‘Am I included?’ Nick asked.
‘Of course. Didn’t you tell me that Cockermouth is sorted?’
They headed for Hannah’s room via the water cooler. When Linz had summarised their interviews with Gail, Tina and Peter, Nick asked, ‘Is Gail telling the truth?’
Hannah said, ‘Why should she lie?’
‘To firm up her own alibi?’
‘Not clever if Sam denies her story. Which might yet happen.’
‘Or to hurt Tina?’
‘That’s more like it,’ Hannah admitted. ‘The pair of them hate each other, but I’d say Gail’s the more vindictive. I can see Tina killing Warren in a fit of temper. As for Gail, no doubt she’s capable of murder, but I’d expect subtlety from her. A slow-acting poison would be her weapon of choice. Good old-fashioned arsenic, maybe. Not something as crude as a scythe.’
‘I still fancy Peter,’ Linz said.
‘Rather old for you, isn’t he?’ Les Bryant murmured. ‘For all you know, he may be a lifelong devotee of Abba and Neil Diamond.’
Hannah said, ‘OK, that’ll do for the time being. I need to catch up on my emails. But before I become engrossed, DS Lowther, can you spare me a minute?’
When they were alone, Hannah switched off her mobile and put her phone on divert. ‘Fine, I’m all ears.’
‘Before I start, I don’t mean to be rude, Hannah, but I have to say, you look like death warmed up.’
‘You always did wonders for my confidence.’
‘Sorry, but you need to know. I’m only seeing what everyone else is seeing. You’d be far better recuperating at home for a few days instead of getting up at the crack of dawn to interview sad women like Gail Flint and Tina Howe.’
‘They’d claw your eyes out if they heard you describing them as sad.’
‘True, though, isn’t it?’
‘Show me someone over thirty who isn’t a bit sad.’
He sighed. ‘Not having a good day?’
‘Pretty shitty, since you ask. I finished up with my heart going out to Tina Howe. Which wasn’t in the plan. God, I hate this job sometimes.’
‘Me too.’
‘All right, fire away. The suspense is killing me.’
‘Don’t get too excited.’ He licked his lips. ‘Actually, this is very difficult for me.’
‘We go back a long way. No need for any secrets between us.’
‘You may change your mind once I’ve had my say.’
‘Don’t worry. By now I ought to be unshockable.’
He bowed his head. ‘I suppose you’ve guessed already.’
Hannah took a breath. The fan was whirring sluggishly, exhausted by its losing battle against the heat. ‘This is about your relationship with Roz Gleave?’
‘Oh, no.’ No mistaking the astonishment on his clean-cut features. ‘It’s about my relationship with her husband. You see, Chris and I were lovers.’
Chapter Eighteen
The grey heron stood motionless by the edge of the water, head resting between its shoulders. It surveyed the tarn and the tangled grounds at the foot of Tarn Fell, as if contemplating Jacob Quiller’s testament to shattered faith. Daniel and Miranda paused on the winding path, not wishing to disturb its reverie.
‘It’s as mystified as you and me,’ she whispered. ‘Daniel, isn’t it time to give up on trying to make sense of the garden? This place is so lovely, let’s just appreciate what we see.’
‘You’re right.’ He put his arm around her slim shoulders. ‘I’ve been making the historian’s mistake. Conjecturing too much about the past, not making enough of the present.’
‘Life’s short.’ She trembled under his touch. ‘I dreamed of Kirsty again last night. Watching her fall in slow motion, unable to do anything to save her.’
‘There was nothing any of us could do.’
‘What could make her so unhappy? What was so bad that she couldn’t bear to carry on any longer? If only I’d talked to her more at the restaurant, perhaps I could…’
‘You can’t blame yourself. It’s crazy. We didn’t know her, didn’t have a clue what was going on inside her head.’
‘It was such a lovely evening,’ Miranda said. ‘Louise was good company, I’m sorry I was mean about her. As soon as she said she was leaving, I realised I’d been selfish.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
She cleared her throat. ‘There’s something I wanted to tell you.’
The air had chilled and at last you could believe that the heatwave might be drawing to an end. He slipped his arm off her.
‘What is it?’
‘Wipe that frown off your face, you ought to be pleased after all your nagging. I’ve decided you were right. We all need to be sure of our roots. I must set about tracing my birth mother.’
‘Seriously?’
His voice rose in surprise. As if alerted to their presence, the heron drew back its long neck and took flight. Within an instant it had disappeared among the trees.
‘Yes. It’s ridiculous, this fear of rejection. If she doesn’t want to know me, fine. I’ll survive. But I’d hate to think she was yearning to hear from me, and I froze her out of my life because she made one mistake a long, long time ago.’
‘Why the sudden change of heart?’
‘There’s a bond between parent and child, it’s unique.’ Her voice was dreamy, her eyes far away. ‘The blood-tie.’
This was precisely how he felt about his own father, and why he needed to learn more about the man’s life, what he was really like. Yet her words didn’t ring true. Whenever they’d talked about this before, Miranda had been resolute. The words, the sentiment, didn’t seem to belong to her. She’d been talked round. But not by him. And certainly not by Louise.
A phrase of Miranda’s came back into his mind as they set off back to the cottage. We have things in common.
‘You’ve talked to someone about this?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘I’m interested, that’s all.’
‘As it happens, I have had a conversation…’
‘With Oliver Cox?’
She stared. ‘Right first time. How on earth did you figure that out?’
‘You were chatting with him in the bar at The Heights. He persuaded you, but what I’m wondering is — how did he manage it?’ He closed his eyes, breathing in her perfume. ‘Was it because Oliver was adopted too? He understood the dilemma better than the rest of us.’
‘He didn’t want to talk about it to begin with. I found it so encouraging when he urged me to trace my mum that I asked him outright if he was adopted. Typical, huh, putting my foot right in my mouth?’
‘What did he say?’
‘At first he backed right off. He’s lovely, but he’s easily knocked off balance. He actually denied it, would you believe? Said I’d put two and two together and made five.’
His face was very close to hers, but he’d shut his eyes. He was picturing her at the bar, determined not to let Oliver off the hook. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, I’d had a couple of large glasses of wine and I’d talked him into having one himself, even though he said he never drank on duty because it soon went to his head. I suppose the booze loosened both our tongues. He tried to brush me off, change the subject, make a joke of the whole thing. But I begged him to be straight with me, told him how much it mattered.’
‘And in the end he gave in.’ That was what people did with Miranda. It was always easier to surrender than to fight.
‘Yes, he finally admitted he was adopted. Even then he said he didn’t want to make it out to be such a big deal.’
‘Did he tell you about his own experience?’
‘I dragged it out of him. He said he was riven with doubt about tracing his blood-family. Once he’d dropped out of uni, he hadn’t been able to settle to anything. As a last resort, he decided to look for his real mother. He was frightened of how she would react, his dread of rejection was as intense as mine. But when at last he found her, it changed his life. No question, he told me, it was the best thing he’d ever done.’
‘Where did he meet his mother?’
‘No idea. He clammed up after that and I didn’t want to make any more of a nuisance of myself. I was grateful for his honesty.’