The line went dead. Phyllis sat back in the seat, crossing her arms in satisfaction.
“What did you do that for? You can’t just turn off my phone, he’ll think I hung up on him!”
“Well, you should have, quite frankly. And what’s so wrong with being a busybody? Miss Marple was a self-professed busybody, and it helped her solve dozens of crimes.”
Nova groaned. “For God’s sake, Phyllis, turn it back on. I need the satnav.”
“I can direct us perfectly well with this,” Phyllis said, pulling an old AA road map out of the passenger door compartment. “Does your fiancé always talk to you like that?”
“Of course not. He’s just worried about me.”
“Why on earth is he worrying about you? You’re a grown woman, not some helpless child who needs a man’s permission to leave the house.”
“He’s not treating me like a child. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Phyllis swallowed down a stab of indignation. “I might not have much personal experience of romantic relationships, but I know plenty about controlling ones, thank you very much.”
“Trust me, it’s not how it looks. Something happened back in London, and ever since then Craig’s been a little overprotective. It’s only because he loves me.”
Phyllis sniffed. “I’ve heard that excuse before, when I correctly deduced Sheila Clark’s husband was hurting her on purpose. Sheila tried to defend him, too, but I had the evidence I needed to report him to the police. She left him eventually, and now she’s happily married to the man who used to clean her windows.”
Nova let out a long sigh. “Look, I realize you’re just trying to help here, but I promise you that Craig isn’t like that. As I said, it’s only because of what happened in my old job. He just doesn’t want me getting hurt again.”
“What happened in your job?”
Phyllis watched Nova’s brow furrow as she weighed up whether to tell her or not. Then her shoulders sagged.
“Before we moved to St. Tredock, I was a youth worker at a community center in London. Although it wasn’t easy and there were lots of complex issues to deal with, I loved the job and thought I’d do it forever…”
Nova trailed off, her eyes locked on the road ahead of them.
“So, why didn’t you?”
“There was this one sixteen-year-old boy, Declan, who used to come to some of the sessions I ran. He’d had the crappiest start in life. His parents were addicts, he’d been in and out of care, and when I first met him, he’d been expelled from two schools and was on a final warning at a third. But he was a smart kid, really smart; he loved Manga graphic novels and used to read them faster than anyone I’ve ever known. And you should have heard the way he talked about them, he was so insightful.”
“It sounds like he’d have been a welcome addition to our book club,” Phyllis said.
“God, yes, he’d have given you a run for your money!” Nova smiled, but then her face fell serious again. “Anyway, as a youth worker, there are all these strict rules in place to protect both you and the young people you work with, like no physical contact and you’re never allowed to be alone with them. But I admit, I used to break the rules a bit with Declan, letting him hang out at the center when I was doing boring admin jobs after hours. I knew I shouldn’t have beenon my own with him, and I’m not making excuses for what I did, but I was still reeling from the grief of losing my dad. And when I chatted to this kid about his books, I felt a million miles away from everything that had happened. But I was so naive.”
Nova paused again, and the only sound was Craddock’s throaty snores in the backseat.
“You don’t have to continue if you don’t want to,” Phyllis said, because as much as she wanted to find out Nova’s story, she could tell it was hurting the girl to retell it.
“One day, Declan came to see me at the center. I was on my own locking up, but I let him in for a chat. I realized pretty quickly something was up. His pupils were dilated, and he was really agitated, like he couldn’t stand still.”
“Drugs?” Phyllis asked, and Nova nodded.
“He kept going on about how everything was shit and unfair, and I eventually managed to get out of him that there’d been some incident at school, a fight with another kid, and he’d been expelled. I tried to calm him down and get him out of the center, but I must have said the wrong thing because he just flipped. The next thing I knew, he’d pulled out a knife and was holding it against my throat.”
Despite herself, Phyllis inhaled sharply. She’d always known there must have been something bad in Nova’s past, given how jumpy the girl could be, but she’d never imagined it was something like this.
“A passerby heard my shout and came running into the center. Declan fled, but the police caught up with him pretty fast. It turned out he’d pulled the same knife on a lad at school who’d taken the piss out of his mum, and so the two offenses meant he didn’t stand a chance.”
From the backseat, Craddock let out a loud, protracted yawn. Nova shook herself, as if waking from a daydream.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Phyllis said.
“It was my fault. I should never have allowed myself to be alone in a vulnerable position with him, and I rightly got fired for breaking the safeguarding rules.”
