Cath Staincliffe - Stone Cold Red Hot

“Mrs Shuttle, I’ve come a long way today, I’m tired. I realise this may not be easy for you but just tell me about it in your own words. Save us both some time.”

“This won’t go any further?”

“Of course not.”

“If Gordon ever found out…”

“I’m not about to tell him but the longer I’m here the more risk there is that he’ll suspect something – or interrupt us and I’d have to see you again then.”

She gave a big sigh and shifted her position, looked down at the rug and spoke. “We were having an affair, Frank and I.”

Bloody ‘ell!

I nodded, go on.

“He’d been very kind, very thoughtful. Helping in the garden and…well, Gordon, my husband, was away a lot, he was a rep, covered the whole of the North, right up to Scotland. I was lonely, I was very young,” she raised her eyes to me. “But I hadn’t thought of him in that way. Then one day, he found me crying, you see,” she studied the floor again, “I was so unhappy and he comforted me. One thing led to another. It got out of control. I don’t know how. It was very physical, very powerful. It was an awful shock for both of us. We promised it would never happen again, we tried to stop.”

She smiled grimly. “It didn’t make either of us happy, just the opposite, really. It was awful. We both knew it was wrong, that we might hurt other people. And Frank being so respected in the church and all that. But there was this attraction, a sexual thing. Like a compulsion, an addiction. We needed each other. We’d stop and try and get on with our lives but all I could think about was Frank. I never sought him out, though,” she added hastily. “Days would go by, weeks sometimes and then he’d come back. Desperate. I couldn’t refuse him, I wanted him. No-one had ever made me feel that way – physically, I mean. He said the same. I don’t think he and Barbara had much of a marriage by then. Even when my mind was telling me it was wrong, my body was obsessed with him. And it would start all over again. The sex, then the guilt and the promises.”

“How long did this go on?”

“About a year. Then Jennifer found out, I don’t know how,” she pre-empted me. “Frank came round, he said Barbara knew, that Jennifer had found out.”

“And after that?”

“They cut me dead. I couldn’t blame them. But it was terrible. I was so lonely and I couldn’t talk to Gordon about any of it.”

“Who cut you dead?”

“Frank and Barbara.”

“And Jennifer?”

“She’d gone to university I got very depressed, more depressed. I told Gordon we had to move, that I didn’t like the house. It didn’t matter to him, we could move further north, better for his job. We put it on the market, it took forever to find the right buyers,” she shuddered. She sat before me ashen-faced, hunched over, still plagued by the wretched emotions dredged up recalling that miserable affair. The whine outside stopped and suddenly the room was full of silence.

“Frank got ill,” I said.

“He wasn’t the only one,” she retorted bitterly. She hid her face with her hands for a moment, then reappeared. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair. Yes, it was his heart, they said. You can see why I didn’t want to discuss any of this, it’s nothing but bad memories for me.” She tilted her head to listen. Wondering where her husband was now. “You better go,” she said nervously. “Please.”

I thanked her for her time and prepared to leave.

“So Jennifer is missing?” she asked. Re-gaining the ground of polite conversation even as she willed me to be gone.

“Yes, she’s been estranged from the family and now her brother Roger wants to find her.”

She nodded.

And how on earth, I thought, do I tell him about you?

I barely noticed the traffic on the drive back to Manchester, though now and again some prat would pull out in front of me at the last minute forcing me to brake or veer into the outside lane. Then I’d curse and huff and puff and wait for my skin to settle back round my body. But for most of the journey my mind was buzzing with activity spinning scenes from the new facts I’d uncovered.

I was convinced that I was much nearer to solving one part of the riddle. I now had two possible explanations for Jennifer calling her father a hypocrite. Either because she had discovered her own illegitimate status and his reaction to her pregnancy was unjust, or because of his adultery. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife. She’d caught him breaking all the rules, betraying his family, breaking the commandment. That was when she’d rung Lisa.

How had Jennifer found out? Perhaps she’d called round one day, some errand for her mother, to borrow something or deliver a wrongly delivered letter. Only to find that her father was there, when he should be at the office or at church. The atmosphere at the Shuttles, the fleeting guilt of his greeting enough to alert the bright, young woman to the truth of the situation. But if that was how it happened Mrs Shuttle would have remembered, it’d be blazoned into her memory. OK. Same situation but Jennifer heard voices, her father’s as well, or sounds of love-making as she reached the house. Peered through the letter-box to see. Heard her father’s name called in passion, saw his briefcase in the hall, witnessed an embrace, there they were kissing, groping, screwing. The hypocrite.

Had Jennifer had told her mother? I’d no reason to think of Jennifer as vindictive but families don’t always bring out the best in people. Had she tackled her father? Or had she let it stew for a while, fermenting inside, pressure building until in the midst of an argument she’d blown her top and pointed the finger?

And how would her father have reacted? She was jeopardising everything: his marriage, his integrity, his status in the church and in business. I felt a lurch of anxiety and adrenalin prickled along my forearms. Had he tried to shut her up, stop her telling her mother? Had Jennifer flung the fact of her own pregnancy at him? You forgave her, so forgive me. Had she told him about Maxwell Jones? He’s black but I’m not ashamed of it, I’m not prejudiced like you. Had she threatened to unmask him in the rush of her anger? Had he prevented her?

I tried to clear my mind, to think logically but the scene that I had conjured up kept creeping back in focus. It seemed preposterous but if he had killed Jennifer, if she had never left home, then her troll would be left in the window, she would miss Caroline’s party, there’d be no goodbyes, no presents for her brother’s birthdays, no admission to Keele, no word to anyone. Ever.

I had a whole heap of stuff to tell Roger. Not just a skeleton in the cupboard, more like a whole chorus-line of them, clattering out one after the other. Starting with; Jennifer is your half-sister, you’ve got different fathers, your mother had Jennifer out of wedlock, Jennifer was already three years old when your parents got married. Moving onto the news that your father had an affair with Mrs Shuttle, next door. Do you remember her? And Jennifer found out. On top of all that there’s no record of Jennifer having a baby, no registered death, no marriage, no sign of her whatsoever. And to cap it all there’s a very simple, ludicrous, nightmarish explanation for your sister’s disappearance. It fits with all the facts but there isn’t a shred of proof. All speculation. But before I breathe a word of that to you there’s a couple of return visits I intend to make.

I came into Manchester in the height of the rush-hour but I was heading in the right direction. The log jam on the other side of the central reservation stretched nose to tail for miles.

I drove straight to the Dobson’s to find Maddie and Tom having tea with the family. Eight of them in all crammed round the big table.