Ann Cleeves - Telling Tales

“No,” Vera said. “Not James.” She stopped, turned to Emma. “But why don’t you phone him? Put the poor man out of his misery.”

“What other secrets can there be?” Emma said.

Vera didn’t answer directly. “Phone James. Listen to what he has to say.”

“Why do you want me out of the way?” Emma said. “I’m not a child. You can talk in front of me.”

Vera looked at her sadly.

“Sergeant Ashworth has been doing most of the leg work. He spent the day in York.” Robert Winter was sitting opposite her. She was watching for a reaction, but none came. Perhaps he’d been expecting this. Perhaps he’d been waiting for it from the time news of Jeanie Long’s innocence was released. Beside her, Mary, who had been restless all evening, was becoming even more agitated.

“We don’t need to discuss this now, do we? It’s late. As you can tell, Inspector, we have our own family problems. Emma’s very upset.”

“Mr. Winter?”

“What do you want to know?” His voice was professionally courteous, with just a hint of a threat. I hope you’re not here with allegations you can’t substantiate. We’re victims. You should treat us with respect and compassion.

“I spoke to your former business partner, Mrs. Sullivan.” Joe Ashworth was still standing by the door. They all looked up at him. At one time it would have made him awkward to be the centre of attention. Vera was proud of his new confidence, liked to think she had something to do with it.

“Maggie and I parted in rather unfriendly circumstances,” Robert said. “She felt she’d lost out financially. I don’t think you should depend on her version of events.”

“She told me you developed an obsession with her teenage daughter.”

“Ridiculous.”

“She said that she was the one to dissolve the partnership. She felt she was forced to break professional links with you, because she was so concerned about your relationship with Zoe.”

“Look,” Robert said. He put a smile into his voice, sounded like a politician at his most sincere. “Maggie Sullivan’s husband left them when Zoe was still a baby. I was a father figure. I admit I took an interest in the girl, but I thought I was helping.”

“I’m sure that was how it started. She was almost a part of the family, wasn’t she? She spent a lot of time in your home and she helped with your children.”

“She was an only child,” Robert said. “She loved them.”

“Then you started phoning her when you knew her mother wasn’t in the house. You took to waiting for her outside school, following her home. You wrote her love letters. Mrs. Sullivan described you as a stalker. She threatened to go to the police, but disliked the idea of heir daughter becoming involved in a court case.”

“You make it sound so squalid,” Robert said. “It wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like?” Vera asked, as if she was just curious, as if it was a bit of gossip over the tea table.

“I suppose I was going through a crisis in my life. Everything seemed pointless. I was very depressed. Helping Zoe gave me some sense of worth. I believed I could make a difference. Bring some love into her life. It’s easy to be cynical about something like that, but it was how I felt. It was at that point that I discovered the importance of faith. It was all meant, you see. The misunderstanding with Zoe and Maggie, the problems at work, they all helped to bring me to Christ.”

His voice was calm and reasonable. He could have been presenting evidence about an offender in the magistrates court. There was a silence. For a moment even Vera could think of nothing to say. She considered laughter to be the only response to such a distortion of the truth, but she’d seen Emma’s face, which was pinched and white, and knew that this was no laughing matter.

Robert stared round at them. “You do understand, don’t you?”

Nobody replied.

There was a brief, intense silence and then the phone rang. No one moved, but it continued to ring. Mary got to her feet, walked into the hall and answered it. They could hear her words quite clearly. “She’s here, James. She was just going to ring you. Yes, she’s fine. Perhaps you could collect her. Not immediately. Give her half an hour.”

She came back into the kitchen and took her place without a word. Vera looked at them, waited for someone to speak.

“You lied,” Emma said to her father. She seemed more in control. Her voice was as calm as his had been. “You’re no better than James.”

“You were very young. It was complicated.”

“I remember Zoe. They’re good memories a barbecue in the garden. Her helping me with piano practice. She was musical, wasn’t she? She played the flute. It’s one of my clearest childhood memories, sitting in the1 garden in York, listening to her practise. I wonder what she’s doing now. Do you know?”

She looked around at her parents, but they both ignored her.

“I wondered why she stopped looking after us.

Chris missed her more than I did. She understood his projects. They were very close.”

“What did you make of it, Mary?” Vera’s voice was very quiet. They could have been alone in the room.

“Of Robert’s fondness for Zoe? It was a difficult time. He blamed me for the friendship. If I’d been a different sort of wife it would never have happened, he said. If I’d been younger, more attractive, more attentive…”

“You didn’t believe that?”

“I didn’t know what to believe. When she first started coming to the house, I’d watch them together, and see that she made him happier than I ever could.”

She looked at Robert, but he said nothing to contradict her.

“Then, when he became a Christian, I was relieved. I thought things would change. He’d been very low. Sometimes he talked about suicide. I tried to persuade him to see a doctor, but he wouldn’t go. I felt responsible. For him and for poor Zoe. I thought I could hold the family together and make it work. Pride, I suppose. I didn’t want to admit that we weren’t as close as we appeared.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Emma said. “None of it.”

Mary didn’t answer. “I believed the move to Elvet would be a fresh start for us all. A wonderful new beginning. And no real harm had been done after all. We still had a chance to put things back to how they’d been. But that was never really possible. We were different. We’d all been affected by what had happened in York, even the children, although they were really too young to notice what was going on, and we tried to protect them. I suppose it was inevitable.”

“Did anything change?” Vera asked.

“Yes, of course! At the beginning! Robert loved his work. He felt fulfilled and valued. We had the structure of our life in the church. I began to relax. I thought everything would turn out well.”

“Then what happened?”

She didn’t reply and Emma answered for her. “He fell for Abigail. For the red hair and the short skirts.” Again her voice was calm, matter of fact. “I can remember when he first met her. That time on the Point, when the sun was shining and we were all eating ice creams. Then at youth club. He told me that he’d never met Abigail, but it wasn’t true. I should have remembered the club. That was one of the first things he did when he arrived in Elvet, he set up the club. He can’t have really changed, can he? If he’d really changed that would be the last thing he’d do. Put himself in a position where he’d meet young girls. I’d forgotten all about that until recently, forgotten that Abigail was ever there. She wasn’t a regular, but she did come occasionally, showing off, making the rest of us look pathetic. Dressed up in her smart clothes. The first time she came was for a disco, wasn’t it? I’d asked her and I was so excited when she agreed to come. It was the last meeting before the summer holidays. Dad was sitting on the stage watching the dancing. I remember. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. I was so stupid. I thdught it was because she was a good dancer. Then Keith got held up and couldn’t take her home and Dad gave her a lift back. Chris and I came back to Springhead with Mum.” She looked at her father for the first time. “Is that when it started?”