who taught what. Looks to me like he gave a quick glance at a list of the staff and chose our names at random."
"Exactly," Bligh said.
Barbara looked at Winston. "It explains how someone who can't read or write managed to „complete' course work at the college, eh?"
Winston nodded. "But not how someone who can't read or write wrote these letters, cos he didn't."
"That looks like the case."
Which meant, of course, that someone else had written them for Gordon Jossie, someone who knew him from years gone by, someone they likely hadn't spoken to yet.
ROBBIE HASTINGS KNEW that if he was going to get to the bottom of what had happened to his sister and why, and if he was going to be able to go on living - no matter how bleakly - he had to begin looking squarely at a few basic truths. Meredith had been attempting to tell him at least one of those truths in the church in Ringwood. He'd stopped her abruptly because he was, quite simply, a bloody coward. But he knew he couldn't go on that way. So he finally picked up the phone.
She said, "How are you?" when she heard his voice. "I mean, how are you doing, Rob?
How are you coping? I can't sleep or eat. Can you? Have you? I just want to do - "
"Merry." He cleared his throat. Part of him was shouting better not to know, better never to know and part of him was trying to ignore those cries. "What did ...In the church when you and I were talking about her ...What did you mean?"
"When?"
"You said whenever. That was the word you used."
"I did? Rob, I don't know - "
"With a bloke, you said. Whenever she was with a bloke." God, he thought, don't make me say more.
"Oh." Meredith's voice was small. "Jemima and sex, you mean."
He whispered it. "Aye."
"Oh, Rob. I s'pose I shouldn't actually have said that."
"But you did, didn't you. So you need to tell me. If you know something that's to do with her death ..."
"It's nothing," she said quickly. "I'm sure of it. It's not that."
He said nothing more, reckoning that if he was silent, she would be forced to continue, which she did.
She said, "She was younger then. It was years ago anyway. And she would have changed, Rob. People do change."
He wanted so much to believe her. Such a simple matter to say, "Oh. Right. Well, thanks," and ring off. In the background he could hear murmurs of conversation. He'd phoned Meredith at work, and he could have used this alone as an excuse to end their conversation at that point. So could have she, for that matter. But he didn't take that turn. He couldn't do so now and live with the knowledge that he'd run again, just as he'd turned a blind eye to what he knew at heart she was going to tell him if he insisted upon it.
"Seems it's time for me to know it all, Merry. It's no betrayal on your part. Mind, there's nothing you can say would make a difference now."
When she spoke at last, it sounded to him as if she were talking inside a tube, as the sound was hollow, although it could well have been that his heart was hollow. She said finally,
"Eleven, then, Rob."
"Eleven what?" he asked. Lovers? he wondered. Had Jemima had so many already? And by what age? And had she actually kept count?
"Years," Meredith said. "That's how old." And when he said nothing, she rushed on with,
"Oh, Rob. You don't want to know. Really. And she wasn't bad. She just ...See, she equated things. 'Course, I didn't know that at the time, why she did it, I mean. I just knew she might end up pregnant but she said no because she took precautions. She even knew that word, precautions.
I don't know what she used or where she got it because she wouldn't say. Just that it wasn't up to me to tell her right from wrong, and if I was her friend, I would know that, wouldn't I. And then it became a matter of me not having boyfriends, see. „You're only jealous, Merry.' But that wasn't it, Rob. She was my friend. I only wanted to keep her safe. And people talked about her so. Specially at school."
Robbie wasn't sure he could speak. He was standing in the kitchen and he felt blindly behind him for a chair onto which he could lower