Then I rang the insurers and began the long, slow process of giving them all the details they needed about my stolen car.
Once the courier had called I got ready to leave. There was a noise upstairs, someone coming in. Unusual, as Grant and Jackie Dobson are teachers and rarely home when I am there, and their daughters are at school.
I went upstairs quietly, feeling foolish at how hard my heart was beating. There was someone in the kitchen. I positioned myself near the front door before calling out, “Hello?”
“Sal?” a husky voice replied and Vicky Dobson, the eldest daughter, popped her head round the door. “Hiya. I’ve just got back. Don’t come too near, I need a bath, seriously.” Vicky had been doing the festivals; Glastonbury, Reading, WOMAD and had gone backpacking round Europe in-between. She looked the part; muddy blonde dreadlocks, a set of rings in each nostril, enough in her ears to hang curtains on, a stud in her eyebrow, distressed clothing, acid green Doc Martens. She looked great.
“Good trip?”
“Top. I’m knackered. And starving. I must eat – you want anything?”
“No, I’ve got to get going. See you soon.”
Frances Delaney had a baby draped over her shoulder when she answered the door. “Typical,” she said, “he always sleeps at this time, until I arrange something. Come in.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, “mine was just the same.”
“How many have you got?”
“Oh, only the one of my own but we share a house so there’s a little boy as well.”
“I’ve four,” she said, “well, four at the moment.”
“You’re having another?”
She smiled. “I always wanted a big family, sometimes you get what you want.”
We sat in a large room, strewn with baby gear and children’s toys. There was a distinct smell to indicate she’d just changed a nappy. She wore a shapeless, navy jogging suit and moccasin slippers. Her dark wiry hair was pulled back in a yellow hair band. The baby wriggled on her shoulder, she rocked and patted its bottom. She looked ridiculously happy.
I asked her to tell me about the weeks before Jennifer left. I wouldn’t let on to Frances that Jennifer had never gone to Keele; it was my job to find things out not divulge them. Roger Pickering was paying my way and any information belonged to him first and foremost.
“I remember it well, actually, with it being so hot. It was incredible, everything drying up. We used to watch her father watering his plants, every night after work he’d be out there.”
