I waited for her to stop before I replied and used the time to calculate whether I could make the journey there and back and be certain of being able to pick up Maddie and Tom. It was too tight, I didn’t need to kill myself over a visit to Caroline. “Yes, it would have to be Monday though, if you’d be at home.”
“Yes, there’s no way I’m goid in like this,” she coughed again to prove her point, “the doctor said take a week minimum. Bordig?”
It took me a second to translate. “Morning would be fine. I’ll aim to get to you about eleven.”
“OK.”
The phone was engaged at Frances Delaney’s house. I put a cross on my list, I’d try her again later.
I made a coffee and had it with the vegetable samosas and the tomato that constituted lunch. I washed the grease off my hands upstairs; the Dobsons let me use their bathroom. The shelves bulged with bathstuffs and cosmetics and towels were stuffed onto rails and hooks any old how. Four girls lived here and the array of bottles bore witness. I’d this to look forward to with Maddie – and teenage rebellion. I knew that the Dobsons had an easy time with their eldest – she was eager to travel and had been too busy earning cash for her adventure to be out clubbing it or in slumming around. It was different with their second girl. They were in the throes of teenage hell. The fact that both parents were teachers and had masses of experience working with youngsters hadn’t seemed to help at all.
Jennifer had been a typical teenager, eager to become independent, desperate to leave home. Her parents had disliked her clothes and the lifestyle she enjoyed but didn’t that just come with the territory? I was becoming more convinced that I would have to speak to Mrs Pickering eventually. If anyone could tell me the essential facts it had to be her: exactly when Jennifer had left her course at Keele, whether she’d given any indication whatsoever of where she was going, whether she talked about having a baby. After all at that point Mrs Pickering had deemed her daughter a disgrace. Hardly a term for someone who’d dropped out of an English degree. If I didn’t get any joy from Keele I would have to persuade Roger to let me approach his mother.
The neighbours who had lived on the other side of the Pickerings had moved to Bradford. I dialled their number. “Hello?”
“Is that Mrs Shuttle?”
“Yes.”
“You used to live in Heaton Mersey?”
“Yes.”
“My name’s Sal Kilkenny,” I began, “I’m trying to trace a missing person, Jennifer Pickering, I know you and your husband lived next door to the Pickerings while Jennifer was still at home.”
