Page 112 of The Impossible Fortune

Joanna can see from the CCTV that the two figures are talking. But what are they talking about?

Joanna decides she has to call Elizabeth. She takes a large piece of black card that she bought especially for Zoom calls and lowers it inch by inch over her screen to make it look like the Zoom has malfunctioned, then switches off the computer and reaches for her phone.

Elizabeth will want to know exactly why Holly Lewis and Davey Noakes were having a private meeting.

But, as she’s about to call, Joanna changes her mind.

And she calls her mum instead.

It rings the customary seven or eight times. Joanna knows that her mum likes to make herself look presentable before she answers the phone.

‘Hello, Joyce Meadowcroft here, whom is calling, please?’ Her mum also has a phone voice.

‘It’s me, Mum,’ says Joyce.

‘Ooh,’ says Joyce. She always sounds so excited when Joanna rings that it breaks her heart for all the times she hasn’t rung over the years. ‘I’ll just turn the volume down onFlog It!’

‘You can pause it, Mum,’ says Joanna.

‘My television doesn’t have pause,’ says Joyce.

‘It does, Mum,’ says Joanna. ‘I showed you last time we were down.’

‘Yes,’ says Joyce. ‘But the button you pressed doesn’t pause any more.’

‘It does, Mum,’ says Joanna. ‘You must be pressing the wrong button.’

‘I’m not pressing the wrong button,’ says Joyce. ‘I’m pressing the one you showed me.’

‘Mum, you are not pressing the one I showed you. If you were pressing the one I showed you …’ Unconditional love, Joanna, unconditional love. ‘Perhaps, perhaps it has stopped working. I’ll get Paul to take a look when I see you next.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ says Joyce. ‘He’s very good at that sort of thing. Your dad was too.’

‘I’m also pretty good at …’ Let it go, Joanna, let it go. ‘How much do you know about Davey Noakes?’

‘Not a great deal,’ says Joyce. ‘I know we ruled him out of Holly’s murder, because he’s always known about the money.’

‘Did he tell you that he and Holly had their own private meeting on the day of our wedding?’

‘No,’ says Joyce. ‘He did not.’

Joanna has also got Paul’s attention, and he puts down his essays and comes to look at the screen. Joanna puts her mum on speaker.

‘I was scrolling through the CCTV and saw them together,’ says Joanna. ‘That has to make him a suspect, surely?’

‘I’d say so,’ says Joyce. ‘Have you told Elizabeth?’

‘Why would I tell Elizabeth?’ Joanna asks. ‘You’re the brains of the operation.’

‘Me?’ laughs Joyce. ‘You might as well have called Alan. He’s cowering in the bedroom, by the way, because he got frightened by a banana skin.’

‘I’m like that with mushrooms,’ says Paul.

‘Hello, Paul!’ says Joyce.

‘Hello, Mum-in-law,’ says Paul, and Joanna can hear Joyce suppress a squeal.

‘I bet Alan can work the remote control though,’ says Joanna, because politeness is all well and good, but you can’t completely give up the fight.