They were looking at the pair of feet, unmoving at the end of the sofa.
Chapter Twenty-five
Friday 25th July
From the Ripon Community Facebook Page:
A word to the wise! The River Ure by Skel Bridge is NOT a designated clean water zone. Even paddling is likely to bring a nasty surprise or two!
‘When I was younger, I was all over the place.’ Chloe spoke dispassionately, hair stained ruddy gold by the evening sun. ‘The usual thing – Mum and Dad split up; I didn’t get on with her new partner. Anyway, I was just a gob on legs me – couldn’t be bothered with school, got in with the wrong crowd. I’m not excusing myself, Mrs Cooper – I’m just saying. And then …’ She paused as if summoning up the will to go on. ‘Then, I got in a fight. Stupid. Like I say – gob before brains – and the upshot was I got a criminal record.’ Chloe sighed, a reflective Valkyrie, wide pale eyes looking into a troubled past. ‘Then I had our Mirrel. Well, her dad was a no-hoper but she was – sheis– the best thing that happened to me. Calmed me right down. Still does – sometimes I catch myself thinking, hang on, which one’s the parent here?
‘Anyway, Annie got me on that scheme – the one where you do your teacher training in school – but when I started on atthe school, I had a criminal record. And I know for a fact Annie covered it up. I’m not sure how. She’s like that – all that matters to her is the person. But when that—’ Here she stopped herself. ‘When that inspector, that Mr Hilton, started going through things, it all came out. And that’s why we failed the Ofsted.Because of me.’
‘No,’ said Thelma.
‘Yeah, okay there was other stuff,’ said Chloe. ‘But that was the main reason. That’s why we were Inadequate, not Requires Improvement.’
‘No,’ said Thelma again, taking Chloe’s hand. ‘The school didn’t fail – the schoolwasfailed … Failed by a clumsy, rigid system of monitoring, carried out by an inflexible man who should never have been doing the job in the first place.’
For a moment Chloe said nothing, then she took a deep, shuddering breath.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and Thelma sensed that again the tears were not far away.
She handed her another tissue and stood up.
‘You are an excellent teacher,’ she said to Chloe. ‘Remember that.’
‘Do you not think we should just call 999?’ asked Zippy, for what felt like at least the tenth time. For once she was lacking her usual confidence, indeed one almost might say she was looking agitated.
‘Let’s just check ourselves first,’ said Liz, more calmly than she felt. She looked at the glass of the kitchen door. It should be easy enough to break, and with her hand and arm wrapped in the tea towels Sidrah had just run across the road to fetch. ‘The sooner we can get to her …’ She let the words tail off.
‘You mean the sooner we can see if she’s carked it,’ supplied Zippy gloomily.
‘The sooner we can see if she’s okay,’ said Liz. ‘Or not.’
Zippy shrugged. ‘She didn’t wake up when we banged on the window.’
Liz nodded. It was a miracle the glass was still intact after Zippy and Sidrah’s vigorous efforts to get the woman’s attention. She looked at the window in the kitchen door. It should be easy enough to reach the key she could see visible, as long as the door wasn’t bolted. She didn’t think any alarms would have been set, not with Ffion in the state she must have been in. She pictured the unmoving figure on the sofa and shuddered despite the evening heat.
Zippy shook her head. ‘Back in the day,’ she said, ‘there was the Police House, the district nurse down Back Lane, Doctor Heathcote over in Pickhill.’
Liz nodded, remembering her earlier thoughts. ‘How many people actually live here now?’
Again, Zippy sighed. ‘Fewer than thirty, I reckon. And I’m not being funny, but a number of them aren’t that long for this world.’
‘Okay!’ Sidrah sounded excited as she appeared with an armful of tea towels. ‘I’ve cotton and I’ve linen. Which do you think would be best?’
From where he was tied up by the front door, Buddy Dog emitted a sharp bark, as if to say, ‘Here goes.’
The living room door was ajar and the noise of flies from within made them slow their already cautious progress and instinctively clutch at each other, whilst outside Buddy Dog howled mournfully. Once again there was the faint smell of stables but this time it was overlain by something else, something Liz’s scared mind shied away from identifying. Breath sticking in her gullet somewhere, Liz gingerly pushed at the door. An overpowering, sickly sweet smell wafted out on a cloud of warm air and angry flies.
‘OMG,’ said Sidrah in a small voice. ‘The smell of death!’
Zippy Doodah sniffed suspiciously. ‘More like Prosecco,’ she pronounced. ‘Very cheap Prosecco.’ She crossed the room andopened the curtains, revealing an irregular, discoloured stain on the edge of the carpet. At the edge of this was an overturned bottle of KostKwik Fizz-tastic, with purple lipstick stains just discernible around the neck. It was around this stain where the flies clustered and buzzed.
As one, they reluctantly turned their eyes to the sofa.
Ffion Hilton lay on her back, eyes wide open, staring, face slipped, T-shirt rucked unbecomingly up round her middle. Feeling as if she were in some fevered daydream, Liz approached the supine figure, watched by Zippy and Sidrah who were clinging to each other. She bent over the figure, laid a cautious finger against the side of the neck.
