by Agatha Frost
Without another word, Alessandra began jogging back towards the manor, leaving Julia and Roxy to watch in shock.
“What an awful woman,” Roxy mumbled.
“Awful,” Julia echoed. “Let’s speak to Alistair before it starts to –”
Before Julia could finish her sentence, there was a rumble of thunder, which was followed by sudden rain. It drenched them both through in seconds as they attempted to run back to the nursing home, the path nothing more than puddles underfoot.
Once back in the orangery, Julia and Roxy stood on the edge of the room, dripping from head to toe. Some of the elderly residents who had retreated inside at the first sign of rain stared at them with frowns and pursed lips. Glynnis shook her head as she bit into another slice of cake.
“If you’re looking for Alistair, you’re too late,” Glynnis announced. “He’s gone upstairs for a nap. Probably tired out from Alessandra working him out on that court.”
When they were back in Roxy’s car, they stared at the rain in silence as they shivered before setting off back towards the village.
“Something weird is going on,” Roxy announced when she pulled up outside Julia’s café as the rain began to ease off. “I’d love to discuss it more with you, but I’ve only got six minutes left of my lunch break, and I haven’t eaten yet.”
“I’ll make you a sandwich,” Julia said as she climbed out of Roxy’s car. “On the house. I stole your break.”
“I don’t mind,” Roxy said with a smile as she pushed her red hair out of her face. “It’s rather exciting. I’m not surprised you get so involved in these things. My adrenaline is pumping.”
Roxy walked into the café, but Julia hung back and looked at Evelyn’s B&B at the end of the street. She owed it to the poor woman to figure out the truth, and soon.
10
“And breathe,” the antenatal midwife called out to the group. “In and out. Nice and slowly.”
“This woman is bonkers if she thinks you can breathe your way through childbirth,” the woman next to Julia and Sue whispered over to them. “This is my third, and you forget all of this when you get in there. Your primary objective becomes to kill the man that got you in this mess.”
“It takes two to tango, darling,” the man behind her said with an apologetic smile when he noticed the horror on Sue’s face. “Is it your first?”
Sue nodded and rubbed her stomach. She looked back at Julia, fear in her wide eyes.
“Twins,” she mumbled before gulping hard. “Is it really that bad?”
“Ask for the gas and air,” the woman said with a knowing wink. “By the time it happens, you’ll be too high to notice if it’s one or two. Are you together?”
“We’re sisters,” Julia said, looking around the room and realising they were the only same sex couple. “The father had to take a late shift at the library.”
“Breathe in!” the midwife announced. “And out! Remember, it’s all in the technique. If you time your breaths right, it will be a walk in the park.”
“More like a drunken stumble through a forest with a blindfold on,” the woman next to them said. “Good luck to you.”
When the antenatal class was over, Julia helped her pregnant sister off the ground. Over the last couple of weeks, her stomach had grown even bigger, and now there was no doubt that there were twins inside.
“They’re the size of aubergines now,” Sue said as they walked out of the village hall with the other soon-to-be parents. “Two whole aubergines. Neil said they’re starting to recognise my voice at this stage, but I don’t know what to say to them.”
“I don’t think they’ll quite understand English yet,” Julia said, linking arms with her sister as they walked towards Sue’s car. “You’ll be fine. I’m going to be with you every step of the way.”
“Do you promise?” Sue mumbled, looking her sister dead in the eyes as the sun started to set on the village. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified, Julia. Maybe I shouldn’t have waited until I was thirty-two. I was fearless in my twenties.”
“It’s just your hormones.”
“Hormones!” Sue cried, pushing her caramel locks behind her ears. “You sound like Neil. ‘It’s your hormones, love’, he keeps saying. I dare any man to do this.”
“I can’t even imagine what you’re going through,” Julia said, her voice catching at the back of her throat.
“You will,” Sue said, clutching her sister’s hand. “You’re not out of the game yet. Thirty-eight is young! Did you hear about those women who gave birth at seventy in India? There’s still time!”
“Seventy?” Julia snorted. “I can’t think of anything worse!”
“I saw a documentary about it at gran’s last week,” Sue said as she unlocked her car. “Who knew post-menopausal IVF was a real thing? I could see gran’s eyes twinkling for a second, but I told her not to get any funny ideas.”
“She’d do it just to break the record of being the oldest woman.”
They climbed into the car and waited for the other cars to pull away. Sue closed her hands around the steering wheel and stared off into the distant setting sun.
“I don’t want to go home and be on my own,” she said, turning to Julia. “Do you have any ice cream in your freezer?”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Julia said, pulling a crinkled flyer out of her pocket. “Didn’t you used to be a fan of Nirvana?”
The usual twenty-minute drive to the village of Burford turned into a thirty-five-minute crawl, thanks to Sue’s sudden regard for driving well under any given speed limit. By the time they pulled up in one of the few free parking spaces outside The Flying Horseman on the main road in the small picturesque village, Julia was surprised not to have missed the gig entirely.
“It’s not The Plough,” Sue mumbled as she climbed out of the car and looked up at the three-story red brick pub with rooms, which looked to be just as busy outside as it was inside. “I never thought this was your sort of thing.”
