Cath Staincliffe - Stone Cold Red Hot

A chump, seeing as you’re asking. And you didn’t answer my question. After a night on the town, a nice meal, fine wine, some heartfelt talk, I couldn’t see separate rooms being an obstacle. Diane had just told me how much she still cared for the man. Of course she’d want to sleep with him.

“I knew you’d do this,” she said.

“What?”

“Go all moral on me.”

“I just don’t want you to get hurt again, that’s all.”

“I’m a big girl,” she said.

I began to smile. “So I can see.” I nodded at Diane’s statuesque figure.

She laughed. A truce. I didn’t dare ask whether Desmond knew about Ben or the coming reunion. I knew I’d hear all about it in good time.

Monday morning had that crisp autumn feel to it. Not cold enough for gloves yet but no longer balmy. Monday was Ray’s regular slot for doing the school run so I was able to set off for Sheffield as soon as I was ready. The journey took longer then I expected. Much of it was over the peaks via the Snake Pass, which gives some indication of its nature. On many of the winding sections overtaking was prohibited and I got stuck behind a slow climbing lorry. The scenery was exhilarating especially on the tops above the tree line where I could see moorland and grass rippling over the hills and dropping down in folds over the valleys and gulleys.

I usually pride myself on being punctual, part of the professionalism I want to bring to the job but I knew I’d be late. Not that Caroline Cunningham was going anywhere with an infection like that.

Towards the end of the journey I joined the motorway and was soon negotiating my way along the dual carriageways and ring-roads of the city. There was still plenty of evidence of Sheffield’s history as the steel-making capital of the nation. Tracts of derelict factories and warehouses, evidence of re-building and demolition and the great water towers which I assumed were previously used by the smelting works.

I got lost twice but finally made it to my destination. Caroline Cunningham lived in a row of terraced houses banked up on a long, incredibly steep hill. We’re not used to hills in Manchester nor the vistas they provide. I could see the panorama of the city and beyond the jumble of buildings, chimneys and roads to the surrounding hills.

Caroline Cunningham bore little resemblance to the pictures I’d seen at Lisa’s, even accounting for her bleary eyes and washed out complexion. The long red hair was long gone replaced by a short bobbed hairstyle in rich brown. She wore gold rimmed glasses, dangly black earrings, a fleecy grey top and black leggings.

A cat wound its way around my legs as I tried to get along the narrow hallway.

“Jasper!” she scooped the cat up. “He’s been trodden on so much he ought to look like a doormat by now. Come in here.”

The rooms were small, two up-two down as far as I could tell with a minute kitchen. The decor suited the original features; a richly tiled fireplace with cast iron surround and a brass coal scuttle matched dark patterned wallpaper and the jade green of the picture rail. The net curtains were heavy cream lace patterned with birds of paradise and there were pictures of Old Sheffield on the walls and an embroidered sampler. “Be good sweet maid and let who will be clever.” Girls’ education circa 1900.

I accepted the offer of a cup of tea and fussed with the cats while Caroline brewed up.

“So you’ve seen Lisa, she still in Chester?”

“Yes.”

“She working, yet?”

I didn’t grasp the ‘yet’. “I don’t know, we just talked about Jennifer.”

Caroline handed me tea, a skeptical look on her face. I wasn’t sure why.

“Lisa hadn’t heard from her, nothing since seventy-six.”

“Neither have I.”

“It seems that she left her course at Keele that first term.”

Caroline settled herself on the chintz sofa. “Yeah.”

“Have you any idea where she might have gone?”

“No,” she coughed violently and blew her nose on a tissue.

It was a dead end. I had a wave of despondency. Why had I bothered coming all this way? Just to have confirmed what I already knew? I could have done it over the phone. But a phone call is rarely as good as face to face contact for getting people to open up, or for spotting discrepancies between what they say and what their body language reveals. I was there at Caroline’s to do my job as well as I could. Just get on with it.

“Did you know she was pregnant?”

“Lisa told me,” she sounded a bit miffed about that. “I was away most of the summer. My parents had a place in Brittany. I missed all the action. When I came back Lisa told me about Jenny and I felt really sorry for her, she should have been on the pill. I’ve often wondered what she did about it. If I’d been in her shoes I’d have had an abortion, especially you know, with the father…”

“What?”

She flushed slightly, blew her nose again. “He was black, wasn’t he. It wasn’t like it is now. And her father would have gone mad if he knew. We never could work out if she’d told them. Lisa said she hadn’t. But when Jennifer never went back I thought she probably had told them and they’d just cut her off. He had a breakdown as well didn’t he, Mr Pickering, had to give up work, that could have been why.” There was a triumphant smile on her lips. “Especially if Jenny insisted on keeping the child.”

“You say her father would have been very upset, was he closer to her than her mother?” I tried to picture Jennifer as a Daddy’s Girl and failed.

“No,” she shuffled on the sofa, “but he had very strong opinions. He wouldn’t approve of people intermarrying. Stick to your own. Of course he was the leader at that Church as well so it’d have been awful for him that way too.”

And for Jennifer? Caroline seemed to have little compassion.

“He had a point really,” she sipped her drink, “it wasn’t so bad back then but it’s all gone too far really. I mean, I go to the shops round here and I’m the only person speaking English. Little Pakistan. And no-one dares to say anything about it. Everything’s so softly softly. What about the right to free speech?”

“So her father was a racist?” I asked coldly. “What about her mother?”

She shrugged. “Went along with his principles I suppose. She was very old-fashioned.”

“How did Jennifer get along with her parents?”

“Not well,” she wheezed a little and cleared her throat. “They were very strict. She couldn’t wait to leave home.”

“Were you and Jennifer close?”

“Seemed like it then, the four of us went around together, Lisa, Jenny, Frances and me. But once we’d all left school, we made new friends. I came here, Lisa had a place at Crewe. I went to Frances’s wedding,” she added, “and Lisa’s – that was a right farce.”

“Why?”

“Lisa getting married.” She jerked her head as if I needed reminding about something. “Thank God they never had kids.”

My incomprehension must have shown.

“You know,” she prompted.

I didn’t.

“She’s gay, isn’t she, a lesbian. There was all that stuff in the papers, last year, that was her.”

I shook my head. I didn’t know what had been in the papers.

Caroline’s eyes brightened with the gossip. “She was a teacher, further education college. Word got out she was a lesbian, right, she was seeing one of her students,” she grimaced, “it was all over the papers, The Sun and everything. She had to leave her job. There was a lot of Muslim students – they won’t stand for it. Don’t you remember?”

What, one rabid tabloid witch-hunt from among all the others? No. It did help explain Lisa’s caution when I’d got in touch and her hesitation when I’d asked her how close she had been to Jennifer.