‘Chelse!’ she said. ‘We’re over here!’
Springing Chelsey on them unannounced was, they all later agreed, something of a master stroke of manipulation on Jax’s part. Sitting there clutching a mango and peach smoothie, the girl looked painfully young and vulnerable. She reminded all three ex-teachers of a child starting in a new class, wide-eyed and unsure in a world suddenly unfamiliar and hazardous, and although they all felt annoyed with Jax, that didn’t diminish the sympathy they felt for the girl. They regarded her awkwardly, unsure what to say.
Jax, however, had no such qualms. ‘Go on, Chelse,’ she said firmly. ‘Tell them what you told me, about finding Mr Hilton.’
Chelse nodded obediently and took a deep shuddering breath; the hands clutching the glass shook. ‘Sorry,’ she said brokenly. ‘Sorry—’
‘You’ve nothing to be sorry about,’ said Liz gently but firmly. ‘I can’t imagine what a horrible experience it was.Anyonewould be upset.’
Chelsey nodded. ‘I just keep seeing him there,’ she said. ‘On the sofa, with that look on his face.’
‘Chelse love,’ said Jax. ‘You need to get your head round it and move on. Now come on, these ladies haven’t got all day.’
‘I can’t stop thinking about it,’ said Chelsey, her voice distressed. ‘Could I havedonesomething? Stopped it from happening somehow?’
‘Chelsey,’ said Jax with the air of a zealous paramedic. ‘Get a grip, love.’
Liz glared at their ex-colleague. ‘Anything can bring on a heart attack,’ she said to Chelsey, passing her a balsam tissue. ‘At any time. Really, there’s nothing you could have done.’
‘Liz is absolutely right,’ said Thelma in a tone she’d used so many times over the years with upset children. ‘The police said he’d been dead for hours.’
‘The police—’ Chelsey seized on the word. ‘They kept asking me the same questions, over and over again, like they thought Iknewsomething.’
‘They have to do that,’ said Pat soothingly. ‘It’s how these things work.’ She was feeling a complex mix of emotions: annoyance with Jax, sympathy for Chelsey, plus a very strong urge to simply walk away and check out the sale in the Edinburgh Woollen Mill.
Chelsey nodded and blew her nose.
‘Come on, Chelse,’ urged Jax. ‘Tell them about finding Mr Hilton.’
‘Never mind that for now,’ interjected Thelma smoothly. ‘Tell us about when you arrived that morning. Whether you noticed anything odd.’
Chelse visibly relaxed and even looked a bit less stricken. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Just that Mrs Hilton’s car wasn’t there, but she often goes away on a weekend with her horses.’
‘So, you parked up—’ prompted Thelma.
‘That’s right. I was in a hurry because with four places to do you need to get a shift on. And –oh—’ She stopped herself, frowning. ‘There was one thing—’
‘Go on, lovey,’ encouraged Liz.
‘It sounds silly,’ she said apologetically. ‘But I had to move the wheelie bin.’
An investigating police officer could well have dismissed this event but Pat, Liz and Thelma were not investigating police officers and knew all about the potential significance of wheelie bins, moved or unmoved.
‘You don’t normally?’ asked Pat, growing interested in spite of herself.
Chelsey shook her head. ‘No. Mr Hilton always puts it out on the street on a Friday night; he used to tell me all the time how he’d do it straight away every time he got back from his Friday-night meeting. Made a big thing of it, he always did.’
There was a pause. All three women could well imagine Neville Hilton making a big thing of putting wheelie bins out.
‘There’s trade waste collection on a Saturday,’ said Jax authoritatively. ‘It’s different from normal waste. A load of holiday cottages use it but you have to remember to put your bin out where they can see it.’
‘It hadn’t been put out like normal; it’d been left in the driveway blocking the way to where I park,’ said Chelsey.
‘So, you moved the wheelie bin and went inside,’ prompted Thelma.
Chelsey nodded. ‘It were clean,’ she said. ‘Spotless. Everything washed up and put away, nothing left out.’
Thelma frowned.
