Christmas tree story’s a lie?’
‘Listen to what you’re saying and think what it means,’ says Sam. ‘Lorraine Turner would have to be a psychotic killer who murders her victims in houses she’s trying to sell, then posts photographs of their dead bodies on the internet. Does that sound likely to you?’
‘Why victims, plural? Maybe there’s only one victim: the woman I saw. And you could say that about any crime, in that disbelieving tone, make it sound implausible. “What, so he dissolved all his victims in a bath full of acid?” “What, so he hacked up young men’s bodies and stored them in his freezer?” ’
‘Do you read a lot of true crime stuff?’ Sam asks.
I can’t help laughing. ‘None,’ I tell him. ‘Everyone knows those stories. They’re common knowledge. What are you suggesting, that I’m some kind of morbid blood-thirsty freak? What if Lorraine Turner’s the freak, or Selina Gane, or both of them? Why does it have to be me?’
Because you’re the one yelling at the top of your voice in a crowded canteen, idiot.
‘I’ve answered your question,’ Sam says calmly. ‘Are you going to answer mine?’
How does he know I’m keeping something back? Because Kit and I had a fight? He can’t have heard the details; he was too far away.
‘I spoke to Alice Bean,’ he says.
I try not to let my anger show. Alice is mine; sometimes I feel as if she’s all I’ve got, the only person I can rely on to have my best interests at heart. How dare Sam poke around in my life? Why didn’t Alice tell me she’d spoken to him?
‘You told me Alice advised you to contact Simon Waterhouse, but you didn’t speak to her in the early hours of Saturday morning, did you? You didn’t tell her about seeing the woman’s body.’
‘I saw her later on Saturday and told her then.’
Sam waits.
‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘I hadn’t told her on Saturday morning, when I spoke to you.’
‘So she must have suggested you contact Simon about something else.’
I say nothing.
‘I’d be very interested to hear what that something else was.’
‘It’s not really something else. I mean, it is, but . . . it’s connected. 11 Bentley Grove is the connection.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Do you remember the snow we had in January?’
Sam nods. ‘I was worried it was never going to end,’ he says. ‘I thought it was the beginning of the new ice age that the climate change scientists keep predicting.’
‘On 6 January, I went to Combingham to buy ten big sacks of coal. Kit loves real fires and we’d run out, and he couldn’t go – he was in London. If you’re about to ask why I didn’t go to the nearest garage, Kit won’t let us buy coal from anyone but Gummy in Combingham. That’s not his name, but it’s what everyone calls him. I’m a bit scared of him, and having teeth isn’t his strong point, but Kit insists his coal is the best. I don’t know or care enough about coal to argue with him.’
Sam is smiling, and he shouldn’t be. This isn’t a happy story.
‘I took Kit’s car because it’s better in snow than mine – it’s a four-wheel drive. I’d never been to Gummy’s before, not on my own, and my sense of direction’s hopeless, so I used the SatNav in Kit’s car.’
‘He didn’t drive to London, then?’ says Sam.
‘He never does. Usually he parks at Rawndesley station, but it was too icy first thing that morning to drive anywhere apart from on the main roads. The gritters hadn’t been out yet. Kit walked all the way down to the Rawndesley Road and caught the bus to the station.’
I wish he’d driven. I wish his car had been in the station car park that day instead of sitting outside our house, looking so much safer and more appealing than mine.
‘I bought the coal. I probably could have found my way home, but I didn’t want to go wrong, so I decided I’d play it safe and use the SatNav again. I pressed “Home”.’ I take a deep breath. ‘The first thing I noticed was the driving time: two hours and seventeen minutes. Then I noticed the address.’
Sam knows. I can see from his face that he knows.
‘As far as Kit’s SatNav was concerned, “Home” was 11 Bentley Grove in Cambridge. Not Melrose Cottage in Little Holling, Silsford.’ I start crying; I can’t help it. ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t . .