everyone needs at least one hot meal a day, and I suppose it is old-fashioned, but that’s me. I’ve never been into food fads, and how sushi is classed as a meal I will never know. Raw fish, what’s that about?
There I go again, veering off topic. Rushing past the Co-op, wasn’t I, betting paper on my head, odds of staying dry very low indeed. I ran across the high street and hit the path that leads past the doctors’ surgery, where I’d seen the GP, to the car park beside the canal. At the near end of the path, raindrops splashed into a puddle. I stopped a moment, transfixed by how quickly the drops lost their edges and became one with the murky water, but then a great trickle ran into my collar, down my back and became one with my pants.
By the time I got to the car park, I was wetter than a haddock’s bathing costume, the Post all but reduced to papier maché on my head. I fumbled for my keys, got myself into the car and sighed massively. The windscreen and all the windows were fogged up. I turned the key for the ignition. The engine coughed and fell silent.
‘No,’ I said through my teeth. ‘No, no, no, no, no.’
It doesn’t rain, does it? I thought. It bloody pours. And it really was chucking it down, so the expression fitted doubly. If I hadn’t been so hacked off, I might even have laughed at the irony. I tried again with the ignition, but there wasn’t even a cough this time, just a last asthmatic gasp. And then I noticed the switch for the headlights was turned to on.
‘For crying out loud,’ I said to no one. And then I had a good old swear, but that kind of language doesn’t need repeating here, does it? Suffice to say that what little air there was in my rusty Renault was a filthy shade of blue.
I dug around in my bag for my mobile, found it, switched it on. I was about to call Mark, but I didn’t. He’d be just in the door from work and I couldn’t face the sulky voice on the other end of the line when I told him I’d left the headlights on, which in that moment I decided not to tell him at all.
I would try and flag someone down on the high street and see if they’d give me a lift home. I knew where the jump leads were – in the dresser in the garage. Yes, jump leads. Sisters are doing it for themselves.
Of course, at that moment I didn’t have a clue how the evening would go, did I? I had no clue what terrible significance those jump leads would come to have.
18
Ingrid
Transcript of recorded interview with Ingrid Taylor (excerpt)
Also present: DI Heather Scott, PC Marilyn Button
HS: So, to clarify, your relationship with Mark Edwards was purely platonic?
IT: (Laughs) Look, the worst thing Mark ever did was have one or two of my cigarettes. I suspect he’s the kind of man who has no idea when a woman wants him and wouldn’t dare do anything about it if he did. Not that I wanted him. I had no interest in him, not in that way, but I can’t help whatever feelings he had for me. As I’ve said, it was friendship, nothing more. I’m not even looking for a relationship at the moment, I’m still getting over my divorce. A man is literally the last thing on my mind.
HS: So you wouldn’t say you were close?
IT: We became close, yes. I’ve said that. He could talk to me in a way he couldn’t talk to her. She was never there, and even when she was there, it’s like she wasn’t really, you know? You’d be talking to her and you could tell she wasn’t listening. And then she’d kind of twitch her head and stare at you as if she’d just woken up and was shocked to see you. It gave me the creeps, to be honest. But I told Mark I’d keep an eye on her, pop in, that sort of thing. I’m not a snob, far from it. It didn’t bother me that they were more working class; I’m not like that, I was genuinely trying to fit in. I wasn’t used to the whole community thing, but I have to say it bugged me that she didn’t appreciate him. He’s such a good man.