Saffy inhales sharply. ‘That wanker. It’s the same guy.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I met someone earlier. He said he was a private detective and he’d been hired by someone to find a file or paperwork or something that Gran has. He tried to be all nice at first but I was feeling increasingly uneasy as the conversation progressed. He …’ She shudders. ‘He was quite intense. I felt afraid by the end. As he was leaving he gave me his card. It said G. E. Davies … Glen. It’s got to be the same man.’ She goes to the coffee-table and picks something up. ‘Here,’ she says, handing it to Lorna.
‘He can’t be a legitimate private detective,’ says Tom, still pacing. ‘Not if he’s grabbing women in the street.’
Lorna takes the card from her daughter. It looks crude and unprofessionally done. She hands it back. ‘He specifically said evidence …’
Saffy pulls at her hair, looking stressed. ‘The police came today,’ she says, and Lorna listens as her daughter tells her about their visit. ‘When they were leaving I gave them Davies’s number and they said they’d check him out. We should tell them about this too.’
Lorna can’t take it all in. Finding out her mother lived here when at least one of the murders took place, and now this. It must be connected somehow. She bends over and takes off her shoes. She’ll have to see if she can glue the heel back on.
‘What the hell was Rose mixed up in?’ Tom stops pacing, his arms folded, fixing Lorna with a furious gaze, like it’s her fault. She’s the parent here: she needs to take charge.
‘Let’s all go to bed,’ she says, standing up. ‘I’ll come with you to the care home tomorrow, honey. See what we can find out.’
‘Mum …’
Lorna holds up her hand, looking from Saffy’s anxious face to Tom’s angry one. ‘You both need to get some rest,’ she says, in her most authoritarian voice. ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’ She limps out of the room and climbs the stairs, her knee aching with the movement. Fury builds inside her. How dare this man threaten her family. Tomorrow, she thinks, she’ll buy some panic alarms and some pepper spray. If that man comes anywhere near her daughter again she’ll kill him.
28
Rose
February 1980
The day after I ran into Joel in the village square the snow came.
You woke me up, scrambling into my room and jumping on my bed, an angel in your long white nightie. ‘Snow! Snow!’ you cried, shaking me awake and dragging me to the window, the wooden floorboards cold underfoot. You looked so cute, your big brown eyes wide with delight and your hair in dark tendrils around your shoulders. Thick dense flakes were falling fast and settling onto the layer already on the ground. The sky was a perfect pearly white and gave the impression the world was wrapped in a quilt.
‘No playschool today! I’m not going out in this,’ I said, climbing back into bed and snuggling down.
You clapped your hands excitedly. ‘Snowman!’
‘Yes, snowman. But later.’
Daphne appeared at the bedroom door then, dressed in many layers with thick socks pulled up over pyjama bottoms, which ballooned over the top giving the impression she was wearing old-fashioned breeches. Her long fair hair was a messy halo around her face. ‘It’s bloody freezing,’ she said, blowing theatrically onto her hands.
‘Snow! Snow!’ you sang, grabbing her hands, pulling her around, like you were playing a game of ring-a-roses. Daphne threw her head back and laughed and, as I watched the two of you, I felt my heart burst with happiness. The three of us, in that little cottage, cosy and safe, cocooned from the world.
We didn’t need anybody else.