Then She Vanishes(74)
She reaches in her bag for a tissue and wipes away the tears. This won’t do. She has to be strong. She promised Heather she’d go back to the hospital and tell her the news. And even though it won’t be officially confirmed until the DNA results are through, this is what Heather will want to hear.
Because it means Heather had no motive to shoot Clive Wilson.
Her mobile rings and she answers it when she sees Leo’s name flash on the screen. She’d texted him earlier to tell him about the remains.
‘They don’t think it’s her,’ she says, her body sagging against the seat. She repeats what Gary Ruthgow had told her about having a DNA test just to be sure.
‘That’s great news if it’s not her,’ says Leo.
‘It is. And it isn’t.’
‘But if it’s not her body, it means there’s no motive for Heather,’ he says.
‘I know.’ She leans her head against the steering wheel and closes her eyes. ‘Are you still coming to visit today?’
There’s an awkward silence. ‘I, um, listen, sis, I’d love to come back to support you. I feel dreadful I’m not there for you – and Heather, but it’s just … it brings it all back, you know.’
She does know. After it transpired Dylan had an alibi it was Leo who was hounded most by the police. She knows that a large number of people still believe he had something to do with Flora’s disappearance even though he, too, had an alibi.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says again, into the silence, and she can hear the emotion in his voice. He hasn’t been back to Tilby in fifteen years. When they meet up she and Heather always travel to Bristol to see him. Not once has she doubted him. She knows he’d never be capable of hurting his niece, yet that doesn’t stop the gossip and speculation. It was his liking for younger women that did it, she knows that. She’d heard the rumours at the time that he slept around with much younger women, but she never felt he was inappropriate with her own girls. He was their uncle. She knew he didn’t view them in that way, even if Sheila had once made a throwaway comment that Margot should watch him around her daughters. She insisted she’d been joking, but Margot hadn’t found it remotely funny.
‘That’s okay. I’ll keep you up to date with any news.’
Margot ends the call, then throws her mobile onto the passenger seat, blowing her nose loudly and peering at herself in the mirror, wiping the stray mascara away from her bottom eyelids. She doesn’t want Heather to see she’s been crying.
Heather. Something is niggling at Margot. The way her daughter had reacted when she’d told her they thought Flora had been found. She’d been so sure the body hadn’t been that of her sister. Why?
Unless – and the thought is so awful that Margot can barely bring herself to think it – unless Heather knows exactly what happened to Flora. An image of Keith’s crumpled body comes to mind, the gun slipping from Heather’s trembling hand to the ground.
Heather had killed her father. Could she have killed her sister too?
40
August 1994
Heather watched as Flora scuttled across the fields and out of sight. She wondered if Dylan was waiting in the lane. She imagined so. The two young lovers running off to London for the day. She turned away from the window in disgust.
Doesn’t Flora understand how much she’s done for her?
That day, four years ago, had been like any other on their farm in Maidstone: another day of their father’s aggressive moods, put-downs and bullying. Their mother overcompensated for their father’s lack of love and, as a result, the three of them were close. Their father was the outsider. He bullied Flora most, maybe because she was the eldest, or because she backchatted him more than Heather did. Whatever the reason, it was normal for him to shout abuse at them, particularly when their mother wasn’t in earshot. Flora would sneak into Heather’s room at night when they heard their parents arguing downstairs, and they would huddle together under the blankets until they heard the reassuring slam of the front door, which indicated their father had gone out. He never hit Margot. They were sure of that. But he was a hard man, devoid of humour, as though he’d just woken up one day and all the joy had seeped out of him. Their mum admitted it was like he’d had a personality transplant. He wasn’t her Keith any more.
But none of them knew what to do about it.
Thankfully, he’d never hit his daughters either, or shown any kind of physical violence.
Until that spring day in 1990.
It was their favourite season on the farm, because of the lambs. They liked to cuddle them, and occasionally feed them with a bottle. Years before, their father had joined in, showing them how to cradle a lamb’s warm little body in the crook of their arm, like a baby. That was until his fun-loving humour was replaced by a prickly, grumpy, anxious state and he snapped at them all the time.
Stress, their mother called it. Obnoxious-bastard syndrome was what Flora called it.
On that particular day their father had got out his shotgun because a cow had become entangled in barbed wire and had to be put down. ‘I need to put it out of its misery,’ he’d said, carrying the gun as though he was John Wayne.
Flora had glanced at Heather and grimaced. But half an hour later, as they were leaving the barn where the lambs were kept, they saw that their father had left his gun out, leaning against the barn gate.