“It’s not,” Julia said, pulling the flyer out to make sure she had the right date and time. “I never expected it to be so busy, considering it’s a tribute band.”
“I think they played at Neil’s sister’s wedding a couple of years ago,” Sue said, linking arms with Julia as they crossed the road. “They were quite good. He’s a good sound alike. This wouldn’t have anything to do with you finding Astrid Wood’s body, would it?”
“What makes you think that?”
“This is Aiden’s band,” Sue said as they approached the busy pub. “I remember them from school. They were above me by a few years, but they played in an assembly once.”
The men smoking cigarettes outside of the pub all looked similar to Aiden, with scruffy clothes and shaggy hair, even if some of them were thinning out considerably, not that they seemed to notice. They pushed through the crowd and into the pub, the wall of sound hitting them immediately. Julia recognised the lyrics to Smells Like Teen Spirit, which she was sure was the only song she would know some of the words to all night.
They pushed their way through the crowd, which was significantly thicker than Julia had anticipated. When they were at the bar, she ordered orange juice for Sue, and a glass of wine for herself. After paying, they pushed their way back through the crowd to find a free spot to watch the band.
“Julia!” a woman cried over the music. “You came!”
Julia turned to see Grace sitting at a booth with the three sons she recognised from the photograph in Grace’s office.
“Do we go over?” Sue said. “She’s our doctor. She’s been up close and personal down there. Isn’t it weird?”
Ignoring her sister, Julia dragged her over to the table. Grace shuffled around, making room for them on the edge of the booth.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight, but I’m glad you’re here,” Grace said, the wine making her talk a little looser than she had in her office. “These are my sons, Mark, Joey, and Ben. Say hi.”
“They don’t usually let kids in this late,” Grace explained over the loud music. “We know the landlord. He’s a big fan of Aiden’s band. Do you like it?”
“It’s – loud,” Julia said with an awkward laugh. “Sue was a big Nirvana fan in her youth.”
“I think we all go through that stage,” Sue said, rubbing her bump in time with the bass guitar. “Looks like Mark is going through it now.”
Sue laughed at her own joke, but nobody else did. Mark’s cheeks blushed, and he quickly hid his painted nails under the table. Julia smiled her apologies at the young man, before shooting her sister daggers.
“He does an excellent David Bowie,” Grace explained, her wine breath hitting Julia’s nostrils as she sloppily leaned in. “He usually gets up and does a few songs when his dad is finished, don’t you, Mark?”
Mark nodded, but he could not have looked more uncomfortable if he had tried. Julia caught the boy’s eyes again, and she was sure she saw him screaming for help. She wondered if he got up onto the stage by choice.
“You look so much like your dad,” Sue explained, leaning in to look at Mark. “You have his nose.”
Julia coughed uncomfortably as Mark’s cheeks blushed even darker.
“He’s not my real dad,” Mark said, his voice deeper than Julia expected.
“He is your dad,” Grace said, tapping him on the knee. “He’s been there since day one, and that’s all that matters.”
“He doesn’t know who his real dad is,” Ben, the youngest, chimed in. “We think he was the milkman’s. That’s what grandma says.”
Mark slapped his brother around the back of the head, which in turn caused Grace to slap Mark. Julia could see Sue had trodden on a sore subject, which Sue seemed to have a habit of doing, and was something that could not be blamed on her pregnancy.
Silence fell on the table as the music in the packed pub carried on. Julia glanced at the stage as Aiden did his best Kurt Cobain impression in his long-sleeved blue-striped t-shirt, with his blond hair stuck to his face as he sung his heart out into the microphone. Every vein in his bright red neck and face throbbed wildly, calling out for some release. When the song finished, the lights turned to black, and a CD took over while the band took a break.
A couple of minutes later, Aiden walked over, rubbing his face with a black and white bandana. When he noticed Julia and Sue sitting at the table with his family, he smiled curiously at them.
“Julia,” he said as he patted her on the shoulder. “Good to see you. And this must be Sue. It’s been a long time, but you look almost the same, just a little more – pregnant.”
“Is that code for fat?” Sue asked blankly, her expression dropping.
“Men, eh?” Grace said, laughing awkwardly. “Wouldn’t know how to say the right thing if their lives depended on it.”
Aiden laughed awkwardly as he turned to look at the bar. He motioned to the bartender to pour him a pint, before pulling a packet of cigarettes from his back pocket.
“I’m just going out for some fresh air,” he said, tapping the box with his finger. “Helps with the vocals.”
Aiden slipped through the crowd, leaving the rest of them in silence.
“Where’s the ladies room?” Julia asked Grace.
“Just over there,” Grace said, pointing in the opposite direction of the front door. “Next to the fruit machine. You can’t miss it.”
Julia shuffled past Sue and headed in the direction of the glowing fruit machine. A man covered head to toe in tattoos smashed one of the buttons with his fist and pound coins shot out of the tray at the bottom. Julia ducked behind the machine and smiled awkwardly at him for a moment before pushing her way through the crowd towards the front door, keeping herself as close to the bar as she could. After stepping on more than one persons’ toes, Julia burst through the front door and into the fresh air, which was not so fresh thanks to the cloud of cigarette smoke.
