‘No, I’m OK thanks.’ I didn’t want to risk her going off and leaving her young assistant to serve me. ‘So you think the police definitely got the right man?’ I persisted.
‘Well of course they did!’ It was almost a snap.
I risked it. ‘His sister doesn’t think so.’
Lisa snorted. ‘She wouldn’t, would she?’
‘I suppose not . . . but . . .’
‘Brian Jennings was obsessed with Dawn,’ Lisa said vehemently. ‘Everybody knew that. The nights we looked out of the window and saw him, just standing there, staring up. If Dawn went out, he followed her. She was frightened to death of him. She reported him to the police, but they never did anything about it.’
‘But it’s what put them on to him, I suppose.’
‘I suppose.’
‘It must have been really scary for you, too, before they caught him,’ I said. ‘You must have wondered . . .’
‘Wondered what?’ Her tone was slightly aggressive now.
‘Well . . . it might have been you the fire raiser was targeting . . . not Dawn . . .’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Lisa snapped. ‘Why would anyone target me?’
‘You didn’t think somebody might have had it in for you?’
‘It never crossed my mind. Dawn was the honeypot. When she was around, she was always the one who was the centre of attention.’ There was something that might almost have been resentment in Lisa’s voice now.
‘But she’s not around any more?’ I said tentatively.
‘No, she’s not.’ Lisa was whisking away a few odd crumbs from the table where Brenda had been sitting, using an old-fashioned wooden crumb brush and tray.
‘Where is she now, then?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea. We’re not in touch.’ Lisa stopped what she was doing and fixed me with a baleful look. ‘Look, I don’t know what your interest in all this is, but it’s pretty morbid. So if there’s nothing else you want . . .’
‘No, there’s nothing else.’ And nothing else I was going to learn today, either, I thought. Unless I owned up to the real reason I was asking questions, and possibly not then. But I wasn’t ready to come clean yet in any case. I wanted to be able to sniff around a bit more first without people clamming up on me.
‘I’ll get your bill,’ Lisa said, fetching the same pad she’d written out Brenda’s bill on. But instead of waiting for me to get out my purse, she carried the used china into the kitchen beyond the curtain, and it was the little waitress who came to take my money.
I didn’t see Lisa again. I’d upset her, I knew. But it was more than just that. I was left with a vague but persistent feeling that there was something she had not wanted to tell me.
It took me a good ten minutes to walk down the High Street to the town square where Compton Properties had their office, twice as long as if I hadn’t been on crutches. But in any case, I wasn’t hurrying. I was busy taking in just how much Stoke Compton had changed in recent years.
I passed the turning to the church hall, where I used to come for ballet classes when I was a little girl – that hadn’t lasted long; ballet really wasn’t my thing. On the corner was the shop that used to be what Mum called ‘the confectioners’, a wondrous Aladdin’s cave of sweets in rows of jars behind the counter and tiered stands full of chocolate bars. Mum used to take me in to buy ‘a treat’ after I’d endured my ballet class, and I’d always taken ages choosing between the Cadbury’s Roses, the stripy mints, creamy fudge, or a sherbet fountain. The sweet shop was no more – it had been turned into a barber’s according to the logo on the window: ‘Haircut £8 – No Appointment Necessary’.
A little further on I came to what had used to be Grays’ the hardware shop, another place that had always fascinated me. There had always been merchandise spilling out on to the pavement – trays of bulbs and sacks of seed potatoes, baskets full of odd china and even the odd oil heater or stepladder. But it was the smell when you stepped inside that I could remember so clearly even after so many years – a smell like no other, a mixture of all the things Mr Gray sold, I suppose. The hardware shop was gone now, though, and in its place was a pound shop. Their goods were spilling out on to the pavement, too, but weren’t nearly as interesting as Mr Gray’s had been. Nostalgia tugged at me; the town shouldn’t have changed while I wasn’t looking!
The post office, at least, was still where I remembered it. I passed it, heading for the Square at the end of the street, and was trying to spot Compton Properties when a voice spoke from just behind my right shoulder.