Just Like the Other Girls - Claire Douglas Page 0,102

morning by banging on the front door. At first she ignores it, thinking it must be a mistake. After all, it is Sunday morning. The postman doesn’t come on a Sunday. She pulls the duvet over her head but the knocking becomes more insistent and she’s forced to get up. She pulls her grey velour dressing-gown around herself and makes her way down the stairs.

‘Who is it?’ calls Elspeth, as Kathryn passes her bedroom. Her door is ajar.

‘Go back to sleep, Mother. I’ll sort it.’

Kathryn’s furious now, her heart thumping with rage. How dare someone wake them up this early? And then panic sets in. What if it’s the police coming to inform her that something has happened to one of the boys or Ed? She clutches her throat as she almost runs across the hallway, the tiles cold underfoot, and unlocks the front door. She curses Willow under her breath that she didn’t double-bolt it last night. She’s usually so good at remembering.

The police flash their badges at her as soon as she’s opened the door. The sight of them makes her breath catch. They are plain-clothed and the older of the two women steps forward. She recognizes her as DS Christine Holdsworth, who came over before to tell them about Jemima. She’s accompanied by someone different this time, a younger woman with mousy hair tied back at the neck and thick, black-framed glasses.

‘Kathryn Winters?’ asks DS Holdsworth, holding up her badge. ‘May we come in?’

‘Is everything okay?’

‘We’d just like to ask you a few questions about Jemima Freeman.’

Kathryn’s feelings oscillate between relief that Ed and the boys are safe to dread that they’re back asking questions about Jemima.

‘It’s a bit early,’ she says, her voice cold. It’s only just getting light and there is a fine rain in the air. It settles, like dandruff, on the shoulders of the officers’ black overcoats. She sighs, knowing she has to face the inevitable, and stands aside to let them in.

DS Holdsworth introduces the younger officer as DC Felicity Reid. She looks almost as young as Willow, with a round baby face and dimples. The three are hovering in the hallway when Elspeth makes her way downstairs, gripping the banister tightly, her shoulders hunched against the cold. She hasn’t put on her dressing-gown and Kathryn can make out her bony frame through her thin nightdress. She looks like a ghoul, thinks Kathryn, unkindly. ‘Mother, you should be in bed.’

‘Una’s not back.’

‘It’s Willow, Mother, remember? Una’s dead.’ She realizes as she says it how uncaring and blunt she sounds, and notices that DC Reid recoils slightly at her words. Kathryn concentrates on rearranging her face into a passive expression. ‘My mother confuses names sometimes,’ she explains to them. They don’t say anything. DS Holdsworth stares back at Kathryn, her face hard.

‘Has something happened to Willow?’ Elspeth calls from halfway down the stairs.

Holdsworth shakes her auburn frizz. ‘No. This is about Jemima Freeman, Mrs McKenzie. We just need to have a few words with your daughter.’

‘Why?’

Holdsworth ignores her and instead speaks directly to Kathryn. ‘Is there somewhere we can sit?’

Kathryn leads them into the sitting room and offers to take their wet coats. She can just imagine her mother’s wrath if any rain gets onto her expensive velvet chairs. She leaves the room to hang their overcoats in the cupboard as Elspeth continues down the stairs slowly, as if every step is painful, gripping so tightly to the banister that her knuckles turn white. ‘Where is Willow? She’s usually getting me up by now.’

‘I don’t know. I’ve got more important things on my mind,’ she snaps. ‘Like why two cops have come to speak to me at this time in the morning.’ When Elspeth has reached the last step, Kathryn escorts her across the hallway and into the sitting room where she settles her in her favourite chair. Kathryn takes the one next to her. The two officers are on the sofa, sitting at either end. The younger one has a notebook in her hand and is chewing the top of her pen.

‘So what is this about?’ Kathryn asks, crossing her legs. She remembers she’s only got a T-shirt on underneath her dressing-gown. She pulls it around herself.

‘I just wanted to ask you a bit more about the day of the nineteenth of December when you last saw Jemima Freeman,’ begins Holdsworth.

‘I’ve told you all this before.’

‘We’d like to hear it again, please.’

Kathryn suppresses a sigh. ‘I wasn’t even here. She was supposed