At the time the discovery had caused a huge media furore, which had subsequently died away from lack of information. According to Carole’s archive, the identity of the Lady in the Lake had never been established. Which made finding out what had happened to her an almost impossible task.
And Carole Seddon couldn’t think of anything better to shake her out of her current torpor than an impossible task.
She also realized that she had collected her clippings on the case back in the now-unimaginable days when she hadn’t had a laptop. She had never even Googled the Fedborough Lady in the Lake. How times had changed. Carole, for many years having pooh-poohed the very idea of computers, had now become addicted to the new technology. There was in her personality an obsessive strand – some people who knew her might even have described it as obsessive-compulsive. Along with her paranoia about dirt and untidiness, she suffered from a meticulous attention to detail . . . except of course, being Carole Seddon, she wouldn’t have seen it as suffering.
She had entered the words ‘Fedborough Lady in the Lake’ into the search engine without much optimism. The trail must long have gone cold. She anticipated finding a few references to old newspaper reports, the clippings she already had in hard copy form, but not a lot else.
She had, however, underestimated the tenacity of the curious. It soon became apparent that, to a lot of people, the Lady in the Lake case was still very much alive. And if she herself had obsessive tendencies, they paled into insignificance when compared to some of the people out in the blogosphere.
It took some time before Carole got to the personal stuff. As she had expected, the first few hundred entries in Google were just newspaper reportage of the case. But eventually she reached the postings of unqualified individuals, and it soon became clear that some of the more extreme views had to be discounted. Venting their opinions online offered a wonderful new platform to the kind of letter-writers who used to use green ink with a lot of capital letters and exclamation marks. But once Carole had weeded out the seriously unhinged, she found some ideas that were worthy of consideration.
A lot of the postings were very sad. As she read them, Carole became aware of how dreadful it must be when a family member or friend simply vanishes without a trace. In some of the online writers there was a desperation. The hope of seeing the missing person alive again was long gone, all the bereaved asked for was a kind of closure, the confirmation of their worst fears. A surprising number of people wanted to claim the Lady in the Lake as their own.
Carole had opened up a Word file and was starting to make some notes on her findings when she heard the front doorbell ring. She consulted her watch and was surprised to see that nearly three hours had passed since she first sat down in front of the laptop. And that meant three hours during which she had avoided self-pity and recrimination.
Those two emotions, however, returned forcibly when Carole Seddon opened the front door of High Tor. Because standing in front of it was Jude.
‘Oh, I hadn’t really noticed you’d been away,’ said Carole with studied insouciance.
They were sitting in the bar of the Crown and Anchor. In one of the alcoves, each facing a large glass of Chilean Chardonnay. At first Carole had demurred at the suggestion of going for a late lunch at the pub, but Jude had been at her persuasive best and, besides, Carole was desperately curious to know where her neighbour had been for the previous two weeks.
As she was travelling down on the train from Victoria, Jude had decided that her approach would be very simple. It wasn’t in her nature to play games. She would tell Carole straight away about her new relationship, and resign herself to whatever fence-mending and bridge-building efforts then became necessary.
But actually being with Carole didn’t make it easy to carry out that plan. Jude felt an uncharacteristic upsurge of guilt. Now she was away from Piers Targett, it seemed inconceivable that during the last two weeks she hadn’t found a moment to pick up her mobile and call her neighbour. Where had the time gone?
‘And you’ve been all right, have you, Carole?’ she asked. ‘You know, since I last saw you?’
‘Oh yes, never anything wrong with me,’ came the brisk, lying reply. ‘You know how it is. I’ve been busy, busy, busy.’
Someone else might have asked what she’d been busy doing, but Jude was too sensitive to do that. She knew about the deep-frozen loneliness that lay at the centre of her neighbour’s heart. ‘Have you seen Stephen and family?’
‘No, I told you,’ Carole replied sharply. ‘They’re in California.’
‘Oh yes, sorry, I forgot.’
‘Taking Lily to various Disney theme parks.’ She couldn’t keep the disapproval out of her voice. Nor could she prevent herself from adding, ‘For which I’m sure she’ll be far too young. But then, of course, children aren’t allowed to have a proper childhood any more, are they?’
There were some pronouncements from Carole with which, Jude had learned over the years of their friendship, it was just not worth taking issue. So she just said, ‘No.’
A silence was suspended between them. Which was unusual. Though Carole could be spiky at times, they rarely had a problem finding things to talk about.
Eventually Jude said, ‘I was introduced to real tennis on Sunday.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Real tennis. The game. Precursor of lawn tennis. Been around for centuries. You know, Hampton Court . . . saggy net . . . King Henry VIII . . .’
‘Oh yes, I’ve heard of it. How on earth did you get involved?’ Carole looked beadily at her neighbour. ‘Was it because of some man?’
There was never going to be a better cue than that and Jude was about to explain everything when she was interrupted by the arrival of the Crown and Anchor’s landlord, Ted Crisp, bearing the piled-up plates of their lunch. Both had ordered the dish of the day, smoked haddock with bubble and squeak and a poached egg on top.
Unkempt as ever, bearded, haystack-haired, Ted put the plates down in front of them. ‘You’ll like this,’ he said. ‘Chef’s best. Haven’t seen you two for a while.’
‘Jude’s been away,’ Carole responded tartly. ‘Somewhere.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Well, I . . .’ Jude found herself blushing. And she never blushed.
‘Never mind, your secret’s safe with me. Anyway, just heard this new joke . . .’
‘Oh dear,’ said Carole.
‘What’s E.T. short for?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jude came back at him in music hall style. ‘What is E.T. short for?’
‘Because he’s got little legs!’ Ted Crisp replied with a loud guffaw, and then went off to serve at the bar.
Jude laughed and then explained the joke to Carole, who didn’t find it funny even when she understood it.
Then they got involved in eating their lunch, which was excellent. Ed Pollack, the Crown and Anchor’s chef, really was going from strength to strength.
The two women ate in silence, which was not unusual but was uncomfortable for Jude. She normally felt so serene, so secure in her own skin, that she wasn’t used to the sensations of a simpering schoolgirl. She found herself wishing that when their conversation did finally resume, Carole would have forgotten the point where it had broken off.
It was, however, evident as her neighbour finished the last scrapings of her lunch, laid knife and fork strictly parallel on her plate, dabbed at her mouth with her paper napkin and asked pointedly, ‘So who was it who introduced you to real tennis?’