“There’s just one last thing,” she said through the open window, her dark eyes guileless.
“Can I have your maiden name so I can cross you off the school list Sister Bridget gave me? I don’t want to go troubling you again by mistake.”
“Hopwood,” said Geraldine helpfully.
It wasn’t difficult to locate Mrs. Hopwood. Roz drove to the library in Dawlington and consulted the local telephone directory. There were three Hopwoods with Dawlington addresses. She made a note of these with their numbers, found a telephone box and rang each in turn, claiming to be an old friend of Geraldine’s and asking to speak to her.
The first two denied any knowledge of such a person, the last, a man’s voice, told her that Geraldine had married and was now living in Wooling.
He gave her Geraldine’s telephone number and told her, rather sweetly, how nice it had been to talk to her again. Roz smiled as she put down the receiver. Geraldine, she thought, took after her father.
This impression was forcibly confirmed when Mrs. Hopwooci rattled her safety chain into place and opened the front door.
She eyed Roz with deep suspicion.
“Yes?” she demanded.
“Mrs. Hopwood?”
“Yes.”
Roz had planned a simple cover story but, seeing the hard glint in the woman’s eyes, decided to abandon it. Mrs. Hopwood was not the type to take kindly to flannel.
“I’m afraid I bamboozled your daughter and your husband into giving away this address,” she said with a slight smile.
“My name’s-‘ “Rosalind Leigh and you’re writing a book about Olive. I know. I’ve just had Geraldine on the phone. It didn’t take her long to put two and two together. I’m sorry but I can’t help you. I hardly knew the girl.” But she didn’t close the door. Something curiosity? kept her there.
“You know her better than I do, Mrs. Hopwood.”
“But I haven’t chosen to write a book about her, young woman. Nor would I.”
“Not even if you thought she was innocent?”
Mrs. Hopwood didn’t answer.
“Supposing she didn’t do it? You’ve considered that, haven’t you?”
“It’s not my affair.” She started to close the door.
“Then whose affair is it, for God’s sake?” demanded Roz, suddenly angry.
“Your daughter paints a picture of two sisters, both of whom were so insecure that one told lies and cheated to give herself some status and the other was afraid to say no in case people didn’t like her. What the hell was happening to them at home to make them like that? And where were you then? Where was anybody? The only real friend either of them had was the other.” She saw the thin compression of the woman’s lips through the gap in the door and she shook her head contemptuously.
“Your daughter misled me, I’m afraid. From something she said I thought you might be a Samaritan.” She smiled coldly.
“I see you’re a Pharisee, after all. Goodbye, Mrs. Hopwood.”
The other clicked her tongue impatiently.
“You’d better come in, but I’m warning you, I shall insist on a transcript of this interview. I will not have words put into my mouth afterwards simply to fit some sentimental view you have of Olive.”
Roz produced her tape-recorder.
“I’ll tape the whole thing. If you have a recorder you can tape it at the same time, or I can send you a copy of mine.”
Mrs. Hopwood nodded approval as she unhooked the chain and opened the door.
“We have our own. My husband can set it up while I make a cup of tea.
Come in, and wipe your feet, please.”
Ten minutes later they were ready. Mrs. Hopwood took natural control.
“The easiest way is for me to tell you everything I remember. When I’ve finished you can ask me questions.
Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“I said I hardly knew Olive. That’s true. She came here perhaps five or six times in all, twice to Geraldine’s birthday parties, and on three or four occasions to tea. I didn’t take to her. She was a clumsy girl, slow, impossible to talk to, lacking in humour, and, frankly, extremely unattractive. This may sound harsh and unkind but there you are you can’t pretend feelings that you don’t have. I wasn’t sorry when her friendship with Geraldine died a natural death.” She paused to collect her thoughts.
“After that, I really had very little to do with her. She never came to this house again. I heard stories, of course, from Geraldine and Geraldine’s friends. The impression I formed was very much along the lines you set out earlier a sad, unloved, and unlovely child, who had resorted to boasting about holidays she hadn’t taken and boyfriends she didn’t have to make up for unhappiness at home. The cheating, I think, was the result of her mother’s constant pressure to do well, as indeed was the compulsive eating. She was always plump but during her adolescence her eating habits became pathological.
According to Geraldine, she used to steal food from the school kitchen and cram it, in its entirety, into her mouth, as if she were afraid someone would take it away from her before she had finished.
“Now, you would interpret this behaviour, I imagine, as a symptom of a troubled home background.” She looked enquiringly at Roz, who nodded.
“Yes, well, I think I’d agree with you. It wasn’t natural, and nor was Amber’s submissiveness, although I must stress I never witnessed either girl in action, so to speak. I am relating only what I was told by Geraldine and her friends. In any event, it did trouble me, mostly because I had met Gwen and Robert Martin when I went to collect Geraldine on the few occasions she was invited to their house. They were a very strange couple. They hardly spoke.
He lived in a downstairs room at the back of the house and she and the two girls lived at the front. As far as I could make out, virtually all contact between them was conducted through Olive and Amber.” Seeing Roz’s expression, she stopped.
“No one’s told you this yet?”
Roz shook her head.
“I never did know how many people were aware of it. She kept up appearances, of course, and, frankly, had Geraldine not told me she had seen a bed in Mr. Martin’s study, I wouldn’t have guessed what was going on.” She wrinkled her brow.
“But it’s always the way, isn’t it? Once you begin to suspect something, then everything you see confirms that suspicion.
They were never together, except at the odd parents’ evening, and then there would always be a third party with them, usually one of the teachers.” She smiled self-consciously.
“I used to watch them, you know, not out of malice my husband will confirm that but just to prove myself wrong.” She shook her head.
“I came to the conclusion that they simply loathed each other. And it wasn’t just that they never spoke, they couldn’t bring themselves to exchange anything touches, glances anything. Does that make sense to you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Roz with feeling.
“Hatred has as strong a body language as love.”
“It was she, I think, who was the instigator of it all. I’ve always assumed he must have had an affair which she found out about, though I must stress I don’t know that. He was a nice looking man, very easy to talk to, and, of course, he got out and about with his job. Whereas she, as far as I could see, had no friends at all, a few acquaintances perhaps, but one never came across her socially. She was a very controlled woman, cold and unemotional. Really rather unpleasant.
Certainly not the type one could ever grow fond of.” She was silent for a moment.
“Olive was very much her daughter, of Course, both in looks and personality, and Amber his. Poor Olive,” she said with genuine compassion.
“She did have very little going for her.”
Mrs. Hopwood looked at Roz and sighed heavily.