‘Good, well, then, let’s get some wine, pronto.’
She calls over a waitress and orders two small glasses of something French without asking Sophie if that’s what she’d like and then she turns to face her and says, ‘So, Susie Beets, I googled you after you left. Something about you didn’t quite stack up.’
‘Oh.’
‘I take it you’re not really a fictional detective in a popular series of books written by someone called P. J. Fox. I assume you are in fact P. J. Fox herself, otherwise known as Sophie Beck, born in Hither Green in south-east London in 1984.’ She says this with a wry smile.
‘Yes. Sorry. I—’
‘Look. I work in private education. There’s nothing I haven’t seen or encountered. But why did you lie?’
‘I didn’t want to cause any more ripples, I suppose,’ Sophie says. ‘It’s actually my boyfriend who’s the new head teacher, not my brother. And it was me that found the ring in the grounds.’
Their wine arrives and Jacinta picks it up immediately and takes a large sip, eyeing Sophie curiously over the rim. ‘Well, listen, I don’t get to chat with detective novelists turned amateur sleuths every day and sadly I can’t tell you much you don’t already know, but when you said they’d found something in the woods behind the college, I did assume that you were going to say something else.’
‘Yes?’
‘Apparently, there’s a tunnel,’ Jacinta continues, ‘which runs from the big house where Scarlett Jacques used to live.’
‘I read something about that. It was dug out during the civil war?’
‘Correct,’ says Jacinta. ‘And I always wondered, when this was all going on, I wondered about that tunnel. I told the police about it and they looked into it, but Scarlett’s family had never found the entrance and neither had the family who lived there before them, and before that the house had lain empty for quite some time. They even got a house historian in to search for it, butnothing. And that was that. But I still think, to this day … I mean, that family, the Jacqueses, they were, I don’t know, they were quite the gang of narcissists. All of them.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, the girl, Scarlett, she wasn’t a student at the Maypole at the time of the disappearances, but she was there for the two years before that and she was such a pretty girl. But such a damaged girl, I always thought. She had this way of managing people, by making them think that she needed them, making them think she was a hopeless mess and that only they could keep her together. But underneath it all I always felt she knew exactly what she was doing. And the mother – awful woman. All image, no substance. The father I only met once, at Scarlett’s initial interview. He disappeared halfway through the interview to take a call. He was very distant. Cold. The whole family felt like this group of ice floes, just sort of drifting about, never touching. And so, when this couple went missing, and I heard they’d last been seen at the Jacques house, I suppose I wasn’t surprised at all.’
‘But there was no connection, was there? I mean, according to what I’ve read, the couple only met the Maypole kids that night.’
‘Well, not quite. Remember, Scarlett and the girl were at Manton College together.’
‘Yes, but according to the other kids they didn’t know each other all that well.’
‘Well, that’s not entirely true. There was a girl called Ruby, also a former Maypole girl. She wasn’t at the pool party that night but she told the police that she thought there might have been something more going on between the girls – I can’t remember her name?’
‘Tallulah.’
‘Yes, of course. Tallulah. She thought there was something going on between Scarlett and Tallulah. Apparently, Scarlett was bisexual and she and Ruby had had a bit of a thing themselves when they were younger. The owner of a cake shop in Manton not far from the college said she’d seen Tallulah in there a few times earlier that year with a girl who matched Scarlett’s description. But Scarlett denied it, said there were loads of girls who looked like her at the college.’ Jacinta rolls her eyes and lifts her glass to her mouth, putting it down again before having taken a sip to say, ‘And Scarlett’s boyfriend. Liam. Have you met him?’
‘Yes. Yes, I have.’ Sophie feels herself flush slightly at the mention of his name.
‘Well, he was there that night and he claims that he’d never met Tallulah before then but …’ She sighs. ‘I’m not so sure. I always thought he was holding something back. I always thought maybe he was protecting Scarlett, somehow, because he was so in love with that girl, so madly, crazily in love with her. And he had his heart well and truly broken when she ended things with him. Even as teachers at the school, we were all aware of it, and concerned – you know?’
‘Oh,’ says Sophie. ‘When Liam told me about it, he said he was fine about it ending.’
‘Well, he was lying to you. I was there. We all saw him wandering around the college looking like a broken man.’
Jacinta runs her finger around the base of her wine glass. ‘You know,’ she says, ‘that was probably the worst year of my life. So much stress. I found out my husband had been having an affairthat year, we separated, and then he went for a walk one afternoon and never came back. To be fair, we were in utter crisis at the time. We were in the process of divorcing. He was only there at the weekends. So, when he didn’t come back, at first I wasn’t too worried. I assumed he’d just gone back to his flat without saying goodbye. But then when he didn’t phone to speak to our son that night, or the night after, when he didn’t reply to any of my son’s text messages or ask about the dog, I reported him missing to the police. They sent dogs into the woods but they found nothing. And I had to accept, eventually, that he just didn’t want to be part of our lives any more. That he wanted to be gone. To this other woman. Exclusively.’ She sighs heavily, and then continues. ‘And then those teenagers went missing and it was all too much. Myannus horribilis. The worst year of my life. I knew I had to leave.’
Sophie gets back to the cottage a few minutes before eight. Shaun has only just returned from work and looks drained as he searches the still unfamiliar kitchen cupboards for a water glass. She comes up behind him and encircles his waist with her arm, burying a kiss into the creased cotton beneath his shoulder blade. ‘I’m back,’ she says.
‘I can tell,’ he says, not turning to complete the hug. ‘How was town?’
‘It was nice.’ She pulls away from him and says, ‘Look at my lovely hair.’
He turns and touches the ends of it where it still kicks outwards after her blow-dry. ‘Very pretty,’ he says distractedly. ‘I’m glad you had a nice day.’
Sophie hasn’t told him about the real content of her day. She wishes she could share it all with him, but feels very keenly that he will not approve.