Page 40 of Worse Than Murder

‘No. I’m fine, thank you,’ Lynne says, nervously.

‘And for you?’ Sally turns to me. ‘Oh, sorry, I actually thought I was working then.’ She slaps me playfully on the arm, laughs and walks away.

‘I’ve never been in here before,’ Lynne says, gazing at her surroundings. ‘They’ve done it out nicely.’

‘Yes.’

I take a sip of my coffee. Sally makes it exactly how I like it– black, and with an extra shot. The stronger the better. I can feel the caffeine kicking in with just one sip.

‘You wanted to see me,’ I say when Lynne doesn’t make a move to begin the conversation.

‘I did,’ she says, taking a breath. ‘I believe my daughter, Alison, has been to see you, asking for help.’

‘She has.’

‘I…’ She hesitates. ‘I don’t want you to help her.’

‘Oh?’

‘I never told Alison fully what happened. She was too young at the time, but… I don’t know, maybe I should have explained everything when she got older, but it was never the right time. Then, when she said she was joining the police, I thought… I’m not sure what I thought, but I didn’t want it jeopardising her career,’

‘Sorry, Lynne, you’re not making any sense.’

She releases a heavy sigh and composes herself. She picks up her cup of coffee. ‘This is good,’ she smiles, nervously. ‘Me and Iain don’t eat out as much as we used to.’

‘Iain’s your husband?’

‘Yes. Second husband. Are you married?’

‘No. I was. I’m widowed.’

‘I’m sorry.’

I used to feel great pain when I mentioned I was a widow or when I thought of James. Right now, I feel nothing. Is that due to the burgeoning romance with Odell Zimmerman back in Sheffield, or because I feel so numbed by recent events that all my emotions have completely shut down?

‘As you know, I had twin girls before Alison was born,’ Lynne begins. ‘They were almost two when Alison came along. I was hoping for a boy. Jack, my husband, the girls’ father, he wanted another girl. When the twins were seven and Alison five, they were out playing hide-and-seek. We lived in a cottage at the time, right on the edge of the village. There are fields behind it where all the kids used to play. According to Alison, the girls just disappeared. She saw them in the back of a car being driven away. She didn’t think… well, she wouldn’t at only five. But they were kidnapped. We never saw them again.

‘We took it hard. We were bound to, weren’t we? But me and Jack dealt with it in different ways. I had a bit of a breakdown at first. I was a mess. I sent Alison to live with my sister and her husband. After a while, I don’t know, I seemed to just throw myself into work. I was a midwife then. I had to keep busy, you know? Jack, he went the other way. He was frightened of leaving the house in case we had a phone call or anything saying the girls had been found.’

She pauses. Her bottom lip is shaking with emotion and her face has paled as she takes herself back to a time that causes her great anguish.

‘This is where things differ from what Alison believes happened.’ Lynne lowers her voice and hitches her chair up to the table, as if worried about being overheard despite there being no-one else in the restaurant. ‘I… we… no,Itold Alison that, a few months later, she and her dad were coming back from visiting her grandmother– Jack’s mum– on the day of a storm, that Jack had got into difficulty with the car and he was swept away by the swollen lake.’

A tear rolls down Lynne’s cheek. She reaches for a napkin and wipes her eye.

‘You don’t have to tell me any of this, Lynne,’ I say, despite itching to know everything.

‘No. I do. I was… well, I wasn’t getting over it– you don’t get over something like that– but I was coming to terms with it. I was adapting. Jack, he wasn’t. He was trapped in grief. He’d always suffered with depression. He was a complete contrast to his brother. Iain, my husband now, is Jack’s brother. I suppose you think that’s strange, don’t you? Me marrying my brother-in-law. I don’t know when things developed between us. We just grew closer as time went on.’

‘It’s not strange at all,’ I say. I feel as if she needs to hear that.

Lynne takes a deep breath. ‘Not long after the girls disappeared, something happened. I don’t know what, Iain never told me, but he said he found something in the stables where they worked together, and they had a big argument, and Jack admitted… I’m sorry,’ she says when the emotion is too much for her to hold in any longer. She grabs for more napkins and blows her nose.

It’s a while before she composes herself enough to be able to continue. ‘It turned out that Jack had been abusing the twins. Sexually. He told Iain that he’d been watching the three of them that day, in the field, and he just… he took them. He couldn’t help himself. He said something came over him and he… I don’t know if he meant to kill them. I don’t know what happened and, to be honest, I don’t want to know.’

‘Why didn’t he take Alison?’

‘I don’t know.’