable now my tummy is expanding. I’m sixteen weeks pregnant and have a small bump. Although it doesn’t look like I’m pregnant, more bloated. I’ve tied my dark curls back with a matching yellow scrunchie. My mum always turns her nose up at my collection of scrunchies. ‘They’re just so … eighties,’ she says, rolling her eyes. ‘I can’t believe they’ve made a comeback.’ I haven’t seen her since Christmas and that hadn’t gone very well, thanks to her rude boyfriend, Alberto. The weeks are flying by and I still haven’t told her she’s going to be a grandmother. Every time I think about telling her I imagine her disappointment.
As I get behind the wheel I notice a man standing in the lane, partially concealed by our front wall, staring up at the cottage. He’s stocky, with a face like a bulldog, maybe mid to late fifties, wearing jeans and a waxed jacket. When he notices me he moves away. Was he taking photos of the cottage? He must be another journalist. Most of them have given up for the moment – until there’s new information to be had. But every now and again another will pop up, like the weeds in my front garden. On Saturday, as we made our way down our driveway to take Snowy for a walk, a journalist sprang out in front of us, obscuring our path and taking a photo of us. Tom was furious, and swore at him as he scuttled back to his car.
I pull out of the driveway and continue slowly past him, making sure to give him enough room so he doesn’t have to press himself against the hedge, but as I do I notice him shooting me such an intense look that it shocks me. From the rear-view mirror I see him getting into a black saloon parked further down the hill, next to number eight.
Tom came home from work yesterday saying he’d spotted a piece about the bodies in the garden in a copy of the Sun that someone had left on the Tube. It had a sensationalist heading that played on the skeletons at Skelton Place, accompanied by the photo the journalist took of us on Saturday, with startled looks on our faces. ‘Oh, God, Tom,’ I’d said, my face flushed with fear. ‘They’re going to say we’re Wiltshire’s answer to Fred and Rosemary West!’
He’d laughed properly then. ‘No, they won’t. It happened at least thirty years ago. We weren’t even born.’
But my gran was.
I push the thought of the man from my mind as I continue down the hill, passing the Stag and Pheasant at the bottom. Instead I think again about how peaceful Beggars Nook is with its beautiful old Cotswold-stone buildings. I drive through the village square, taking in the market cross, the pretty church, the corner shop, a café and the one boutique selling trinkets, cards and slouchy expensive clothes. All walkable from the cottage and in a dip, surrounded by the woods and the thick oak trees that stretch up to the sky. It gives the impression that the village is hidden from the rest of the world. I cross the bridge and continue down the long, winding lane, pretty stone houses either side, until I get to the farm at the end. So different from built-up Croydon. So safe. Or so I’d thought. Now I’m not so sure.