petrol station, but I don’t know if there are any others. Never thought it mattered much. I do know that they’ve been taking suspects into the station. Two of them are from the High School too. It just goes to show, doesn’t it? Teachers? They’re no better than the rest of us, are they?’
The shopkeeper leaned her elbows on the counter.
‘Do you know which teachers it was, Sally?’
‘All I heard is that one is a deputy head - a man. And then they’ve taken the PE Teacher in as well. How awful if it was one of them, and they’d left that girl to die.’
Leo felt a shock at the mention of a PE Teacher. She was as certain as she could ever be, though, that Max would never have knocked somebody over and abandoned them on the side of the road. She wondered if the deputy head could be Pat. Surely not?
‘It’s not only the teachers who’ve been taken in,’ said another of the customers, a large woman with a too tight perm. ‘Our Philip was at the dentist this morning, and he saw that big-wig banker chap - you know, the one that works in London - him who’s married to the girl who disappeared overnight from the village all those years ago. I can’t remember his name. Well - he was scurrying out of the police station too - looking very shifty according to our Philip. You know what I think? All these sorts from the smart end of the village with their fancy jobs and flash cars to match - they all drink wine like it’s going out of fashion. Then they think nothing of driving home. I just bet when they find out who it was, they’ll discover that he’d been drinking. It’s just criminal is what I think.’
Surely they couldn’t be talking about Charles and Fiona? Disappeared? Leo remembered that Fiona had left the village, but that didn’t mean she’d disappeared. And why were they interviewing Charles? He was in London until Saturday.
‘Have you heard anything, love?’ the shopkeeper asked Leo.
‘I’m afraid not,’ she answered, shaking her head. She wouldn’t bother to mention the connections through Ellie and Max.
‘Well, we’re all saying that if it is somebody from the village, we all need to ask around. Notice if anything isn’t quite right, or if somebody was out on Friday night that shouldn’t have been. We’ve got as much chance as finding this villain as the police do - so if you hear of anything, just let us know.’
Leo was relieved to hear the old fashioned bell on the door tinkle. A memory of Ellie going out on Friday night flashed through her mind, and she desperately wanted to change the subject. However, the new arrival was far from the saviour she had been hoping for.
Fiona.
Even though Leo hadn’t taken an active part in the conversation, she could feel herself flush slightly. The woman called Sally turned to study the wide range of goods on the shelves behind her, and everybody was self-consciously trying to look anywhere but at Fiona.
Clearly having no sense of interrupting anything, Fiona looked surprised to see Leo.
‘Hello, Leo. What brings you into the village on this sunny afternoon?’
Now Leo felt worse. The women in the shop would think she had intentionally misled them.
‘I’ve come for a few bits for Ellie.’
‘Well I’m glad I’ve seen you, because I seem to remember at dinner on Saturday night you offered to buy me lunch. Well, I’ve been thinking about it and that would be very nice. Shall we say the wine bar at twelve thirty tomorrow?’
In the eyes of everybody else in the shop, Fiona had now moved from being nothing more than a casual acquaintance of Leo’s to being a very good friend.
The shopkeeper offered to serve them, and Fiona politely indicated the other women in the shop.
‘They’re browsing, don’t worry about them,’ was the response. The hard stare was reserved for Leo, who ended up buying rather more than she came for. Fiona only wanted some Parma ham, so they were soon served and left the deli together.
With the exception of the words necessary to complete their purchases, nobody had spoken since Fiona had arrived, but Leo had the strong feeling that she had once again become the person for whom shops fell silent as she walked through the door.
Immediately the village morphed back into its former shades of black, white and grey. The colour seemed to have drained out of