Saturday 9th December 2023
Georgie
‘Rowena, can you hold the fort for a few minutes?’ Georgie calls over to her, gesturing at the bar. ‘I just need a bit of a break.’
Rowena looks up from talking with Ellen and Dave and gives her a thumbs-up. Georgie escapes into the back office to collect her thoughts, sitting in her usual committee meeting seat, stretching out her legs and letting her head fall back.
The conversations and events of the day replay on a loop.
Somebody in that church knows where Leo is.
My uncle peter helps peeple and peeple like him and ask him for things.
He catches bad guys like the man who made things go on fire.
Why is the sign back up?
Why is Alice talking to the police?
Avoiding his own stuff. And God, there’s plenty …
I’d rather not take any trips down Memory Lane.
Outside this pub, there are ripples and movements she can’t control. Alice talking to the police; Chrissy searching for Leo; Peter roaming around ‘sorting out other people’s situations’, and Leo somewhere further afield, perhaps making his way back. Or perhaps never to return.
Her mind’s eye starts turning the pages of Peter’s scrapbook and she imagines Ethan looking over her shoulder. What does that weirdo want with my son?
Maybe she hasn’t paid enough attention to Peter before now, or his ex-wife. It’s all been about Chrissy and Alice. The Inseparables, Ethan used to call them. And Georgie’s current search history, if she didn’t clear it at least once a week, would be full of them. She sometimes wonders what someone in her position would’ve done before smartphones and the internet. How long would it have taken her, even, to find out her lover was dead? That awful limbo week of not hearing from him, thinking he was rejecting her, ghosting her, could’ve lasted months, even years.
She thinks of the day she waited in their usual hotel room, with a new dress, new underwear, reapplying her lipstick again and again as she waited.
The two room-service meals that turned up under their shiny silver domes, and sat there uneaten.
And the moment, several torturous days later, when she realised the alternative to being ghosted was a thousand times worse.
LOCAL HEAD TEACHER TAKES OWN LIFE
The photo they used was of him and Chrissy. That was a knife to Georgie’s heart at the time, but later it became a flame to her anger: the audacity of her. Smiling beside him in all these tribute pieces, as though she hadn’t neglected him, scoffed at him throughout their marriage. And the more Georgie agonised over it, the more convinced she became: there was more to it than work pressure and Ofsted, of course there was. What if Chrissy had made things unbearable for him? Chrissy and her best friend and her brother? Maybe they’d found out Ethan was in love with someone else. Threatened him, made him feel he had no way out.
Drove him to it … or worse.
It was seeing Cromley back in the news, after Leo’s arrest, that had really stirred the lurking doubts from the back of Georgie’s mind. Seeing Chrissy and Alice’s faces, reading about the fight; thinking, that village. Bad things happen in that village. The googling and Facebook-stalking started then. Driving past and through Cromley, not yet daring to actually stop. Then the property searches, the first fragments of a plan. And then, like fate, the pub up for sale, the committee being formed: her chance to own a piece of Ethan’s life. To find out why he ended it without any warning, not a flicker.
Now she sets her jaw as she types Peter’s name into her phone. He doesn’t seem to use social media but there are local news articles about his career, awards he’s won, arrests he’s made. There he is with his arms round other officers, an arrogant smile, slaps on the back, another promotion. He’s dodgy, she thinks, all her instincts blazing. He’s dodgy as fuck.
Her spine straightens when she spots his name in a report about Ethan’s death. Has she seen this one before? Of course she has; she’s seen them all, pored over them obsessively. But she reads it again, paying attention to the quote from Peter: ‘In my capacity as a senior police officer in the area, I can confirm that Ethan Dean’s death has been ruled a suicide following a short inquest. In my capacity as a friend of the family, I’d like to say how devastated the whole community is by this tragedy.’
Lies, she thinks, breathing hard. Lies, lies, lies.
She scrolls through a few more of the Google results, then tries some different search terms – Ethan Dean inquest, Peter Lowe Ethan Dean, Peter Lowe cases, Peter Lowe fires … And it’s the final one – a wild card, really – that throws out a mugshot that stops her dead. The face blares out from the list of results, younger, but recognisable, mainly because of his distinctively broken nose. It’s the man from outside the pub a few weeks ago. The one who asked if she was Alice Lowe and then said, never trust a Lowe.
She clicks into the article and scans for his name. Frank Jordan. She has never heard of him. She’s about to google him separately when she hears shouts from the bar, voices raised in anger. She freezes as they climb in volume and intensity. Then she swears under her breath, jumps up, and hurries out of the room.
As she turns the corner into the main bar area, she sees Janice, Ellen and Sara standing in the corner near the fire extinguishers.
‘No, Robbie was here,’ Janice is insisting, gesturing at the floorboards. ‘And Leo was here … And Robbie literally just turned …’ She demonstrates crudely. ‘And Leo punched him!’
Sara steps forward, vigorously shaking her head. ‘Jesus, Janice, that isn’t what happened! Robbie and Leo were both here …’ She points to a spot further towards the bar. ‘And Robbie was up in Leo’s face, saying something to him …’
‘That’s what I said!’
