Ignoring Carole’s wince, Jude said, ‘I’ll get us refills too,’ and made for the bar before her neighbour could remonstrate that she didn’t need any more. Or that she only wanted a small one.
While Jude went to order, Brandie turned to Carole. ‘Have you been a friend of Jude’s for a long time?’
‘Long enough.’ She meant it as a casual reply, not realizing that the words could sound as though she did not wish the relationship to continue. Throughout her life, Carole had had a propensity for unwittingly making remarks like that, which made her appear more combative than she really was (though, it has to be said, she was already quite combative).
‘Oh. And are you part of the healing community?’
Had she been searching for two words to antagonize her listener, Brandie could not have made a more accurate selection. Healing? Well, Carole’s views on that were very clear. And she had frequently expressed her distrust of any phrase that began with the word ‘community’.
‘No, I am not,’ she replied icily. ‘Friendship does not imply a shared belief in mumbo-jumbo.’
As she returned with the drinks, Jude was aware of the silence, not to say ‘froideur’. Oh dear, she thought. As she could have anticipated, Carole and Brandie was never going to be a marriage made in heaven, was it?
FOUR
Jude liked to keep leisurely hours. Quite capable of getting up for an early appointment when required, she preferred a routine incorporating a cup of tea made in the kitchen and enjoyed back upstairs. Her perfect way of greeting the day was from under the duvet. The residents of the adjacent High Tor, woman and dog, would, on an ideal day, have returned from their brisk walk on Fethering Beach long before their neighbour had started to think about getting dressed.
But the following morning, the Friday, Jude’s laze was interrupted by the telephone ringing. The caller, to her surprise, was Vi Benyon. ‘Sorry, Jude, to trouble you so early, but I wanted to talk to you while Leslie’s out walking the dog.’
These words instantly shifted Jude from comatose to fully alert. ‘Oh, yes? What was it about?’
The answer could not have been better. ‘Well, you know last night we were talking about Anita Garner …?’
‘Yes?’ said Jude eagerly.
‘There were things I could have said then, but I didn’t because Leslie didn’t want me to.’
Even better. Jude reckoned Vi didn’t need another prompt.
She was proved right as the words tumbled out of the old woman’s mouth. ‘The fact is, I always felt unhappy about what happened to Anita. I mean, people don’t just vanish off the face of the earth, do they? She must’ve gone somewhere, and I didn’t reckon the police took her disappearance seriously enough. It was as if nobody cared about the girl.’
‘My friend Carole found quite a lot of coverage of her disappearance in back copies of the Fethering Observer.’
‘Oh yes, there was a lot of fuss at the time, but people soon forget. Fethering’s always been a hotbed for gossip’ – You don’t have to tell me that, thought Jude – ‘but the local attention span is short.’
Perhaps now a nudge was needed. ‘Vi, do you actually know something specific about what happened to Anita?’
‘Not exactly, no. But she was working at Footscrow House which, back then, was a care home …’
‘I’d heard that, yes.’
‘… and my mother was a resident there at the time.’
‘Really?’
‘Terrible place, I’m sorry to say. Standards of care, particularly considering the money they were charging, they was terrible. My mum would be calling for hours for a carer to come and help her … and when one eventually did come, they couldn’t speak English. And she was like as not to get a man as a woman … which was undignified for a lady of Mum’s generation. She wasn’t used to having men dealing with her … private needs.’
Jude was beginning to think another nudge might be required to shift Vi Benyon off the familiar track of the inadequacy of care homes, but the old woman reined herself in.
‘Anyway, Mum knew Anita Garner. She was one of the few carers who she actually liked … who actually cared, you could say. Kind girl, seemed genuinely interested in an old biddy’s reminiscences. And I’m not saying my mum wasn’t a talker, but she had lots to talk about. Well, Anita had lived her whole life around Fethering, so she knew the places and some of the people Mum talked about. And what’s more …’ Vi Benyon held the pause like a professional storyteller – ‘Anita told her some of the stuff that was going on behind the scenes at Footscrow House.’
‘Like what?’ asked Jude eagerly.
‘Well, there was … This is all rather difficult for me, because when Anita disappeared, it was round the time my mum was on the way out, so I was preoccupied with that. You know, her final illness and passing, the funeral and family complications … And I loved my mum to bits, so I wasn’t in a good state. Otherwise, I might have followed up more on some of the stuff Anita told me.’
Jude managed to restrain herself from demanding what Anita did actually tell her, and fortunately Vi continued, ‘Apparently, the standards of cleanliness at Footscrow House, you know, back when it was a care home, was really terrible. I wish I’d known more about it before I put Mum in there. I might have looked somewhere else, though there wasn’t much available, not on the budget we had. But standards there was very low. Sheets not changed nearly as often as they should have been, mice in the kitchen, you name it. No surprise the place was closed down fairly soon afterwards.
‘But, according to Anita, this level of neglect wasn’t down to the carers being slack or anything like that. It was management policy. The staff was effectively told to lower their standards. Well, it was to save money, wasn’t it? Save on the laundry bills. There are always people who’re ready to cut corners if it’s going to save them a few bob, aren’t there?’
‘Too true. Sadly.’ Jude was still hoping for something more specific. ‘Did Anita Garner actually have any run-ins with the management? You suggested when we were in the Crown and Anchor that she might have complained to them about the way things were being run?’
‘Yes, being one of those … oh, what’s the word? Tell me again.’
‘“Whistle-blowers”?’
‘I can never get that right. But, yes, Mum said she thought Anita had complained. But I don’t know whether the girl got into trouble over that. I’m sure the management wouldn’t have liked it, though.’ Vi Benyon was silent for a moment, and Jude was worried she might have said her piece. But then the old woman resumed, ‘No, the problems Anita had at Footscrow House back then were more … personal.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, there was someone at the care home who kept … you know … coming on to her.’
‘Oh? Did she say who that person was?’
‘She did give me a name’ – Vi hesitated – ‘but I’m not sure that I should mention it …’
‘Oh, come on,’ Jude urged her. ‘That could be important. It might well have something to do with why Anita disappeared.’
‘Yes, it might. I’d thought that at the time. And there was a bit of gossip round Fethering about the possibility.’
Another silence. Then an abrupt ‘Oh, here’s Leslie back with the dog.’
And Vi Benyon ended the call.
Leaving Jude in a state of considerable frustration.
Fethering Library was not of a size to have a separate room for archival research. The bound copies of the Fethering Observer were kept in a large metal cupboard which had to be unlocked by the librarian Di Thompson. For reasons of space on the available tables, Carole was only allowed to take out four volumes at a time. Then the cupboard had to be locked again until she had finished with those four. Whereupon the processes of unlocking and retrieving had to be repeated. That was how access had always been arranged, and that was how it continued to be arranged.