Rich didn’t hear her being irresponsible, ‘but I wouldn’t be able to resist finding out either. You don’t think Michael had anything to do with what happened to Els, do you? Hasn’t his wife given him an alibi? The police obviously don’t think he was involved; they’ve got their heads firmly up their arses trying to prove it was Karen.’
‘You’re not telling me you think she didn’t do it? I thought you’d be the first with the torch and pitchfork.’
‘What, the doc? Come on, Bea, seriously? You’ve known her for years – admittedly not as well as you thought you did, but still, you were all so close.’
‘I don’t know her at all, Fran.’ Bea sighed, sadness and exhaustion threatening to take her over completely. ‘Her boyfriend is a married man! I don’t know either of them. She set me up with that creep and she probably emailed all my workmates a sex tape I didn’t even make! And I told you what happened to her sister, right? How do we know she didn’t do that on purpose?’
She heard Fran take a deep breath. ‘Don’t be a bitch, Bea. You told me she wasn’t to blame for that. She was a kid!’
Bea sighed. ‘You’re right, that was horrible. I’m just so confused at the moment. Why hasn’t she been in touch? Although you’ve changed your tune. You never got on with Karen. Why the sudden bleeding heart?’
Fran let out a laugh. ‘I never really disliked her. It was her relationship with you I didn’t like. She was like a big sister to you. I didn’t particularly relish the competition from someone who had never glued your Barbies’ heads together.’
‘I knew that was you,’ Bea muttered, tears pricking at her eyelids. ‘You never had any competition, Fran.’
‘I know that really. Now go and prove your best friend isn’t a nutcase and I’ll bring Vin Diesel over tomorrow.’
‘Love you, Fran.’
‘Love you too, Bea Bea.’
78
Bea
‘Who is this girl then? And what makes you suddenly so sure you know her identity?’
Bea had called Michael as soon as Fran had left and told him to pick her up immediately, on the condition he didn’t talk about Karen or Eleanor. He’d agreed, and Bea was relieved he’d stuck to his word.
‘I would have known all along if Karen had been allowed to tell me her name,’ Michael replied. ‘When I went back to the house to pick up some stuff she wasn’t there and I had to let myself in. There was a file on the table. It didn’t take a genius to work out whose; Karen had been verging on obsessed with this girl for weeks. When I saw the name, I recognised it straight away.’
‘Old girlfriend with a grudge?’
Michael snorted. ‘I almost wish it was. Jessica Hamilton was a friend of my daughter’s at college.’
‘Your daughter?’ Bea whistled. ‘Jesus, Michael, were you in college yourself when you had her?’
Michael sighed and rubbed a hand across his face. ‘I’m forty-five, Bea. Anne is twenty-two now. We adopted her when she was nearly seven. Anne was – is – Emily’s niece. Her sister had a drug problem. We didn’t even realise until social services contacted us to say that Anne would be taken away and placed with a new family if we didn’t take her in. Emily was distraught that she hadn’t seen any signs – her sister lived miles away – but we agreed to take Anne on. She’d been through a lot, seen more than a seven-year-old should see. She was difficult, but not in the normal seven-year-old way. She could be quite sly; she’d lie to me and Emily, play us off against each other. There were incidents, things that put a lot of pressure on our relationship. I wasn’t there enough.’
Bea could read between the lines as though the words were written across his forehead. Karen wasn’t the first – he’d been cheating on his wife for years.
‘And this girl, Jessica, where does she fit in?’
He shook his head in reply. ‘I honestly don’t know. Like I said, she was a friend of Anne’s at college. Anne didn’t mention her friends much, so when she started talking about Jessica, we were pleased she’d met someone she got on with so well. Then she met someone else, a girl called Ruth Carrington. According to Anne, Jessica didn’t like her having someone else she was close to. She was a jealous girl, possessive. I got the impression she didn’t have many friends herself.’
‘You never