‘No, you were making out like Robbie was minding his own business and then Leo just walked up to him and hit him. Did you even see a punch? Can you be sure it—’
Georgie rushes forward. ‘Hey, hey, what’s happening?’ She looks around, seeing everyone else staring at the unfolding argument, and no sign of Rowena.
Ellen turns indignantly to Sara. ‘Why are you defending him all of a sudden?’
‘I’m just saying there was more to it. We all know there was, but nobody ever admits it. And now he’s missing, and maybe … well, maybe it needs to be said.’
‘No, it does not! It’s completely inappropriate! We’re all on edge, already, wondering what the hell is going on—’
‘I wasn’t the one who started talking about who was where and who saw what that night!’
‘Well, we were all thinking about it!’ Janice says. ‘It’s impossible not to, being back here!’
Georgie thinks about intervening again, calming things down, but she is rapt. The electricity in the air feels like a release. And it’s the first time she’s heard anyone defend Leo. She holds her breath, lets things roll.
‘Leo is a murderer!’ Janice explodes.
‘He was convicted of manslaughter,’ Sara hurls back.
‘Why are you even here if you’re on his side?’
‘I’m not on his side! But the whole thing was a tragedy, a terrible, flukey tragedy—’
‘Killing someone is not a fluke!’ This is Ellen again now. She and Janice close in on Sara, and for a moment Georgie thinks someone’s going to get hurt, again, in this cursed corner.
‘Okay, everyone—’ she finally speaks up.
‘They were arguing,’ Sara ploughs on. ‘Robbie clearly said something to upset him—’
‘You can’t be suggesting he deserved it? You’re as bad as Chrissy!’
‘Well, to be perfectly frank,’ Sara says, chin jutting, ‘I don’t think Chrissy is bad. I think she’s had a bloody rough ride.’
A murmur ripples around the pub. Now Georgie feels a dark wave of fury. Defending Leo is one thing, but she doesn’t want sympathies to start swinging Chrissy’s way. Undeserved. Uninformed. No, no, not on her watch.
She inserts herself into the middle of the jostling group. ‘Please remember that we’re here to honour Robbie today!’ she cries. ‘Not to dissect that terrible night!’
It’s like pulling a plug. Shoulders sag. Heads go down. The three women look a little shamefaced, but their scowls are still in place, their bodies still bristling.
The toilet door bangs and Rowena comes back in. ‘Is Marianne still—’ She stops when she sees the cluster of pink-faced people. ‘Oh …’ She looks puzzled. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Where have you been, Rowena?’ Georgie can’t help snapping.
‘I popped into the toilet … I heard voices but I just thought things were getting lively in here …’ The word ‘again’ seems to dangle, unsaid. ‘I was only gone a few minutes …’
Georgie breathes hard, settling her mask back in place. ‘It’s fine,’ she says, smiling thinly. ‘Nothing to worry about. Just an emotional day.’ She casts the smile around the room, forcing it wider.
‘Well, yes, quite …’ For a moment, it seems as if Rowena will say something along the lines of, I told you so, and Georgie prepares herself not to rise to it. Instead, Rowena blinks and raises the mobile phone she’s holding in her right hand. ‘Is Marianne still here?’
People look around at each other.
‘I think she went to get some air,’ Poppy says. ‘Although I can’t see her from this window …’
Rowena starts typing clumsily on her phone. ‘Apparently the police want to talk to her.’
Georgie looks at the table where Marianne was sitting. There is a half-empty wine glass still there, a plum-coloured lipstick stain on its rim.
‘I’ve had a message about that, too,’ someone else says.
‘What’s going on?’ chimes a third person, across the other side of the room. ‘Apparently there are loads of police up at Chrissy’s, and forensics, too …’
‘I’ve just heard there’s something happening further north.’
‘A helicopter.’ Everyone’s phones are coming out now. ‘Some friends are saying there’s a helicopter?’
Georgie wades into the crowd, asking them what they’ve heard, looking over shoulders at brandished phones. A few people are trying to contact Marianne. Others are looking at local news sites and social media. The noise level rises, bouncing off the bare floorboards and hollow furniture, the room warm, her heart beating fast. The sense of Ethan watching gets stronger, but more confusing: what would he want her to do? Among all the unexpected chaos, which way should she be looking?
‘There’s a fire,’ a voice looms out of the din, and Georgie spins around in alarm.
‘What?’ She can’t see any smoke, can’t smell burning, but she is already moving, heading for the fire extinguishers.
Rowena is gesticulating at her phone. ‘There’s a barn on fire in north Derbyshire,’ she says, and Georgie stops in her tracks. Her mind shoots back to Robbie’s piece about Peter catching bad guys – the man who made things go on fire – and then to her Google results from just now. She doesn’t know how everything fits together. But Peter Lowe seems to be all over it.
‘And helicopters, and police, and …’ Rowena stops and puts her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh my God …’
‘What?’ Ellen asks. ‘What is it?’
‘Someone says …’ Rowena’s voice dips. ‘That he’s dead.’
The whole room hushes.
‘Who?’ asks Sara, her voice also dropping to a whisper. ‘Who’s dead?’
Rowena looks up, her eyes huge. Georgie’s fingers close into tight, sweaty fists.
‘Leo Dean,’ Rowena says. ‘People on Facebook … they’re saying that he’s dead.’