She stood up and restrained her daughter by placing her hands firmly on Heather’s upper arms. ‘Honey. Stop. Please. Otherwise I’ll have to call the nurses.’ It was like speaking to a child, not a grown woman.
Heather stopped writhing, but her face remained deathly pale. Margot continued, ‘I’m going to the police station this afternoon to talk to them. To – to make an identification.’ If you can call it that, she thought, after so many years. ‘And to give my DNA. I’ll know more after I’ve been.’
Now that’s where she is. Stuck in a claustrophobic room in a police station having provided her DNA.
The door opens and Gary Ruthgow enters, his bulk taking up most of the doorway. Behind him a slight young woman trots in, holding a file to her chest. His face softens when he spots her sitting stiffly on the uncomfortable plastic chair with her handbag on her lap. ‘Hello, Margot.’
She dips her head but doesn’t smile. ‘Gary.’ Her heart beats faster and she has to take another sip of water because her tongue is sticking to the roof of her mouth.This is it? The moment she finds out for certain whether or not that body is her daughter’s.
His eyes go to the empty chair beside her. ‘You didn’t bring someone with you?’
She shakes her head.Just get on with it.
Ruthgow and the DC, who introduces herself as Clotilde Spencer, take the seats opposite. Ruthgow clears his throat and looks across the table at her, his expression serious. She notices he’s wearing a soft pink tie flecked with white. ‘Now, obviously it won’t be possible for you to identify Flora, due to the, uh, decomposition of the body.’ She winces at the word. She’s trying not to think about her beautiful Flora being reduced to bones. ‘That’s why we’ve taken the DNA sample from you. But we wanted to know if there was anything else that might help us identify the remains that we’ve found.’
‘Such as?’
‘Any abnormalities, fractures, that kind of thing. Like, for example, had she ever broken her collarbone?’
‘No. She broke her ankle years ago when she was about six. Her left one. I don’t think it was ever set properly. It used to play up now and again. And it was weaker.’
DC Spencer sits up straighter. ‘Broken left ankle, you say?’
‘That’s right.’
She turns to Ruthgow and raises an eyebrow.
Ruthgow leans forward, his elbows on the table. ‘The body that has been found died somewhere between 1993 and 1996 and is believed to be a young female, aged between fifteen and seventeen. Unfortunately, due to the amount of time that has passed, we’re unable todetermine the cause of death at this point, although we have forensic pathologists working on it as we speak. But there is one thing we’re certain about. There has only been one past breakage.’
Here it comes, thinks Margot, bracing herself. She won’t cry. She clenches her fists in her lap, pressing the fingertips into the soft flesh of her palms. She’ll wait until she’s alone in the car to shed any tears. ‘The left ankle?’
Ruthgow smiles. ‘No. Right collarbone. There is no indication that either ankle has ever been broken. We won’t know for definite, of course, until we run the DNA sample you gave us, but …’ he sits back in his chair and Margot’s amazed that he looks relieved ‘… I don’t think the body is Flora’s.’
Margot waits until she’s safely ensconced inside her Range Rover before letting the tears flow. She’s not even sure what she’s crying about, exactly: that the body doesn’t look as if it’s Flora’s, or that it’s somebody else’s daughter and that another family, another mother, has had to live the same limbo life as she has for the past eighteen years. Part of her wanted it to be Flora so that she could finally – not move on, she’ll never be able to move on – have some kind of closure and lay her to rest. Yet the other part, the bigger part, is relieved because it means there is the smallest hope that maybe Flora didn’t die all those years ago, that she’s alive somewhere. Happy. It’s a fantasy she sometimes allows herself, but not too often. Hope is a powerful thing that, as yet, has led only to disappointment.
She reaches in her bag for a tissue and wipes away thetears. This won’t do. She has to be strong. She promised Heather she’d go back to the hospital and tell her the news. And even though it won’t be officially confirmed until the DNA results are through, this is what Heather will want to hear.
Because it means Heather had no motive to shoot Clive Wilson.
Her mobile rings and she answers it when she sees Leo’s name flash on the screen. She’d texted him earlier to tell him about the remains.
‘They don’t think it’s her,’ she says, her body sagging against the seat. She repeats what Gary Ruthgow had told her about having a DNA test just to be sure.
‘That’s great news if it’s not her,’ says Leo.
‘It is. And it isn’t.’
‘But if it’s not her body, it means there’s no motive for Heather,’ he says.
‘I know.’ She leans her head against the steering wheel and closes her eyes. ‘Are you still coming to visit today?’
There’s an awkward silence. ‘I, um, listen, sis, I’d love to come back to support you. I feel dreadful I’m not there for you – and Heather, but it’s just … it brings it all back, you know.’
She does know. After it transpired Dylan had an alibi it was Leo who was hounded most by the police. She knows that a large number of people still believe he had something to do with Flora’s disappearance even though he, too, had an alibi.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says again, into the silence, and she can hear the emotion in his voice. He hasn’t been back to Tilby in fifteen years. When they meet up she andHeather always travel to Bristol to see him. Not once has she doubted him. She knows he’d never be capable of hurting his niece, yet that doesn’t stop the gossip and speculation. It was his liking for younger women that did it, she knows that. She’d heard the rumours at the time that he slept around with much younger women, but she never felt he was inappropriate with her own girls. He was their uncle. She knew he didn’t view them in that way, even if Sheila had once made a throwaway comment that Margot should watch him around her daughters. She insisted she’d been joking, but Margot hadn’t found it remotely funny.
‘That’s okay. I’ll keep you up to date with any news.’
