The Darkest Evening

she was eating when she was younger. So, she held her secrets close. It was her way of surviving.’
‘Do you have a recent photo?’ he asked.
Jill got up and went to the dresser, pulled out a folder with half a dozen photographs. ‘I took these on my phone last summer and they were so lovely I went to a place in Kimmerston where they print them out.’
They’d been taken in a small garden, presumably outside Lorna’s house. Thomas was sitting on a rug. Lorna was staring at him, smiling. She had the same startling beauty as the younger Jill, still model skinny, high cheekbones, long, elegant neck. He took the folder. ‘We’ll take copies and make sure we get them back to you.’
Helen, the social worker, seemed fidgety. Joe saw her glance at the clock on the kitchen wall.
‘Do you need to be away?’ His voice was sharp. He could think of nothing more important than settling this baby in her new home.
‘Sorry, my life is one constant rush. This afternoon it’s a child protection plan core group session. I need to be there. And if you need a lift back to Brockburn . . .’
‘Sure,’ he said. Jill Falstone was staring at them, confused by the exchange. He thought, now, that she would look after the baby well enough.
He waited for a moment by the car while Helen made arrangements for future visits to the farm. He was hoping that Robert might reappear so he could talk to him, but there was no sign of the man.

Chapter Ten
Vera knew the village of Kirkhill. It was where she came on a Saturday morning if she wanted a sense of belonging to the real world. She’d stock up in the Co-op, visit the butcher and have a bit of chat with the women who ran the greengrocer’s. No matter that the village shops were a little more expensive than the supermarket on the retail park outside Kimmerston. She’d have a coffee in the cafe, not the posh one looking out over the river, but the one in the square which pulled in elderly farmers talking about sheep. The coffee was just as good and they cooked their own ham for the sandwiches, saw nothing wrong in putting a pile of chips on the side. It was run by Gloria, who knew Vera by name and always had her coffee ready by the time she reached the counter, even if there was a bit of a queue.
Vera knew where Lorna Falstone had lived. There was a terrace of council houses on the slope that led out towards Brockburn. The road ran on to some old folks’ bungalows further up the bank. Vera thought the houses would mostly be privately owned now, but the local authority must have held on to one or two: the small ones in the middle of the terrace, with a strip of garden so narrow that it felt like you could stretch your arms and touch the fence at each side. Vera didn’t go in. The crime-scene investigators were already there: Crime-Scene Manager Billy Cartwright’s bright young things. He seemed to attract the bonny young women, despite his flirtatious reputation. These days perhaps he knew better than to try it on, and he’d always been a charmer rather than a lecher or a groper. The house was cordoned off, blue-and-white tape flapping in the westerly wind. The air was a little warmer and felt as if it might carry rain, not snow. Vera thought all the bairns who’d been hoping for a white Christmas would be disappointed, though there was still time. Just a week to go. They were only a few days away from the winter solstice. There was still an edge to the breeze that penetrated clothes and chilled the bones.
Constance Browne lived on the other side of the road, down the bank, closer to the village centre, in a small private development of detached bungalows. So, Lorna hadn’t been a next-door neighbour. Not close enough to chat over the garden fence. But of course they’d already known each other because Constance had taught the girl in primary school. It would be interesting to find out what Constance had made of her then.
Joe had been on the phone to Vera as soon as he’d got back from Broom Farm, filling in more details of Lorna’s early life, but she wanted to understand more. There had been times, growing up, when she had wanted to shrink away from the world, to become invisible, but that had never stopped her eating. If anything, food had always been her comfort, her means of escape. Her own private addiction.
The teacher’s garden had been tidied for the winter, shrubs pruned, dead leaves swept. Vera rang the bell. The woman who opened the door was fit, spry and looked younger than her sixty-seven years. She wore jeans and a sweater, long earrings. Arty in a restrained kind of way. She made Vera, who was still wearing the clothes she’d slept in, feel lumpish and unkempt.
‘You must be Inspector Stanhope. Do come in. I’ve just made a pot of tea.’
There was a hall with hardwood floors, a sideboard completely clear of clutter, on the wall a photo of a young woman in cap and gown at her graduation.
Vera nodded towards it. ‘Your daughter?’
‘Oh, no, my niece. We’re very close all the same.’ A pause. ‘I never married.’ Another beat. ‘Too picky, my mother said, but I think it was more that I valued my independence. I never met a man who was worth giving that up for.’
‘No,’ Vera said. ‘Nor me.’ Though it might have been nice to be asked, she thought. Just once.
They sat in a living room with two windows. One had a view to the side of the house and across the valley to the forest beyond, the other looked up to the road. There was no Christmas tree to drop needles, but a holly wreath had been fixed to the