The Sleeping and the Dead

The new hall was where school plays were performed. In Hannah’s final year, Michael was Macbeth. He looked like a Viking warrior with his long white hair and papier-mâché armour. Jenny Graves was Lady Macbeth. People said she was very good, but Hannah had been prompting and too busy following every line to notice individual performances. What she did remember was the knife, because she’d helped with props too. She didn’t know where Mr Westcott had found it, but it was seriously sharp. One of the first years was messing around and cut herself. Hannah thought that nowadays, when everyone was so conscious of health and safety, it wouldn’t be allowed.

Once she’d persuaded herself that of course it would have been impossible for Michael to be there, Hannah even started to enjoy herself. At first the music was far too loud for sensible conversation but someone persuaded the disc jockey to turn it down. She could catch up on news of people who had once been close friends. No one mentioned her father. She supposed, even in a town as small as this, that had been forgotten long ago.

She was talking to Paul Lord when Sally arrived. Hannah saw her from the corner of her eye, but continued the conversation. In school Paul had been something of a figure of fun – a spotty scientist, too conventional for his age, more conventional even than her. He had become rather handsome. Certainly he was married. He mentioned a wife and child. It seemed he had his own business and was doing rather well.

‘What happened to that blond lad you used to knock around with?’ he said suddenly. ‘Did he go away to art school in the end, or did he settle for university?’

Hannah said calmly that she had no idea. Then Sally interrupted them quite rudely, taking Hannah’s arm and dragging her away. Something had excited her. She could hardly contain herself. But she kept her face serious.

‘There’s something you have to know.’

‘What is it?’

She turned everything into a drama. Hannah was expecting a piece of local gossip. Someone had run away with someone else’s wife. She should know not to mention it in front of the people involved.

‘The body in the lake,’ Sally said.

Hannah must have looked at her stupidly. It wasn’t at all what she was expecting.

‘You had heard that they’d found a body in the lake?’

Hannah remembered a snatch of a radio report. ‘Yes. It came to light because the water level’s so low.’

‘That was what the press conference was about. The police have got a positive ID at last. Dental records or something. It’s too horrible to think about.’ She shivered theatrically. ‘It’s Michael Grey. He’d been down there for nearly thirty years.’

She was whispering. Perhaps she wanted to add to the theatre of the occasion. Perhaps she didn’t want to spoil the party. Hannah felt the room spin around her.

‘Pull yourself together,’ Sally said sharply. ‘You’ll have to speak to the police. We all will, but you’re most likely to have something useful to say.’ She looked at Hannah, waiting for a sensible response before adding impatiently, ‘Michael Grey was murdered.’

Hannah remained silent. She could hardly say that the news had come as something of a relief.

Chapter Nine

So far, Rosie thought, she’d been very good, very much the mummy’s girl, putting on a clean frock, tying back her hair in a French plait, saying what a brilliant time she’d been having.

The school was pretty much what she’d expected, comprehensive now, but still to Rosie’s eyes, rather grand. Her high school on the coast was a seventies glass and concrete slum. The window frames had warped and the roof leaked. This was a stone building, approached by a drive through trees. There was a couple of new blocks, a scattering of mobile classrooms, but still it was hard to imagine kids dealing dope in the toilets or sniffing glue behind the bike sheds. More Mallory Towers than Grange Hill. Rosie wasn’t sure about being there. ‘Look,’ she had said. ‘I’d just be in the way.’ Hannah had given her a look so geeky that Rosie could have strangled her but not deserted her.

They had been early of course. Her mother was always early. It drove Rosie crazy. There had been people in the hall, but they were still setting out food and glasses. Rosie had taken her mother’s arm. She was shaking.

‘Why don’t you give me a guided tour of the place before we go in?’

They had walked together round the outside of the building, peering in through windows. Hannah had pointed out the domestic-science block, the room where Roger had taught Latin, the sixth-form common-room. Rosie had listened. She had felt supportive and grown up. She had even wondered if she should bring up the subject of Eve and Jonathan – they had never really discussed it – but she hadn’t wanted to spoil things and had left Hannah to her memories.