Roz gritted her teeth.
“So you discussed sex, and boys, and clothes, and make-up?”
“Well, yes,” she said again.
“I find that hard to believe, Mrs. Wright. Not unless she’s changed a great deal in ten years. I’ve met her, you know. She’s not remotely interested in trivia and she doesn’t like talking about herself. She wants to know about me and what Ido.”
“That’s probably because she’s in prison and you’re her only visitor.”
“I’m not, in actual fact. Also, I am told that most prisoners do the exact opposite when someone visits them. They talk about themselves nineteen to the dozen because it’s the only time they get a sympathetic hearing.” She raised a speculative eyebrow.
“I think it’s Olive’s nature to quiz the person she’s talking to. I suspect she’s always done it, and that’s why none of you liked her very much. You probably thought she was nosy.”
Pray God, I’m right, she thought, because this one, who’s about as manipulable as putty, will say I am regardless.
“How funny,” said Geraldine.
“Now you mention it, she did ask a lot of questions. She was always wanting to know about my parents, whether they held hands and kissed, and whether I’d ever heard them making love.” She turned her mouth down.
“Yes, I remember now, that’s why I didn’t like her. She was forever trying to find out how often my parents had sex, and she used to push her face up close when she asked, and stare.” She gave a small shudder.
“I used to hate that. She had such greedy eyes.”
“Did you tell her?”
“About my parents?” Geraldine sniggered.
“Not the truth, certainly. I didn’t know myself. Whenever she asked, I always said, yes, they’d had sex the night before, just to get away from her. Everyone did. It became a silly sort of game in the end.”
“Why did she want to know?”
The woman shrugged.
“I always thought it was because she had a dirty mind. There’s a woman in the village who’s just the same. The first thing she says to anyone is, “Tell me all the gossip,” and her eyes light up. I hate that sort of thing. She’s the last person to hear what’s going on, of course.
She puts people’s backs up.”
Roz thought for a moment.
“Did Olive’s parents kiss and cuddle?”
“Lord, no!”
“You’re very certain.”
“Well, of course. They loathed each other. My mother said they only stayed together because he was too lazy to move out and she was too mercenary to let him.”
“So Olive was looking for reassurance?”
“I’m sorry?”
“When she asked you about your parents,” said Roz coolly, ‘she was looking for reassurance. The poor kid was trying to find out if hers were the only ones who didn’t get on.”
“Oh,” said Geraldine in surprise.
“Do you think so?” She made a pretty little moue with her lips.
“No,” she said, “I’m sure you’re wrong. It was the sex bits she wanted to know about. I told you, her eyes had a greedy look.”
Roz let this pass.
“Did she tell lies?”
“Yes, that was another thing.” Memories chased themselves across her face.
“She was always lying.
How odd, I’d forgotten that. In the end, you know, nobody ever believed anything she said.”
“What did she lie about?”
“Everything.”
“What in particular? Herself? Other people? Her parents?”
“Everything.” She saw the impatience in Roz’s face.
“Oh dear, it’s so hard to explain. She told stories. I mean, she couldn’t open her mouth without telling stories. Oh dear, let me see now. All right, she used to talk about boyfriends that didn’t exist, and she said the family had been on holiday to France one summer but it turned out they’d stayed at home, and she kept talking about her dog, but everyone knew she didn’t have a dog.” She pulled a face.
“And she used to cheat, of course, all the time. It was really annoying that. She’d steal your homework out of your satchel when you weren’t looking and crib your ideas.”
“She was bright, though, wasn’t she? She got three A-levels.”
“She passed them all but I don’t think her grades were anything to shout home about.” It was said with a touch of malice.
“Anyway, if she was so bright, why couldn’t she get herself a decent job? My mother said it was embarrassing going to Pettit’s and being served by Olive.”
Roz looked away from the colourless face to gaze out over the view from the window. She let some moments pass while COmmon sense battled with the angry reproaches that were clamouring inside her head. After all, she thought, she could be wrong. And yet… And yet it seemed so clear to her that Olive must have been a deeply unhappy child. She forced herself to smile.
“Olive was obviously closer to you than anyone else, except, perhaps, her sister. Why do you think that was?”
“Oh, goodness, I haven’t a clue. My mother says it’s because I reminded her of Amber. I couldn’t see it myself, but it’s true that people who saw the three of us together always assumed Amber was my sister and not Olive’s.” She thought back.