“Didn’t have you down as a smoker,” Aiden mumbled through the half-finished cigarette dangling from his lip as he offered Julia the pack.
“No, thank you,” she said as she joined him in the amber glow of the streetlight he was leaning against. “I just came out for some air. It’s a bit stuffy in there.”
A cool breeze ran down the busy street, wafting Julia’s hair across her face. She tucked it behind her ears and smiled at the man, who was almost a stranger to her, and yet she was linked to him in a way that words could not describe.
“How’s Evelyn doing?” he asked. “I’ve been meaning to pop in, but the time never feels right.”
“I’d be lying if I said she was doing better,” Julia said, jumping out of the way as a rowdy group of young men made their way down the street, cans of beer in their hands and football shirts on their backs. “I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to Astrid.”
“Are you a police officer?” he asked, his eyes squinting as he sucked on the cigarette. “I thought you were a baker?”
“I am,” she said with an uncomfortable laugh. “I’m just asking around to see if I can uncover something the police might not know.”
“They’ve spoken to me half a dozen times since you found her,” Aiden said, his jaw gritting as he tossed the cigarette stub to the ground. “Feels like it did back then. They never believed a word I said then, and they don’t now. They keep making me go over it, as though it’s easy to remember exactly what happened twenty years ago. When it comes to that day, I remember every detail until I started drinking the whiskey at prom.”
“What happened?” Julia said.
Aiden squinted down at her as he pushed his sweat-soaked hair away from his face. She could tell he was deciding if he was going to tell her everything he had told the police.
“It was the day of prom,” he started. “Astrid made a big deal about not wanting to go. She said she couldn’t find a dress, but I told her she should just go in whatever she wanted. I didn’t care what she wore. We had a huge argument that morning at the B&B when I went to see her, and she said she wasn’t going. I told her not to bother, and I left. That was the last time I saw her. I felt so guilty. I walked around the village for hours, before going to a phone box and using the last of the money I had from my Saturday shift at my uncle’s toy shop. She didn’t pick up, but Evelyn did. She promised me she would talk Astrid around. Said something about needing to realign her chakras. I don’t understand all of that stuff myself, but Evelyn sells it well. I told Evelyn that I loved her daughter and that I was sorry for storming out. She thought it was the sweetest thing she’d ever heard.
“She wasn’t like the other girls at school, she was different. She didn’t dress the same, or act the same. She read old books I’d never heard of, and always came out top of the class. She liked old music and weird Middle Eastern food that I could never stomach. I fell in love with her the minute I spoke to her during a music class in Year Nine. People said it was puppy love, but I knew it was real. I still know it was real. It was as real as love gets between two people, which is why I would never do what people said I did to her.”
Aiden paused to pull another cigarette out of the packet. Julia’s mind pushed forward the rumour she had heard more than once about Aiden killing Astrid and chopping her up into little pieces. She could not believe anyone who had looked into the man’s eyes when he was talking about Astrid would believe that.
“I waited at the war memorial with Grace. She was supposed to be going with this kid called Brandon, but he broke his arm that morning. I didn’t know she was pregnant at the time, but she gave birth a couple of days later. She hid it so well. H
ad on a floaty dress. It was one of those under the ribcage babies. I didn’t know that could happen, but she barely showed. We waited until the last minute before the prom started before leaving. I was going to visit the B&B, but all of the lights were turned off. I thought they’d both decided Astrid could do better than me, so I went to the prom without her. I nicked one of the teacher’s hip flasks, and I got blind drunk on whiskey for the first time. Apparently, I disappeared and turned up back at the war memorial the next morning. Uncle Alistair found me and took me home, but I didn’t remember anything until I woke up on his couch. Because I didn’t remember a thing, people thought I was lying.”
“Did you ever remember?” Julia asked him as he paused to light another cigarette.
He took a deep drag before blowing the smoke out of his nostrils. His eyes widened, and his jaw gritted tightly as he stared down at Julia with an intensity she had never experienced before.
“I don’t remember a thing,” he said darkly. “And I’ve had to live with not knowing for twenty years. The only thing I’ve had to hold onto is how much I loved her. I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt a hair on her head sober, so why would I suddenly want to drunk?”
He stared imploringly at Julia, but she did not have an answer for him. As she stared into his sad eyes, she realised he was not entirely convinced that he was not the one to have locked Astrid in the basement.
“Aiden?” a deep voice called from the entrance of the pub. “You’re back on.”
Julia was surprised to see that it was Mark who had referred to him as ‘Aiden’.
“He’s going through a phase,” he explained. “I just wish it would end sooner rather than later. We thought he’d skipped the rebellious stage, but the second he turned twenty, it’s almost like we got a new son entirely.”
Aiden smiled at Julia as though to thank her for listening before slipping back into the pub. Seconds later, Sue burst through the crowd, twiddling her index finger in her left ear.
