Stuart Pawson - Some By Fire

"Where to?"

"Melissa? I don't know."

"Tell me about her," Dave invited.

I put my empty plate back on the table and settled back to listen.

"Tell you about Melissa?" she queried.

"Yes please."

Mrs. Holmes's face looked mystified for a few seconds, then broke into a smile of realisation. "It's Melissa you want to know about, isn't it?" she demanded, unable to contain her delight. "What has she done now?"

"Her name has cropped up in an investigation," Dave told her. "We don't know if she is involved but we'd be grateful for anything you can tell us about her."

"About poor Melissa? Good grief."

"Yes please."

"Well, let me see…" Mrs. Holmes hadn't spoken to a soul for a fortnight, and now she was being given the invitation to gossip about her best schoolfriend, who she hated, by two people who were trained listeners with no intention of interrupting. It was a moment to savour. She gathered her thoughts, smoothed her flowered skirt and began.

Melissa was head girl, which we knew, and a brilliant scholar.

Annoyingly, she was also good at games, and not considered a swot by anyone. She had long hair, down to her waist, and her parents doted on her. They were always in the front row at speech days and school plays, applauding their daughter long after everyone else had stopped.

But something happened to her in that first week at university, and Mrs. Holmes didn't know what it was.

"All sorts of societies organised meetings and parties for the new students, partly to entertain us and break the ice, partly to recruit new members. We went to one, I remember, about the rain forests, which weren't quite the cause celebre in 1969 that they are now. Oh! The high life! Those were the days," she laughed, and I noticed that she still had a girlishly happy face. Betrayal and disappointment hadn't left their mark. "On the Friday," she continued," and this is still the first week Melissa announced that we were going to a lecture about a man called Aleister Crowley. Have you ever heard of him?"

Dave said: "No," and I left it at that, although I had.

"He was the self-styled wicked est man in the world, apparently, although it all sounded harmlessly bonkers to me. He was a witch, a warlock, I suppose, who climbed Everest without oxygen or warm clothing and performed other fiendish deeds like that. He probably did spells and things, but the Everest bit is all that I can remember. Melissa was fascinated. Or maybe it was the lecturer who captivated her. He was a bit of a dish, if you like that sort of thing, but far too smooth for me. Afterwards she trapped him in a corner and wouldn't let him go. I waited for ages, sipping a half of beer and wondering why people drank the stuff," she laughed again, 'until Melissa came over and told me that it was all right, Nick would see her home later."

"Nick?" I asked.

"Nick Kingston, the lecturer. Apparently he also taught psychology at the university, although we didn't know that at the time. So I walked home all by myself and Melissa stayed out all night. I was shocked, but that was only the beginning."

"Why? What happened next?"

"I didn't see her until she came in, late Saturday afternoon. She' dhad all her hair chopped off and it looked a dreadful mess. I asked her why and she just said she was sick of it. The following week she had it dyed and she had her nose pierced. She was a different person."

"What colour did she dye it?" we both asked.

"Bright red." Ah, well, she still had six years to go purple.

"Was there anything else?" I wondered.

"Not really," Mrs. Holmes replied. "We drifted apart after that. I knew I had to work hard, and I didn't want to let my parents down. I know it's corny, but they made sacrifices to send me to university, and I wasn't as gifted as Melissa. I thought she wasted her talents, and to be honest, I grew to dislike her."

"Did she and this Kingston become a couple?" Dave asked.

"For a while," Mrs. Holmes answered, 'and then…" She covered her face with her hands and began to laugh uncontrollably. "Oh my goodness!" she exclaimed as she recovered. "I don't know if I should tell you…"

Her laughter was infectious. "If you don't," I said, smiling, 'we'll just have to arrest you and take you to the station to make a statement."

She blew her nose on a tissue and concealed it somewhere in the folds of her skirt. "It was awful," she declared, but her expression said otherwise.

"What happened?" I asked.

"We went to a party at Nick Kingston's flat. It must have been after Christmas, because I'd taken my father's car back down there after the holiday. It was a Morris Minor, and he said I'd have more use for it than him. After that, I was invited to a lot more parties, because I was good for a lift. I remember! It was to watch a moon landing, that was it! Apollo 13, the one that had problems. We were all interested, history was being made, but Kingston knew everything about it. He was a complete show-off. Would you like some more tea?"

We would. She refilled our cups and I invited her to continue.

"Kingston was awful to Melissa. They'd seen a lot of each other up to then, but I could see he was deliberately ignoring her and chasing another girl. Melissa took her revenge by latching on to poor Mo."

"Mo?"

That smile came back, but wistful this time. "That's right, short for Mobo Dlamini. He was from Swaziland, that's in South Africa, and a lovely person. His father or grandfather was the king, and he came over here to study law."

"Could you spell it, please?" Dave asked, and noted it down.

"I went home just as it was breaking dawn," Mrs. Holmes continued, 'but Melissa didn't come with me. I heard her and Mo arrive much later. Their giggles and antics woke me up. About lunchtime I had my revenge. There was a knock at the door and who should I find there but Melissa's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Youngman. They pushed past me and marched up to her room. Can you imagine their reactions? Not only was their darling daughter in bed with a man, but he was a black man. It was awful. I heard most of it and Mo told me the rest. They stormed out and drove away, and I don't think she saw them again. I gave Mo some aspirin and some breakfast and took him home."

"This was early 1970?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Melissa's mother died of an overdose in August of that year," I said.

"Oh no," Janet Holmes sighed. "The poor woman."

"Melissa sounds a right little charmer," Dave declared. "I'm not surprised you disliked her."

"What happened to them all?" I asked.

She took a deep breath and thought for a few seconds. "That was the end of our friendship, if you could call it that. I moved out and concentrated on my studies. Melissa didn't do the second year and I haven't heard a whisper of her until now. Mo joined a firm of solicitors in London and married an English girl. We kept in touch until I left university, but I don't know what happened to him."

"And Kingston?" I prompted.

She hesitated before shaking her head and saying: "I don't know."

My tea was cold but I finished it off. Putting the cup down I said:

"You wouldn't happen to have any photographs, would you?"

Our lucky streak stayed with us. She sat upright, stretching her spine to its full extent, and said: "Why didn't I think of that? Of course I have, somewhere."

"We'd be grateful if you could find them."

She said it would take a few minutes, but she knew where they should be if we didn't mind waiting. We passed the time by having another scone each and I studied the cross-section of the beastie above the fireplace. Seeing one of them down the pan would ruin your morning.

It took a little longer than we expected, and she had a smudge of dust on her nose when she returned, explaining that they were in the loft and she rarely went up there. "Here we are," she said, laying an album on the table. It said "Essex' on the cover in ornate lettering.