“Mother’s probably right. Olive stopped following me around quite so much when Amber joined the school.”
“That must have been a relief.” There was a certain acidity in her tone, mercifully lost on Geraldine.
“I suppose so. Except’ she added this as a wistful afterthought ‘nobody dared tease when Olive was with me.”
Roz watched her for a moment.
“Sister Bridget said Olive was devoted to Amber.”
“She was. But then everyone liked Amber.”
“Why?”
Geraldine shrugged.
“She was nice.”
Roz laughed suddenly.
“To be frank, Amber’s beginning to get up my nose. She sounds too damn good to be true. What was so special about her?”
“Oh dear.” She frowned in recollection.
“Mother said it was because she was willing. People put on her, but she never seemed to mind. She smiled a lot, of course.”
Roz drew her cherub doodle on the notepad and thought about the unwanted pregnancy.
“How was she put upon?”
“I suppose she just wanted to please. It was only little things, like lending out her pencils and running errands for the nuns. I needed a clean sports shirt once for a net ball match, so I borrowed Amber’s.
That sort of thing.”
“Without asking?”
Surprisingly, Geraldine blushed.
“You didn’t need to, not with Amber. She never minded. It was only Olive who got angry. She was perfectly beastly about that sports shirt.” She looked at the clock.
“I shall have to go. It’s getting late.” She stood up.
“I haven’t been very helpful, I’m afraid.”
“On the contrary,” said Roz, pushing herself out of her chair, ‘you’ve been extremely helpful. Thank you very much.”
They walked into the hall together.
“Did it never seem odd to you,” Roz asked as Geraldine opened the front door, ‘that Olive should kill her sister?”
“Well, yes, of course it did. I was terribly shocked.”
“Shocked enough to wonder if she actually did it?
In view of all you’ve said about their relationship it seems a very unlikely thing for her to do.”
The wide grey eyes clouded with uncertainty.
“How strange. That’s just what my mother always said. But if she didn’t do it, then why did she say she did?”
‘1 don’t know. Perhaps because she makes a habit of protecting people.” She smiled in a friendly way.
“Would your mother be prepared to talk to me, do you think?”
“Oh Lord, I shouldn�
�t think so. She hates anyone even knowing I was at school with Olive.”
“Will you ask her anyway? And if she agrees, phone me at that number on the card.”
Geraldine shook her head.
“It would be a waste of time. She won’t agree.”
“Fair enough.” Roz stepped through the door and on to the gravel.
“What a lovely house this is,” she said with enthusiasm, looking up at the clematis over the porch.
“Where were you living before?”
The other woman grimaced theatrically.
“A nasty modern box on the outskirts of Dawlington.”
Roz laughed.
“So coming here was by way of a culture shock.” She opened the car door.
“Do you ever go back to Dawlington?”
“Oh, yes,” said the other.
“My parents still live there. I see them once a week.”
Roz tossed her bag and briefcase on to the back seat.
“They must be very proud of you.” She held out a hand.
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Wright, and please don’t worry, I shall be very careful how I use the information you’ve given me.” She lowered herself on to the driver’s seat and pulled the door to.
“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 s
imply 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.
“You asked me earlier where I was while all this was going on. I was bringing up my own children, my dear, and if you have any yourself you will know it’s hard enough to cope with them, let alone interfere with someone else’s. I do regret now that I didn’t say anything at the time, but, really, what could I have done? In any case, I felt it was the school’s responsibility.” She spread her hands.
“But there you are, it’s so easy with hindsight, and who could possibly have guessed that Olive would do what she did? I don’t suppose anyone realised just how disturbed she was.” She dropped her hands to her lap and looked helplessly at her husband.
Mr. Hopwood pondered for a moment.
“Still,” he said slowly, ‘there’s no point pretending we’ve ever believed she killed Amber. I went to the police about that, you know, told them I thought it was very unlikely. They said my disquiet was based on out-of-date information.” He sucked his teeth.
“Which of course waA true. It was five years or so since we’d had any dealings with the family, and in five years the sisters could well have learned to dislike each other.” He fell silent.
“But if Olive didn’t kill Amber,” Roz prompted, ‘then who did?”
“Gwen,” he said with surprise, as if it went without saying.
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