‘If I’d finished at the newspaper offices in time I’d have popped in for a coffee myself,’ I said.
Mum sucked in breath over her lip.
‘I wouldn’t think she’d want to start talking about the fire when she’s got a café full of people.’
‘Maybe not, but I shall definitely want to speak to her sometime, get her take on what happened,’ I said ‘I need to find Dawn Burridge too. One of the newspaper reports said she’d gone home to Dorset, but I suppose it’s possible that once the trial was over and Brian Jennings locked up she might have come back. Her job was here, after all.’
‘I really couldn’t say, Sally. But it’s five years ago, remember, since it all happened. She’s probably married with a family.’
‘Maybe. Is Lisa? Married, I mean?’
‘It’s no good asking me, Sally. I don’t know anything about them really. I’m not going to be much help to you, I’m afraid.’
‘Never mind. I can find out.’
My journalistic juices were running, my head full of the story. For the moment I’d forgotten all about Tim.
Which was really just as well since I had a nasty feeling he’d forgotten all about me too.
I spent the afternoon sorting the notes I’d made and organizing them on to Dad’s computer. He’d finished working on his accounts now, the relief evident when he came down for a scratch lunch of bread, cheese and one of his favourite boiled onions – well, microwaved, to be more accurate, but the result was much the same.
‘Well that’s the paperwork brought up to date,’ he said, wiping his hands on the seat of his baggy cords as if they’d been soiled by contact with bills and catalogues. ‘The computer’s yours now if you want it, Sally. Just as long as you don’t mess up what I’ve done.’
‘I won’t, don’t worry. I shan’t go anywhere near your accounts. I just wish I had my laptop,’ I added.
But of course, I didn’t, because, strictly speaking, it wasn’t mine. It belonged to my newspaper. I’d had to leave it at the office when I went off on the skiing holiday and there it had been ever since, being used, I presumed, by whoever was doing my job in my absence.
‘Actually I think I might treat myself to one,’ I said, and wondered why I hadn’t done so before. It would certainly have gone some way to easing my boredom if I’d been able to surf the net, and it was a measure of the depression that had descended on me these last months that I hadn’t stirred myself to get a computer of my own. I had, of course, access to the Internet on my phone, but the 3G signal I could get in the countryside was so poor as to be useless in comparison to what was available at home.
I saw Mum and Dad exchanging satisfied glances.
‘This is doing you the world of good, Sally,’ Mum said, and I had to agree.
When I’d finished typing up my notes and transferred them on to a memory stick Dad lent me I started preparing a list of how I was going to proceed.
Top of the list, as I’d said to Mum, was paying a visit to Brian Jennings’s sister, Marion. Mum told me she lived in Newcombe, a village just a few miles from Stoke Compton. I found her address and telephone number in the phone book and added it to my notes. Since she was campaigning to try to prove her brother’s innocence I hoped she would be glad enough of my help to share with me whatever information she had, including the name of Brian’s solicitor. It was my hope that he too would welcome any publicity I might be able to generate, and perhaps take me on board as an extra investigator who might be able to learn something to strengthen his client’s case.
Number two on my list was talking to Lisa Curry and Dawn Burridge. They might be convinced that the arsonist who had almost cost them their lives was behind bars, of course. But they might also be able to tell me something that would give me an alternative explanation for what had happened.
I went on to transcribe the notes I’d made from the newspaper cuttings – the names that had come up as witnesses when the case went to court, and the people who had been mentioned in the press reports – Paul Holder, the baker who had first spotted the fire and rescued the two girls, the captain of the fire brigade, the tenants of neighbouring flats. As something of a long shot I included the girls’ employers at the time – the country house hotel where Lisa had been a sous chef and the estate agent’s office where Dawn had worked. I didn’t hold out much hope that the hotel employees would be the same ones now as had been working there two years ago – it was my impression kitchen staff moved about pretty frequently. But estate agencies were a different matter. Staff often stayed with the same firm for a very long time. Two years would be nothing in their world.