‘Kohl eyeliner,’ added Pat.
‘Take away those things,’ said Thelma. ‘No make-up, no bright clothes – hair under a beanie hat – what do you have? A nondescript late-middle-aged woman – the type of person who passes largely unnoticed.’
There was a brief, understanding pause.
‘When Friday came,’ said Thelma, ‘Bun made a big point about being seen checking out from the Snuggery, making sure Sidrah saw her.’
‘Making some cock-eyed comment about hydrangeas,’ added Liz.
‘Then she parked up out of sight behind the playing fields and returned to the house by the back way, joined in the memorial service, phoned Neville – and waited for him to come home,’ said Thelma. ‘When he did, she called him into the flat and she confronted him, telling him what he’d done, producing the knife—’
‘And completely out of the blue, Nev had a heart attack and dropped down dead in front of her,’ finished Pat.
‘Really,’ said Thelma, ‘it must have seemed like providence to her. She didn’t have to go through with her plan after all, so a lot of her preparations – like cleaning the flat – were unnecessary. If she’d stopped to think she could have called 999 and no one would have been any the wiser.’ She looked at Ffion. ‘But then you came home unexpectedly. Bun must have panicked. She thought you’d gone away for the weekend – she’d no way of knowing you were only popping in and out. All she knew was she had to get out as quickly as she could, which is why she didn’t paint the wall back grey again and stuffed the knife in the dishwasher.’ She nodded. ‘It puzzled me did that dishwasher.’
‘What did?’ asked Donna.
‘The contents,’ said Thelma. ‘The fact it had vegetable dishes and three plates – not the sort of washing up a person on their own would generate. And then I realised – it was all stuffed in at random to camouflage the fact Bun wanted that knife washed clean of her fingerprints.’
‘Even though she hadn’t used it?’ said Donna.
‘She was panicking, remember,’ said Liz. ‘You do all sorts of daft things when you’re in a fluster.’
Donna frowned. ‘Suppose everything you say is true – and incidentally I have no problem believing it is – but why do all this in the first place?’
‘That’s what I was gonna say,’ agreed Ffion. ‘I mean okay, she sounds off her chunks this woman, but it’s all a bit extreme—’
‘Okay Neville did a bad Ofsted report, which ruined this school and led to the death of that poor lad,’ said Donna. ‘But it’s not like she was the head teacher. She has her own very successful business. Why put all that in jeopardy?’
Pat, Liz and Thelma exchanged glances. It was Thelma who spoke. ‘Annie Golightly,’ she said. ‘They’d been friends since college days. They were both at Bretton Hall together – Bun mentioned one of her tutors to us, Annie named her bungalow after the place.’
‘They’d been friends for over forty years,’ said Liz. ‘Nearer fifty. She was right cut up when Thelma mentioned her at the garden centre.’
‘They’d both been working as teachers in Africa together,’ said Pat. ‘Mombasa, in Kenya. It wasn’t hard to find out with a bit of digging online.’
‘And what – they were having a thing?’ said Ffion bluntly.
Thelma shook her head. ‘Not latterly,’ she said. ‘Though they might well have been lovers at some point. But they had a shared passion –education.’
‘Primaryeducation,’ amended Liz.
‘It’s a stronger bond than you might imagine,’ said Pat. The three ladies shared a smile.
‘You’d have to be a teacher to understand,’ said Thelma. ‘Over the past twenty years in this country there’ve been some trends in education that many people have viewed in a very negative light.’
‘Academisation,’ interjected Liz darkly.
‘Suits and money over ideals and playdough,’ put in Pat.
Thelma looked sombre. ‘Neville’s almost casual attack on the school her friend had built – a school that embodied their ideals and beliefs – must have been very difficult, especially when that attack resulted in the destruction of the school. And, even worse – the absorption by a hated academy. It would have felt personal.’
‘More so for Bun,’ said Pat. ‘Annie was facing her own destruction.’
‘And then to cap it all, Davey Fletcher died,’ said Liz.
‘That was the lad who went off the road? In a blizzard?’ asked Donna.
The three nodded.
